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
most jobs barely deliver either
Keep in mind that most people are unwilling and unable to sustainably maintain self-employment.
Now before you get all hung up how this isn’t possible. There is precedent. The government would do just this during the great depression, sponsoring artists knowing it is more valuable to have artists in the population than to lose that talent pool and benefits to culture over cold cruel economics.
Scarcity is very real, I'm not sure why you would feel otherwise. Fortunately, we have largely eliminated scarcity of the necessities of life due to economic policies that are as far from your suggestions as possible, but that doesn't mean that they are produced at no cost or that scarcity in general does not exist.
And you don't need to go back 100 years for precedent. We basically paid people to sit at home during covid, and I didn't see some sort of renaissance as a result. Why would this be any different?
I think the implication here is that such a society is not built on markets or even money, but rather by individuals working together to foster a collective community that meets everyone’s needs.
Yes, communism. The more advanced we become technologically the more sense it makes. We’re largely at a point where most jobs are made up - created to give people something to do because if we don’t then they die.
We’ve pushed consumerism to the absolute max. Now, most goods are pretty much worthless. But we have to buy them, or we die. That’s how markets works. We work, and we consume, or else.
That made sense when the work we were doing was beneficial and the stuff we’re consuming was needed. We’re past that now. Most people are working to produce something dumb, or worse, evil. New addictions, new poisons, new bombs, and new problems to be solved by new software.
I don't know, but if suddenly someone really has a problem with the fact that the government is still not taking enough money from them to finance various unpromising projects, I am happy to take on the government's work and free of charge get any amount of money from them to implement the widest range of interesting projects.
Communism makes no sense until we reach a post-scarcity economy, which will never happen.
Like I said, the people you're talking about just had a significant period of time where they were effectively paid to stay home and had ample time to pursue their personal interests, yet no meaningful innovation was produced by that cohort that I'm aware of. What am I missing?