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Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#71

Post by ryanmarsh »

aswanson wrote: post #42
no1youknowz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's something else that should shake US and UK highly skilled workers. Our time will soon come as well. In China, they are racing to match and surpass western standards. I would say, they have already matched in some cases. But unlike the west where companies export out to save costs. Companies in China do everything in-house. There will be a time where these 6 figure jobs that some HN users have, will go down by…

Just doing the numbers from a stat standpoint, assuming you need to be in the top 2 percent of intelligence to code, there is a latent pool of 42 million developers in China/India waiting for their "go" signal. Best thing to do imo is hoard and deploy money to investments, because capital is set up to clean labors clock in the coming decades.

> capital is set up to clean labors clock in the coming decades

I don't think people realize how extremely true this is and how drastically different it will make the west look.

Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#72

Post by rm999 »

zeeveener wrote: post #43
xapata wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming, obviously.

Sure, but what kind of programming? Web and Java developers are a dime-a-dozen. Sure there are different levels of skill within those specific fields, but you're never short for developers who know those things. Now Machine Learning or AI or even potentially low-level programming. Those are some areas where knowledge could be _extremely_ lucrative in the near (10-15 years) future.

Short answer: "scripting"

Longer answer: programming isn't necessarily a job where you build things. I'd argue it's more generally about communicating with and controlling computers. And computers are increasingly where our lives are spent and/or tracked.

I learned to program when I was relatively young, and I've spent my whole life witnessing people doing mundane tasks that a script could have easily automated away. It's everywhere: doctors' secretaries copying forms, grocery clerks scanning through shelves, office workers manually editing excel documents, etc. The reason these tasks remain un-automated is because programmers don't do these jobs; programming is considered a profession rather than a basic skill. I showed my friend's secretary how to easily automate a task she spent hours a week on, but she felt like the solution was foreign and rejected it. That one script could have made freed up 100s of hours a year to do other things, but she didn't get it.

In a world where business people are looking to "disrupt" a lot of jobs through automation and consolidation, I think there's room for people to help automate away parts of their own jobs and share in the wealth (with more free or recreational time). I believe this is how a lot of people will keep jobs in the next 20+ years.

Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#73

Post by nickik »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #9

> Cook told "60 Minutes” in 2015. “I mean, you can take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room that we’re currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have multiple football fields.” In that interview he also said that the jobs weren't coming back. This is one of the most powerful statements uttered on American labor and employment trends in recent memory. I have shared thi…

The people who make argument like yours simple sound like "ignore problem, everything will be fine".

A company that does not move to cheaper labour will go bankroupt and a new all China company will simply take over. So you have unemployed anyway.

The typical solution to this is that you start walling of these industries with tarrifs or to subsides.

What you eventually have is a huge sector of the US economy that lives of the higher prices and/or taxes of the rest of the population while everybody has lower standards of living.

Once China started institutional reforms there were only two possibilites, these jobs were payed for by other americans or they go away.

Also, most americans only had these jobs because the US was able to export lots of these manufactures.

Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#74

Post by ChemicalWarfare »

david-cako wrote: post #34
ryanmarsh wrote: post #9

> Cook told "60 Minutes” in 2015. “I mean, you can take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room that we’re currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have multiple football fields.” In that interview he also said that the jobs weren't coming back. This is one of the most powerful statements uttered on American labor and employment trends in recent memory. I have shared thi…

What's the answer? Protectionism? That's the thing I don't get, so many people will advocate "fewer regulations", yet are perfectly content with prohibitive tariffs from the place that allows people living in section 8 to afford iPhones. You're 100% right, but i just don't see a good answer other than coming to terms with the fact that cheap labour overseas and automation WILL back us into UBI in the very near future…

>> That's the thing I don't get, so many people will advocate "fewer regulations", yet are perfectly content with prohibitive tariffs...

anything that is completely unregulated or loosely regulated is prone to abuse. tariffs/additional taxation levels the playing field. also - reciprocity. try importing a US-made vehicle in Japan for example...

Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#75

Post by nickik »

ianceicys wrote: post #59
imron wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been making that same claim for a couple of decades already [0], and it still hasn't happened. I mean, I'm sure it will happen eventually and then all the naysayers will be 'right', but not really (broken clock, twice a day, yadda, yadda, yadda). 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_Collapse_of_China

Just remember people said the housing crisis would never happen in the US. '"Someone Is Blowing Up": RBC Warns China-Induced Unwinds Are Escalating' http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-04/someone-blowing-rbc... Just realize it's not all sunshine and rainbows in China.

They may have a recession at some point but just as recessions in the rest of the world, they usually end and the country goes back to some trendline.

Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#76

Post by senorjazz »

colordrops wrote: post #70
david-cako wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the answer? Protectionism? That's the thing I don't get, so many people will advocate "fewer regulations", yet are perfectly content with prohibitive tariffs from the place that allows people living in section 8 to afford iPhones. You're 100% right, but i just don't see a good answer other than coming to terms with the fact that cheap labour overseas and automation WILL back us into UBI in the very near future…

> protectionism Why not? It works for so many other countries. Is it not a fundamental characteristic of government to prioritize its citizens over others? Without that, we've got a de facto world government with dissolved borders but that only benefits the rich and powerful. If we truly want to give equal rights and privileges to everyone on Earth we should make global governance explicit to make sure the poor and d…

The cost of things will go as it will be more expensive to make things nationally.

Your big export industries will be hit, especially those that run at huge economies of scale and are able to dump the produce on other countries devastating their local industry (think big corp farms).

The answer is never as simple as it seems

Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#77

Post by rhizome »

david-cako wrote: post #34
ryanmarsh wrote: post #9

> Cook told "60 Minutes” in 2015. “I mean, you can take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room that we’re currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have multiple football fields.” In that interview he also said that the jobs weren't coming back. This is one of the most powerful statements uttered on American labor and employment trends in recent memory. I have shared thi…

What's the answer? Protectionism? That's the thing I don't get, so many people will advocate "fewer regulations", yet are perfectly content with prohibitive tariffs from the place that allows people living in section 8 to afford iPhones. You're 100% right, but i just don't see a good answer other than coming to terms with the fact that cheap labour overseas and automation WILL back us into UBI in the very near future…

I'm sorry, but why is that such a terrible future? What is the goal that is threatened by the alternatives you propose as negatives?

Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#78

Post by CPLX »

nickik wrote: post #73
ryanmarsh wrote: post #9

> Cook told "60 Minutes” in 2015. “I mean, you can take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room that we’re currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have multiple football fields.” In that interview he also said that the jobs weren't coming back. This is one of the most powerful statements uttered on American labor and employment trends in recent memory. I have shared thi…

The people who make argument like yours simple sound like "ignore problem, everything will be fine". A company that does not move to cheaper labour will go bankroupt and a new all China company will simply take over. So you have unemployed anyway. The typical solution to this is that you start walling of these industries with tarrifs or to subsides. What you eventually have is a huge sector of the US economy that liv…

Not really.

Germany and Switzerland have managed to maintain high wages and high standards of living in a globally competitive manufacturing sector.

The idea that all this change is inevitable or impossible to avoid and we can't pay workers properly is just bullshit, it's the messaging of a multi-decade well financed public relations effort by people in the U.S. with a vested interest in making the public believe it.

Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#79

Post by rhizome »

saimiam wrote: post #55
david-cako wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the answer? Protectionism? That's the thing I don't get, so many people will advocate "fewer regulations", yet are perfectly content with prohibitive tariffs from the place that allows people living in section 8 to afford iPhones. You're 100% right, but i just don't see a good answer other than coming to terms with the fact that cheap labour overseas and automation WILL back us into UBI in the very near future…

> What's the answer? Protectionism? If you have the means, invest with the wealth makers. I'd buy into SPY or FANG and let these CEOs do the work for me while I relocate to a low CoL location. Does it scale? Probably not. I honestly can't think of any other way to make ends meet one my skills become moot.

What skills of yours do you think could become moot?

Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#80

Post by atqtion »

colordrops wrote: post #70
david-cako wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the answer? Protectionism? That's the thing I don't get, so many people will advocate "fewer regulations", yet are perfectly content with prohibitive tariffs from the place that allows people living in section 8 to afford iPhones. You're 100% right, but i just don't see a good answer other than coming to terms with the fact that cheap labour overseas and automation WILL back us into UBI in the very near future…

> protectionism Why not? It works for so many other countries. Is it not a fundamental characteristic of government to prioritize its citizens over others? Without that, we've got a de facto world government with dissolved borders but that only benefits the rich and powerful. If we truly want to give equal rights and privileges to everyone on Earth we should make global governance explicit to make sure the poor and d…

> It works for so many other countries

It even worked for the United States. Protectionism was a major component of our policy approach toward industrialization.

Protectionism as a mechanism for supporting the development of domestic capabilities is, historically, a well-justified policy position.

And if you look to highly protectionist economies today, you'll find mostly developing economies.

> Why not?

1. Most importantly, protectionism as a mechanism for inflating wages and/or spurring job growth in an already developed economy isn't nearly as well-tested an approach as examples of protectionism in America's past. Historic examples of US protectionism had the end goal of boosting domestic labor productivity. Modern protectionism risks doing exactly the opposite.

2. The diffuse benefits of free trade must be weighed against the more localized costs of free trade. It's a difficult calculus, but it shouldn't be ignored. Cheap stuff at Walmart and Amazon benefits a whole ton of people. Perhaps more importantly, access to foreign markets and capital creates a lot of jobs and wealth domstically. A lot of Americans are employed doing high-paying, high-quality work that is exported globally. (Including a lot of software engineers.)

3. The benefits to labor may be short lived if automation wipes out a lot of manufacturing jobs. In which case we've traded access to foreign markets and capital for maybe 10 years of jobs and a false sense of non-urgency in job re-training.

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