America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

We never stopped manufacturing, we just stopped employing people.

> We don’t have the infrastructure to manufacture

That's trivially false given we're the second-largest manufacturer in the world. We just don't want to employ people, hence why we can't make an iphone or refine raw materials.

The actual issue is that our business culture is antithetical to a healthy society. The idea of employing Americans is anti-business—there's no willingness to invest, or to train, or to support an employee seen as waste. Until business can find some sort of reason to care about the state of the country, this will continue.

Of course, the government could weigh in, could incentivize, could subsidize, could propagandize, etc, to encourage us to actually build domestic industries. But that would be a titantic course reversal that would take decades of cultural change.

Concur, employee training and retention are at an all-time low. There are no positions available for junior employees, minimal onboarding and mentoring of new employees. Organizations have stopped planning people's careers. Used to be that the employee's career growth was their manager's problem, while the employee could focus on the work. Now the employee must market themselves as often, if not more often, than actually doing the work. Meanwhile organizations see employees as cost centres and a net drain on their revenue sources.

Corporate culture in America is definitely broken. I'm not sure how we can fix it.

Employees have always been responsible for managing their own career growth and always will be. How can it be otherwise? It would be foolish for an employee to let someone else handle career growth for them as their interests aren't aligned (or even known). If you want help with career growth then find a mentor, don't rely on your manager.

Managers should facilitate training to improve employee productivity and help prepare them for a promotion. But that isn't really the same as career growth.

> Employees have always been responsible for managing their own career growth and always will be. How can it be otherwise?

On the contrary, from the 40s to the 70s (possibly well into the 80s) the corporation was heavily invested in your career. Employees were expected to dedicate their lives to the firm, and the firm, in turn, was expected to take care of them. This "free-for-all" employment model is fairly recent.

Edit - added source (1993): https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/employers-employees-no-...