Brock, Granted, that over regulation and taxation drove industry first south and then overseas. Union overreaching no doubt also has been instrumental in the death of American manufacturing. You say there is nothing special about manufacturing .I wonder if you will say that if forced to arm for large scale mobilization and we have no machine tool capacity or a trained work force. Maybe the pierced cat at the call center will be useful then or maybe he won’t.
Maybe I’m a dope, but I don’t get how everyone can work in financial services and call centers and tech services . Many of those jobs are shipped to India anyways.
Industrial and tradesman jobs are not all “low skill, low value” Tell that to a tool and die maker or a precision machinist or a skilled cabinet maker. I think it’s an elitist view that de-values the beauty and joy of working with one’s hands to produce things that endure and not just buying up shipping containers of massed produced Chinese junk.