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America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

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842 points putzdown | 2 comments | 15 Apr 25 13:50 UTC | HN request time: 0.48s | source
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vFunct ◴[15 Apr 25 14:05 UTC] No.43692883[source]▶
Our economy was designed to NOT have citizens work at factories. We pay thousands of dollars a year in our public schools to teach each of our citizens calculus, literature, world history, and physics, so that they DON'T have to work at a factory, or perform manual labor like picking strawberries or driving trucks or cleaning toilets.

Why would anyone want to go back to an economy that can be run by a third worlders? What is our competitive advantage then?

Economics works when the people do the things they are most efficient at. If a person in China can make iPhones for cheaper than an American, LET THEM. Our citizens should be designing them instead, because that's what we train our citizens to do.

Trump and the Republicans really do think of our citizens as third worlders performing manual labor like we were oxen.

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gowings97 ◴[15 Apr 25 14:14 UTC] No.43693012[source]▶
Because you cannot hide the imbalance of disconnecting yourself from the material reality that's involved with making your lifestyle possible by outsourcing to other human beings, over multiple decades, without it coming back to bite you in one form or another.

See the hundreds of thousands of people in US that have died from opioid overdoses. 50% of the US population, specifically those living outside major metro areas, experienced a slow collapse (over decades) that was not unlike the fall of the Soviet Union.

A country should have _some_ semblance of what it is to truly source, manufacture, and produce the lifestyle that's made possible in the country. When the top 15-20% become completely disconnected from the other 80% working menial service jobs because the core manufacturing has been outsourced to outside the country, it will come back to bite you.

"Man must feel the sweat on his own brow" or at least have an appreciation for what makes this possible. Your comment essentially implies that you feel that you are above or should be disconnected from this reality, which is dangerous.

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1. vFunct ◴[15 Apr 25 14:20 UTC] No.43693124[source]▶
You didn't explain exactly why we need that physical connection. You just broadly complained. Every one of your statements could be refuted by globalists saying its perfectly fine for foreigners to perform our manual labor for us instead.
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2. gowings97 ◴[15 Apr 25 14:27 UTC] No.43693242[source]▶
Because in the absence of that physical connection you begin to accumulate a social and economic debt that will eventually come due, because sooner or later that 80% working in the service economy will come for the remaining 15-20%. Domestic manufacturing made possible by some degree of anti-dumping/tariffs would at least create a more balanced distribution of this wealth.

Globalist trade promoters are just short-term wishful / magical thinkers. It's magical thinking that you can create this social and economic imbalance via outsourcing it to the other side of the globe, without consequences over the long run. It's wishful thinking that there are enough upper middle class jobs / lifestyle for everyone that took Calculus.