America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

The other day I saw the results of a poll [1] where 80% of Americans thought the *country* would be better off if more Americans worked in factories. However, only 20% of Americans thought that *they* would be better off if more Americans worked in factories. It was surprisingly bipartisan.

In other words, people like the idea of this, but no one actually wants this.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/845917ed-41a5-449f-946f-70263adba...

Americans are cosplaying (voting their belief system, not what they'll do, the "revealed preference"), as they do as farmers [1] [2] [3] [4], as they do as "rural Americans" [5]. It is an identity crisis for tens of millions of people [6]. Their crisis is our shared political turmoil. Happiness is reality minus expectations.

From the piece: "The people most excited about this new tariff policy tend to be those who’ve never actually made anything, because if you have, you’d know how hard the work is."

[1] https://www.agriculturedive.com/news/agriculture-shifts-farm...

[2] https://www.terrainag.com/insights/examining-the-economic-cr...

[3] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor

[4] https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/agriculture/our-insights...

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q_BE5KPp18

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/11/there-are-a-...

just like management class in any typical corporation

While simultaneously needing migrant labor with lower minimum wages and labor laws for agricultural workers.

The control and status they've had is diminishing, and they are taking it out on the rest of us. Regardless, it will be lost. People are tricky. Onward.

We already have a massive prison industrial complex, a lack of basic rights and a complete disregard for due process.

Very soon we'll be forced to make shoes and other things behind bars. No trial needed, just indefinite detention.

Would interesting to know what percentage themselves or their own children wanted to work at a factory. Can tell with a huge degree of confidence for all practical purposes thats 0.

Its always easy to expect other people to make sacrifices working these jobs, while imagining you and your kids working office desk jobs.

This lines up with the experience of the people I know who have worked in factories, there seems to be a disconnect with all these pundits and economists (and many people on the internet in general) talking about basic manufacturing work and the people I have met with actual factory jobs. The pay could've been worse and it wasn't the worst job I've heard of but it also wasn't great (they said they would've preferred a boring office job). There's a reason the pundits talking about the virtues of manufacturing jobs are pundits.

Now that is an elegant solution! They are starting to punish people with the wrong opinion and strip them of their citizen rights already; instead of flying them to El Salvador, might as well keep them as slaves in a federal prison! Pesky dissidents and manufacturing problems solved at the same time!

I mean 20% of the population thinking they would be better off working at a factory is huge. So we need more than that?

There's absolutely no contradiction here.

Currently less than 20% of Americans work in factories. All those 80% need to want is that the 20% of people who want to work in factories can do so.

It’s the same as every tech bro on here who says, “Go join the trades!”

People want to be sure that their success is protected and they love telling other people what they should do.

Old school Soviet school of thinking, very nice.

I would consider factory work if it paid a liveable wage and I didn't have other options.

Is everyone on hacker news so entitled and privileged they cannot even imagine an American citizen wanting to work for a living?

I absolutely would work a factory job if it paid 100k+ and meant owning a home someday.

Instead I got 100k student loans and make 60k at a desk and I'll never have a life outside of work because I simply can't afford it.

I'll be 35 this year after 12 years of working and just starting to have a positive net worth.

American dream my ass.

I started out asking myself, what would it take for American's to be okay with factory work. For example, my grandfather worked in a GM plant in Kansas City for most of his life. I mean he had started out wearing suits and doing books for a bank when he was young and fresh out of high school.

And then I remembered, oh yeah, the Great Depression happened when he was young and he was let go from his bank job — the bank folded. When the decent paying factory job at an auto assembly plant eventually came along he probably jumped at it.

Arbeit macht frei.

If that 20% never had a factory job before, it is not a reliable indicator. It just means their current job is already shitty. They may get a factory job and realize that they were better off flipping burgers, even with less pay.

From TFA:

> When I first went to China as a naive 24 year old, I told my supplier I was going to “work a day in his factory!” I lasted 4 hours.

