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Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

nytimes.com

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Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#51

Post by dragonwriter »

macspoofing wrote: post #34
gutnor wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Factories do not scale as well as service because they need are limited by natural resources. Service can literally be created out of thin air. For example, an AI could create an infinite number of movies or books or insurance contract. A factory making widget will be limited by availability of raw material. They both share the same limitation at the end of the day. At the end, the human being is relatively static. Y…

>Service can literally be created out of thin air. Not really. It's built on manufacturing base. You need to 'service' something.

Lots of service are personal services (the thing you are servicing is the customer), and categories of personal service expand and contract with, essentially, fashion. Service can literally be created out of thin air.

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#52

Post by wildmusings »

thesmallestcat wrote: post #48
wildmusings wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is easy for a coastal educated person to say, but to a line of family men who have not just eschewed education but actively resisted it, this is a tough pill to swallow. I don't think it's so much a cultural thing as the high intellectual capabilities required for high paying knowledge jobs. Coding, for example, is just too hard for a huge segment of the population, regardless of how much training they get. I…

TIL that the React ecosystem is a conspiracy against the poor.

It's interesting really. Systems that give you more flexibility and power might make good engineers more productive, while making many more mediocre engineers less productive. Of course, the former largely drive these innovations.

I've been out of web dev for a while now, but React's one way state to UI concept actually seems like an amazing simplification.

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#53

Post by sithadmin »

golergka wrote: post #38
steven777400 wrote: post #19

The memory is that these old factory/manufacturing jobs were high paying (middle class), secure, and accessible to people of low intellect, minimal education, and limited social grace. The proposed replacements "caregivers, retail workers and customer-service representatives" are significantly lower wage and also require more "EQ" that the working man of the prior generation didn't need. The voters these politicians…

> actively resisted it Honest question. Is this a reality or a degrading stereotype?

It's very much a common reality among working-class families of nearly any ethnic background in the USA.

I have plenty of friends and some non-intermediate family members that have reported that their friends and family actively discouraged continuing their education after highschool for one reason or another. In some cases, reasons like "you'll earn more working an honest trade", and "college debt is a scam" are given (in some cases, these may actually be true). In others, things like "do you think you're better than the rest of us?", "that's for white people", and "only f-gs and liberals go to college" are hurled at those that want to continue their education.

And in many cases, it doesn't even take active discouragement to prevent people from wanting to obtain any higher education. I have relatives that live in very small, rural farming towns that have actively resisted attending anything other than the local 2-year junior college, in part because the people that get 4-year degrees never come back to town. They're convinced that they would be betraying their family and friends by getting educated and finding a better living situation.

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#54

Post by akiselev »

philipkglass wrote: post #23
Houshalter wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there aren't a finite number of factories. If more factory work gets automated, then it will reduce the cost of building more factories and producing even more goods. Whereas service jobs seem more finite. There is only a finite demand for burgers or shelf stockers, unless you increase the population. I really don't understand how a mostly service based economy is sustainable. In any case, the service based jobs…

There's a finite demand for manufactured goods too. If anything, the price elasticity for manufactured goods seems likely to be lesser than that for restaurant meals; I'd eat out more often if it cost less, but I'm not going to buy additional dishwashers or dining tables for my house no matter how cheap they get. I'm not going to buy light bulbs or printers faster than they need replacement due to failure. With laser…

You're correct that manufacturing too has a finite demand but it still has an order of magnitude more potential than the service industry. The vast majority of service jobs are extremely local or tied to a language/region/jurisdiction so those jobs have very little to export. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the world is not yet affluent enough to afford most luxury manufactured goods so as the population gets wealthier, the market for manufactured goods expands. As long as the developing world follows western consumerism, and by all vounts it looks like it is, there is a lot of room to grow. Developed countries who have centuries of industrialization behind them and a knowledge economy stand a much greater chance of capturing that newly generated wealth because of scale and experience. As long as higher labor and regulatory costs can be offset by automation, the manufacturing can be grown with the world while services can only really grow with the national population.

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#55

Post by Uhhrrr »

serge2k wrote: post #26
helloworld wrote: post #10

I wasn't aware of these facts: -- [T]here can be no revival of American manufacturing, because there has been no collapse. Because of automation, there are far fewer jobs in factories. But the value of stuff made in America reached a record high in the first quarter of 2016, even after adjusting for inflation. -- [T]here were 64,000 steelworkers in America last year, and 820,000 home health aides.... Soon, we will be…

> I think I'd vote for McKinsey, Bain, or BCG to manage the executive branch instead of our current Presidential candidates Why not just give them whatever money they ask for and be done with it?

This is true for most companies that hire those consulting companies as well.

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#56

Post by madengr »

steven777400 wrote: post #19

The memory is that these old factory/manufacturing jobs were high paying (middle class), secure, and accessible to people of low intellect, minimal education, and limited social grace. The proposed replacements "caregivers, retail workers and customer-service representatives" are significantly lower wage and also require more "EQ" that the working man of the prior generation didn't need. The voters these politicians…

"Coastal educated"? Nice stereotyping there.

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#57

Post by titanomachy »

jfoutz wrote: post #35

Politicians are amateurs. I don't mean that in a pejorative way. Politicians are experts at politics, they can achieve consensus in seemingly impossible circumstances. If you pick a random politician, and ask them to design a transmission, or perform open heart surgery, they'd do as poorly as you or me. Yes, there are politicians from all walks of life, and you can probably find a surgeon politician. In general, the…

Governments employ experts in myriad capacities. Some of these experts achieved their position through actual merit rather than successful politicking.

I think many politicians, despite appearances, actually listen to these expert advisers. It takes a generalist to integrate information from disparate domains of expertise and make a decision. It takes a political expert to establish public support for the decision and shepherd it through various levels of government.

This represents an idealized picture of government, of course, and may not correspond with the reality in any particular country.

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#58

Post by saturdaysaint »

rayiner wrote: post #14

There is a lot more dignity of work in manufacturing. You're not servicing some old person who can afford to have a home health aid--you're making a product for people to buy (including other people like you).

As someone that works in manufacturing (on the ERP systems side), I assure you that the dignity non-unionized assembly line workers feel is about what you'd get from any highly repetitive $10 - $20 an hour job with scant pay raises. Having been around the assembly line, I'd definitely recommend someone try life as a barista or bartender or Costco employee before stepping foot in a factory.

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#60

Post by philipkglass »

madengr wrote: post #40

Why can't I buy a toaster made in the USA, even if it is off a highly automated line? Because it's still cheaper to make in manually in China. Even if it's automated, it will still be cheaper to automate it in China.

Does this help? http://www.b4usa.com/tag/toaster/

I've bought quite a few things made in the USA (or other countries with decent worker and environmental protections, like Italy, Germany, Japan...) that other people seem to usually get from China. Anecdotally, I've noticed that people who will talk about how Grandma's toaster or washing machine lasted forever and it's a shame you can't buy something like that today are not willing to budget for it like Grandma did. Grandma spent a lot of money on her appliances in 1950, whether you want to adjust by consumer price index or just look at (e.g.) the ratio of minimum wage to sticker price. Are you willing to spend thousands of dollars on a washing machine, to match relative buying power and prices from the middle of the 20th century? If so, you can still find appliances that are built like a tank, built by workers paid decent wages, built in factories that don't just dump all their trash into the nearest river. But if you want to buy a toaster that lasts a long time, is made in the USA, and costs only a little bit more than the Chinese toaster, yeah, I agree that is hard to find. There is good stuff still available at the high end. The low end has gone a lot lower.

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