As an engineer I also feel the "realness" or whatever of manufacturing a real product, but countries that don't shift into a service economy tend to struggle mo

As an engineer I also feel the "realness" or whatever of manufacturing a real product, but countries that don't shift into a service economy tend to struggle more: there's fewer profitable investments and not enough places to sell goods. Our liberalization policies from the 90s until recently would not let us maintain the industries, and places like Germany or China with industrial policies more favorable to manufacturing are criticized by a lot of our policy makers, economists, media, etc.