If it pays well and eliminates the need for people to work 2-3 jobs, people will work in them. If it pays bottom barrel wages then they won't. The logistics industry has been decimated since the 90's. Wages have been stagnant for 15 years or more. Most who work in warehouses need social services to survive, despite working manual labor for 50+ hours a week. It is despicable and not what we were promised about working hard and doing things right. If we don't bring it in and ship it out, no one gets any consumer good. But most of the wages are minimum no matter how hard you work. No meritocracy In the logistic/distribution industry. So the next republican who says that everyone is sitting on their ass and no one wants to work anymore, send them to a warehouse in furniture retail for a week. That message will change real quick.....
Frank Luntz, whom I know, should know better than to throw out almost meaningless survey data without the nuance of crosstabulations. Where's the survey? Remember that 20 percent of Americans are over 65 and likely retired. A third of Americans have college degrees and aren't interested in factory jobs. And where's the information comparing pay between, say, teachers and plumbers or factory workers (guess which one pays better starting salaries?). Luntz disserves.
Typical of the man. I had similar thoughts to what you express. I not sure how the 10% who are already employed in factories would answer the question.
My folks were teachers, and almost all our neighbors were factory workers, the income was very similar but my dad had a shorter day and longer vacations. My dad also worked in a machine shop and at a turbine manufacturer at first until he had a little better pay. The working class has been decimated by low pay and no benefits.
Good one, Oren. Its perfectly normal for a large majority of people to want a strong military, but not wanting their kids to join the military. That would be the most realistic position for most people.
Its also unfortunately the example that does the most to undermine Cass's argument that just because somebody doesn't want something for themselves doesn't mean they don't want it for the good of the country. When it comes to military service, there are almost no justifications of why somebody else's children should be put in harm's way but your own should not. That's a terribly selfish and unpatriotic view.
That's misconstrued and misses the point. In pluralism, people make lots of different choices and there should be many paths to a decent life. I have no interest in the military nor do my children. My father and grandfather were both in the military. I have plenty of friends who joined or whose children joined. That was their path and their choice and an honorable one. I believe having a military is important. Even though I don't want to do it. That doesn't make me a hypocrite.
Not wanting a career for yourself or your children in the military doesn't make you a hyporcrite. My point is that while it may be defensible to say you want your kid to be a doctor but not an electrician on a factory floor - although this thinking can lead to the "elite over-production" problem we have today - its far less defensible to say that if there is the need to serve in the military, that somebody else should do it.
Our military is voluntary last I checked. You’d have a point if it relied on a draft. Part of the downside but obvious side of joining the military is you may have to go to war. If you had a guarantee you wouldn’t it would make a military job much more lucrative to many other people. But yes that does not mean we should not be mindful of what wars we choose to wage.
Its so strange to watch the party that once represented labor now trashing the idea of providing jobs for people who work with their hands. Anyone remember the movie that made Michael Moore famous? I remember at the time thinking how foolish it was to blame the factory closures on CEO’s. The same foolishness is being rolled out now. My hunch is that the loudest opponents of …factories.. have never thought much about manufacturing and they are mostly redirecting their ferocious hatred of Trump supporters. Local Manufacturing economies are in and of themselves complex semi contained ecosystems that have many aspects and support many services and lifestyles. In New England we used to have thousands of machine shops and boutique small manufacturing companies. In addition to supporting and often moving on to create local businesses many workers went from factory floor, to technician, to engineer sometimes going to night school. I know one such individual who became CTO at a major solar cell manufacturer. (Yes, green energy needs manufacturing too.) Not all factory jobs are dead ends. Not sure how it is today but Magna was once legendary for its loyalty to workers and its commitment to elevate and retain motivated workers. It is unbecoming of serious thinkers to reduce the idea of manufacturing to bad low paid jobs.
If he only posted the second part, that 20% of people in the United States would prefer a factory job to what they're currently doing, that would come across as HUGE NEWS! One in 5 people would like to work in manufacturing, and that has to be including some people who are already working in law, academia, etc.? Leave it to free traders to entirely distort something, and then to lavish ridicule upon people.
If I lost my job and couldn't get another doing the same for the same income, would I be happy to take a dirty dangerous factory job, that paid the same, if it meant I could pay the mortgage and support my family?
Yes, in a heartbeat.
