America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

America doesn't underestimate it, its president does.

I saw a chart passing around from this Cato Institute survey (Cato is a right wing think tank) [0]. It made me laugh.

> America would be better off if more Americans works in manufacturing than they do today. Agree 80%/Disagree 20%

> I would be better off if I worked in a factory instead of my current field of work. Agree 25%/Disagree 73%

[0] https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2024-08/Globalizat...

For better or worse the man is exposing the mindboggling scale of deindustrialization that was hidden underneath America's transition to a "knowledge economy". Decades of failed economic policy has led America to this point.

They're going to end up with some sort of corvee forced labour scheme enforced by ICE, the logical conclusion of "other people should go work in the factories".

Those two are not in conflict. The claim is 20-25% of the population would be better off if they moved to a manufacturing job. The other 75-80% are better off where they are, but making the bottom better makes everyone better.

We already have that, it's called prison labor. The current regime will certainly ramp that up and throw even more people into forced labor camps.[1]

BTW we don't talk enough about the gigantic loophole in the thirteenth amendment: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. [emphasis added]

1 https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/flyover-country

That is not a loophole. Also prison labor tends to be "unskilled", so useless and even counterproductive in manufacturing roles the US would need if they were to compete with China.

"Unskilled" is what I meant. People with zero economic value who only can do tasks where machines are already superior to them. That definitely is the case for much of the prison population. It is better that they are kept far away from manufacturing because they are unskilled.

> It is better that they are kept far away from manufacturing

I've got bad news for you, then. https://www.vox.com/2018/8/24/17768438/national-prison-strik...

Unfortunately, that ship sailed a long time ago. Why is no one in the administration paying any attention to the outsourcing of high skill knowledge work to India and elsewhere? Obviously I have a bias working in technology, but it seems to me to be a much more CURRENT issue and one that can actually be addressed in the present.

That job retraining is going to happen ANY DAY NOW I tell you, and then those textile workers are going to be so glad that they can be call center workers.