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> Manufacturing does not mean jobs. Exactly. I think a lot of people who say they "want manufacturing to come back to the USA" have a picture in their imaginat
by ryandrake 2y ago
> Manufacturing does not mean jobs.
Exactly. I think a lot of people who say they "want manufacturing to come back to the USA" have a picture in their imagination of a 1950s factory employing hundreds of middle class people standing along an assembly line picking up parts with their hands and working on them, or turning bolts on a car as it goes down the line. Then the old steam whistle blows, and all those workers exit the building and drive back to their middle class 1950s homes.
This world does not exist anymore and is never coming back. If manufacturing comes back, it's going to be heavily automated plants with a lean staff of robot technicians keeping the line going. Manufacturing may come back to the USA, but those Fred Flintstone jobs are not part of the picture.
- potato3732842 2y agoThose were not middle class jobs before the 1950s nor were they for long afterwards. The idea that one can be functionally illiterate yet afford a home, a car and a family by spending 40hr and no more riveting spring hangers onto Chevrolets, or whatever, is a legacy from a blip in time during which the US had a bear monopoly on state of the art for the time manufacturing. Those men who worked comparable factory jobs in the 1870s through the 1930s had wives and kids doing piece work at home. And in the 1970s their wives all went back to work again, just outside the home.
- ferguess_k 2y agoI think maybe with two people working a blue collar job that is much more realistic objective, once better wealth distribution has been figured out.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]