Everyone wants more manufacturing in the US, but nobody wants to be a factory worker. People would rather starve or go homeless than work in a factory. Until Americans overcome their pride, this is going to make building manufacturing in the US very difficult.

Let's me real... 80% of the hard shit in US factories will be ran by mexican migrant labourers like in agriculture. And maybe that's enough of a "win" for US interests.

Agreed and the same people do a lot of their shopping at Amazon/Dollar General/Wal-Mart where low price goods are only possible because they are made off shore for much much lower wages. Bringing that manufacturing back here would destroy their buying power.

I do find it interesting that a lot of these same people are against raising the minimum wage because "it will bankrupt all the businesses" but somehow think that bringing manufacturing for the goods they buy back to the US won't do the same. At best, going from off-shore labor costs of say $15/day to $15/hour (minimum for US workers) is an 8x multiplier and will somehow magically work but a 1.5 multiplier on minimum wage is just untenable for any business.

Honestly, it is mostly an emotional response around "fairness". They don't want others getting a "raise" when they don't "deserve it". However, everything they get is 1000% deserved. The greatest trick the rich ever pulled was convincing the middle class that all their woes are the fault of the poor. The political comic of "That foreigner wants your cookie!" captures it pretty well (imo).

> if it paid 100k+ and meant owning a home someday

That is not going to happen.

Everybody wants to be a factory worker if the compensation is good. Why do you think Chinese people work in factories? Because it pays better than other jobs they can find.

"But if factory wages are good then products will be expensive"

No, because the wages for the factory worker is less than 1% of a products shelf price.

A 100k factory job and you're calling others entitled? This is the equivalent of the famous Arrested Development skit, "what does a banana cost, $10?"

It says "only 20% of Americans thought that they would be better off if more Americans worked in factories." Which isn't the same as believing they would be better off if they worked in a factory.

I agree with that sentiment. I would be better off if more of you, just not me, worked in factories instead of trying to compete with me for my non-factory work.

> people like the idea of this, but no one actually wants this

As others have pointed out, this is not a contradiction. (Read their reply.)

However, the question of 'Do YOU want to work in a factory?' is heavily influenced by the fact that we don't see factory work as a high-paying career, or a career at all. Part of the solution to the factory problem is enhancing the value proposition for the employees.

I am ambivalent toward tariffs, but the idea is that if we make foreign products more expensive then the higher price of domestic goods becomes more palatable by comparison. If paying domestic workers more raises the price of domestic goods, and if people are willing to pay that price for whatever reason, you will start to see growth in manufacturing.

It's also silly to reject long-term goals simply because achieving them is difficult.

Instead the products might just cease to exist. Or cease to exist in a particular market. Tariff-free trade brings into being products or markets that previously didn't exist.

> If paying domestic workers more raises the price of domestic goods, and if people are willing to pay that price for whatever reason, you will start to see growth in manufacturing.

Why would you need to pay them more? Remove their legal ability to organize, cripple their social safety net, and they will either work or die.

I'm not advocating for that, but it does seem to be the path we're deliberately taking.

Offhand, I believe that trick started with tribalism (generally, the 'other' is the most obvious scape goat), became racism in various forms (they look different / go to a different church it's /their/ fault), and has shifted to classism with thinly veiled racism included.

It's not much different than how a young child will blame anyone else for something that's gone wrong / they got caught doing. Maybe our society should do a better job promoting responsibility and allowing parents to offer oppertunities for children to be responsible; instead of infantalizing everyone entirely until some magical number has passed and suddenly they're an adult who was never previously empowered to be responsible.

how would a 40k a year manufacturing job help though? (real salary of someone I know in the field right now)

This poll is being propped up as evidence that people don't actually want to work in a factory, yet more people voiced interest in doing so than are currently, by an order of magnitude. If you believe there's a disconnect between perception and reality, that's fair, but it would have to be off by an order of magnitude on the positive side to support the premise, and an anecdote about a Chinese factory is very weak evidence of that. I would posit that many people would be happier and more fulfilled working in a factory than being stuck doing gig work or packing foreign products for Amazon or even bullshit desk work, but I'm not elitist enough to pretend to know what blue-collar workers in stagnant towns actually feel, let alone argue that they actually want the opposite of what they say. Personally, I wish I had the chance to work in a factory at 16 years old instead of a call center.

