> The dream of (re)building your local economy around industries that boomed 100 years ago is a fantasy and the global economy has moved on.
What industries, specifically, are you thinking about?
Because if those industries did not disappear completely but were instead offshored to arbitrage labor, then the global economy has definitely NOT moved on.
Those industries were almost entirely automated years ago.
You aren't going to bring manufacturing back to the US and get jobs on the assembly line like your grandfather had, those jobs simply no longer exist. The few jobs that do exist won't pay enough money for a home with a two-car garage like your grandfather had on the assembly line either, they will pay barely subsistence wages like working in an Amazon warehouse. And American manufactured goods won't be competitive like they were when the US could leverage its industries against a Western world that was still rebuilding after the war. No one is going to want to buy American Ladas, and Americans won't be able to afford them.
What industries, specifically, are you thinking about?
Because if those industries did not disappear completely but were instead offshored to arbitrage labor, then the global economy has definitely NOT moved on.