"those who believed de-industrialization didn't matter, those who claimed Western capitalism was entering a new golden era of private law firms, advertising agencies, entertainment corporations, insurance companies, management consultancies, and the like - they got it wrong."
But as ever, this lacks a sense of proportion. There has been deindustrialisation, which is indeed a real problem, but you take the trend and exaggerate it out of all proportion. Just because business theorists say that the West is all post-industrial you take that as good coin. They did indeed get it wrong, and you are repeating their error. The US has not turned into a postmaterial knowledge economy. In fact the US is still has the greatest industrial output in the world - nearly a quarter in fact of all industrial output:
"Currently, the largest share of world industrial output is held by the United States (23.3 percent), followed by Japan (18.2 percent) and Germany (7.4 percent). China ranks fourth with 6.9 percent." (as at Nov 2006 http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35402)
Once again you allow impressions to substitute for real statistics, just as your attempt to show that the millions of new workers in the US and worldwide are mostly unproductive rests on sheer assertion.