> If paying domestic workers more raises the price of domestic goods, and if people are willing to pay that price for whatever reason, you will start to see growth in manufacturing.

We ran this experiment for decades. It turns out that Americans are not willing to pay the higher prices, which led to our manufacturing consolidating around higher-value items.

This notion that we should move Americans from high-productivity jobs to lower-productivity jobs, and that such move will somehow enhance our prosperity is nutty. Lower-productivity jobs mean less income for workers, means less income in the system, means lower prosperity for all Americans. Moving tens of millions Americans to higher-productivity jobs while maintaining relatively low unemployment has to be seen as one of the economic success stories of the modern age.

Separately, Americans do not feel like this happened. That's a different discussion, about allocation of wealth. Our poorest states have higher GDPs per capita than many "rich" western EU countries. Mississippi has a higher GDP per capita than the UK. The difference is that the US has designed a system where every citizen lives a precarious existence, potentially a few months from destitution while other rich countries have not done that. We are allowed to make different choices in the US if we don't like this outcome.

Reminds me of the "college is a scam, learn a trade" people, all of whom went to college and plan to send their kids to college as well.

> We ran this experiment for decades. It turns out that Americans are not willing to pay the higher prices, which led to our manufacturing consolidating around higher-value items.

But did we run that experiment while foreign alternatives were nearly or equally expensive? That's the real test, and whether foolish or not that's what they are trying to do with tariffs.

> Lower-productivity jobs mean less income for workers

Are you suggesting former factory workers all became scientists and engineers? If that's true then fantastic. But I'd like to see evidence that what they are doing now is somehow more productive.

> Our poorest states have higher GDPs per capita than many "rich" western EU countries.

Is the result of that a higher median income, or is it a reflection of a higher wealth inequality?

> But did we run that experiment while foreign alternatives were nearly or equally expensive?

Tariffs will have to go a lot higher than 145% for this to be a relevant question. US labor (and now due to tariffs, raw materials) costs are so much higher that frequently even doubling the import price would not make US cost-competitive.

> Are you suggesting former factory workers all became scientists and engineers?

No, I am suggesting that those people currently work in jobs that support higher productivity of the overall labor force, and that higher productivity creates the conditions necessary for increased prosperity for Americans.

Let's take QA for example as something that is often thought of as lower-skilled (but which is not) job that a hypothetical former factory worker could retrain to do. A person could QA a T-shirt or QA the Netflix app. The Netflix QA impacts more flow of money than a T-shirt QA, and so supports higher income for everyone working at Netflix than those working in a T-shirt factory. It is not possible for a person to manually QA enough shirts to have a similar economic impact as QAing the Netflix app.

Or compare the typical factory worker to a profession that is often denigrated in the US: retail. A factory worker making cutlery or light bulbs will generate less money for the economy than the average Costco employee[1].

Or look at a company that moves these goods around, like UPS. $360k revenue per employee @ 21% gross margin.

> Is the result of that a higher median income, or is it a reflection of a higher wealth inequality?

This is the continued choice of the US polity to not use our wealth to improve our common good. We instead choose to allocate it in ways that are markedly different from other rich and developing nations. So a high-productivity state with a higher GDP per capita than the UK is "poor" because our chosen combination of labor laws, tax laws, etc. are designed to produce that outcome. There used to be robust debate about the best way to make our economy less anxiety-inducing for individuals, but that discourse ended and everybody pretty much accepts that this is how it has to be. Nonetheless, we are allowed to choose differently.

