Defense of US Economy

OK, I recognize that the US economy is in the shitter, and that people's insatiable greed combined with lack of proper oversight essentially have single-handedly led to millions of jobless, elimination of pension and retirement funds, closure of charities, and all-around ragtime for everyone. But, I do want to comment on a my father in law's statements about the US economy, basically saying that the US doesn't produce anything, and that Canada is very viable because it "makes things." Now, I am no economist, but I will try and interpret the already dumbed-down data supplied by the CIA worldbook.
First off, the US population is almost 10 times that of Canada, and our GDP is over 10 times of Canada's. Of course, all of this is dropping now, and the US is probably dropping at a higher rate than Canada's, but I assume we are still around these relative values.
The US and Canada have very similar distribution of labor force: around 4/5 of the labor force in both countries is in the Service Industry: lawyers, IT support, customer service...you know, services. The remaining labor force is in manufacturing, industry, and agriculture.
So, what does America make? Well, we are significant manufacturers and producers of petroleum, steel, motor vehicles, aerospace, telecommunications, chemicals, electronics, food processing, consumer goods, lumber, mining.
what does Canada produce? transportation equipment, chemicals, processed and unprocessed minerals, food products, wood and paper products, fish products, petroleum and natural gas.

So pretty similar stuff. Interestingly, the US produces around 8 times the oil that Canada produces, even though canada has about 8 times the proven oil reserves as the US (this is including oil sands). Its a similar story with natural gas. The US is also a major coal producer. Sadly, the US consumes WAY more oil and natural gas than our friendly northern neighbor. But again, 10 times the population, 8 times the GDP, and a 10% higher household income.

Almost 80% of Canada's export are to the US, and 65% of her imports are from the US. So we ARE producing something. We are producing airplanes, motor vehicles, machinery of all sorts, telecommunications, agricultural producst, but limited consumer goods. I think what my esteemed Dr. Father-in-law was hitting on was the limited production of consumer goods in America...indeed, this is all bought from Asia. But so is nearly all of Canada's consumer goods.

Canada has not suffered as much from the economic disaster as the US has because Canada observes prudent fiscal policy, and have managed a balanced government budget since 1997. However, they are heavily dependent and in fact intertwined with the US economy in their reliance on US exports as well as imports. Additionally, Canada is reliant to a significant degree on American banks for commercial lending (which is in sharp decline in this credit crunch), so now they are suffering from the current crisis as well.

In summary, we have two very similar countries, but one would be remiss in saying that the US is not the world's major industrial nation, with a highly diversified economy producing a wide variety of quality goods and services for the world. And I will go as far as to say that the economic boom Canada has experienced since the end of WWII (until that point the canadian economy was essentially agrarian) was only made possible by the great growth seen in the American economy.