Was reading this NYT op ed - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/19/opinion/chris-murphy-demo... - and reflecting that the people talking don’t get that the secret sauce for meaningful labor is not just that it pays, but also the sense that it is “special” somehow, in the sense that manufacturing parts with 50000 ton press is manual labor but also remarkable because of the uniqueness of the machine being used.
Most discussions about trying to build industrial capacity in the US seem to focus on either our high labor costs or on the disinterest in capital to invest in low margin places. I would love to understand what time frame of guaranteed business the government provided these companies to convince them to participate, and also what other industrial processes the government invested in which failed to take off. Specifically, why didn’t this sort of thing work for the solar industry a few years back?
Most discussions about trying to build industrial capacity in the US seem to focus on either our high labor costs or on the disinterest in capital to invest in low margin places. I would love to understand what time frame of guaranteed business the government provided these companies to convince them to participate, and also what other industrial processes the government invested in which failed to take off. Specifically, why didn’t this sort of thing work for the solar industry a few years back?