If you like reading about patent reforms, Robert Hunt wrote an article in 1999 that really started a lot more discussion on how patents and ideas are now the main source of income, directly or indirectly.   

Manufacturing will always be around, but servicing a much smaller customer base unless the product can't be shipped in a container easily -- Toyota now has more manufacturing plants in the US that GM. 

Unfortunatley, volume manufacturing of many consumer products left for Japan, then Korea, then Indonesia / Taiwon / Mexico, now China with India ramping up and I'm going to go see three factories in Vietnam in October.  Next up?  Africa, in five to ten years (if internal fighting doesn't kill off all the workers).

Here is a link to Robert Hunt's article.  A bit dated now, but illustrates some of the patent history from where we have come:

http://www.ftc.gov/os/comments/intelpropertycomments/patentreform.pdf

and one from the dark side of Redmond:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/mar05/03-10patentreform.mspx

John