Decry it as sweatshop labor or praise it as “an escalator out of poverty,” low-wage sewing in faraway lands is going the way of the typing pool. The plummeting cost of industrial robots and the electronic cameras used for machine vision mean that serious automation is coming to even the cheapest sewn products.
A high-profile example is the “SpeedFactory” that Adidas recently unveiled in southern Germany. Robots there will start turning out shoes next year, and a similar U.S. plant is in the works. The aim is to increase flexibility and reduce inventories by bringing production closer to the market.
So, you're a rural midwestern middle aged working class white. You're angry because the elites are out to get you. Bankers, the Media, Mexicans, etc. Your culture is under assault. You can't make a living the way your grandfather did a century ago. So you vote for old rich white guys to save you, they never do, but you do it anyway. And you'll continue to do it until someone listens to you. I suspect you'll do it even if folks do listen to you.
I have listened. As an educated affluent East Coast elite from a minority group, I have heard your plea for recognition. Let me confirm your suspicions: we are most definitely out to get you. We've made up our minds that what you need is less work. In fact, you need no work. Unbeknownst to you, the old white guys you vote for agree with me because they make more money when you don't work. So, to that end, me and my fellow cohorts on the West Coast are going to serve you up a heaping helping of robots, artificial intelligence and big ass data to do the things you think you ought to be doing for high wages.
Now I know you all hate science and stuff, but you can do your own research. We aren't hiding it. Just look around for the latest developments in data collection and analysis, artificial intelligence and robotics and you'll get a good sense of whats in store for you and yours. We're not planning on you working for us. We're planning you out of work entirely.
I'll summarize the key points:
We're going to replace your job with a robot to the best of our ability. From cab and truck driving, to package delivery, to manufacture, to resource extraction... you name it. Even construction. Even farming. Even border wall building. We're going to have robots to build other robots. Whatever you thought you could do with hard work, you'll never beat what financiers, scientists and entrepreneurs on the coasts have in mind. You, nor your Trump government, nor Breitbart, nor Bernie or anyone else can do a goddamn thing about it. You are helpless in this assault on your whole way of life. Too bad. We're doing it anyway. We're even going to put all the robots on social media so they can learn from each other. They will be better than you at your job, beleive it. They will be better at social media than you too.
All of this is going to make life a helluva lot better and more luxurious. For us.
That's basically it.
I know you don't care because you are angry. I know you and folks like you will have strange reactions to all this. Like your inexplicable firearm purchases. That's fine. We're going to keep doing this shit. At some point in the future, a Liberal Democrat is going to come along with some new ideas for how to deal with all this. That person might come peddling stuff about guaranteed basic income and redefining 'work' rather than late 19th Century crap about unions and minimum wages and mass movement. Some person, probably from a coast, might have a great idea about what you can do with all that free time in your shrinking, impoverished towns and with your aging broken lives now that robot has your job. Some of you might even smarten up, get wise and listen to him or her. I doubt it, but we will see.
Nevertheless, rest assured, we are going to get the cheapest possible labor for mass production and that's not you or any other human anywhere in the world. I'd suggest taking up some form of traditional craft for specialized high end work for... well... people like us. For while robots are already putting the world's 75 million seamstress out of work (yes robots will make all the clothes in about ten years) there will still be a market for handmade, human sewn, bespoke suits (for example) for the discerning coastal elitist. You could be the organic farmers of coal mining or whatever it is you used to do.
By the way... if you go after our robots, we will teach them to fight back. Cheers!