There are tons of US PhDs working in manufacturing. Most of the interesting and high-leverage problems in manufacturing are in Chemical/Biochemical Engineering, Robotics, Controls, ...
When it comes to "stuff phds do in the manufacturing sector", the US is still a leader.
> The west self-harm is contradicting itself by allowing both heavy labor-regulations in their own countries and trade with countries with basically no labor-regulations.
This is accurate. If you want manufacturing capacity in the US, the correct thing to do is to raise the bar globally. Want to import? Great. Meet a minimum standard of labor and environmental regulations, perhaps different than the US labor regs, and even possibly lower in some dimensions, but qualitatively similar.
Of course, this is far easier said than done.
> It's just like they hate their own low skill workers so much that the politicians intentionally destroyed the factory job market.
WRT environmental regulations, it's much easier to turn a blind eye to something happening half-way around the world than something happening in your own town. Especially when that "something" is "Pittsburgh's skies blacker than night at noon due to cancerous smog".
WRT labor regulations & cost, you seem to claiming that the workers rights movement hated workers? Again, it's easy to say "make jobs safer and pay people more". It's much harder to so "and also we're going to accept permanent double-digit inflation."
I think, instead of malice, we can attribute the US's current situation to the fact that policies which make manufacturing more expensive are largely popular even among manufacturing laborers and policies which make imported goods more expensive are (a) horrendously difficult to "get right" and (b) largely unpopular.
There are tons of US PhDs working in manufacturing. Most of the interesting and high-leverage problems in manufacturing are in Chemical/Biochemical Engineering, Robotics, Controls, ...
When it comes to "stuff phds do in the manufacturing sector", the US is still a leader.
> The west self-harm is contradicting itself by allowing both heavy labor-regulations in their own countries and trade with countries with basically no labor-regulations.
This is accurate. If you want manufacturing capacity in the US, the correct thing to do is to raise the bar globally. Want to import? Great. Meet a minimum standard of labor and environmental regulations, perhaps different than the US labor regs, and even possibly lower in some dimensions, but qualitatively similar.
Of course, this is far easier said than done.
> It's just like they hate their own low skill workers so much that the politicians intentionally destroyed the factory job market.
WRT environmental regulations, it's much easier to turn a blind eye to something happening half-way around the world than something happening in your own town. Especially when that "something" is "Pittsburgh's skies blacker than night at noon due to cancerous smog".
WRT labor regulations & cost, you seem to claiming that the workers rights movement hated workers? Again, it's easy to say "make jobs safer and pay people more". It's much harder to so "and also we're going to accept permanent double-digit inflation."
I think, instead of malice, we can attribute the US's current situation to the fact that policies which make manufacturing more expensive are largely popular even among manufacturing laborers and policies which make imported goods more expensive are (a) horrendously difficult to "get right" and (b) largely unpopular.