[Workaccount2]

>Whose standard of living though? It's well and good if you're in a comfy desk job with health care and a pension.

The fundamental problem is that people want low-value jobs (manufacturing clothes irons, screw drivers, ceramic mugs) with a contemporary American middle class living wages. It just doesn't math though. If you make mugs by hand all day you simply cannot create enough value in a day to keep up with the person who automates production lines all day.

Worse yet, they want those wages while also still being able to go to walmart and buy...clothes irons, screw drivers, and ceramic mugs for <$20 (maybe $50 for the iron).

We already just saw how this went over during the pandemic. Many people got $20/hr jobs for the first time in their life. A wage they have always dreamed of while slogging in $10-$12/hr jobs. Then it happened...but it felt the same as when they were making $12/hr. This is because the intrisic value they create didn't change. Value creation is what determines the structure of an economy, not wages or dollars or any other currency, those are just proxies.

The intrinsic value of making this stuff in the US just isn't there to make it viable to compete with the large number of high intrinsic value job workers in the US.