Construction, oil drilling, factories, boring loud dirty jobs that pay well are a safety valve for society. A heck of a lot of guys with a degree would work at bad jobs to pay for school or to get a jump on life. Smart people aren't above working hard. One summer I worked an oil job in Wyoming that had three undergrads from three ivies working, they arrived independently. It was a good job for a young guy.
I appreciate Oren engaging with audiences who seem to have strong biases against his generally pluralistic viewpoint. I would have neither the patience nor the temperament.
I think that 25% may even be low, because - as you noted with Lutnick's full quote - reindustrialization in America would lean much more heavily on automation. However, considering how few people overall in America have ever worked in a factory, you probably have a bunch of people viewing it more like the first half of the quote re: tiny screws into iPhones. If that's the general perception of most respondents, then that 25% figure is even more astounding.
And the 80%/20% poll just seems obvious to me. I'm a CPA and have a white-collar financial compliance job with a large manufacturing company. I'd clearly say, yes, more manufacturing jobs for the US, but no, not for me in particular. And that just makes me honest, not an asshole. The fact that 80% of Americans are happy with their jobs compared to (what they perceive) a manufacturing job to be sounds like a good thing. We have a workforce happy with their current jobs, at least measured against one alternative.
So by your telling, there are tens of millions of Americans who want a manufacturing job, but even the most robust re-industrialization program imaginable won't produce enough manufacturing jobs for all of those people, and that's . . . why we need to dramatically disrupt the global economy?
Correct because that global economy isn’t working well for at least half the US population and low prices for the side doing really well shouldn’t be our priority. And also Oren explained those manufacturing jobs have a multiplier effect that benefits a much larger set of people.
This is truly bizarro-world stuff here. So, according to Cass the elites are at fault for thinking that one should not recommend work for others that they wouldn’t do themselves. It’s the populists that have it right. To them the most noble argument is the one Chevy Chase makes in Caddy Shack: “the world needs ditch diggers too.” In Cass’s view, we’d all be better off if we advocate for policy changes that promote jobs that other people should do, while not holding ourselves to any obligation whatsoever to do those jobs ourselves. In fact it is selfish to even consider the possibility that maybe one shouldn’t recommend work for others that they wouldn’t want for themselves.
Cass has somehow managed to get this exactly backwards. The problem with elite over production is caused because too many elites think that there are jobs that are beneath them. The fact that media elites are calling out that these survey results show that exact problem is a sign of progress on this issue. The economy will be far more equitable when jobs like electrician and HVAC are recognized by elites as a perfectly acceptable alternative to the service jobs that require college degrees, and not just as jobs that those poor employed men in Erie PA should have.
Per Oren's logic, if 25% of people say they'd prefer a job that lets them work from home 100% of the time, that means there is a massive unmet need for more WFH jobs. If 25% of people say they'd prefer to earn 50% more per month, there's a massive unmet need for employers to give their employees a 50% raise. If 25% of people say they'd like to earn 1MM per year while living on a yacht full time, it means there is a massive unmet need in the U.S economy for the kind of job that allows people to earn 1MM/year while living on a yacht.
Conversely, if 80% of people say they wouldn't want to work for 10% less in compensation, then that means there is a massive 20% of people that should have their pay cut by 10%. If 20% of people think that there is no need for more manufacturing jobs, then that represents a massive number of people who think there are too many manufacturing jobs already and want different options for work.
That 25% of respondents say they’d prefer factory work is not a punchline. It’s a signal. And not because everyone should go back to screwing in tiny bolts, but because the cultural contempt for making things is cracking. Mocking that impulse is a luxury belief. Modeling against it is an economic opportunity.
What we’re witnessing is not nostalgia, but a subtle re-anchoring—toward locality, tactility, and contribution. It’s not about whether you personally want to work in a factory, but whether you can recognize that someone else does, and that their dignity in doing so strengthens the whole.
Re-industrialization is not a numbers game—it’s a narrative game. Manufacturing jobs ripple. They root. They don't just create wages; they create places. And what a healthy democracy needs now is fewer status games, more stable ground.
Very Solid article. I don't see the two survey elements as contradictory. Pundits are often retards so I don't put much stock in their verbal emissions. Oren goes a bit overboard with the assertion that the elite want everyone to be elite. I don't see that in the data as presented. The 20% against more factory work could have any number of reasons for that opinion. Pluralist opinion, etc.
The drumbeat of college education being the path to well-being IS supported by data. So it's not illogical to advocate that. But it IS unrealistic and unworkable. Consider if everyone has a PhD, someone still has to take out the trash. A PhD in that case. Kind of a waste, except that I do believe a good education is valuable for more than career reasons. Critical thinking and civic engagement are two. Enjoyment of the world in any number of ways is another. But that is a different discussion. But the actual issue is Why a college education is associated with higher well-being.
