Bringing “manufacturing back to the US” is a fool’s errand. The future of manufacturing is automation, not jobs.
> people don't want a job, they want money and purpose
And society will not give them any of that without a job.
There, now you should understand "the obsession with jobs."
> most jobs barely deliver either
And no job delivers even less.
Unless you are an aristocrat. Them your "job" was to fleece the peasants, and somehow "society" accepted this for thousands of years.
> that is my point
You're letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Realistically, you're not going to change society to give people "money and purpose" without a job. Fixating on an unrealistic goal takes focus away from more realistic ones.
I mean, for a least a century people have been proposing using productivity improvements to increase leisure time and distribute goods more equally. And in that time work demands have increased (e.g. going from one full-time worker in a typical household to two).
Until the 90s, that's the trajectory we were on. For life to constantly get better whilst human servitude is lessened over time.
We should be getting ever shorter work weeks and earlier retirement ages. It's the entire point of technology.