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

fortune.com

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

#201

Post by twblalock »

ageofwant wrote: post #22
bandrami wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it not happen? Even poor people today have objectively much better living standards than rich people 100 years ago.

A rising tide lifts all boats. Even poor people in 1960 have objectively much better living standards than rich people 100 years before, yet we work longer hours and have less security. What happens to you today if you loose your job tomorrow, and cannot find employment within 6 months ?

> What happens to you today if you loose your job tomorrow, and cannot find employment within 6 months ?

You'd be less screwed than you would have been 100 years ago in that situation, for sure.

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

#202

Post by ZeroGravitas »

amluto wrote: post #93
ddlatham wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do feel like shipping goods by container ship is bad for the environment and bad for consumers. How is it bad for consumers (beyond the environment)? Shipping goods does include an environmental cost which is not incorporated into the price of things - an unfortunate externality. We should have a carbon tax to properly reflect the true cost of items made and shipped so the market can choose between a locally made…

> We should have a carbon tax to properly reflect the true cost of items made and shipped so the market can choose between a locally made good and one made elsewhere. I agree, but the results may be a bit surprising. Shipping by container ship is extremely efficient [1]. On the West coast, for example, it might be cheaper (possibly far cheaper) to buy goods from Asia than from the Midwest. And wine drinkers in New Yo…

This probably also explains factories in the middle of the US closing, since they do not have easy transport links in and out of the country. They would have been built there in the past because of easy transport links within the country.

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

#203

Post by toomanybeersies »

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #148
tomarr wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised how negligible the environmental impact of shipping compared to production is. As an extreme example, it's cheaper in terms of CO2e emissions to produce and ship lamb from New Zealand to the United Kingdom than produce it in the UK.

How is that possible?

Producing lamb in NZ is a veryow intensity operation. Usually lambs are just out on a hill and left there for a few months before slaughter. There's also drenching and other stuff, but the actual land they're in isn't irrigated or worked at all.

Not so much these days, but it used to be fairly common to just run sheep up a mountain valley and then twice a year muster them down the valley (often with only horses and dogs) for shearing and slaughter. Any sheep that fall ill would either recover or die.

That's still the case usually, a lamb is worth a lot less than the vet costs.

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

#204

Post by toomanybeersies »

CydeWeys wrote: post #161
blakeyrat wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big question is what happens when the Chinese government puts a high priority on getting into aerospace and tries to replicate their own 787s or A-350s. That said, Boeing's defense contracts might keep is secure regardless of what happens in civil aviation. United Airlines might buy a plane from China (in a decade), but the US Navy certainly wouldn't.

They haven't even cracked the automobile market yet. No one in the west will buy a Chinese car, let alone a Chinese plane.

They sell Chinese pickup trucks here in New Zealand under the brand "Great Wall".

Everything I've heard about them is that they're unreliable and unsafe to an extreme degree. You're apparently better off buying a 3 year old Toyota Hilux or Nissan Navara for the same price as a brand new Chinese truck.

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

#205

Post by dx034 »

hackuser wrote: post #152
sunsu wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is most definitely a net food exporter and it has been that way for a long time. "U.S. agricultural exports have been larger than U.S. agricultural imports since 1960, generating a surplus in U.S. agricultural trade." https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/international-markets-trade/...

That doesn't contradict what I said: The U.S. imports large amounts of food. The charts on a related page show tens of billions of dollars of imports per year: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/international-markets-trade/... Net imports is a different question.

It still means that the US could probably rely on domestic production if it was forced to do so. In a war, no other country could leverage their position by threatening to stop food exports to the US. It would surely result in less choice, but wouldn't really hurt the US.

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

#206

Post by dx034 »

bandrami wrote: post #49
losteric wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a well founded myth based on an extremely high percentage of consumer goods produced overseas. I can't find hard data on this, but anecdotally it's very hard to find things made in the US unless it's a high end store. Chinese manufacturing filled the burst in consumer demand for budget-level products...

True, but that's a relatively small part of the economy to begin with. We make most of the heavy plant in the world, so we're essentially building the factories China uses to make the plastic crap we buy.

Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure that German machinery exports are higher than those of the US. Couldn't find numbers but remember that Germany was #1 in that segment for quite some time, would be surprised if the US is now leading.

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

#207

Post by dx034 »

LargeCompanies wrote: post #174

Making America Great Again...

According to the report [1], the US is already at 99.5% competitiveness of China. It's not a big shift they project. Don't really see why many companies should shift their production if they haven't already.

[1] https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/...

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

#208

Post by Keyframe »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #7

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…

Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware documentary illustrates this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY

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

#209

Post by jessaustin »

br_smartass wrote: post #176
bandrami wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it not happen? Even poor people today have objectively much better living standards than rich people 100 years ago.

Ah, surely the aristocrats of before would instantly jump at the opportunity of giving up their lifes of free-time, leisure, education, servants, 3-hour-meals, giant houses, countryside retreats, upper-class-socializing, to trade it with the shopping-mall-worker that does 60h weeks(no weekends), for he'd have a smartphone! Funny. This argument, which I've read before, only works with a really, really narrow definitio…

Lots of people would choose electric lighting, refrigeration, aircon, television, automobiles, etc.?

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

#210

Post by threeseed »

LargeCompanies wrote: post #174

Making America Great Again...

No Trump will cement the US's inevitable trend towards mediocrity.

Manufacturing are not the jobs of the future. They are too easy to automate and will far too easily flow to cheaper countries with lots of young, skilled people e.g. China, India.

What should be happening is a massive skills and education investment in the US combined with some sort of basic income.

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