Japan auto companies triple Mexican pay rather than move to US • Hacker News Board

Re: Japan auto companies triple Mexican pay rather than move to US

#111

Post by ejanus » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 1:48 PM UTC

moltar wrote: post #90

erikw wrote: post #6

Wow, this should at least provide for some very interesting natural sociological experiments. For context, I make less than this as a software developer in Chile, and still have no problems saving and living a comfortable lifestyle. This is going to significantly impact the lives of folks working in these factories, and it will be interesting to see how it will affect the individuals, their communities, and the quali…

Similar situations happen in many places around the world. Factory workers are usually not well educated and they don’t handle money well. A perfect example is Alberta oil sands. Many workers are extremely well paid. Most of them just spend everything and manage to get in debt with lavish lifestyle. Buying expensive cars, toys, large houses. They end up without any significant net worth and now are also hostage of th…

Who handles money well? This is not true. I live in a Third world and the educated are the most wasteful. They want to show class and style. They live far above their means.

Re: Japan auto companies triple Mexican pay rather than move to US

#112

Post by GrumpyYoungMan » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 3:44 PM UTC

HeadsUpHigh wrote: post #62

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's assuming it lasts. When you already have a factory in Mexico and now you have to pay them $16/hour, it makes little sense to immediately move it back to the US just in order to save $0 by paying US workers $16/hour instead. But the next thing that happens is that it becomes more cost effective to automate, so you start considering that. Then you don't employ as many people, and they become skilled workers who…

The notion that car manufacturers from all the industries out there haven't already automated anything that's worth automating is something that I can't understand.

It needs to be understood that any kind of new engineering project has a risk of failure, often quite high. For example, in software, there's the infamous CHAOS report from the Standish Group that comes out every couple of years. A casual Google for the 2018 results has this quote from someone with a copy (https://hennyportman.wordpress.com/2020/01/03/review-chaos-r...)

> "The Standish Group started with a traditional metrics of success by looking at: “on time, on budget, and on target”. This means in this CHAOS Report 2018 for the year 2017: successful: 36%, challenged: 45%, failed: 19%. If they use their “modern” definition of success: “on time, on budget, with a satisfactory result.” You get almost the same results (33%, 48%, 19%)."

So, about 1/3 of IT projects are successful, including being on-time and on budget, and about 1/5 are total losses that fail to deliver any value at all. Not great odds and I'd expect the numbers are likely to be broadly similar in other engineering fields.

The decision on whether or not to embark on an engineering project (and whether to do it in-house or hire a third party) is among the most challenging duties executives have.

Re: Japan auto companies triple Mexican pay rather than move to US

#113

Post by gwern » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

wolfgke wrote: post #44

awakeasleep wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone else a 'robotic automation takeover of all jobs' skeptic? There are obviously places where it makes sense, but a $15/hr human is preeeetty cheap compared to the price, programming, and maintenance of a robot. Seeing the quote from Yukihiko, I feel it reads like PR or a soothing word to stockholders who hate to hear about employees and wages

> There are obviously places where it makes sense, but a $15/hr human is preeeetty cheap compared to the price, programming, and maintenance of a robot. But such a robot is a good insurance against further increases of minimum wages.

It also is great if the tariffs get dropped, since you were going to invest in robots anyway and this just moves your R&D forward in time. Which is better, relocating your entire factory & supply chain permanently only for the tariffs to disappear and render the entire exercise moot, or prioritize robots (even more than you were before, given coronavirus) and then regardless of what happens, you still enjoy the benefits of the robots? This and coronavirus and the recession are playing their usual role of shocking entities out of local optima... in this case, towards more automation & remote working. It is deeply ironic that Trump is essentially gouging Americans' welfare by forcing jacked-up prices which will subsidize the very automation & trade dynamics the Rust Belt blames their woes on.

Re: Japan auto companies triple Mexican pay rather than move to US

#114

Post by ksk » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 8:11 PM UTC

gurumeditations wrote: post #110

ksk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, nobody is "owed" a job. Markets transform and respond to pressures. When you operate in a saturated market like the US the only line item on the balance sheet that is easy to tackle is labor costs, not revenue or profit. Your customers aren't going to buy products from you because you gave a raise to your janitor instead of replacing them with a roomba (relax, its a joke :P). The China/Walmart economy is here t…

Everyone in western society is owed a good well-paying job so long as they’re also willing to work for it. It’s our birthright and expectation. You can believe that no one is owed that and that everyone can just work for pennies from Walmart as America and the Western world continues to go down in flames.

