Steven R. Levitt: Manufacturing’s future

Regarding the Sept. 17 Business article, “3-D printers can make your shoes, technology customizes your tees”: Granted, such computerized manufacturing technologies are now in their infancy, but, as we have lived it, advances are made seemingly in the blink of an eye.

So how is it that politicians are so unabashedly sure they can bring back millions of manufacturing jobs to our shores when the not so distant future is so blazingly written on the wall?

For several decades it has been claims of “high production costs” that have driven our manufacturing companies off-shore. But, what can these politicians possibly hope for these companies to come back to when our evolving service economy is so increasingly being driven by an ever-expanding workforce of low-paid, unskilled workers? Their job descriptions will likely consist mainly of feeding raw materials into banks of efficient 3-D printers and strapping our made-to-order consumer goods onto state-of-the-art delivery drones scheduled to quench our thirst for instant gratification with near on-demand precision.

This story was originally published September 29, 2016 at 4:01 PM with the headline "Steven R. Levitt: Manufacturing’s future."