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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

#271

Post by wizofaus »

midoridensha wrote: post #193
wizofaus wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mexico stands out to me as a country that hasn't lived up to its potential in that regard. Certainly there's no shortage of potential cheap labour, given the number of refugees making their way across it. And regional security and ability to get hold of necessary skilled workers shouldn't really be an issue, when you have the US right next door. It's hard not to see why it wouldn't be significantly to the US's benefi…

>so I do wonder what the primary forces working against it might be. Extreme corruption, lack of rule of law, extreme violence to name a few. Mexico is basically a failed state: the government doesn't even control large parts of the territory it claims, ultra-violent drug cartels do. How is that a good place to build factories? Other central American counties are at least as bad. El Salvador has a higher death rate f…

Assuming your assessment is accurate (I don't pretend to have any expertise in the matter!) then the question becomes why certain countries/ regions suffer such corruption and lack of rule of law, and more importantly, why is it so hard to fix?

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#272

Post by ako »

hellotomyrars wrote: post #269
ako wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These agreements are not the only cause, if everyone would have kept on buying locally produced products, the jobs would have remained. Problem is that we bought the cheaper products, making it impossible for companies producing locally to stay profitable. We want our cake and eat it too.

Not an entirely honest appraisal of the dismantling of US manufacturing in the 80s. Big corporations didn’t reluctantly close down factories, hat in hand, because people weren’t buying their products. They moved the manufacturing offshores and people kept buying the products they always have.

You can't blame the corporations, if they wouldn't have moved the manufacturing while the competition did, they wouldn't have been able to compete on price, and consumers would have bought the cheaper options.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#273

Post by contingencies »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #57
alexose wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'.

Except that now nearly everything is automated, the limiting factor basically becomes capex plus maintenance availability, not labor.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#274

Post by FrustratedMonky »

yCombLinks wrote: post #238
maxilevi wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting a software business as a SWE requires almost no investment

Any competent tradesman is making a living wage on basically day 1 with his business. A software business (not writing software for someone else, selling your own software) is much more difficult.

Yes exactly. Doing SWE as a 'contractor' type as a tradesman, very difficult because you have to find customers, and most customers have software teams and aren't just calling up SWE to work a few days. Trades have easier time being expert at X, and people can call them up and get them immediately to do X.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#275

Post by JoeAltmaier »

g9yuayon wrote: post #243
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All true ... 50 years ago. Today factories in the US are built automated. No jobs, not for anybody but an accountant, an administrator, a couple of engineers.

Maybe fewer jobs per square feet, but it's the natural evolution of manufacturing. What matters is we need engineers and workers on the floor so we can innovate and develop more senior talent.

And to hell with those not rated 'senior talent' I guess.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#276

Post by JoeAltmaier »

g9yuayon wrote: post #243
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All true ... 50 years ago. Today factories in the US are built automated. No jobs, not for anybody but an accountant, an administrator, a couple of engineers.

Maybe fewer jobs per square feet, but it's the natural evolution of manufacturing. What matters is we need engineers and workers on the floor so we can innovate and develop more senior talent.

We need a percent of the workers we remember being in a factory. Not enough to even count factory jobs as a significant sector of our economy.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#277

Post by lumost »

bruce511 wrote: post #263
BetaDeltaAlpha wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scaling software to the same level of revenue as a trade business is a sure way to get run over by the VC backed competition.

I get that when you live in a forest all you see are trees, but 99% of software companies are not in rather VC markets, nor have VC competitors. There are massive problems that come with "scale" - problems most people don't want. The VC model is all about the exit, whereas, again, 90-something-% of businesses, trades included, are focused on long-term sustainability, not on the "exit". Sure, the VC space us very visi…

My experience is that you are either in/will be in the vc space - or you are in a specialized/regulated industry (finance/health) or you are a consulting firm.

Even living outside of SV I don’t see a lot of in between firms.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#278

Post by red-iron-pine »

no_wizard wrote: post #213
nosefrog wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, re: comparing to "elite SV company" compensation, it doesn't really make sense to discount stock, since stock at the "elite" SV companies is effectively cash, because they're public. Unless you mean that your friend is also making a significant amount of stock, but since you can't value it (e.g. the company is private), it's harder to compare to the "elite" SV companies. I know Google was handing out $385k tota…

Two things I want to point out: First is Google is an outlier, even among Silicon Valley. So is Meta. They both are well known for very high total compensation. I also specifically didn't say FAANG for this reason. There's other high compensation places that I would bucket in as top 5% that aren't in the acronym (Microsoft comes to mind) which very good TC packages. Second is I removed stock because stock is hugely o…

I don't know anyone in the trades who is going to pull north of 200k unless they own the business. In which case my Ex's father comes to mind; he owned a plumbing business and had 4-5 vans out servicing clients.

He made 300+, and busted his ass to get it. Most of his guys were in the 60-85k range.

HVAC at 300k is an absolute outlier, and there are going to be some serious tradeoffs in terms of how brutal that's going to be on your body. Gonna be some long, hot days.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#279

Post by red-iron-pine »

jstarfish wrote: post #171
wizofaus wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely though there's still plenty of places in the world that, on the basis of labour costs, it would be vastly cheaper to operate than in the US. On that basis I'm not convinced wage growth in SE Asia is the primary reason the US manufacturing industry is deciding to reshore. Is the same phenomenon occurring in other wealthy countries that haven't put in place taxpayer funded incentives to do so?

> I'm not convinced wage growth in SE Asia is the primary reason the US manufacturing industry is deciding to reshore. It's not. This is disaster planning. We're being forced to bring production back home because we can't keep outsourcing to a region subject to control by a potential adversary. If war breaks out with China, access to Taiwan for chips or Vietnam for socks is going to become difficult. Blockades will b…

It's already moving to Mexico in droves; north MX near the border is where a ton of stuff gets made. Canada supplies the resources and Mexico does the Hencho-ing.

Re: The US is building factories at a fast rate

#280

Post by yCombLinks »

karaterobot wrote: post #240
yCombLinks wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any competent tradesman is making a living wage on basically day 1 with his business. A software business (not writing software for someone else, selling your own software) is much more difficult.

Why compare a tradesman to a software entrepreneur? The tradesman sells his skill and labor in exchange for money. A more direct comparison would be a SWE selling his skill and labor in exchange for money. Or, a manufacturing entrepreneur creating a product and selling it. In both apples-to-apples cases they either make money on day one, or it takes a long time to make money.

I do agree with you, it's just the wording in the parent made it seem like a different scenario. When a software friend of mine says "I'm starting a business", I get a very different picture than a software friend of mine saying "I'm starting consulting". If a tradesman says "I'm starting a business" I envision him still doing similar work, but also finding clients, figuring out contract details etc.
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