I've yet to be convinced that manufacturing jobs inherently give more "purpose" than white-collar work, and I think posts like yours are mostly ungrounded fantasy. Ironically, that kind of rose-tinted nostalgia is usually coming from people who have never actually worked a manufacturing job themselves and can only guess at what it's like from internet memes.

I recommend this quasi-review of Rivethead by Ben Hamper if you want a taste of what "manufacturing jobs" were actually like: a lot of people drinking themselves stupid to escape the monotony and utter lack of agency in their work. And this was at one of the Big Three automakers, supposedly the peak of what we're trying to return to! [0]

[0]: https://kontextmaschine.tumblr.com/post/96390732283/happy-la...

I think the implication of question 2 is who, exactly, are we going to tax to get the money to pay for all the highly skilled professionals needed? Everyone can't be working for a military contractor. Someone has to pay the costs of moving the legions of workers needed into those jobs. And taxing the uber drivers, walmart stockboys, or the Amazon warehouse workers is just not going to get us there.

In my view, the way forward is, unfortunately, automation. We can't bring that manufacturing back using the same labor basis as is used in Asia. Just to put that labor basis in perspective, we'd be looking at millions of jobs that the military would be funding through sub-contracts. We have to get some of that work done through industrial automation without creating jobs. We need to do that not only to make this sustainable, but really even to make this feasible at all.

>People need purpose.

I can't help but feel you are romanticizing manufacturing jobs. The vast number of manufacturing jobs that "give people purpose" are still here - those people just travel to china once a quarter.

The guy that stands at a station for 8 hours a day, stamping the same 4 bolts into a car frame does not have anymore "purpose" than a guy running around in an Amazon warehouse.

What about the guy that sits at a computer and works through an issue queue changing the color of buttons or adding an extra 2px of padding to a class or writing glue code so one API can talk to another API?

Oh no, those are highly skilled professionals as API Integration Architects and Gartner tells me we currently have shortage of 230,000 of those. Hence we need import these best and brightest from outside.

It depends on the job. T-shirts yes. I enjoy building microgrids. There are many unsolved challenges. When the robots start doing it maybe it’ll be boring. That’s a long way off.

>work in an Amazon warehouse selling stuff from China to make ends meet or driving Ubers

You think those factory workers have a better job ? Imagine sitting 8 hours a day, just screwing screw.