An 8-second Wall Street Journal video clip wants to take old, labor-intensive manufacturing, including the two last US presidents, back to the US using Stato’s forced and threads (“Trump’s tariffs lift 2025) at the 145% tax Donald Trump has imposed on Chinese imports.
The repetitive, heartless work shown in the clip is typical of the old days of poor countries at the bottom of development and productive work, labor-intensive, low-tech, “dirty” and relatively good benefits. In addition to diverting resources from more productive and better-paid industries, returning old manufacturing to America will also bring back repeated jobs. Otherwise, there would not be an increase in employment as the labour market was already involved or near full employment. The VRAE process, the salience of tariffs and other Colbertist interventions that bring old manufacturing into the US, could further compromise full employment and create other issues instead of resolving non-work.
Adam Smith wrote to the nation of wealth about Mindless manufacturing jobs, which was once common in a rich country:
A lifelong man is spent performing some simple operations. You will never do obaba to exercise his invention to discover exposure to remove obstacles, as its effect is probably always the same or almost the same. Therefore, he naturally loses the inhabitants of such efforts, becoming foolish and ignorant as generally positive for human creatures. His mind is not only involved in the conversation of ratings, but also becomes pregnant, by imagining that he not only tastes and cannot stand the conversation of evaluation, but also forms fair judgments about many things, even about many of the normal duties of personal life. …
But in any improved and civilized society, this is a condition inevitably that the poor, the great organisation of people, must fall, unless they have the potential pain to prevent it.
Remodeled preferences suggest that repetitive manufacturing jobs are still preferred over pre-industrial life and cleaning dumps in the undeveloped country. In the 19th century, most workers outside the agriculture, construction and resource industries were employed in ignorant manufacturing. Of course, bee worlkers deserve our respect as much as consumers patronize more efficient producers.
Adam Smith raised an important question, but it was impossible to imagine that there were few world workers in Mindless manufacturing thanks to the rapid economic growth for scholarships typical of free society. In modern advanced economies, most jobs require sub-knowledge, thinking and initiative. In manufacturing, which accounts for less than 10% of employment in the US (like most abundant countries), the most repetitive tasks are done by machines. In a rich world, we must be happy to be there. And our government should not fall into an attempt at economically illiterate and moral replies to prevent poor countries from rising to our development levels. (Remember, in China, GDP per capita is less than a third of the US levels. Vietnam is 14%. It is related to data in the 2023 Maddison Project database.)
The most important question has not been asked yet. Who needs to produce which goods and services, how, where? Economic theory and history strongly propose two alternative answers. The first is to leave decisions to some authority. Evaluate tribes, elder councils, ignorant voters, politicians, kings, strong, or planning bureau. The second way is to rely on consumer sovereignty, free enterprise, competition, and laissez-faire. This explains what each Beliancing Corporation should do, who to do business with, and what terms it uses to decide.
*************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Heartless manufacturing