Well, that is certainly a major difference between our points of view. I'm not going to say that you're wrong. Global labor arbitrage is an expected byproduct of Capitalism. There is no easy fix for that. Economies will have to transform as the requirements of the workforce change. The trend is certainly towards more automation and off-shoring, and just like we don't expect people to be ditch-diggers anymore, maybe we won't expect them to do menial jobs too. And on top of that the current population of the world is simply not sustainable, doesn't matter where you live.

Re: Japan auto companies triple Mexican pay rather than move to US

#115

Post by randyrand » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 4:56 AM UTC

pwdisswordfish2 wrote: post #63

erikw wrote: post #6

Wow, this should at least provide for some very interesting natural sociological experiments. For context, I make less than this as a software developer in Chile, and still have no problems saving and living a comfortable lifestyle. This is going to significantly impact the lives of folks working in these factories, and it will be interesting to see how it will affect the individuals, their communities, and the quali…

Paying these factory workers what they are worth, regardless of where they are situated, has been a long time coming. This is great news.

In your mind, what is the worth a laborer? How does a company determine it?

Re: Japan auto companies triple Mexican pay rather than move to US

#116

Post by mbrodersen » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 5:36 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #54

erikw wrote: post #6

Wow, this should at least provide for some very interesting natural sociological experiments. For context, I make less than this as a software developer in Chile, and still have no problems saving and living a comfortable lifestyle. This is going to significantly impact the lives of folks working in these factories, and it will be interesting to see how it will affect the individuals, their communities, and the quali…

That's assuming it lasts. When you already have a factory in Mexico and now you have to pay them $16/hour, it makes little sense to immediately move it back to the US just in order to save $0 by paying US workers $16/hour instead. But the next thing that happens is that it becomes more cost effective to automate, so you start considering that. Then you don't employ as many people, and they become skilled workers who…

Tesla tried to go 100% automated and failed.

Re: Japan auto companies triple Mexican pay rather than move to US

#117

Post by mbrodersen » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 5:38 AM UTC

HeadsUpHigh wrote: post #62

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's assuming it lasts. When you already have a factory in Mexico and now you have to pay them $16/hour, it makes little sense to immediately move it back to the US just in order to save $0 by paying US workers $16/hour instead. But the next thing that happens is that it becomes more cost effective to automate, so you start considering that. Then you don't employ as many people, and they become skilled workers who…

The notion that car manufacturers from all the industries out there haven't already automated anything that's worth automating is something that I can't understand.

Toyota and Tesla found out the hard way that a lot of tasks can't be automated. Robots are still very very very dumb.

Re: Japan auto companies triple Mexican pay rather than move to US

#118

Post by mbrodersen » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 5:42 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #71

0max wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hilarious to the point of tears since we've been enabling the opposite for decades

Canada is one of the most affluent, stable, peaceful nations. For 2019 Canada's GDP per capita just barely missed surpassing Germany. They happen to be a prominent neighbor to the US, their primary cities are positioned next to the US border, and they are likely to get a lot wealthier in the coming decades. If the US gets credit for the bad, it also gets credit for the good (which is the part that critics universally…

GDP is completely useless as an indicator of anything important. Sell the same house 10 times and it will contribute to the GDP 10 times. However it is the same house. Nothing has changed. Nothing of value has been added.

Re: Japan auto companies triple Mexican pay rather than move to US

#119

Post by mbrodersen » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 5:46 AM UTC

thephyber wrote: post #76

cmxch wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what do you do for those that end up on the wrong side of the equation, especially those who have been there for a long time?

I don't understand why some HNer is expected to have an answer for this because no part of US society does. We've underfunded career counseling in public schools for generations. We don't have any healthy career retraining system like other OECD countries do. Unemployment systems in the USA are nearly useless when it comes to retraining employees -- they really just act as job boards. Most states don't seem capable o…

Yep agree. At least be honest about not giving a s* about other people. That would be a small improvement.

Re: Japan auto companies triple Mexican pay rather than move to US

#120

Post by mbrodersen » Sat, Jul 04, 2020, 5:48 AM UTC

awakeasleep wrote: post #38

gwern wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are these 'wages' of which you speak? Robots do not have hourly wages: "Auto component maker Piolax, will also raise the hourly wage at its Mexican plant to $16 within the year. The company is also installing robots to mitigate rising labor costs, President Yukihiko Shimazu said."

Anyone else a 'robotic automation takeover of all jobs' skeptic? There are obviously places where it makes sense, but a $15/hr human is preeeetty cheap compared to the price, programming, and maintenance of a robot. Seeing the quote from Yukihiko, I feel it reads like PR or a soothing word to stockholders who hate to hear about employees and wages

Toyota and Tesla (among many companies) found out the hard way that robots are still very dumb and not a substitute for all jobs.