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Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

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Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#121

Post by c1sc0 »

BrandonM wrote: post #109

I think the core of the problem is the idea of the 40-hour work week. It is inevitable that more and more jobs will become marginalized and automated. That is a good thing : the goal of technological progress should be increased happiness, of which one component is increased leisure time. As more and more jobs require less and less work performed by humans, the obvious solution is to work less hours. Instead of famil…

Ask the French how reducing the workweek to 35 solved their unemployment problem in the last decade or so.

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#122

Post by juicebox »

starkfist wrote: post #52

It's interesting to hear this from Andy Grove. Intel of the 1990s was constantly being called out as an abusive workplace, exploiting H1B and "home grown" engineers, then laying them off when they got too old and sending their work overseas. Although I agree with most of his essay, I'm not sure I would want to be an employee in whatever scheme he is envisioning.

You mean the "scheme" of economic survivability?

I didn't read where Grove was proud of how Intel behaved during the '90s. In fact, I got the opposite impression from this article: Grove is writing from the pain and tragedy caused by competing with the Chinese on entirely Chinese terms. Where was the US during those years? Absent. Like a drunk staring into a Vegas slot machine in the wee hours of the morning going through the motions, but not really being there.

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#123

Post by patrickk »

Hubbert wrote: post #21
gojomo wrote: post #16

He had me up until: Levy an extra tax on the product of offshored labor. (If the result is a trade war, treat it like other wars -- fight to win.) Everybody loses a trade war. And the ensuing impoverishment and desperation can trigger a shooting war.

We are currently losing this non-war. The Chinese are playing to win this non-war.

The US wins economically as the Chinese middle-class grows. What products do you think they will buy when their wages increase - a knock-off phone in Hong Kong or the iPhone 5 or 6?

The market for American goods increases as the Chinese middle class grows. Chinese consumers don't prefer cheap knockoffs, they buy them because they can't afford the most expensive genuine article. Look at the Chinese market for luxury cars as an example of what will happen with increasing speed: http://magazine.wsj.com/features/the-state-of-luxury/cars/

Granted, US car makers aren't in great shape right now, but other industries can take advantage of the Chinese appetite for luxury consumer goods (electronics, cosmetics etc). The elecronics may be manufactured in China, but the profit margins are mainly with the US companies who designed and developed them.

Savvy US companies can sell their goods in increasing volume due to the larger overall global market. Many US multinationals make large chunks of their profit overseas, yet you don't hear people saying the US should enter into trade wars with South America, Europe or Australia.

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#124

Post by AlisdairO »

lokiujhytyu wrote: post #98
nl wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, as wages drop, the unemployment rate will go down, and less will be outsourced. This is just the tradeoff. You make that sound so simple. You left out the bit about that meaning falling standards of living, and the social dislocation that causes.

>falling standards of living You mean only being able to buy a 27" TV for $1000 instead of a 50" one? Or having to stick with a 3G phone for another year before getting a 4G one?

Inability to buy gadgets is unlikely to be the main problem - it's not like gadgets are a huge proportion of the expenditure of poor people right now. The problem that will be created is extremely high wage mismatch between the highly educated, and those that are not able to achieve such a high level of education.

This is a problem for a variety of reasons. The poor are, of course, less able to compete for scarce resources such as housing (particularly in cramped places like the UK), healthcare, high quality education, etc. This uncompetitiveness isn't too bad in places with reasonably limited income inequality, but as the inequality scales up becomes a really serious issue. All of this is a bad recipe for social stability - as being part of society becomes less beneficial for the poor, more and more will choose to live outside it.

Over time, income inequality also leads to poor social mobility, which is a real issue with keeping a country competitive.

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#125

Post by joubert »

Although it is naive, at present, to discount (artificial) national borders (and the patriotic sense people might feel), I look forward to a day when countries no longer exist, similarly to how different regions were amalgamated to form countries and their "national identities".

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#126

Post by AlisdairO »

timr wrote: post #113
CamperBob wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of them shifted into fields that didn't exist in 1900 because in 1900, food and shelter were the majority of what people in the US worked for. Exactly -- science led to technology which led to job creation. That's the whole story of the 20th century, with a couple of wars tossed in to keep things moving. Meanwhile, in 2010, science and technology are just two more things most Americans take for granted. We still…

"Meanwhile, in 2010, science and technology are just two more things most Americans take for granted. We still have to fight the Scopes monkey trial every few years, we couldn't get back to the Moon with any less time and money than it took the first time, and especially since 9/11, we're no longer a place where the world's STEM students come to study and live." You're actually very wrong about foreign STEM students…

"If nothing else, the simple fact that human intelligence follows a bell-curve should tell us that there's always going to be a large class of people who cannot function at the highest level of production. Those people need factory jobs, or farming jobs, or other lower-skill industries that pay a decent salary."

