Standards of living rise because the depreciation and other cash flows of industries employing older, increasingly obsolescent technologies are marshaled to finance the newly produced capital assets that almost always embody the cutting-edge technologies. This is the process by which wealth is created incremental step by incremental step. It presupposes a continuous churning of an economy in which the new displaces the old.
But there is also no doubt that this transition to the new high-tech economy, of which rising trade is a part, is proving difficult for a large segment of our workforce that interfaces with our rapidly changing capital stock day by day.