> If you want to "bring manufacturing back" (whatever that means) you need significant tax raises to build and subsidise significant amounts of infrastructure a

> If you want to "bring manufacturing back" (whatever that means) you need significant tax raises to build and subsidise significant amounts of infrastructure and subsidise education and training in the relevant skills. IMHO large investments in infrastructure and education are the playbook China has followed for the last 40 years to become the world's biggest factory. In China's case, they didn't fund it by raising taxes on an already-wealthy populace, but rather by going "lol, workers' rights?" and forcing an entire generation (or two) work 12 hours a day for 6 days a week (996) making pennies per hour. [1] The PPP of Chinese citizens has gone from ~$1000/year in 1990 to ~$17,000/year today. [2] That's a 17 fold increase, compared to just ~2.7 for the US over the same period. [3] I highly doubt any employee in a country like the US, UK, or Germany is going to accept a 996-style work schedule (in fact it would be illegal in many, if not all, of these jurisdictions) and especially not for the current PPP of a Chinese citizen. > Automation explains almost all loss of manufacturing jobs. This is also applying to China now. You can't have labour costs increase 17x over 30 years and not consider automation to reduce your costs. However, since China has historically been the destination of outsourced manufacturing, they have built up supply chains that the US used to have back when the US did "manufacturing." Why would a profit-driven corporation spend money to bring the supply chain back to the US when there is no economic reason to do so? To me, this is a very large issue, separate from "infrastructure" that the US government has yet to seriously discuss. Raising taxes is a politically toxic move in many political systems, and it's incredibly unlikely a corporate entity would voluntarily choose to forego profit to help an OECD country re-develop its lost supply chains. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system [2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=CN https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat... [3] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=CN-US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...