Well said. The jobs we're creating are achievable to a progressively smaller segment of the population, and that's a huge problem.

I wonder if as we run out of easily-mineable resources, we'll start creating low-skilled jobs again, in the recycling of the already-mined resources - garbage mining, effectively. If China's hold on rare earth metals, for example, continues to increase, I can imagine this being an important job area.

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#127

Post by ebiester »

CamperBob wrote: post #35

The real elephant in the room, which Grove and practically everybody else knows very well but refuses to talk about, is that nobody starts a company to employ people. People start a company to make stuff . To the extent this can be done with fewer people, this is always a good thing from that company's perspective, with no exceptions I can think of offhand. People suck, and you don't want to deal with them if you can…

The first thing we do is kill all the robots...

If we honestly look at things right now, the only reason these jobs haven't been automated is because we have people so cheap. Even so, in the US, if you strip away the metajobs: service, marketing, entertainment... our infrastructure and creation now is around ten percent of the population. [citation needed.] http://www.yesvirginia.org/Images/charts/EmploymentMajorSect... shows 24% of the working population in manufacturing, construction, IT, and educational/health services. This does not count the unemployed and children.

We are hurdling toward a world where fewer than a quarter of the population are required to maintain the society.

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#128

Post by Tichy »

AlisdairO wrote: post #124
lokiujhytyu wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>falling standards of living You mean only being able to buy a 27" TV for $1000 instead of a 50" one? Or having to stick with a 3G phone for another year before getting a 4G one?

Inability to buy gadgets is unlikely to be the main problem - it's not like gadgets are a huge proportion of the expenditure of poor people right now. The problem that will be created is extremely high wage mismatch between the highly educated, and those that are not able to achieve such a high level of education. This is a problem for a variety of reasons. The poor are, of course, less able to compete for scarce res…

But the next elephant in the room: suppose with a huge effort, you build a factory that employs all the 100 million (or whatever) uneducated people in your country. Then these people have a steady income and decide to have children. In a couple of years, you suddenly have 400 million uneducated people. Then what? (I don't know a proper answer - simply throwing more money at education seems unlikely to work...).

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#129

Post by say_ »

ebiester wrote: post #127
CamperBob wrote: post #35

The real elephant in the room, which Grove and practically everybody else knows very well but refuses to talk about, is that nobody starts a company to employ people. People start a company to make stuff . To the extent this can be done with fewer people, this is always a good thing from that company's perspective, with no exceptions I can think of offhand. People suck, and you don't want to deal with them if you can…

The first thing we do is kill all the robots... If we honestly look at things right now, the only reason these jobs haven't been automated is because we have people so cheap. Even so, in the US, if you strip away the metajobs: service, marketing, entertainment... our infrastructure and creation now is around ten percent of the population. [citation needed.] http://www.yesvirginia.org/Images/charts/EmploymentMajorSect…

I can't wait. The more people that can focus on making things that we want instead of things that we need, the better.

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#130

Post by starkfist »

juicebox wrote: post #122
starkfist wrote: post #52

It's interesting to hear this from Andy Grove. Intel of the 1990s was constantly being called out as an abusive workplace, exploiting H1B and "home grown" engineers, then laying them off when they got too old and sending their work overseas. Although I agree with most of his essay, I'm not sure I would want to be an employee in whatever scheme he is envisioning.

You mean the "scheme" of economic survivability? I didn't read where Grove was proud of how Intel behaved during the '90s. In fact, I got the opposite impression from this article: Grove is writing from the pain and tragedy caused by competing with the Chinese on entirely Chinese terms. Where was the US during those years? Absent. Like a drunk staring into a Vegas slot machine in the wee hours of the morning going th…

He doesn't go into Intel's part in the whole thing. He mentions asking investors for money to build a fab, that's about it.

Regarding his scheme, if his economic stimulus plan means to build a bunch of Intels, people will choose to party on and watch the economy go down in flames.

Others in this thread keep talking about "the elephant in the room" but the real elephant in the room is that given other options, almost nobody chooses to work in a factory.

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