Are you telling me the company with the most accumulated profits in the world in the last 15ish years can’t absorb a small increase in an expense input that equals 5% of finished price? Did you read MIT article or look at graph on the side of 3 scenarios?
I’m not skipping your a,b, or c as a gotcha. My statement dealt with automating a line to produce a “Non Labor Intensive” item and bring that job back into the US. I am not oblivious to a machine here can do the labor of what formerly took several employees. However, if the job was totally lost to Asia for the previous 15 years - well 1 machine operator vs 0 employees of any sort, is a win.
I have never said we could sew blue jeans that retail for $14.88 at Walmart here, because I understand labor input. But MIT seems to think we could build iPhones here, because Apple has a profit margin that is many times what typical manufactured goods bring.
We need every job that we can get because when your direct competitors Amazon, Walmart e commerce, Ebay have completed as much automation as they can (these 3 and UPS are literally the distribution automation tip of the spear) guess where they will be looking for market share on their march to oligopoly?
Yep, your far smaller and non automated operation. Therefore your lesser paid former coworkers will need somewhere to work. Or else how do we continue our consumer based economy (paraphrased from your words)? No one working = no consuming.
I believe history is instructive for seeing the rise of economic power achieved through manufacturing and export.
In year 1AD, India and China had 50% and 33% of population and GDP
1700 AD, they still held over 1/2 of world GDP
1800s Britain and the Industrial Revolution has led to a series of huge economies built on the back of manufacturing goods for others - UK, the balance of Europe, the US, then Japan, Korea, Asian Tigers, and now BRIC (I question Russia personally).
The power comes from building and selling to others, or building for self consumption. How does buying what others Built (unless it is equipment to allow our manufacturing to be more efficient produced) grow the economy?
Mature consumption based economy is nonsense spewed from ivory towers.
Eventually the savings account is empty.
Corporate debt current $50TT projected to $75TT by 2020
Personal debt $12TT
US debt $20TT