Is it maybe because centering divs was much better career choice than dealing with machines and chemicals for more than a decade now? If that’s changing and manufacturing becomes a need, it should correct by itself.

The west, especially the USA invested gargantuan money into high margin high scale businesses and the Chinese worked their way up in dealing with atoms with help of the west. Now they too can do many of the high margin stuff and the west will have to re-learn how to deal with atoms. It happened because the west’s rich were simply shittier than Chinese bureaucrats and invested badly by choosing wrong KPI or ideas. Wonder what happens if the AI thing doesn’t pan out after pouring enormous money on it(instead of on something strategically important but not as potentially lucrative).

IMHO things are reversible, especially for the USA. Europe is in a worse place as its demographics and energy situation is less favorable.

> correct by itself

As a mechanist there’s more tax on my work now than when I was centering Divs because it was considered "research and development", which comes with tax exemptions. I won’t share the salary difference but you can bet it’s inversely proportional to the tax.

This is in France but I’m sure other Europeans countries have found ways to favor IT startups over usefull industries.