Robots and industrialization in developing countries [pdf]
It&#x27;s interesting and a little scary, we&#x27;re going to have to drastically rethink the way our economies operate and what our lifestyles will be like in the future, and fast.<p>The problem is we&#x27;ve seen that people struggle to let go of old ideals, for instance climate change deniers, because they&#x27;re reluctant to let go of their lifestyle despite all evidence that it&#x27;s not sustainable. Unfortunately, the more you fight it the harder the fall will be.<p>This also makes Trumps promise to bring manufacturing back to the US quite interesting, because the labor cost is too expensive in places like China and they are loosing the manufacturing jobs themselves, just to automation.<p>The only way to reverse the tide would be for large subsidies on US based manufacturing, and tariffs on imports, i.e. a protected economy, which has never worked in the past.<p>In fact manufacturing IS returning to the US, Foxconn has been building US factories as have other large contract manufacturers, it makes sense from a supply chain perspective. But the return of manufacturing does not equate to a return in manufacturing jobs, those jobs are gone and will never return. And many, many more jobs will be lost within the coming years.