> The farther you move up this value chain, the fewer and fewer people you can find that can actually do those jobs.
Yep. But that is a problem better solved via some kind of wealth redistribution, rather than maintaining low value jobs that couldn’t pay enough to keep up anyways. China was just the first thing to suck away low value jobs, eventually automation will be much much worse.
You mean, the jobs that could support a family on a single income?
Those jobs?
It's a unique aspect of tech-people that the disappearance of a class of work that was actually able to support people at a reasonable standard of living is cause for advocacy of "more wealth redistribution, please". Where I come from this is viewed as both naive and insulting. I don't mean to imply you were trying to come across that way - but realize that it can. "Look I know we took your dirty disgusting low skilled manufacturing job and shipped it overseas ... but here's a welfare check from Uncle Sam" has not exactly done well as a political strategy for the last few election cycles.
Your choice of using tariffs to keep the rubber dog poop factory jobs in America eventually fails because they’ll just be away automated anyways. Trump-style protectionism doesn’t make the problem go away because it is ultimately one of a huge value gap. And this is why his tariffs have closed factories rather than actually helped them.
If capital continues to become much more valuable than labor (via robotics, automation, etc...), then eventually we have to decide what to do with all the obsolete humans who we don’t need labor from anymore. We can hand them welfare checks, give them a basic income, have them do pointless jobs (eg move dirt back and forth, or make rubber dog poop that doesn’t justify their paychecks), or...just throw them away. Some of those choices are more moral than the others.
"rubber dog poop factory jobs"? Well, at least you're making your contempt for blue collar labor obvious.
You're just wrong about tariffs closing factories. Some factories have closed (and the media makes sure we all know about those), but more have opened (and the media never tells us about those), and in total the number of manufacturing jobs in the US has increased since Trump's tariffs.
Yep. But that is a problem better solved via some kind of wealth redistribution, rather than maintaining low value jobs that couldn’t pay enough to keep up anyways. China was just the first thing to suck away low value jobs, eventually automation will be much much worse.