[pessimizer]

> I’m always reminded of the poll where 80% of Americans say that the country would benefit from a bigger manufacturing base but only 25% are interested in actually working in manufacturing.

This is a silly statistic that manipulative people drag out to imply the answer that they want. If you asked people who work in factories right at this second, 75% of them would say that they didn't want to work in a factory. If you ask people who work any job, and ask if they would rather not be working, 75% would say yes.

It kind of goes with the weird idea that illegal immigrants actually love to clean toilets and work in fields for slave wages.

> when I ask “so you’d prefer to work in a factory?”

...to your upper-middle class friends who make six figures.

[derriz]

You know nothing of my friends.

Have you ever worked in a factory? I find the people most enthusiastic about manufacturing are the ones least likely to have stood at a station in a factory performing manufacturing "work" - the vast majority of which is mind-numbingly boring and repetitive yet with minimal opportunities for passing the time with idle social interaction or chit-chat. Of all the non-professional work I've done, it was easily the least enjoyable. Even if it paid a bit less and demanded more physically, unskilled construction work was enjoyable in comparison. Even kitchen portering provided more stimulation - at least there was plenty of social interaction. This romanticization of factory work is weird.

[themaninthedark]

I find it funny how you are describing it and acting like it is bad. In most of the topics dealing with WFH and return to office, a large number of the comment were along this vain:

"I really hate going into the office because I don't want to have to socialize with my coworkers, I just want to be able to do my work and be done with my day."

[derriz]

What acting have I been doing? Feels like a weasely way of accusing me of lying when I said I hated my experience of factory work. If you have had a different experience of factory work, let’s hear it. And preferably without the presumption - particularly the weird idea that being antisocial or asocial is the norm for human existence.

[seanmcdirmid]

If you have more factory jobs the workforce has to come from either immigrants or the cushy white collar or service jobs that Americans mostly work today right? Because our unemployment rate isn’t low enough that we can just take people who aren’t working and get them working in factories.

Japan has had to heavily import workers to keep its factories and service jobs staffed, and the Japanese hate immigration more than MAGA does. The other solution is automation, which is how China plans to deal with its demographic cliff, I guess we could import factory robots from China.