Oren gets to that in his conclusion but I don't think it is emphasized nearly enough. To paraphrase: 'A healthy economy and a healthy society offer different paths to a decent life, granting dignity and respect to people regardless of the path they choose.' Yeah, yeah. To be crystal clear, Substantial income and material security. Different paths to that. Including manual and menial labor, farm labor and factory labor. Labor itself, not ownership, is what should be rewarded. Making money from owning money should be viewed as unsavory and unhealthy, a step away from theft. The whole financial sector could and should be run with entirely different rules. Corporations need charters to be approved by congress representing constituents. That's how you get at the deep state. Musk, et al, Is the deep state. Unelected billionaires setting policy behind the scenes, at odds with the will of the voters.
Certain things should cost more relative to other things as they now stand. AND everyone should be able to comfortably afford what they need. That is what would happen with a proper respect (income) for pluralist paths. And wealth must be redistributed via wages and salary. At any given time wealth is a zero sum proposition. If overall wealth increases, great, and still, at any point in time wealth is a zero sum proposition. A healthy society, economy and politics cannot abide the extreme wealth disparity our country is enduring and the actual musky deep state continues to support and propagate.
One main challenge to bring back manufacturing is the shortage of skilled workers and mid-level engineering technicians. A combination of poor basic math and language skills, insufficient apprenticeship programs, and retirement of baby boomers brought about a shortage of manpower of about 2 million. The necessary US reindustrialization will require a huge effort to increase skilled workers. Big corporations complain time and again about the poor training and worker’s lacking skills and keep asking for more and more foreign workers, which displace American workers and does not provide any incentives for young people to invest in acquiring skills. One alternative would be to set up a large national apprenticeship program starting at the 8th grade managed and funded by large corporations (along the lines of Switzerland apprenticeship programs) and let corporations hire only foreign senior skilled workers and technical schoolteachers to train American workers.
If it pays well and eliminates the need for people to work 2-3 jobs, people will work in them. If it pays bottom barrel wages then they won't. The logistics industry has been decimated since the 90's. Wages have been stagnant for 15 years or more. Most who work in warehouses need social services to survive, despite working manual labor for 50+ hours a week. It is despicable and not what we were promised about working hard and doing things right. If we don't bring it in and ship it out, no one gets any consumer good. But most of the wages are minimum no matter how hard you work. No meritocracy In the logistic/distribution industry. So the next republican who says that everyone is sitting on their ass and no one wants to work anymore, send them to a warehouse in furniture retail for a week. That message will change real quick.....
Frank Luntz, whom I know, should know better than to throw out almost meaningless survey data without the nuance of crosstabulations. Where's the survey? Remember that 20 percent of Americans are over 65 and likely retired. A third of Americans have college degrees and aren't interested in factory jobs. And where's the information comparing pay between, say, teachers and plumbers or factory workers (guess which one pays better starting salaries?). Luntz disserves.
Typical of the man. I had similar thoughts to what you express. I not sure how the 10% who are already employed in factories would answer the question.
My folks were teachers, and almost all our neighbors were factory workers, the income was very similar but my dad had a shorter day and longer vacations. My dad also worked in a machine shop and at a turbine manufacturer at first until he had a little better pay. The working class has been decimated by low pay and no benefits.
Saying “manufacturing jobs” is like saying “weather.” They’re not all equivalent to shoveling coal into a boiler or screwing iPhones together.
Good one, Oren. Its perfectly normal for a large majority of people to want a strong military, but not wanting their kids to join the military. That would be the most realistic position for most people.
Its also unfortunately the example that does the most to undermine Cass's argument that just because somebody doesn't want something for themselves doesn't mean they don't want it for the good of the country. When it comes to military service, there are almost no justifications of why somebody else's children should be put in harm's way but your own should not. That's a terribly selfish and unpatriotic view.
That's misconstrued and misses the point. In pluralism, people make lots of different choices and there should be many paths to a decent life. I have no interest in the military nor do my children. My father and grandfather were both in the military. I have plenty of friends who joined or whose children joined. That was their path and their choice and an honorable one. I believe having a military is important. Even though I don't want to do it. That doesn't make me a hypocrite.
