Factories, but not Factory Jobs

No place for people

So I’ve heard that one of Trump/Musk’s justifications for large scale layoffs of government employees is that no one will really suffer for long. What will happen, they say, is that the unemployed will find fulfilling, well-paid jobs in the factories that Trump’s tariffs will return to our shores.

But, come, this is a fantasy. If manufacturing is coming back to America (itself not certain), then it will be modern and efficient. Meaning it will be automated. Factories will have a workforce of (mostly) robots. Today, you don’t want people on the factory floor. They just get in the way. You have machines instead.

Thus, in an age of automation, the economy may be based on manufacturing, but employment is not. Which means that the supposedly well-paid factory jobs coming in the wake of tariffs will almost certainly never get here. 

One wonders what they will do then…our glorious leaders? When yet again the prosperity they promise to the many proves an illusion? And all they can offer is still greater wealth to the vanishingly few?