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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

#51

Post by FpUser »

mwbajor wrote: post #27
jakearmitage wrote: post #7

OK, now we need immigration reform to actually get enough people to work on everything.

I want to make sure americans have the first shot at the job but I also want to make sure that the USA does brain drain the rest of the world so that there is absolutely no way to compete with us. I am all for immigration reform as long as it prioritizes americans heavily. This means no H1B abuse but with congress getting massive subsidies from H1B mills, I don't think this will happen.

>"I also want to make sure that the USA does brain drain the rest of the world so that there is absolutely no way to compete with us."

"The rest of the world" might have a little problem with that.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#52

Post by scythe »

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.

Santa Barbara is a small town with a college/tourist/military economy. New York is an outlier by US standards in every sense, but if you've ridden the subway there you know it feels old, even though it's one of the best systems in the world on paper.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#53

Post by wmf »

mgr86 wrote: post #8
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…

> Maybe a good time to start a company selling to the government if only I knew what the government wanted to buy. Besides weaponry that is.

You don't want to be the main character of War Dogs II?

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#54

Post by rufus_foreman »

majormajor wrote: post #44
rufus_foreman wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, exactly.

>> Yes, that was the point?

The original post's point seemed to me to be "Reaganomics was bad for manufacturing jobs", and listed tariffs and subsidies as two things that are good for manufacturing jobs that were a reversal of Reagonomics. Do you agree that was the original point?

But Reagan implemented both tariffs and subsidies that were good for manufacturing jobs. So how are tariffs and subsidies a reversal of Reaganomics?

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#55

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

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.

Fukuoka is probably a bad example for your point. It almost makes Tokyo look antiquated by comparison.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#56

Post by atlasunshrugged »

mgr86 wrote: post #8
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…

> Maybe a good time to start a company selling to the government if only I knew what the government wanted to buy. Besides weaponry that is.

Gov also isn't just federal, there's state and local! In general, the federal government is really bad at procuring pure software products (with some exceptions like Scale AI).

Edit to add: If you're building in the space, YC cofounder matching also does events targeted to gov once in a while, and I personally am doing some ideating if you want to chat

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#57

Post by FrustratedMonky »

alexose wrote: post #32
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…

Another important factor is that China's workers make more money than they used to, especially relative to the West. There's not as much of a cheap-labor-arbitrage opportunity as there was in the early 2000s. Here's a chart illustrating this point: https://i.insider.com/532ccb18eab8eadc39f33da6

Exactly. The factories follow the Cheap Labor. From US to China, then it was China to Thailand/SKorea, then from Thailand to India.

Probably don't have chain correct, and it is different for different industries.

But there was definitely a progression of 'local salary goes up', 'time to move to next cheapest country'.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#58

Post by mwbajor »

FpUser wrote: post #51
mwbajor wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to make sure americans have the first shot at the job but I also want to make sure that the USA does brain drain the rest of the world so that there is absolutely no way to compete with us. I am all for immigration reform as long as it prioritizes americans heavily. This means no H1B abuse but with congress getting massive subsidies from H1B mills, I don't think this will happen.

>"I also want to make sure that the USA does brain drain the rest of the world so that there is absolutely no way to compete with us." "The rest of the world" might have a little problem with that.

Yea I know. Everyone should bargain in their people's own self interest.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#59

Post by revskill »

Animats wrote: post #24

Nice. China becomes less of a competitor on costs as wages rise there. Once the manufacturing wage differential gets into the 4:1 range, offshoring is less attractive. In the 2:1 range, offshoring starts to be a lose. That happened with Japan two decades ago.

[flagged]

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#60

Post by deeg »

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…

My guess is that the increase in tariffs had little, if anything, to do with it; the article doesn't mention it but does cite CHIPS and the IRA. If anything the tariffs were one of the causes of our recent spike of inflation.

My own opinion is that 40 years of globalization have lifted a billion people out of poverty and now the global pay scales aren't so vastly different. It is becoming more economically viable to produce things in the US. (Which will also put pressure on higher inflation.)

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