But service doesn't mean not working with your hands. Plumber, electrician both residential and commercial, construction, cabinetmaking, woodworking, auto body repair, appliance repair, hvac installation and repair are all service industry jobs.

Indeed. We should not confuse manual labor with manufacturing.

Some assorted observations:

1. Most services are dependent on the use of manufactured goods.

2. Trade exists precisely, because no domestic economy is entirely self-sufficient with respect to the demands of its market. However, when manufacturing is entirely outsourced, you become somewhat of an economic rump state. In the best case, you are now an administrator of manufacturing possessions somewhat like a colonial overseer. This creates a condition of economic imperialism rather than one of economic exchange. It creates incentives to capture the political systems of foreign countries and to depress standards of living in order to maintain low costs.

3. When everything is imported, then the only thing you can exchange for them are services. The alternative is printing fiat money or borrowing.

4. When manufacturing is moved abroad, experience and expertise withers and dies. Entire supply chains and intertwined sectors of industry fade. This creates an economic and even political dependence that goes beyond the mere inability of manufacture. As technology becomes increasingly complex, this creates security exposure. The interdependence of these supply chains is nontrivial.

5. Manufacturing is a basis for technological development. This is the result of not just manufacturing capacity, but the combined and communicated expertise that manufacturing enables and propagates. Once a tradition of expertise dies, it is difficult or impractical to replace.

6. Domestic manufacturing creates redundancy that buffers both the domestic economy and the global economy against single points of failure. It also helps drive prices down.

I don't know how things are in the US, but in Canada we're dying to have more people in the trades. Skilled trades are quite lucrative here, there's tons of incentives and subsidies to study them as well.

They could work in hard to outsource crafts like plumbing, carpentry, joinery etc.

Manufacturing is about skill and price, asian countries are hard to beat in that, especially the latter

> Germany tried some "protectionist" policies I seem to recall reading about — to protect some segment of manufacturing (automobile?).

As a German, I'm not aware of any large-scale, coordinated efforts specifically with that goal. There's all kinds of subsidies or policies with other ostensible goals (such as promoting electric cars) that are effectively subsidies. Usually enacted as a reaction to some current event, such as COVID, or a large company about to go bankrupt. Nothing that hasn't been done pretty much the same way in other countries.

if you want other people to give you money you have to offer something they want, not something that interests you

>> It is unfortunate though. There is a percentage of the population that have no interest in the "service economy". They need to work with their hands.

> if you want other people to give you money you have to offer something they want, not something that interests you

In the small scale.

But if you're thinking about society, you damn well better be thinking about having a big enough place for the people who "need to work with their hands," that's adequately remunerated.

As long as we understand that the ‘want’ may originate beyond what individuals desire. e.g. the state may want agricultural production to be in-house for food security or have sufficient industrial capacity for national security

So these measures (public/investments) would be instituted to fulfill these ‘wants’

But don't ever worry about the big yellow elephant in the room with bold black letters M-O-N-O-P-O-L-Y and A-D-V-E-R-S-A-R-Y

Wait until low-level service jobs go away, cashiers, warehouse workers, waiters.

Jobs going away is really a blessing. New jobs are created and society must arrange income for people who are not valuable enough to live with their work.