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Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

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Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#141

Post by mech1234 »

wasdfff wrote: post #116
powowowow wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The supply chains that you rail against have successfully delivered the greatest levels of prosperity to the largest number of humans in all of history. They were created not by some mysterious force, but by individuals making rational choices about how they want to allocate their time, their energy and their resources. The "suicidal deindustrialization" you refer to is the result of people making informed choices th…

In the 1940s sweaters were american made, did not cost $400, and the median american had more disposable income than now. The people who benefitted from outsourcing were those buying shares, not sweaters.

If you think the median american had more disposable income in 1940 than today, you are hilariously uninformed.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DSPIC96 (only goes back to ~1960, and the I think this is mean, not median, but also a huge enough trend that it is impossible to deny).

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#142

Post by seanmcdirmid »

hintymad wrote: post #108
powowowow wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The supply chains that you rail against have successfully delivered the greatest levels of prosperity to the largest number of humans in all of history. They were created not by some mysterious force, but by individuals making rational choices about how they want to allocate their time, their energy and their resources. The "suicidal deindustrialization" you refer to is the result of people making informed choices th…

And I honestly do want a $400 sweater if we have a prospering manufacturing business. How many people stuff their house with clothes that they wear only once? How many people buy toys that their kids play only a few times? How many people hav a whole closet of shoes? Why do we have twice as large of closet room compared with people living in the 50s? Why do people just have to buy clothes every quarter, every month,…

Do you remember the early 90s and late 80s when clothes were much more expensive than in the late 90s on? That was really tough for a lot of us who didn’t come from rich families. I could probably deal with it now, but you aren’t considering a lot of people who would be absolutely ruined by a return to the old way.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#143

Post by tootsandboots »

wasdfff wrote: post #116
powowowow wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The supply chains that you rail against have successfully delivered the greatest levels of prosperity to the largest number of humans in all of history. They were created not by some mysterious force, but by individuals making rational choices about how they want to allocate their time, their energy and their resources. The "suicidal deindustrialization" you refer to is the result of people making informed choices th…

In the 1940s sweaters were american made, did not cost $400, and the median american had more disposable income than now. The people who benefitted from outsourcing were those buying shares, not sweaters.

In 1949, a nylon sweater cost about $7.95 (https://mclib.info/reference/local-history-genealogy/histori...), which in 2020 dollars would be about $86.41. So not $400 and about in line with what an average sweater today would cost.

However, the median American did not have more disposable income back then compared to now. In 2020, the median American has about $16763 in disposable income, whereas in 1959 (the furthest back data I could get in https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/disposable-person...) had about $351, which inflation adjusted would be $3,120.14 in 2020 dollars (5X less).

So while globalization didn't necessarily drop the cost of sweaters, I think we can say that the median American is better off today than in the past with regards to disposable income.

If you look at the prices of ordinary things over time, I'd guess that the prices stayed relatively same. But consider the fact that while median purchasing power has 5X-ed since the 1950s, prices staying the same is a testament to the power of free trade.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#144

Post by elicash »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #62
hardtokill wrote: post #16

We really need to get our factories out of China. This is a country that hid the coronavirus case for 2-3 weeks, let 5 million Wuhan residents leave the city, doctored numbers, then most recently had government press try to spin the disease as if it didn’t come out of Wuhan, but rather somewhere other countries!! And they are actively funneling uigher population into crippled factories in eastern China to replace mig…

How did China "sabotage" Italy & South Korea? Italy & South Korea had ample time to ban travel to & from China, given how China was handling Coronavirus. They chose not to. China is free to make decisions handing an epidemic. We are free to criticize how they handle it. We were free to implement travel restrictions. We chose not to. China didn't strike us with a bioweapon. We did nothing to stop a novel virus from sp…

Worth noting that even we today still haven't banned all travel from China and doing so FULLY is not really a great option unless we did a ton of other things first. We're still having goods imported from China and there are folks actually BRINGING those goods here. Our healthcare system currently depends on imported items, for just one example. China is mostly where we get our antibiotics.

I don't disagree with your broader point.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#145

Post by monadic2 »

powowowow wrote: post #84
zkms wrote: post #54

This is the cruel and predictable result of a society that has meticulously and senselessly offshored/outsourced most its industrial capacity. If your country can't manufacture, from raw materials , all the electrical/electronic/mechanical components, the tooling, the equipment, and the chemicals (industrial and pharmaceutical alike) it needs to keep everything running, you're dependent on these hyper-fragile and con…

The supply chains that you rail against have successfully delivered the greatest levels of prosperity to the largest number of humans in all of history. They were created not by some mysterious force, but by individuals making rational choices about how they want to allocate their time, their energy and their resources. The "suicidal deindustrialization" you refer to is the result of people making informed choices th…

> but by individuals making rational choices about how they want to allocate their time, their energy and their resources.

