Remember the December 2012 mcuban AMA on Reddit:

China is running out of cheap labor and transportation only gets more expensive. I know there are other third world countries who can make widgets but in general is there a trend towards returning manufacturing to the US?

i think it will change drastically as we see more and more robotics and factory automation. Cheap labor cant compete with robotics.

when that happens we will still lose manufactoring jobs, but we will see the factories and the intelligence required to create the software to run them move back to the states.

its critical that we as a country dominate in robotics and factory automation. That is how we will take back manufacturing

The argument for Mark's thesis is that on a Chevy Express Cargo, that hasn't changed all that much for 30 years or so - there is no deflation.

_{(bot sourced quick research, didn't check all the links, just spot checked a few)}

14-year Chevy express MSRP based on these numbers: +69.5%
14-year cumulative CPI^[1]: +47.7%

So with all this "cobot" automation, how much is the price of a GM car going to drop? They need -20% to match CPI, so that the question becomes: how much more functionality is one going to get for that money?

And here is where I think that Mark's vision has a problem. Yes, for his costplus thing, he can do this, because he's competing with / disrupting guys (what he calls "the cartel") that do 1000x markup on meds. But is it really in GM's interest to reflect the lowering cost to produce to consumer pricing and not profitmaxx? Can they even get away with not profitmaxxing? Or will they be sued by their own shareholders? Time will tell what GM will realize, but the pessimist in me fears that the most likely outcome is that there will be job loss + MSRP continuing to outpace CPI.

@remindme in 3 years

1. from FRED, source - I'd compare with sats but "we're too early in the distribution phase". ↩