Bringing back things we used to do is looking in the rear view mirror. There should be investments in technology, education geared towards that and visionary things for us to accomplish for the future.
That isn't to say that the types of jobs have a huge impact. If McD paid $25/hr with full benefits, nobody would give a shit. Kind of hard to make that sustainable without clawing back real jobs from the 3rd world.
Germany seems to do a fine job with their auto industry, robots and all. I think this article is very flawed as that $8 task is but one of many and also one of the few perfect for a robot. "Spot welding isn't coming back to human manufacturing" is more accurate.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/labor-force-...
Here's a good start.
What is bad about our labor environment and why? And compared to whom?
Where I was going was that it appears looking backwards to want to bring jobs back that were outsourced for mostly cheaper labor. If US companies could do those things here profitably, they would.
However if the drop is in people who want to or need to work that's obviously bad.