Is this a good thing that our oh-so-rational society can’t even cope with such predictable problems?

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#146

Post by hef19898 »

jandrese wrote: post #136
twblalock wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we were manufacturing everything in the United States, supply chains would still be disrupted because companies would be sending workers home, which is what they are doing already. No supply chain is safe in the event of a global pandemic. One day there might be a pandemic which affects the West but not China, which would make outsourcing supply chains look pretty smart. You are drawing a general conclusion based…

If your supply chain encompasses two countries then a disruption in either country will take you offline. If you keep everything in-house you only have to worry about one country. You can also harden your supply chain by having multiple suppliers in different countries, so a loss of any one isn't an issue. For something like Covid-19 it's near impossible to avoid disruption, but for less-global outbreaks it can be a…

Only in the case epidemics or natural disasters. And even then I would argue that's nit the case. E.g. there was a major accident in a Chinese chemical park last year, it closed down for the majority of the year. This park manufactured the raw materials for stuff like car lights, the glasses of them. It also was the only source. Did anybody outside the industry suffer any results? No, because supply chains actually adopt pretty well to stuff like that. What would happen so, if everything is in one place is higher costs off-crisis, you wouldn't survive economically to see a crisis that way.

Recovery is key, so. And that is where we will see which companies did their jobs supply chain wise and which didn't.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#147

Post by Der_Einzige »

monocasa wrote: post #107
tunesmith wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd really like to start seeing less of this sort of comment on Hacker News. It's not even close to literally true.

Just breaking: White House orders federal health officials to treat coronavirus planning as classified, something that has never been done for public health emergencies. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-secrec...

Holy crap that is really really bad

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#148

Post by AndrewKemendo »

hintymad wrote: post #108
powowowow wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The supply chains that you rail against have successfully delivered the greatest levels of prosperity to the largest number of humans in all of history. They were created not by some mysterious force, but by individuals making rational choices about how they want to allocate their time, their energy and their resources. The "suicidal deindustrialization" you refer to is the result of people making informed choices th…

And I honestly do want a $400 sweater if we have a prospering manufacturing business. How many people stuff their house with clothes that they wear only once? How many people buy toys that their kids play only a few times? How many people hav a whole closet of shoes? Why do we have twice as large of closet room compared with people living in the 50s? Why do people just have to buy clothes every quarter, every month,…

The problem is the data doesn't support your position being even a minority position behaviorally - probably even for the things you own.

The results are in: The overwhelming majority of consumers buy the cheapest things/services that fit their need, and they do not price in externality discounts on their own accord.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#149

Post by hef19898 »

hinkley wrote: post #117
lutorm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a net good effect in terms of resiliency, in the long term... Well, this is the problem, right. Resiliency only pays off when there's a crisis, otherwise it's a net cost. So if you're outcompeted by the other non-resilient companies before that crisis happens, it doesn't help. I feel like societal resiliency needs to be rewarded (in many contexts, utilities are obvious but also food supply, etc) but I don't k…

> Resiliency only pays off when there's a crisis resiliency mostly pays off when there's a crisis. You can reduce latency in systems by sourcing things closer to use, but having a fallback farther away. It's a tradeoff though. If I have two suppliers, the odds that I have 'a supplier issue' are doubled. But the odds that I have no supply at all is lower.

Two suppliers are more resilient so, you always have a fall back. Suppliers run into trouble all the time, single sources screw you in that case. Cluster risks are always bad.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#150

Post by agumonkey »

powowowow wrote: post #84
zkms wrote: post #54

This is the cruel and predictable result of a society that has meticulously and senselessly offshored/outsourced most its industrial capacity. If your country can't manufacture, from raw materials , all the electrical/electronic/mechanical components, the tooling, the equipment, and the chemicals (industrial and pharmaceutical alike) it needs to keep everything running, you're dependent on these hyper-fragile and con…

The supply chains that you rail against have successfully delivered the greatest levels of prosperity to the largest number of humans in all of history. They were created not by some mysterious force, but by individuals making rational choices about how they want to allocate their time, their energy and their resources. The "suicidal deindustrialization" you refer to is the result of people making informed choices th…

> by individuals making rational choices about how they want to allocate their time

I estimate truthiness of this statement at 10%

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