FiveThirtyEight: Manufacturing Jobs Are NEVER Coming Back.

[fasttense]

64. I'm NOT buying it.

First, how many billions of factory jobs are we actually talking about? How many suffering 3rd world factory workers are making our clothes, our shoes, our furniture parts, our car parts, our computer and communications equipment? They claim it's in the millions but our parts have been manufactured overseas for a long time and no one counts those jobs. Every time I read one of these "free" trade writers who claim the jobs are being taken over by robots, I have to laugh at their naivety. There are millions and millions and millions of workers in poor destitute areas slaving away for you but you can't see them, and no one counts them. They are hidden and no one, the least of which are free traders who are trying to convince you of the wonders of globalization, is talking about all those hidden jobs that get moved when factories get moved. No the jobs are there, you just can't see the poor and suffering who are doing them so if you can't see them, they don't count.

Second, robotics are too expensive, clumsy, unnecessary and just NOT that advanced. Global warming is going to flood most of New York and Florida before anything resembling a truly human functioning robot is developed. Hell they can't even invent a machine that picks fruit without creating huge amounts of damage, waste and dust. We still have thousands of underpaid foreign workers crossing our borders to harvest most of our fruits and vegetables and doing our computer programming. No, robots are not coming anytime soon because human labor is still too cheap. As long as you can rent a person for $7.25 an hour or less, usually less, you are not going to see robots being developed to replace them. Talk to me when renting a person costs you over $50 an hour, then maybe robotics will see a boom. Necessity is the mother of invention and there is no necessity for robot workers when humans ones are so cheap.

Besides if/when robotics become common place, they will need to be manufactured, cleaned, repaired, energized (or fed), synchronized, balanced and programmed. That's a lot of work and self-repairing robots aren't even in the works yet.