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Comment by facile3232

15 days ago

I like this take a lot. I also think that America competing on manufacturing is obviously never going to happen.

Why is it obvious and why never?

  • Unemployment is at 4%, there's no reserve army of labor that can be mobilized to make flashlights and sew t-shirts for $3/hr.

    Anyways, I hope you're looking foward to prices for everything going up.

    • Could be a thing? Perhaps people might start caring about product durability and stop buying cheap shit that goes in a landfill because the producers only care about shelf appeal.

      1 reply →

    • But then we can promote immigration from poorer neighbouring countries to pick up the work. Oh wait...

  • I think there is a bit more nuance. US manufacturing jobs are never coming back. If you look at the stats, US manufacturing output continues to set records. Yes, the US is second to China (has been since ~2010), but that was bound to happen on population/demographics alone.

  • Because Americans are too rich and manufacturing is too cheap. If any of those changes it's a different story, but that's unlikely to happen.