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America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

nytimes.com

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Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#161

Post by esoterica »

habosa wrote: post #25
nikanj wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stock market and housing prices are higher than ever, so a large part of the population is doing good. Not just the elites have benefited from the spoils, people with retirement portfolios and paid-off houses are sitting nice and flush.

84% of wealth in the stock market is in the hands of the top 10% Not sure about housing.

10% of the population is 33 million people. There's a sleight-of-hand going on here where people whine about a tiny number of billionaires and CEOs screwing over the masses and then point to statistics that actual show the average upper middle class household doing very well.

I bet a large fraction of the posters on here who complain about being oppressed by economic inequality are themselves part of the top 10% too (and have benefited greatly from the trend towards more inequality).

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#162

Post by catawbasam »

l3v3ll wrote: post #129
esoterica wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is the "you" here? Given that this is a tech focused website, I bet a lot of people on here have done very well in recent years. Hard to consider the 20- and 30- something year olds making $500k/year at a FAANG or a few million dollars when the unicorn they work for IPOs an oppressed class.

20- and 30- somethings at FAANG is hardly a picture of America as a whole. Also if 20- and 30- somethings ignore the rest of our neighbors in other fields because “F you got mine”, we’re hardly better than the elitists.

Better than the elitists? They are the elite.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#163

Post by jonkho »

Tycho wrote: post #4

At a certain point, does automation/robotics swing the manufacturing base back towards the west?

Not until the USD loses reserve status. Until then, it’s cheaper to print and export these USD tokens for imports rather than to exert labor to make stuff to trade for imports.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#164

Post by slv77 »

esoterica wrote: post #104
recursivedoubts wrote: post #6

We were sold down the river by our own elites, particularly on Wall Street and with the full complicity of the Economics Departments of the west. "Comparative Advantage", something something about corn and wool, meanwhile the whole supply chain was moved to China, our middle class was decimated and we went into tremendous amounts of debt to pretend everything was fine... Left, right... whatever. The elites have faile…

Why the obsession with manufacturing jobs? Unemployment was still low (at least pre-covid) and total compensation, while not growing as fast as some people would like, is still higher than ever.

Manufacturing requires the ability to marshal human, technological and financial resources at scale. The US policy for the last 50 years has been to invest heavily in the technological and financial capabilities of the equation and outsource the human capability to other countries.

COVID-19 has made it apparent that there are significant advantages to having the operational capabilities to organize human resources at scale. The US, for example, was unable to staff an effective test and trace program even while a significant percentage of its population sat idle or to mobilize healthcare resources to hot spots. Effectively the US traded 300,000 lives because the US couldn't effectively organize 300,000 people quickly.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#165

Post by diydsp »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #126
anonunivgrad wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democrats distract their base with identity politics (free sex changes! defund the police! and such woke nonsense) while their wealthy supporters get rich selling the country to China.

Medical care and not being harassed/shot are also important, and the Democratic party doesn't seem particularly enthusiastic about those things either.

Those two items do take a prominent place in the dem platform [0]

Several large-ish departments [1] have been persuaded to make budgetary changes in regards to the lite version of defund the police, i.e. transfer certain operations to medical specialists such as mental illness, etc.

don't have time to dig as deep into dem support of taxpayer-funded healthcare, but here is one group to pay attention to because they seem to be very realistic, even pragmatic about it. Some interesting podcast interviews coming out of their media: https://pnhp.org/news-category/members-in-the-news/ https://pnhp.org/kitchen-table-campaign/

[3] https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/07/us/new-york-city-police-fundi...

[2] https://www.npr.org/2020/12/10/944938471/minneapolis-shifts-...

[1] https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/civilians-could-repl...

[0] https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#166

Post by l3v3ll »

esoterica wrote: post #161
habosa wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

84% of wealth in the stock market is in the hands of the top 10% Not sure about housing.

10% of the population is 33 million people. There's a sleight-of-hand going on here where people whine about a tiny number of billionaires and CEOs screwing over the masses and then point to statistics that actual show the average upper middle class household doing very well. I bet a large fraction of the posters on here who complain about being oppressed by economic inequality are themselves part of the top 10% too…

Quit down playing the inequality. Let me make the math easier. Of 10 people, one owns 86% of the stock. The other 9 fight for the other 14%. You are trying to justify that and it’s unfortunate. Also, the few billionaires are still very much a problem. However, the top 10% still displays a large inequality, quite the opposite of “doing very well”. And, I’m glad there are 10%’ers who are pro-equality, they aren’t complaining about being oppressed. They are displaying solidarity with the less fortunate and I hope they are showing it by voting for pro equality measures and politicians (an oxy-moron, I know, but there’s a few good ones).

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#167

Post by l3v3ll »

catawbasam wrote: post #162
l3v3ll wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20- and 30- somethings at FAANG is hardly a picture of America as a whole. Also if 20- and 30- somethings ignore the rest of our neighbors in other fields because “F you got mine”, we’re hardly better than the elitists.

Better than the elitists? They are the elite.

Ha! I was going to edit my post with exactly that, that is correct. 500K/year is probably top 2%?

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#168

Post by detaro »

esoterica wrote: post #97
blackrock wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your politicians failed you. You vote for them, and you feel good if they win. But then what happens? Nothing. The rich keeps getting richer. While the poor stays poor. And the middle class becomes poorer. The elites just wants to make more money. And what do they do? They buy out the politicians, in order to keep themselves rich. And what’s the biggest lie that they’ve sold you? That trickle-down-economics works for…

Who is the "you" here? Given that this is a tech focused website, I bet a lot of people on here have done very well in recent years. Hard to consider the 20- and 30- something year olds making $500k/year at a FAANG or a few million dollars when the unicorn they work for IPOs an oppressed class.

That's a small part even of the people here.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#169

Post by iphorde »

deeeeplearning wrote: post #77
iphorde wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the one guy trying to knock it all down, you decide to vote out of office, because the Elites said he was racist. Bravo! Typical stupid Americans doing exactlt what the Elites want.

Can you a name a single member of his cabinet that isn't in fact one of these "Elites"? It's full of Harvard MBAs, Wall Street bankers and Swamp Creatures. You are delusional.

Wilbur Ross.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#170

Post by iphorde »

krapp wrote: post #74
iphorde wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the one guy trying to knock it all down, you decide to vote out of office, because the Elites said he was racist. Bravo! Typical stupid Americans doing exactlt what the Elites want.

Right... because Trump was the one billionaire who was actually not an elite, and not on the side of the elites, and really for real interested in destroying the elite power structure. The guy who wouldn't even pay his own employees or contractors was a hero of the common man. The guy just caught on tape trying to shake down Georgia's Secretary of State to "find" votes ... he's the only honest man in a den of vipers.…

Wow, where did you read, oh never mind, you're a CNN, MSNBC guy. The Elitist networks.

Keep watching them.

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