It is much more important for the US to revitalize it's machining capabilities, it's tool and die industry, and to breathe new life into the ability to produce electronic components domestically. From personal experience, I can state that we do have a vital electronic manufacturing business sector and that it is about to grow.
I have not had time to read the OP article. But this jumped out at me. Because it is not going to happen.
The problem is that tool and die makers are treated as replaceable idiots. Parents tell their children to become Doctor's Lawyers, stockbrokers. If you fail, you dig ditches or become and 'employee that makes widgets for the boss.
Tool and die makers are the lowest form of employment on the planet. Why? because this is unskilled labor anyone can do. And why is it Unskilled? Because it is what women did during the war. When they ran the automated lathes. After the war in the 1940s it was outsourced to other countries.
The processes used (and in industrial level) are bad for the environment. (it is impossible to make a legal plating shop or foundry.) and you can not make tools and dies without this. Even simple things like pure grain alcohol is illegal. Yes the toolmakers drink it. Given the emotional state of how they are treated I do not blame them. Most of the ones I have met are the roughest sort. Because they could not make it in the 'professional world.' So they went to trade school. They do have one ability. Such are good at the Victorian route mathematics I can not do. But they do not do fractions or decimal math. They can however do base 12 mathematics in their head. Which is why the US still designed in thousandth of an inch. In base 12 (there are 12 inches to a foot) quarter and thirds are both integers. (same is true for Lignes)
But that is not the point. The point is how people are treated. That some are considered smarter and more skilled than others. And while tool making is the most skilled of all. It is the least respected. That the employees must be watched. Lest they steal from the company. An the worse thing they can steal from the company is time.
The unions do their best to protect the workers, but there is corruption at all levels. The less skilled tend to find their way into management.
Now we have the whole environmental thing. Which is being used to restrict this sort of work even further. As long as there is blame for poor educational results with heavy (or any metal exposure.) these jobs will never return. The other issue is too much of a good thing is well too much. Especially when there is not enough to go round.
Business is no longer about providing services. It is about gaming the system. About the buying and selling of commodidites (always has been.) One of these commodities is the 'Worker.' And as long as we treat workers as drunken or drug addled idiots we are stuck in this loop. Sometimes I think the worst thing one can say to another is "Get off your lazy a** and ..." And when you have entire societies saying this about one another. Well that is for others to think about.
I was told when young that 'You could do something yourself, or you could pay someone else to do it.) Seems like the latter part is the one that generates the greater reward. Especially when you do not pay much for others to do it for you. Cheap labor and disregard for the environment. may be the rule of things.
I guess that is why I like to encourage an interest in the DIY skills like watchmaking. Granted not everyone has the temperament to do that. Or even the desire. Then there are the typecasts where some people naturally like fixing radios. Others are encouraged to design clothing, or prepare meals. Or simply provide comfort. One is not better than the other.
But it does make it frustrating when access to things tools, materials, chemicals are restricted. I love Mars bars. But Mars bars are not sold in the US. The company that bears that name prefers to sell M&Ms and Snicker bars, which can be produced cheaper. Cadbury will not let the better candy be sold here and cracked down hard on the places that used to bring in the British foods. And some of the worse trouble one can get into is smuggling candy. (especially an egg candy from the UK what contains a toy.) And why. Because Hershey wants it that way. Next time you look at the candy aisle notice just how much there is not. Old people like my dad remember when three musketeers came in chocolate strawberry and vanilla.
Ironically I can sometimes get mexican candy at the quick stop, A lot of the old food processing machines used leaded brass to make the machining easier. Which could be a subject unto itself. Thing is a lot of people did die from lead poisoning. But they still die. Just from something else. This is the point where one would blame education. But that is really more of a lack of access to information. Which is even farther away from the subject at hand. It really may come down to who controls what information. But desires have a lot to do with it as well. And there are many who desire wealth and power.
Some would say this is social darwinisim at work. Then again no one really ever read Wallace, or even Darwin for that matter. Fit does not mean strength. (it means adaptability.)
We can not always have what we want (or even what is best for us.)
(Ironically I am good at wasting time on writing something like this. Yet I have no desire to work through the tutorial to install a word press plug in for my comic strip blog. But that blog is 'insurance for the future.' in case anything happens to my main blog, which I also never update either as I have always preferred the old Usenet groups, which were purely academic. )
