The real American factory killer? It wasn’t automation

The real American factory killer? It wasn’t automation

Dylan Matthews at Vox wants you to believe that robots — not China — killed American manufacturing. Even if tariffs reshore production, he argues, they won’t bring back jobs because machines have already taken them.This is not just wrong. It’s an ideological defense of a decades-long policy failure.The jobs lost to offshoring aren't just the five million factory jobs that disappeared — the number is likely more than double that. The real toll co…

The US can’t fill its factory jobs even now. So how is it going to revitalize manufacturing in the future?

Despite billions in federal incentives and high-profile tariffs aimed at reshoring manufacturing, the US still can’t seem to fill its factory jobs. While the official narrative blames skills gaps and labor shortages, the deeper story may be about cultural shifts, generational values, and the unintended consequences of financialisation. The slacker generation 2.0 Manufacturing was once […]