Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#251

Post by poof131 » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 7:41 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #225

poof131 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m finding this robots argument a bit tiresome. Seems more of an excuse to justify outsourcing than the inevitable end state. If for every 10 workers, instead of 9 losing their jobs and 1 managing the robots, couldn’t we have 10 managing the robots and 10 times more stuff. The latter seems the more likely outcome to me of free markets, but instead we seem to have pivoted into a micro-managed (FED, ZIRP) government s…

There is no distinction between "free market" and "profit extraction". There's no easy way to "10 times more stuff" either: not just natural resource limits but demand limits. People aren't going to buy 10 times more stuff without 10 times as much credit. Or vastly increased wages / basic income. (There's an aside in Huxley's 'Brave new world' about new sports being invented with elaborate equipment requirements simp…

I could have worded it better: short term profit extraction at the expense of long term capital expenditures and growth through mechanisms such as stock buybacks and outsourcing. [1] Agree there is no easy way to 10 times more stuff but neither is everybody instantly replaced by robots and if everything is 10 times cheaper due to increases in productivity (robots) then more credit / increased wages isn’t required. I do believe the robots arguments is used in a fait accompli way that isn’t necessarily true. [2]

1. http://www.marketfolly.com/2016/05/stan-druckenmillers-sohn-... 2. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2015/04/29/dont-bl...

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#252

Post by mywittyname » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 8:08 PM UTC

hrxn wrote: post #245

mywittyname wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We outproduce both Japan and Germany combined in manufacturing. Manufacturing is roughly 18% of GDP for each Japan and Germany, but only 12% of the USA. Germany GDP: ~$4 trillion. Japan GDP: ~$5 trillion. USA GDP: ~$17 trillion. 9 * 0.18 = 1.6 17 * 0.12 = 2.0 So, as usual, Mr. Trump's ignorance is causing him to ask the wrong questions.

Yes, as the trade surplus so aptly shows. Oh, wait..

The USA could export everything it manufactures but still run a trade deficit because Americans spend too much money on French mobile games and Bollywood films.

But your original argument was that the US doesn't compete with Germany or Japan in manufacturing, when the facts show they not only compete, America fucking decimates those countries in raw output.

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#253

Post by yummyfajitas » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 8:18 PM UTC

whybroke wrote: post #241

yummyfajitas wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or indeed by your logic simply raising the salary of a CEO by a massive amount also raises the "absolute mobility" of all other employees Yes. If I had a 1% chance of being the CEO and having my income go from $100k to $1M, my expected payoff was $900k x 1% = $9k. If my income stays at $100k but the CEO income goes to $10M, and my odds of being the CEO stay at 1%, my expected payoff is $9.9M x 1% = 99k. My situation…

Or by that logic you could cut your pay from $100K to $1K and give your CEO $10M and be just as happy. There are plenty of people who live on $1K a year after all. Although in the CEO's case, often no further harm is done, if half of a population has a massive increase in wealth while the other half does not then then poorer half must compete for limited resources with a group that will not only drive prices up but c…

if half of a population has a massive increase in wealth while the other half does not then then poorer half must compete for limited resources

You are not discussing an increase in wealth at all. You are discussing a situation of declining or fixed wealth and monetary inflation. They aren't the same thing.

I agree that we should try to avoid declines in wealth. Luckily wealth has only increased in the US and globally, for folks at the bottom and the top.

Everything I said is unchanged if you replace income with utility(income).

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#254

Post by whybroke » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #253

whybroke wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or by that logic you could cut your pay from $100K to $1K and give your CEO $10M and be just as happy. There are plenty of people who live on $1K a year after all. Although in the CEO's case, often no further harm is done, if half of a population has a massive increase in wealth while the other half does not then then poorer half must compete for limited resources with a group that will not only drive prices up but c…

if half of a population has a massive increase in wealth while the other half does not then then poorer half must compete for limited resources You are not discussing an increase in wealth at all. You are discussing a situation of declining or fixed wealth and monetary inflation. They aren't the same thing. I agree that we should try to avoid declines in wealth. Luckily wealth has only increased in the US and globall…

No it does not. If you received no utility for your work but instead a 1:1000,000 chance of a million incomes, you would starve to death. The math you are using does not describe reality and rational people, since about Galileo anyway, have known better than to insist on broken models.

There is a reason people are willing to buy $1 lottery tickets but not $1000 tickets. (hint: a certainty of misery or high chance of death is not compensated by a remote chance of enormous wealth of ever decreasing marginal utility)

You are simply misunderstanding the use cost benefit, I assume because it clashes with some ideological point.

But if you want to buy a one in a million chance for a trillion dollars, I have a bitcoin address you could send a million bucks too.

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#255

Post by yummyfajitas » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 10:29 PM UTC

whybroke wrote: post #254

yummyfajitas wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if half of a population has a massive increase in wealth while the other half does not then then poorer half must compete for limited resources You are not discussing an increase in wealth at all. You are discussing a situation of declining or fixed wealth and monetary inflation. They aren't the same thing. I agree that we should try to avoid declines in wealth. Luckily wealth has only increased in the US and globall…

No it does not. If you received no utility for your work but instead a 1:1000,000 chance of a million incomes, you would starve to death. The math you are using does not describe reality and rational people, since about Galileo anyway, have known better than to insist on broken models. There is a reason people are willing to buy $1 lottery tickets but not $1000 tickets. (hint: a certainty of misery or high chance of…

The math you are using does not describe reality and rational people, since about Galileo anyway, have known better than to insist on broken models.

