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Comment by falcor84 | Hacker News Reader

>...the US manufacturing industry alone is expected to have 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030.

Is the implication here that they're aiming to automate away all of these jobs?

The implication is that noone wants to work those jobs anymore and the options are to either import illegal workers being paid below minimal wage or replace by robots.

>noone wants to work those jobs anymore

The implication of that in turn is that these US companies aren't willing to pay at a rate that would be competitive in the market

Yep, people will do all the jobs.... even hard, shitty jobs... just not for minimum wage.

The other implication is that the US is unwilling to take advantage of the millions of people that want to immigrate here.

I'm guessing this comment got down voted because Americans are against immigration in general. But whether its a good idea or not the fact remains that our desirability as a place to live could be used to satisfy any labor shortage.

Or that Americans aren't willing to work for the prevailing global wage that manufacturing workers demand. Why would any company keep manufacturing here when labor is so expensive? Effective manufacturing robots would allow manufacturing to move back to the us.

The government buys a shitload of stuff and everything has to be sourced* and made in America*.

*There are exceptions, but they are rare.

How could this possibly work for, e.g., electronics? How does the government buy computers that are made in America? Unless there is some loophole whereby all the parts are acquired from wherever they are acquired, and the manufacturer just assembles the box in the US and gets to label it "Made in USA"?

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