While this is true, it's not just imports that have gutted manufacturing jobs, it's also been automation. Making 20,000 cars, for example, takes a HECK of a lot fewer workers today than it did 50 years ago. That fact isn't changing, and automation is only increasing.
True, but the core problem is us sending more money out than what we take in. Once robotics reaches a certain critical point, economies of developed and developing nations will have to be totally rethought. Among other things, it would truly allow all classes to have leisure time, which could be downright dangerous (think about the middle-aged people you know that never matured past their early teens, before you dismiss it as a tongue-in-cheek remark). Somebody has to design the robot, make the robot, install the robot, service the robot, train the robot, etc.. All of them combined might still account for 1/10th of a human worker doing the same work, but that's a Hell of a lot better than humans getting paid for the work in India, China, Costa Rica, Zimbabwe, or wherever they are,
if it can be designed, made, installed, trained, and serviced domestically.
The big issue we have now is much more that when you buy something for $50, $10 (arbitrary value) comes back to the domestic economy, and $40 (arbitrary value) gets split between foreign interests and investments that aren't "trickling" their way back down to you and yours. While it still leaves a bit of a job shortage, automation itself is not a bad thing at all, given that we need to produce and sell more of more value from here than we pay for from there. It can also help solve a fairly major current problem of people have very little extra money, which, in other times, would go towards all that skillset improvement that keeps being harped on about (it wouldn't do so as well as employing more humans, but since they need decent safety and pay, those times are permanently gone). With COL going up, and wages staying stagnant, effective wages have been decreasing, and the "grease" needed for economic mobility is in ever-shorter supply.
Manufacturing and selling domestically reduces the drain of consuming foreign goods at higher rates than we produce. Manufacturing and exporting directly attacks the problem. Manufacturing and selling domestically
and abroad, attacks the problem from both directions. With an economy that has more outgo and income, you need to start tipping the balance, and eventually reach a balanced point. Services simply cannot do that. Services are needed, but they need to be supporting domestic production of profitable goods.
Making things people want to buy, however, can do exactly that.
Also, the lower economic echelons are where most non-federal taxes are coming from.
If we can produce more than we consume for long enough to bring our debt and deficits down (not necessarily gone, but reasonable), then the rest of it would be a matter of figuring out the best way to barbeque or current political class, and get some volatility in who makes up our government, so that enough people are in there still connected to their constituents to make a positive difference for them. That, of course, is a whole other can of worms, and does not necessarily need to be done afterwards (just that if we start turning around and don't do it, we'll be sliding right on back into a worse bust than the last one, and be right back here again, but even weirder technology available to the masses).
Not all manufactured goods are of inherent use. A car isn't, technically.
It is, non-technically. If you don't live and work deep inside a city, or a bad neighborhood just outside of it, you don't get to work without one. You don't get hired for many jobs without one, either (as in, your vehicle occasionally becomes a work vehicle). Even living in a city, if you live in a good neighborhood, you'll still need one, because bus routes don't stop there (and that's how they like it). If you don't only buy new cars, you also end up paying as much or more to live close enough to work, in a city, to not need a car.
Now, an iPhone isn't, no matter how you look at it. You can get <$100 phones that do everything you'll need for a job, today, unless it's a job at an Apple house, in which case the cost shouldn't be (a) a problem nor (b) a status symbol issue.
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