Someone could make an interesting study of what became of that earlier critique of social policy. To some extent it became standard among Republicans and conservatives (and for a time, even moderate Democrats). To some extent it seems to have dried up or retreated back into think tanks. It took courage to take on the prevailing social policy consensus of the day, but with time the failures of the Great Society became common knowledge.

Doing something about them is a different matter and more difficult. American political movements tend to end up preoccupied with foreign policy, because it is so hard to change things domestically (and there can also be more glory and national unity in foreign and military actions). Sometimes foreign conflicts forced us to take notice. Sometimes we got in to trouble ourselves.

“And this is before we get down to issues of labour laws. Rich countries demand high standards, but that won’t allow cheap manufacturers to flourish.”

However, the cheap manufacturers here DO flourish (although perhaps more in the service and physical labor sectors than in the factories) because the people who have enacted all of those high-standard labor laws are also the ones circumventing them with illegal immigrants.

Change my mind.

And yet that strategy has been tried by large countries, and failed.

To make high end materials you need a well educated workforce. To make clothes you need a cheap (so under-educated) workforce. That’s why basically no-one does both. No-one will set up a sweat-shop making sweatshirts in the US, your labour costs would make it impossible.

If you have a lively financial sector, like New York, then the cost of money is high. So investment in long-term bulk operations like mining never happens — it costs too much. Countries with large financial sectors are largely out of the mining business (except as legacies from previous times).

And this is before we get down to issues of labour laws. Rich countries demand high standards, but that won’t allow cheap manufacturers to flourish.

If someone in the US could set up a semi-conductor plant and out-price the Taiwanese they would already have done so. Same goes for making clothes. Same for mining.

The US doesn’t even have high unemployment, so how are you going to get these people to make these things that aren’t currently profitable? You have to take them from things that are currently profitable.

Trying to beat the laws of economics is the sort of nonsense that Marx tried. It doesn’t work, because the real world isn’t run in some arbitrary fashion. You can’t just wish away awkward realities like competitive advantage by hand-waving that the US is big.

But the results are what they are: Additional year for the Wehrmacht to prepare, without casualties. German people have one more Counter that Hitler is a genius and can be trusted to make the right decisions. And the enemy will fold.

America is about an idea, trump thinks economics and manufacturing is key to the self identity of america, vivek is more ideological in same ways, desantis somewhere in the middle,

if he hadn’t paid off biden and co through gazprom, to shut down drilling, and
‘phase out fossil fuels’ putin wouldn’t have had the revenue to pull this off,

again you have to look at how putin sees himself, in the guise of a czar, xi sees himself as an emperor, erdogan as a sultan

Funny thing, I didn’t hear him offering a solution to that particular problem in that video, simple or otherwise. Nor would any such solution be simple, anyway.