When you think about the manufacturing advances of the past 60 years, this is logical. Machinists used to require skill. Now they LITERALLY just screw the part

When you think about the manufacturing advances of the past 60 years, this is logical. Machinists used to require skill. Now they LITERALLY just screw the part into a machine and press a green button. And the pay went from 100k+ to $45k. And the technology went from $75k to $1m. But it's still cheaper to pay a human to push a cart then it is to develop the rest of that technology. But this is the investment that next level requires. Look at the progression (Google search this) from a Bridgeport, to a Mazak Nexus 6800, and then look at a Mazak Pallettech robot. The first machine is completely manual. Most have retrofit digital displays and some have retrofit powered axis, but you still have to know what you're doing. The second one is semi automatic, you just need a human to set it up and an even dumber human to run it. The last machine is a robot that you bolt onto the second machine to get rid of the dumb human operator.