Not wanting a career for yourself or your children in the military doesn't make you a hyporcrite. My point is that while it may be defensible to say you want your kid to be a doctor but not an electrician on a factory floor - although this thinking can lead to the "elite over-production" problem we have today - its far less defensible to say that if there is the need to serve in the military, that somebody else should do it.
Our military is voluntary last I checked. You’d have a point if it relied on a draft. Part of the downside but obvious side of joining the military is you may have to go to war. If you had a guarantee you wouldn’t it would make a military job much more lucrative to many other people. But yes that does not mean we should not be mindful of what wars we choose to wage.
that's a powerful argument. Didn't think of that
Its so strange to watch the party that once represented labor now trashing the idea of providing jobs for people who work with their hands. Anyone remember the movie that made Michael Moore famous? I remember at the time thinking how foolish it was to blame the factory closures on CEO’s. The same foolishness is being rolled out now. My hunch is that the loudest opponents of …factories.. have never thought much about manufacturing and they are mostly redirecting their ferocious hatred of Trump supporters. Local Manufacturing economies are in and of themselves complex semi contained ecosystems that have many aspects and support many services and lifestyles. In New England we used to have thousands of machine shops and boutique small manufacturing companies. In addition to supporting and often moving on to create local businesses many workers went from factory floor, to technician, to engineer sometimes going to night school. I know one such individual who became CTO at a major solar cell manufacturer. (Yes, green energy needs manufacturing too.) Not all factory jobs are dead ends. Not sure how it is today but Magna was once legendary for its loyalty to workers and its commitment to elevate and retain motivated workers. It is unbecoming of serious thinkers to reduce the idea of manufacturing to bad low paid jobs.
If he only posted the second part, that 20% of people in the United States would prefer a factory job to what they're currently doing, that would come across as HUGE NEWS! One in 5 people would like to work in manufacturing, and that has to be including some people who are already working in law, academia, etc.? Leave it to free traders to entirely distort something, and then to lavish ridicule upon people.
I'd like to pose the question another way.
If I lost my job and couldn't get another doing the same for the same income, would I be happy to take a dirty dangerous factory job, that paid the same, if it meant I could pay the mortgage and support my family?
Yes, in a heartbeat.
Construction, oil drilling, factories, boring loud dirty jobs that pay well are a safety valve for society. A heck of a lot of guys with a degree would work at bad jobs to pay for school or to get a jump on life. Smart people aren't above working hard. One summer I worked an oil job in Wyoming that had three undergrads from three ivies working, they arrived independently. It was a good job for a young guy.
I appreciate Oren engaging with audiences who seem to have strong biases against his generally pluralistic viewpoint. I would have neither the patience nor the temperament.
I think that 25% may even be low, because - as you noted with Lutnick's full quote - reindustrialization in America would lean much more heavily on automation. However, considering how few people overall in America have ever worked in a factory, you probably have a bunch of people viewing it more like the first half of the quote re: tiny screws into iPhones. If that's the general perception of most respondents, then that 25% figure is even more astounding.
And the 80%/20% poll just seems obvious to me. I'm a CPA and have a white-collar financial compliance job with a large manufacturing company. I'd clearly say, yes, more manufacturing jobs for the US, but no, not for me in particular. And that just makes me honest, not an asshole. The fact that 80% of Americans are happy with their jobs compared to (what they perceive) a manufacturing job to be sounds like a good thing. We have a workforce happy with their current jobs, at least measured against one alternative.
So by your telling, there are tens of millions of Americans who want a manufacturing job, but even the most robust re-industrialization program imaginable won't produce enough manufacturing jobs for all of those people, and that's . . . why we need to dramatically disrupt the global economy?
Correct because that global economy isn’t working well for at least half the US population and low prices for the side doing really well shouldn’t be our priority. And also Oren explained those manufacturing jobs have a multiplier effect that benefits a much larger set of people.
This is truly bizarro-world stuff here. So, according to Cass the elites are at fault for thinking that one should not recommend work for others that they wouldn’t do themselves. It’s the populists that have it right. To them the most noble argument is the one Chevy Chase makes in Caddy Shack: “the world needs ditch diggers too.” In Cass’s view, we’d all be better off if we advocate for policy changes that promote jobs that other people should do, while not holding ourselves to any obligation whatsoever to do those jobs ourselves. In fact it is selfish to even consider the possibility that maybe one shouldn’t recommend work for others that they wouldn’t want for themselves.
