This was true in the US pre WWII. Who better to walk in to the giant mechanism of knives and gears than small children? Their little arms can reach!
It doesn't happen anymore because the US doesn't manufacture anything anymore. Well, there is one thing the US manufactures - energy. Not directly, but they get all the economic benefit for it.
When you pull a barrel of oil out of the ground, you've created wealth where there was none before. It is not a zero sum game. When you charge dollars for that barrel, you give those dollars value in the global energy market. It does not matter who 'owns' the oil, even another country, as long as it's sold in dollars, the US gets the benefit.
This is why stuff from China is so cheap. The only thing a dollar is good for on the global market is energy, but the dollar has a near monopoly on it. The US doesn't have to do any of the work when they are the ones putting the gas in the gas tank. The rest of the world makes the engine go off of that gas.
As a US based manufacturer, I find your comment ignorant. There is a great deal of manufacturing in the US, and it is getting easier to do - not harder.
I have been manufacturing since 2004. It's not that hard. You start with an idea, build a minimally viable prototype, improve it, make a final design, sort out the supply chain and then start building. Design once, sell thousands of times.
Use automation, its cheaper than even Chinese labor. Work on just-in-time manufacturing techniques and you can get your inventory down to a small fraction of annual sales. The multi-axis controls in a 3D printer can be repurposed to do all sorts of motion control in a factory. See https://www.synthetos.com/project/tinyg/
The U.S. is the second largest manufacturer in the world. China only surpassed the U.S. in 2010. Furthermore, manufacturing is growing in the U.S.
Chinese labor is (or at least was) so cheap because the standard of living is considerably lower than in the West or the developed East Asian countries.
It doesn't happen anymore because the US doesn't manufacture anything anymore. Well, there is one thing the US manufactures - energy. Not directly, but they get all the economic benefit for it.
When you pull a barrel of oil out of the ground, you've created wealth where there was none before. It is not a zero sum game. When you charge dollars for that barrel, you give those dollars value in the global energy market. It does not matter who 'owns' the oil, even another country, as long as it's sold in dollars, the US gets the benefit.
This is why stuff from China is so cheap. The only thing a dollar is good for on the global market is energy, but the dollar has a near monopoly on it. The US doesn't have to do any of the work when they are the ones putting the gas in the gas tank. The rest of the world makes the engine go off of that gas.