I thought cost was why we don't manufacture anymore. You have to pay an American worker way more than a kid in China. No?
We do have a problem here, or a fear I should say, of being on the leading edge of technology/machines/robots/A.I.. Yes, it's going to take a lot of reeeeally cushy factory jobs. Artificially delaying it will only make it worse when it inevitably happens.
It's not automation, it's communication.
Prior to the internet, high-tech complex manufacturing was very difficult to outsource. The on-the-ground expertise and real-time communication to the design/engineering teams needed made it difficult to produce quality products.
That all changed, dramatically, over the last 20 years. With most everything being done/stored electronically, with rich communication (email w/attachments, even video conferencing) the ability to transmit complex information back and forth, and with cheap voice communication (VOIP rather than the old-school long distance plan), it's basically shrunk the globe to the point where "over there" is no longer very far away.
Working across time zones can still be a PITA, but that's more of an annoyance than a hard constraint. For some teams, it can actually be a benefit, because people working in the US during our day can hand findings off to Asia who can continue the work while we sleep, and then have results/findings ready to review back in the US when we wake up. Rinse/repeat.
Prior to the internet, it was impossible to take advantage of foreign low-cost labor except for easy-to-produce goods. Now we can do so, and further, increases in education in places like China/India mean that they also have high-skill workers available too. A software engineer in Bangalore costs a lot less to employ than a software engineer in San Jose.