Cass has somehow managed to get this exactly backwards. The problem with elite over production is caused because too many elites think that there are jobs that are beneath them. The fact that media elites are calling out that these survey results show that exact problem is a sign of progress on this issue. The economy will be far more equitable when jobs like electrician and HVAC are recognized by elites as a perfectly acceptable alternative to the service jobs that require college degrees, and not just as jobs that those poor employed men in Erie PA should have.
And here I thought it was only the liberals who had ivory tower/bubble debates with no connection to the reality of the world around them…
Per Oren's logic, if 25% of people say they'd prefer a job that lets them work from home 100% of the time, that means there is a massive unmet need for more WFH jobs. If 25% of people say they'd prefer to earn 50% more per month, there's a massive unmet need for employers to give their employees a 50% raise. If 25% of people say they'd like to earn 1MM per year while living on a yacht full time, it means there is a massive unmet need in the U.S economy for the kind of job that allows people to earn 1MM/year while living on a yacht.
Conversely, if 80% of people say they wouldn't want to work for 10% less in compensation, then that means there is a massive 20% of people that should have their pay cut by 10%. If 20% of people think that there is no need for more manufacturing jobs, then that represents a massive number of people who think there are too many manufacturing jobs already and want different options for work.
That 25% of respondents say they’d prefer factory work is not a punchline. It’s a signal. And not because everyone should go back to screwing in tiny bolts, but because the cultural contempt for making things is cracking. Mocking that impulse is a luxury belief. Modeling against it is an economic opportunity.
What we’re witnessing is not nostalgia, but a subtle re-anchoring—toward locality, tactility, and contribution. It’s not about whether you personally want to work in a factory, but whether you can recognize that someone else does, and that their dignity in doing so strengthens the whole.
Re-industrialization is not a numbers game—it’s a narrative game. Manufacturing jobs ripple. They root. They don't just create wages; they create places. And what a healthy democracy needs now is fewer status games, more stable ground.
Very Solid article. I don't see the two survey elements as contradictory. Pundits are often retards so I don't put much stock in their verbal emissions. Oren goes a bit overboard with the assertion that the elite want everyone to be elite. I don't see that in the data as presented. The 20% against more factory work could have any number of reasons for that opinion. Pluralist opinion, etc.
The drumbeat of college education being the path to well-being IS supported by data. So it's not illogical to advocate that. But it IS unrealistic and unworkable. Consider if everyone has a PhD, someone still has to take out the trash. A PhD in that case. Kind of a waste, except that I do believe a good education is valuable for more than career reasons. Critical thinking and civic engagement are two. Enjoyment of the world in any number of ways is another. But that is a different discussion. But the actual issue is Why a college education is associated with higher well-being.
Oren gets to that in his conclusion but I don't think it is emphasized nearly enough. To paraphrase: 'A healthy economy and a healthy society offer different paths to a decent life, granting dignity and respect to people regardless of the path they choose.' Yeah, yeah. To be crystal clear, Substantial income and material security. Different paths to that. Including manual and menial labor, farm labor and factory labor. Labor itself, not ownership, is what should be rewarded. Making money from owning money should be viewed as unsavory and unhealthy, a step away from theft. The whole financial sector could and should be run with entirely different rules. Corporations need charters to be approved by congress representing constituents. That's how you get at the deep state. Musk, et al, Is the deep state. Unelected billionaires setting policy behind the scenes, at odds with the will of the voters.
Certain things should cost more relative to other things as they now stand. AND everyone should be able to comfortably afford what they need. That is what would happen with a proper respect (income) for pluralist paths. And wealth must be redistributed via wages and salary. At any given time wealth is a zero sum proposition. If overall wealth increases, great, and still, at any point in time wealth is a zero sum proposition. A healthy society, economy and politics cannot abide the extreme wealth disparity our country is enduring and the actual musky deep state continues to support and propagate.
One main challenge to bring back manufacturing is the shortage of skilled workers and mid-level engineering technicians. A combination of poor basic math and language skills, insufficient apprenticeship programs, and retirement of baby boomers brought about a shortage of manpower of about 2 million. The necessary US reindustrialization will require a huge effort to increase skilled workers. Big corporations complain time and again about the poor training and worker’s lacking skills and keep asking for more and more foreign workers, which displace American workers and does not provide any incentives for young people to invest in acquiring skills. One alternative would be to set up a large national apprenticeship program starting at the 8th grade managed and funded by large corporations (along the lines of Switzerland apprenticeship programs) and let corporations hire only foreign senior skilled workers and technical schoolteachers to train American workers.