EXACTLY! Only those who simply don't think about it still demand "no outsourcing!" It's not jobs shipped overseas, it's jobs replaced with machines and automation. More jobs are lost to robotics and automation than to overseas competitors.
Protectionism will ONLY hurt the US, we need to let businesses compete on better footing and jobs will continue to move upscale in capability and income. Those at the bottom will get left at the bottom, in predominantly service positions. Not because some guy in India or China is running a press, but because a Tomasa or Jenkins auto-press is doing the work of 20 men.
Automation is taking over all the world's manufacturing. I see it a huge amount here in China. Ten years ago, factories had thousands of men each working their own lathe or press or mill or drill. Now you have dozens of men feeding and servicing a floor full of multi-tool CNC machines, and the products are higher quality, more consistent, and lower cost.
It's machines, not people, that are eliminating the need for US manufacturing jobs.
If that were true, it would not be economically feasible to employ the tiny number of workers in China or India to run the machines to produce products for sale in the US, and then incur all the handling and shipping cost to the US.
That's about 600% productivity improvement. Most of it was done with NEW MACHINERY, COMPUTERS, OCR, IMPROVED SYSTEMS, a device I invented that saved one full man year every time we bought one ~ and we bought tens of thousands of them every year.
If we had not done all of that we'd needed another 3,600,000 employees!
BTW, not a single job was outsourced!
Robots are creating jobs for Americans, just like automobiles have. Someone needs to build them, you know, and someone needs to fix them when they break. Someone needs to design them, program them and test them. Someone needs to design the factory floors where they operate and someone needs to build the factories to house them. Someone needs to pave the parking lots for the workers who still come to the factories, and tend the landscape for the building. Someone needs to supply the workers with their needs, office equipment, foodstuffs. Someone needs to train people how to run the robots and that means someone needs to provide classrooms and materials or supply internet courses and videos, which means someone will have to program the courses and shoot the videos.
Robots are good for a lot of someones.
If you are a soldier, indeed, thank you for your service to our country. But I must add that robot mules are a great advance for American soldiers deployed in rugged terrains, and the flying robotic humvees under development will help protect troops from IEDs.
“Only those who simply don’t think about it still demand “no outsourcing!” It’s not jobs shipped overseas, it’s jobs replaced with machines and automation. More jobs are lost to robotics and automation than to overseas competitors.”
This may be true for manufacturing jobs, but the financial jobs outsourced (mainly from the northeast) to Asia are never coming back. Many people who made a lot of money building the “information superhighway” are now upset that it works. India has a growing middle class that works all hours of the night, answering phones and emails during our “9 to 5” workday; these were jobs Americans used to have, and they are never coming back. Back office accounting functions? financial trades? all to Asia, never to return.