We can’t go back to the days when most of America worked in manufacturing. Ubiquitous computing, robotics, globalization, wage-pressure, massive productivity increases, and being way behind the 8-ball on job re-training all mean we can’t re-create the American job market of the decades from the 1870’s to the 1970’s.
However, we can do a heck of lot better than we have been doing over the last thirty years to encourage our economy to maintain a healthy diversity, preserve American middle-classism for the many who don’t have the ability or the time left in their lives to become big data analysts, coders, video game designers, or medical concierges.
Witness a piece on CBS 60 Minutes about how a guy in Mississippi is a one-man chamber of commerce and has brought manufacturing jobs back to the Golden Triangle region there. Sort of a 21st century Horace Greeley.
