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The US is building factories at a fast rate

businessinsider.com

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Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#41

Post by FrustratedMonky »

balls187 wrote: post #18
obblekk wrote: post #2

> The US has added around 800,000 jobs in manufacturing employment over the last two years, employing around 13 million workers It's too early to know, but if it turns out the solution to decades of economic misery for middle class blue collar workers was 1. 50% tariffs on China, and 2. $100B of subsidies to chip makers and green tech... The reversal of Reaganomics we're living through will become permanent for at le…

3. Global pandemic making it nearly impossible for the #1 Consumer Economy to fulfill demand. And recall Globalization was championed by Bill Clinton. Donald Trump pumped up Tariff’s against China. Joe Biden pushed for chip and green subsidies.

I hear this a lot about Clinton, as if it is a condemnation. Seems conveniently forgotten that it was a Republican Congress, and Republican's were the ones pushing globalization, to help big business with all that cheap labor. And Clinton went along with it to be 'bipartisan'.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#42

Post by rufus_foreman »

majormajor wrote: post #36
rufus_foreman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "The reversal of Reaganomics" March 28, 1987: "President Reagan decided Friday to impose punitive 100% tariffs on a wide variety of goods produced by Japanese electronic giants in retaliation for Tokyo’s failure to abide by the semiconductor trade agreement between the two nations" -- https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-03-28-mn-698-st... That Reagan? 50% tariffs are rookie numbers.

Reagan also jacked up the national debt pumping $$$$ into defense technology and hardware development, but I suspect you know that neither tarriffs nor unrestricted government spending without an eye towards the debt is what "Reaganomics" is popularly remembered as. Outside of the more immediately-public-facing stuff like tax cuts, Reagan's legacy is very much a "do what we say, not what we did" situation.

>> "Reagan also jacked up the national debt pumping $$$$ into defense technology and hardware development"

That sounds like manufacturing jobs to me.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#43

Post by FpUser »

api wrote: post #19
obblekk wrote: post #2

> The US has added around 800,000 jobs in manufacturing employment over the last two years, employing around 13 million workers It's too early to know, but if it turns out the solution to decades of economic misery for middle class blue collar workers was 1. 50% tariffs on China, and 2. $100B of subsidies to chip makers and green tech... The reversal of Reaganomics we're living through will become permanent for at le…

Part of why the US working class has been so angry isn't just the economic misery but the decades of being gaslit by politicians pretending that outsourcing to countries with no OSHA, no EPA, no concerns about carbon emissions, no workers rights, no unions, and radically lower wages is going to create jobs in America. It's a clearly absurd proposition on its face. Of course that's going to depress wages and destroy j…

Problem with this policy is that it will prevent poor countries from ever getting up the ladder. It also ignores the fact that many advanced human right respecting countries got there not without plundering less fortunate for generations.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#44

Post by majormajor »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #42
majormajor wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reagan also jacked up the national debt pumping $$$$ into defense technology and hardware development, but I suspect you know that neither tarriffs nor unrestricted government spending without an eye towards the debt is what "Reaganomics" is popularly remembered as. Outside of the more immediately-public-facing stuff like tax cuts, Reagan's legacy is very much a "do what we say, not what we did" situation.

>> "Reagan also jacked up the national debt pumping $$$$ into defense technology and hardware development" That sounds like manufacturing jobs to me.

Yes, exactly.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#45

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

obblekk wrote: post #2

> The US has added around 800,000 jobs in manufacturing employment over the last two years, employing around 13 million workers It's too early to know, but if it turns out the solution to decades of economic misery for middle class blue collar workers was 1. 50% tariffs on China, and 2. $100B of subsidies to chip makers and green tech... The reversal of Reaganomics we're living through will become permanent for at le…

Is a 2020s factory in any significant way similar to a 1970s factory?

Given a factory from each era that produces roughly the same product and quantity, how many are employed at each? What are their inflation-adjusted wages?

It seems difficult to believe that modern factories can employ enough people for your blue collar middle class dreams to become reality. The difference in population alone is 200M vs 330M. And even modest improvements in automation has the modern factory at something like half the personnel of the 70s-era factory for the (roughly) same output.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#46

Post by ch4s3 »

standardUser wrote: post #26
monero-xmr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we shouldn’t consider this a success while subsidies are happening? We also gave $535 million to Solyndra to manufacture solar panels in 2009 and they imploded once our tax dollars stopped being funneled (as much) to them: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra The real test will be once they stop taking our taxes and handing it to businessmen if they can stand on their own merits. Until then this is charity…

Charity is when you get nothing in return. This is called industrial policy and this country was a lot better off when it had one.

That's a bold claim. Coming out of WWII the US had virtually the only operational factories in the world. Arguably protectionism caused incumbents to become moribund and fall behind foreign firms. The steel industry is a great example. By the time tariffs came down US steel plants were half a century out of date and producing steel that was either too expensive or too low in quality compared to competition. For another angle on just steel, the Chinese industrial policy caused such a glut of steel that they were frantically searching for things to do with all of it, and ended up doing a bunch of stupid and wasteful projects that diverted funds from more useful endeavors.

The US also protected furniture and garment production into the 90s. Had that not been the case, the transition int hat industry likely would have been much smoother and no so apocalyptic for workers.

Underlying your claim is the notion that technocrats can or could ever know what an economy as large and complicated as the US "should" be producing.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#47

Post by FrustratedMonky »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #34

In order for this to be effective, these factories need to be able to produce at a desirable profit. The reason so much manufacturing drained out of the US in the first place was corporations seeking improved profits. That's not to say many won't succeed, but we need to ensure that global competitiveness is imbued into these operations. Southeast Asia and India remain inexpensive.

Didn't TSMC say that its new US factory would be 30% more expensive. US labor being the problem.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#48

Post by mcphage »

mwbajor wrote: post #38
nimish wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad free trade deals likely did more than Reaganomics here. NAFTA + China-WTO accession really did not help American manufacturing.

Boomers saying: "I don't want my kid to go to machineshop in HS, he'll turn out to be a plumber" is what did it too. Building things has been looked down upon for 40 years because boomers thought it was a step backwards since their parents worked on the assembly line.

"We'll just design things and have people elsewhere do the building" is one of the dumbest ideas. How do you think you learn how to build things without building things? Who's going to build the next big thing? Oy!

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#49

Post by amanaplanacanal »

enraged_camel wrote: post #33
FpUser wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

W in WTO stands for the World. It does not say anything about the US.

I mean, neither do any of the words in 'NATO' but the alliance has been immensely beneficial for the US.

I suspect it has been way more beneficial to Europe than the US. The US could already defend itself, the smaller countries in Europe not as much.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#50

Post by FrustratedMonky »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #21
Xcelerate wrote: post #15

Perhaps I'm just bad at economics, but it always seemed to me that the countries making all the stuff would eventually hold all the power (and I say this as someone working in tech who produces nothing tangible). The fact that it costs exorbitant amounts to construct new buildings, railways, etc. in the U.S. and how our cities almost look antiquated or frozen in time compared to Asian cities shows that we missed a ge…

Compared to A Tier cities in some Asian countries? Does Santa Barbara or NYC really look antiquated compared to Mumbai? Or Da Nang? Or Fukuoka? Maybe if you're trying to compare Detroit to Shenzhen or Tokyo.

Fuka What you say to me?
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