Manufacturing is facing the same fate of agriculture: machines and robots will keep displacing people. Nothing is going to stop it.
2. There is no such world where we'll choose to do things less efficiently to artificially save few jobs. And it's not about your TV being 100$ more expensive, it is about everything you touch and see being considerably more expensive, with a cascade effect on the businesses that need the equipment.
3. Average Joe in US is as much a shareholder as some imaginary person you have in mind. And a company's duty is towards shareholders first, workers second.
> a company's duty is towards shareholders first, workers second.
This is just like, an opinion, man. There's no reason a company has to be like that.
It just benefits company management to act like it's an objective truth because their pay is stock-based.
Law. Board and CEO have fiduciary duty towards shareholders.
Management has to act in shareholders' best interests especially when those conflict with their own.
That's not the same thing as shareholders above workers (or anyone else for that matter).
Before tariffs, unemployments was ~3.5% and real wages were rising, and part of why wages have been rising is because the cost of goods like TVs have been falling.