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The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

fortune.com

31–40 of 235 posts

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#31
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should also start treating rising housing prices as a policy failure.

What about inflation? Why would anyone buy land if it was guaranteed to depreciate. I'd be better off renting from someone else losing money.

Lots of people buy vehicles that depreciate like mad because they believe the total value of the purchase exceeds the total cost.

I'm not necessarily saying that prices should have significant downward trajectory. Of course desirable locations will command a premium over time and so on. But as a society we probably shouldn't be excited that housing sometimes goes up substantially, even as the stock deteriorates.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#32

I haven't been myself but my wife is a process engineer and had to go to China to install and train people on a new machine so this is only second hand... But one of the reasons China is so good at manufacturing is because everything is in one place (or at least clusters)... need 10,000 of an Integrated Circuit? The company that makes it is literally down the street. Need some raw materials? That's down the other str…

China wasn't always that way: it was a choice they made to become the worlds manufacturers, with the complicity of the global financial elite. We moved the factories over there, we can move them back.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#33
post #9
post #3

While manufacturing may comeback to US, the employment in Manufacturing sector may not increase as much due to automation.

We really need economic indicators that reflect conditions for most people, not just the top few. Indicators that are often used in the news like rising GDP, house prices and manufacturing output are pretty useless if only a few get benefits from them.

I always thought we should have several averages:

Full data, cut off 1% at each end, 5% at each end, and 10% at each end.

I think we'd get much more out of the A-1 or A-5 than the raw average.

(Of course, the real answer -- like with the weather -- is that you need to use distribution information, not a single value.)

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#34
post #3

While manufacturing may comeback to US, the employment in Manufacturing sector may not increase as much due to automation.

I've been finding this graph: https://tropicsofmeta.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/2007-real-... very helpful (y-axis is percentages of GDP and workforce.) Manufacturing never left the US, in terms of output, it's just that jobs did.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#35

I haven't been myself but my wife is a process engineer and had to go to China to install and train people on a new machine so this is only second hand... But one of the reasons China is so good at manufacturing is because everything is in one place (or at least clusters)... need 10,000 of an Integrated Circuit? The company that makes it is literally down the street. Need some raw materials? That's down the other str…

China wasn't always that way: it was a choice they made to become the worlds manufacturers, with the complicity of the global financial elite. We moved the factories over there, we can move them back.

To be automated, which is what will, and is happening.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#36

thank you donald trump

What, exactly are you thanking him for? You know that they will all be automated jobs right? That is where manufacturing is going.

You can love a corrupt egomaniac all you want, but you should wake up and smell the coffee, you sound like a shill from your amazingly defensive two comments.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#37

I read the article and skimmed the full study and was left scratching my head: - What exactly do they mean by 'Competitiveness'? - Why so much focus on labour costs, when manufacturing cost is increasingly driven by large capital investments (especially in China, where low interest rates and government encouragement have expanded capital investments for years) - Why all the talk about R&D expenditure. Is that really…

How do they expect (on page 46) China's consumption to rise to 46% of GDP by 2025, if GDP will rise at 6.5% per year during the period? Such a shift would require consumption to go up by ~10% per year.

Perhaps a relative reduction in exports? When costs go up in China the goods that can be profitably produced elsewhere tend to increase.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#38

I haven't been myself but my wife is a process engineer and had to go to China to install and train people on a new machine so this is only second hand... But one of the reasons China is so good at manufacturing is because everything is in one place (or at least clusters)... need 10,000 of an Integrated Circuit? The company that makes it is literally down the street. Need some raw materials? That's down the other str…

> Although I hope it is true.

I don't know if being a manufacturing powerhouse is actually all that exciting anymore. There aren't really that many jobs in manufacturing anymore. Some of Toyota's modern car plants employ a meager 1500 people which is about and order of magnitude decrease from what car plants used to employ.

This las election was frustrating for this very reason everybody assumes getting manufacturing back is going to be great. It's not. Sorry, it just won't be.

Manufacturing is moving back to the US because distributed supply chains are becoming worth the cost increase in labor.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#39
post #9
post #3

While manufacturing may comeback to US, the employment in Manufacturing sector may not increase as much due to automation.

We really need economic indicators that reflect conditions for most people, not just the top few. Indicators that are often used in the news like rising GDP, house prices and manufacturing output are pretty useless if only a few get benefits from them.

> We really need economic indicators that reflect conditions for most people, not just the top few.

We have economic indicators that do that, such as median income and various distributional measures. They don't tend to get covered as much in the news because most of the people with power and influence don't like people paying attention to the stories they tell.

But the same government agencies that publish the headline figures publish my more useful ones for assessing how most people are experiencing the economy.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#40
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We really need economic indicators that reflect conditions for most people, not just the top few. Indicators that are often used in the news like rising GDP, house prices and manufacturing output are pretty useless if only a few get benefits from them.

We should also start treating rising housing prices as a policy failure.

since it's usually a policy goal supported by the voting public, I don't see how it's a policy failure.

Now, the fact that it is a policy goal with that kind of support may be a failure on a more fundamental level, but that's a different issue.

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