There doesn’t seem to be any new manufacturing going on in CT aside with Electric Boat building new subs.

Batteries are probably not going to be made anywhere except for the countries that have the lowest costs. I guess Tesla making some batteries with Panasonic’s would be a bit of an exception. But that’s not at a scale that you would see the education system stop what they’ve been doing and move towards are a quick rate.

Building solar panels is something that China has managed to get down pretty well in terms of resources and manufacturing. Construction of solar panels is pretty environmentally unfriendly as well. The silicon tetrachloride and heavy metal waste from solar panels make it not a great thing to manufacture in the US. Even though “solar is the future” sounds good on paper, the manufacturing waste would probably only be acceptable in China. So that probably won’t happen in the US on a large scale anytime soon.

Computer chip manufacturing is EXTREMELY expensive and takes a long time to implement any changes. With the CHIPS Act that Biden implemented, that’s just a drop in the bucket for what’s needed. And companies saying they’re going to do one thing and not following all the way through is pretty prevalent in the technology industry. Foxconn said that they were committing to building a successful plant in Wisconsin, “dedicating $10 billion” to the project. 5+ years out and the project is kinda not going anywhere.

If there were to be serious efforts made towards advancing technology to keep pace ahead of countries like China, and keep advanced manufacturing in America you’d have to see the government committing to education to the levels they did during the Cold War. And even then, manufacturing in America might still be an issue just because there’s an entire generation retiring leaving openings. So those openings would have to be filled before sustained growth, technology advancements, and keeping pace ahead of other countries can be thought about. And manufacturing is not as a big of a draw for younger crowds, as much as software development, business, and even liberal arts. Manufacturing isn’t all that fun. It involves high skill and low pay. And it kinda makes sense in that America has to compete in terms of keeping quality, and prices have to be kept low because China has been manufacturing stuff at a low price for a long time now, so manufacturing is now just undervalued and no one wants to pay a larger price for anything. So why would a young person go into manufacturing when they could learn programming and possibly make more money? So there’s a bunch of young people who now have computer skills for the tech industry that is no longer expanding at the pace it has.

If the American government, CT government, and employers were serious in addressing their need for skilled manufacturing, there would be more incentives for building a bigger workforce. The fact is the government’s aren’t funding manufacturing properly, companies are kinda paying not great wages and not training, and schools don’t have the students who are interested in manufacturing programs, and the schools are becoming increasingly more useless and more expensive.

So sure, companies might seem desperate to hire (but just to offer the lowest possible wages) and there’s a lot of talk about bringing manufacturing back to America. But where things matter, we’re still left with a government that is keen on doing nothing to build the middle class. And it’s just easier to sit there do nothing and have students sit there and learn from a book than fund a proper manufacturing program.