1 - Costco produces close to $100k of gross profit per employee. This is multiples of the prevailing wage even in rich countries in Western Europe, much less countries like China.

> A factory worker making cutlery or light bulbs will generate less money for the economy than the average Costco employee.

The good news is that we don't need to calculate the value of an employee, because the market itself makes it loud and clear: wages. The higher the wages, the higher the value. In any sane company, the less valuable an individual is to the bottom line, the less they get paid.

So then, if the wages of a factory job start to eclipse that of other fields, that's all the evidence we need of higher productivity/value/whatever-you-want-to-call-it.

Agree 100%. And in this case, the market is yelling that we should not bring low-productivity jobs back to the US.

You would be able to afford a lot less if everything you bought was made in factories where every worker was paid north of $100k. That includes your home, by the way.

*Yet ;)

Yep, and that’s what they’re doing. They’re wrecking the economy so much that factory jobs might look desirable to some people.

Bringing back factory jobs isn’t bringing back the American dream. It’s just replacing the shitty gig work you have to do to barely get by with a shitty factory job that you have to do to barely get by. If they pay well, it’ll drive up the cost of goods a ton and still be unhelpful for people.

> > Our poorest states have higher GDPs per capita than many "rich" western EU countries.

Not the OP, but poor as used here seems to refer to average quality of life , quality of infrastructure, etc.

> Is the result of that a higher median income, or is it a reflection of a higher wealth inequality?

Higher wealth inequality leading to stretched public services and infrastructure, which lead to lower quality of life , despite higher nominal GDP per capita.

You are probably much better off being a poor person in Spain (33k GDP/capita) vs Mississippi (40k GDP per capita), because at least you don't need to worry about the cost of healthcare.

You're more likely (but still very unlikely) to get extremely rich in the US though, although probably not in Mississippi.

Every tradesman I know makes north of 80k, granted it's backbreaking work. I assume working in a factory such as semiconductors pays 6 figs, as an engineer or foreman of some kind.

If they are literally stamping parts together on an assembly line then I guess yeah it's not going to pay 100k.

Othering has driven a lot of the hate and derisiveness of the 21st century. A lot of the political messaging and advertising tends to specifically focus on othering.

If 20% of people really think they'd be better off as factory workers, that's actually kind of a lot. Can you imagine if 20% of the working population really did work in factories? That's an enormous number.

Spot on. I would extend your analysis to include the median middle-class person is probably better off in Spain vs most/all US states. This, even though the Spaniard personally earns less income. Largely as a result of the economically precarious nature of living in the US.

Healthcare, childcare, education, retirement are all big expensive things the US does incredibly poorly.

Even more, the huge problems in the US like crime and poor healthcare outcomes are made worse by the increased inequality.

This is spot on. To add, it won’t even matter the outcome of upending our entire society and economy this way (tariffs) if the wealth distribution remains unequal. Nor will these types of jobs equalize wealth distribution (which is never mentioned because that probably sounds like communism) Look at the poor factory workers in china! You want to bring that here? Insanity.

> In other words, people like the idea of this, but no one actually wants this.

Misinterpretation of data.

> The other day I saw the results of a poll [1] where 80% of Americans thought the country would be better off if more Americans worked in factories. However, only 20% of Americans thought that they would be better off if more Americans worked in factories. It was surprisingly bipartisan.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2023/a-look-at-manufacturing-jo...

Compared to the current percentage of people employed in manufacturing (9.9% - 12,759,129 / 128,718,060), there are **more** Americans that would like to move into manufacturing, not less.

> A person could QA a T-shirt or QA the Netflix app

Netflix famously fired all their QA people and requires their devs to do test automation.

I guess HR didn't get the memo?

https://explore.jobs.netflix.net/careers/job/790301756355-qa...

Great, so we have enormous consensus and prestige for 60 million willing participants in the re- industrialization of USA. What's the problem again?