Several years ago now I recall hearing an interview with a private company executive on NPR. He related how the major of one town said at a meeting he attended “What we need is plenty of those low skilled manufacturing jobs!” He said he just looked at her in stunned shock and said “But manufacturing does not work that way any more. We need skilled workers.”

So why would a mayor of any town want lots of low skilled manufacturing jobs? After all, if anyone can run a stamping machine or make one two inch weld after another then so can a computer controlled machine. Old fashioned low skilled manufacturing was always going away, whether to overseas or to a computer.

So why do some politicians pine for those days of yesteryear? Well, such workers don’t require much of a school system and can be told what to do by their union. People who program computers , design equipment, or even simply maintain automated manufacturing equipment have to be able to think for themselves.

The Old Detroit was always going to go away, whether people got disgusted and moved away, or foreign and domestic (e.g., Southern) competition drove it out of business or the factories simply filled up with Cyberdyne T-888’s working at the machines.