Manufacturing is returning to America

The implication here is that the kind of manufacturing work that helped lift China out of poverty may never migrate to the rest of the world's developing nations.

It may turn out that the time window in which a developing country could ride the outsourcing train to prosperity was actually only a few decades wide.

>> What disappeared were the unskilled jobs, and they are never coming back, because they are rapidly becoming obsolete.

This. To get a job, the new requirement is to be able to do something that a robot can't do. And robots are improving rapidly.

Just like steam shovels put ditch diggers out of work, and spreadsheets put human calculators out of work, robots are putting factory workers out of work. As their dexterity and visual abilities improve, and their cost decreases, they'll start taking over other jobs: picking crops, washing dishes and cars, laying bricks, etc.

The big question, for which I don't have an answer, is whose problem it is when workers' skills become obsolete.

You need to look carefully at the definition of manufacturing before you get too excited.

For example, did you know the staff at MacDonald's "manufactures" burgers?

As a reality check, how many people do you know who work in manufacturing?

BTW the only reason manufacturing is coming back is because the jobs are completely disappearing from it due to robotics and automation. From wikipedia "Employment in manufacturing ... its lowest since July 1950".

Ha. I saw the headline and quickly clicked through to post essentially what you have just said.

How many people do a thing should never be a measure, unless you don't care about inefficiency.

Then where do I buy an american made cell phone or television set?

Manufacturing capacity is a matter of national security imo and it's important for the country to maintain and increase it. However I'm wondering about the very basic manufacturing / raw material production capacity within the United States. Yes, there is Alcoa, the largest Aluminum producer in the world, but does the country actually have the ability to produce basic building blocks like nuts, bolts, sheet metal, steel beams, wiring, etc from the ground up if such a need came up in the future? (though one would hope that such a need would never arise in the future)

Well done for commenting though (I mean it, no snark coming). A lot of the current crop of singularity-ey, TED-ey, 'digital revolutionary'-ey mouths seem to get away with all sorts of logical crimes and unimpeachabley general proclamations. A lot of them are basically posers and pseuds. As the excitement and breathlessness and novelty start to wear off, we should be applying a little more intellectual rigour to the output of these people.

There was an amusing frontpage HN story a couple of weeks ago which was a refreshing voice to see in a forum like this:

http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/105703/th...

Note: I'm not saying it's all guff, just saying we should apply the same critical process to this material as with anything else.

Now that you mention it, Malcolm Gladwell comes to mind as well.

I could not find any references about Google's announcement to produce Nexus 7 in US. On the other hand, Nexus Q is indeed manufactured in the US. Is it possible that this is a typo on the part of the author?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/technology/google-and-othe...

I don't understand how this would be possible. Nexus 7 is a device that is made in collaboration with ASUS. ASUS being a Taiwanese company, doesn't have any manufacturing capacity in the United States.

ASUS licensing out the HW design to Google and Google contracting with a US factory for production? Doesn't sound logical to me.

I think Googles plans to manufactor in the USA died with the Nexus Q. No one will buy something which is three times more expensive than competitiv products. In addition no one did care about the Nexus Q being made in the USA after seeing that price (300$).

Lego minifigs?