First of all, it's a textbook exercise in topology to show that any rational decision process must have a utility function (at least for a countably infinite set of choices).

Let me repeat the statement for utility functions. Suppose I have a 1% chance of being CEO and increasing my utility to U(CEO pay) - U(my pay). Suppose this increases to U(10x CEO pay) - U(my pay).

It's simple arithmetic that 0.01 x U(10X CEO pay) + 0.99 x U(my pay) > 0.01 x U(CEO pay) + 0.99 x U(my pay).

Rearranging the arithmetic, this is merely the statement that U(10X CEO pay) > U(CEO pay) - i.e. I'll be happier as a CEO with 10M than with 1M. Do you disagree with this statement?

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#256

Post by guyzero » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 10:52 PM UTC

Turing_Machine wrote: post #125

guyzero wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The plus side of service economies is that they're a lot harder to outsource - you can't open a Manilla call-center to handle a nursing home.

If your local hospital doesn't have a vastly disproportionate number of nurses from the Philippines, it is... atypical.

And they pay taxes, buy things from local businesses, pay rent to local landlords, etc. Quite unlike foreign call centers. Great news all around.

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#257

Post by whybroke » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 11:06 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #255

whybroke wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it does not. If you received no utility for your work but instead a 1:1000,000 chance of a million incomes, you would starve to death. The math you are using does not describe reality and rational people, since about Galileo anyway, have known better than to insist on broken models. There is a reason people are willing to buy $1 lottery tickets but not $1000 tickets. (hint: a certainty of misery or high chance of…

The math you are using does not describe reality and rational people, since about Galileo anyway, have known better than to insist on broken models. First of all, it's a textbook exercise in topology to show that any rational decision process must have a utility function (at least for a countably infinite set of choices). Let me repeat the statement for utility functions. Suppose I have a 1% chance of being CEO and i…

You are using high school math incorrectly which is what results in the many obvious contractions I have listed above.

In the unlikely event you are actually interested in the correct formulation, you start to find the answer here [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_utility#Quantified_ma...

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#258

Post by thesmallestcat » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 11:10 PM UTC

vertex-four wrote: post #182

thesmallestcat wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You realise that something can have bad outcomes for a given group without anyone intentionally seeking those outcomes, yes?

Yes, it was a joke.

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#259

Post by eveningcoffee » Thu, Oct 06, 2016, 11:50 PM UTC

rfrank wrote: post #18

hueving wrote: post #4

Manufacturing is a target because it's easy for people to see concrete results. They can point at something and say, "we made that", and it tends to generate some sense of pride. The same doesn't really apply for service industries or innovation in the service industries: "we produced consumer surplus by lowering transportation costs via automation" doesn't roll off the tongue as well. :) The same problem exists for…

Manufacturing also provides jobs for both high and low skill workers. As such can be seen as more valuable to a community than say, a software company that only hires engineers and a CS center in a different state. Manufacturing was one of the best roads for a low skill worker to earn good money and move up the rung economically - something that only seems to be getting harder as time goes on.

What is even more troubling is the amount of people who seem to believe that such people do not deserve a decent pay.

Re: Why Are Politicians So Obsessed with Manufacturing?

#260

Post by chillacy » Tue, Oct 11, 2016, 2:34 AM UTC

JDiculous wrote: post #249

chillacy wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one should not be allowed to vote on something like climate change without knowing the science and data behind climate change Okay, so in states where the majority don't believe in climate change and evolution, you'll have them design tests to exclude voters who believe in evolution/climate change from voting? > This could be in the form of an exam on a topic (eg. economics) and/or logic test We already have a long…

The tests should be as objective and unbiased as possible. Yes one can never remove 100% of bias, that doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything at all. Remember, the whole point is to only have people qualified on a topic voting on said topic. So if you're voting on, say, the minimum wage, you should be familiar with the economic ramifications of it. You should be familiar with both the arguments and counter-arguments,…

> knowledge is universal

But it isn't... take your example on economy. In the last hundred years people tried out all sorts of things with the guidance of experts, from market economies, planned ones like communism, globalism, and now economists are shifting their thinking on that too. The chances that we're right about all that today are pretty slim too. In 10, 20 years economic thought will have shifted elsewhere. That's a mere 2-4 election cycles.

> If you're voting on trade policy, you should know the economic ramifications of a tariff. You should probably know the history of our positions on trade as well.

Isn't that why we have a representative democracy? And even those who govern look to advisors for these things anyways. I don't need to be micromanaging the government.

> So if you're voting on, say, the minimum wage, you should be familiar with the economic ramifications of it.

Does anyone know the economic ramifications with adjusting minimum wage? Seriously. We just did this in Seattle and there were experts arguing that it would destroy all the businesses in the area. That didn't actually happen: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/08/10/...

Turns out, people disagree about all sorts of things. Usually it helps to look at what people have to gain or lose. In the minimum wage case, business owners didn't want to raise their expenses. In your case, the more people you exclude from voting who disagree with you, the better chance your policy preferences come into play.

I'm not saying we shouldn't try to understand the choices we make through our voting decisions, but knowledge tests as a means to reduce.. "idiot voters" is just another way to exclude people who disagree with you from voting.