Manufacturing -> programming (particularly superficial web programming as taught at a bootcamp) seems like an awfully impractical leap for those people currently affected by this labour transition.<p>Manufacturing -> augmented materials handling, robot/machine maintenance, manufacturing configuration & system setup, fulfillment & distribution, etc. all make great use of existing skillsets & environmental familiarity in new and growing areas.<p>If freecodecamp/general assembly/app academy/flatiron school/... were serious about serving the market of aging factory jobs, they'd diversify their training options into those areas (a category overweight in opportunistic "private education" which _sorely_ needs disruption.) There's even a massive amount of government grants available to fund this training ( <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_Adjustment_Assistance" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_Adjustment_Assistance</a> ) and unions are eager to include it of companies as a requirement for major RIFFs (which lets companies write it off for departing workers).
Total strawman argument. Nobody is suggesting bringing back turn-of-the-century industries. When people talk of keeping jobs, they are talking about high tech manufacturing jobs.<p>When a company is deciding where to build it's next manufacturing factory, something many companies are doing, why not have policies in place that incent the company to build it domestically? This type of policy is prevalent in virtually every country across the globe (especially in China).<p>The argument that "some jobs are being automated, therefore we should make no effort to keep the jobs that are not being automated" is a ridiculous and nonsensical argument.<p>Furthermore, every manufacturing job (whether high tech or low skilled) adds all kinds of downstream benefits to the economy that add up to much more than just one job.<p>And finally, the author demonstrates a complete ignorance of the criticisms of the H1B program and cherry picks the highest salaried H1B workers in order to hold them up as some kind of example as to why there should be no reform, I guess?<p>Sure, we should be better training people to match the realities of the modern labor market, but that's the only point that makes sense - and it's an obvious one.<p>Oh, and by the way, those Apple profits? None of them actually go back to the U.S., they sit in foreign, tax exempt, bank accounts.
Articles like these really ignore the true problem with jobs and technical fields. Most individuals who have to have factory worker jobs are not the same individuals who can spend years learning a highly technical and competative proffession. Programming is not something you just 'go to school' for, and even if it was, college is very difficult by itself for many, especially if you have kids. The mindset you have to have to partake in something like engineering, in any form, is years upon years of effort. For younger individuals, this can still be possible, but our education system is far too broken for that to work out for the individuals it should.<p>I don't think "everybody should program" is a realistic goal. Companies are not willing to invest in individuals to 'learn', because they don't have to. There's so many already that they can pick and choose individuals who already know how to solve the problem they have, even if sometimes that person lies and then somehow turns out a decent output. The time when places like Google or Microsoft hire people to 'figure out' how to do something is when they require extremely advanced skills, skills that by their nature maybe only a few hundred, or dozen, in the world have.
They will come back in the long tail of manufacturing.<p>You'll buy a standard Toyota made by robots in Nevada for $8,000. But if you want to spend $50,000 you can get a custom car, with lots of parts manufactured in house.<p>There will be single humans who build a car from scratch using a couple of robot "helping hands". There will be a car company that uses <i>no</i> robotic tools, using only carefully designed winches, with a car designed specifically for ease of human construction. There will be a competition to build a complete car from scratch as fast as possible.<p>There will be cars that are unique to Paris, cars that are unique to Arkansas, and cars that are unique Long Beach.<p>Teenagers will make cars as a science fair project.<p>There are all kinds of interesting opportunities for things to flip flop. Robots take away easy work, but they make many more kinds of new work easy. I know it is easy to think "what's happening now will be the trend forever!" and robot manufacturing is in fact a major trend, but history is complicated and after robiticization the next phase will look very different again.
Here's what the chart would look like if the data analyst wasn't trying so hard to push their political agenda:<p><a href="https://i.imgur.com/nlALPzj.gif" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/nlALPzj.gif</a>
What about the "old" jobs that aren't going anywhere soon?<p>There are a bunch of such in health care that are always drastically understaffed...