The United States is in need of reindustrialization

I accept Pro's definitions. Pro's definition of reindustrialization is one that requires government intervention: "a policy of stimulating economic growth especially through government aid." Thus reindustrialization occurring by ordinary free market investment does not qualify. It is about government. The central flaw is Pro's argument is that for government to aid revitalization and growth, it must take the money for that aid out of the private sector. Then the government must select the areas for investment and spend it. The government does that with little regard for market demands, with little knowledge of technological trends, and without profit motive. Political considerations, on the other hand, are paramount. Money will be distributed in proportion to the political influence of the individual states and in accord with whatever politicians think will buy them votes. A prime example of government investment disaster is the ethanol debacle. That paid off the farm states, so that every presidential candidate could claim credit in the Iowa primaries. Ethanol, however, turns out to be a net energy loss, it increases pollution, and it caused corn prices to spike upwards then plummet. We can expect disaster after disaster as politicians try to pick winners and losers, and continually fail. The government does not admit failure, and continues bad investments like ethanol, whereas enterprise writes off the bad ones. The alternative is free market operation. An example is the textile industry being phased out of North Carolina. This made news headlines when those really great jobs sewing underwear were lost to Mexico and China. What ensued was a transformation of the North Carolina state economy to pharmaceuticals, financial services, and high-tech R&D. North Carolina attracted the new industries through policies of low taxes and minimum interference with business. Instead, they might have raised taxes to "reindustrialize" the textile industry. Pros specific arguments are rebutted: 1) "Industry creates capital." Actually it is capital that creates industry. Government taking capital out of the private sector and spending it according to political considerations wastes capital and therefore diminishes industry. After WWII the industrial base of Europe and Japan were destroyed, so American industry was preeminent. That was lost not due to "overindulgence" but rather due to competitors rebuilding. 2) Pro claims, "the American government currently puts too much of its "stock" in technologies and not enough in production." Government has not put much into technology, and it has boomed. While the dotcom bubble did burst, technology has remained a pillar of the American economy. Other key sectors of the economy are entertainment, financial services, aerospace, and agribusiness. Biotechnology is perhaps the key emerging area. If the government redirects resources into manufacturing, resource will be removed from one or more of the existing sectors of the economy. There is no reason to believe that taking money out of biotechnology and putting it into, say, textiles, will provide a net benefit to the economy. The evidence that it will not is that private capital has not flowed in that direction of its own accord. Pro could argue some specific case of taking resources out of X and putting it into Y, but it is far more likely that investors will make those decisions correctly than government. If it were not so, the great socialist experiments of the last century, like the Soviet Union and India, would not have failed. 3) It is true that if the US produced its own clothing, then we would not be as dependent on other countries for clothing. So what? Is there a real danger that all the countries producing clothing will gang up and refuse to produce, thereby damaging their own economies? I don't think that is a risk. It's not a good tradeoff because advanced economies are far more efficient at producing sophisticated goods and services. There are a few genuinely strategic goods that the US could produce that it does not. The principle one is oil. We could choose to convert coal to oil, we could get oil from oil shale, and we could expand drilling. That would substantially increase the independence of the US. The reason why we do not do that has nothing to do with lack of investment capital. It is a policy that foreign dependence on a strategic commodity is better than doing it ourselves. If oil is not deemed a strategic necessity, then clearly textiles, which is orders of magnitude less important, cannot be compelling. Pro claims that America produces too many college graduates. We produce far too few engineers and scientists, and must fill graduate programs with foreign students. We may well produce too many generic humanities graduates. The cure to that is to redesign the K-12 system to put substantially more emphasis on the sciences. It's not to send humanities majors to factories. 4) Pro claims all the problems would be fixed by government redirecting investment to manufacturing. Redirecting destroys value. Rather than producing the things we are most efficient at producing, we would be forced to produce the things we are least efficient at producing. Taking resources out of such successes and trying to compete on labor-intensive goods means that we will cede the markets were we excel. Finally, I question Pro's broad assumption that manufacturing is the best bet for the future. In 1900, agriculture provided over 90% of the jobs in the economy. Suppose government had made every effort to preserve the agricultural sector. That would have impeded growth of the industrial sector. Now, all the food is produced by 4% of the population. Since the 50s, half as many manufacturing workers are producing twice as many goods. (ref: "The Lexus and the Olive Tree") It's not the role of government to fight such changes in the economy. Enterprise will find the best use of resource