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The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

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Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#81

Post by didericis »

nemomarx wrote: post #26
jackyinger wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of a friend’s defense of the service focused economy: “I’ve got a PhD in economics”. Sure services may be great when things are going well, but you can’t ONLY have services, and then go and blow up international trade and expect to have a good time.

well why would you want to blow up international trade to begin with?

Because a rising power (China) backed a country (Russia) which didn’t bow to the dominant power (USA) that enables international trade, and intentionally blowing up international trade agreements now allows the USA more time to rebuild strategic supply chains to counter further violations of the international order.

If the USA doesn’t have a secure industrial base and can’t reliably enforce the international order then there is no international trade.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#82

Post by margalabargala »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #24
ryandrake wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because the US has emphasized college as the only respectable education path, as well as the only path to well paid jobs. If I could make as a machinist what I make as a software monkey, all other things being equal, I'd go back in time and train to be a machinist. People will go where the money is.

Not everyone can be a SW engineer. Same how not everyone can be a doctor. Or a lawyer. For a lot of people, bolting bumpers to Fords is as good as it gets in terms of job prospects.

Firstly, the number of people who cannot be a software engineer is not actually very large. There are a lot of really shitty software engineers out there. Unlike being a doctor or a lawyer, you don't have to pass a test that requires actually knowing material, you simply have to be able to convince someone to give you a job banging on a keyboard, which does not necessarily require one to have technical skills.

Not everyone can be a good software engineer, sure.

Among people who cannot be a lawyer, or a doctor, or a good software engineer, there are also very few people who can be a good machinist.

Competent machinists require an extremely similar set of problem-solving skills as competent software engineers.

Bolting a bumper to a Ford is different from manufacturing the metal shape of the bumper itself, and a competent machinist is the person who both figures out how to turn a piece of raw metal into a piece of bumper-shaped metal, and also the person who figures out how to do so in an easily replicable way.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#83

Post by jkubicek »

elictronic wrote: post #16
ferguess_k wrote: post #5

I have a sense that manufacturing is not coming back until there is a real Cold War 2.0 (or Hot War 3.0 which hopefully never realizes). I mean a real one, like the NATO-WP one when there was not a lot of trading between the two blocs.

Manufacturing will start coming back based on the high tariffs just with two big caveats. 1. Manufacturing takes time and money to setup. This is a software forum where changes are made at lighting speed. Manufacturing requires capital, years, and will. In software it might take a day to make an obvious change. Manufacturing hopefully 6 months. Working with physical systems takes time. 2. Manufacturing does not mean…

> Manufacturing takes time and money to setup... Manufacturing requires capital, years, and will.

And a stable political system. If I were in the manufacturing industry, I wouldn't make big bets on moving manufacturing back to the states unless I had some real guarantees that these tariffs weren't going to go away in the next week.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#84

Post by hwillis »

jackyinger wrote: post #37
hwillis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My brother is an extremely skilled machinist, the sort who could build machine tools if he had the resources. Machine tools are not designed by extremely skilled machinists, they are designed by engineers. Machinists do not know how frames deflect or resonant modes or overconstraint or the other things that are critical in machine tool design. Machine tools are inherently dynamic systems where moving cutters cause…

Skilled machinists are very well aware of deflection and resonance. Operating a machine tool is not static in the slightest.

I can tell when a dirt bike is running rough, but that doesn't mean I can design the helmholtz resonator in the exhaust. That difference is engineering.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#85

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

pjc50 wrote: post #73
markus_zhang wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of what?

The "retreat" (in which direction) from the "current situation" (US richest country in the world, as they keep reminding us "Europoors"). What's the US supposed to look like after this purge?

Rich in what, exactly? Inflated stock prices? Inflated home prices? Empty processed-food calories? Are we the richest in recently-built public infrastructure or intellectual property (or both!!)? Maybe we're the richest in collateralized debt obligations?

No one in the United States feels rich, when we look around, we don't see wealth or prosperity. We suspect, though we'd feel silly to say it out loud, that if anyone ever busted into Fort Knox and looked in the vaults, those would be empty of the gold that it was once famous for.

>What's the US supposed to look like after this purge?

I imagine we'll look like what we really have been for a long while, instead of this illusion that everyone has of us.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#86

Post by pjc50 »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #76
yojo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech is the obvious one, but there are lots of less obvious ones, like designing the things that are manufactured elsewhere. It turns out production of most goods is commoditized and a race to the bottom (assuming free trade), so if you want margins that can support high salaries, you have to move up the value chain (read: services). If we keep tariffs high enough for long enough, we will bring back manufacturing job…

>It turns out production of most goods is commoditized and a race to the bottom (assuming free trade), so if you want margins that can support high salaries, you have to move up the value chain (read: services). I know, right? When you go home and sit down on your Oracle database to relax, then go to the kitchen to cook your evening meal in an AWS Lambda, then afterwards relax a little more by changing into some spre…

> No, I believe we're talking about switching our role from consumer in the global economy to producer. What do you think the Chinese could even buy with all the trade deficit cash they're squirreling away, when we don't make anything? Some large chunk of it is buying up stock, real estate, etc. Give them something else to buy.

Meanwhile over at the People's Daily, someone starts to type up "Why should we accept the Americans stealing good Chinese manufacturing jobs?"

> for most people in the United States

Now we start to talk about income inequality, and who exactly is having a nice life; but the minute you mention some of the policies of less unequal European countries, Americans go absolutely bananas and call you a communist. You might as well suggest doing something about the mass shootings, that's even more unpopular.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#87

Post by [deleted] »

margalabargala wrote: post #82
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone can be a SW engineer. Same how not everyone can be a doctor. Or a lawyer. For a lot of people, bolting bumpers to Fords is as good as it gets in terms of job prospects.

Firstly, the number of people who cannot be a software engineer is not actually very large. There are a lot of really shitty software engineers out there. Unlike being a doctor or a lawyer, you don't have to pass a test that requires actually knowing material, you simply have to be able to convince someone to give you a job banging on a keyboard, which does not necessarily require one to have technical skills. Not ev…

[deleted]

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#88

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

anon84873628 wrote: post #53
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been coasting on advances made many decades ago. Most developed, sure. Successful? By nearly any metric you can imagine or make up. Strongest? Our economy is eaten hollow by termites. A stiff wind would make it crumble. Worse, there doesn't appear to be any path to true recovery... we can't create the jobs that people need to prosper, but if we could somehow do that we no longer create the people who would grow…

Which people got the COVID vaccine first? Why is HN in English and always talking about FAANG? Why do kids all around the world play with Spiderman? Asking for "vital" and "21st century" is a paradox, so maybe it's not what you really meant. But the proof of our success is all around if you're willing to actually look.

>Why do kids all around the world play with Spiderman?

So we sell children's stories, in a world where technology makes it possible to copy not just any single story, but pretty much all of humanity's stories since time began onto a tiny little plastic doohickey that you can hang on a keychain. And then anyone in the world can also make up a new story with those same characters, or draw a picture, or whatever...

That's our wealth? Wow. Even if I had stock in that intellectual property, it seems like it never really was property to begin with and that I'm heading for ruin.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#89

Post by whimsicalism »

whatshisface wrote: post #79
whimsicalism wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how would increasing the cost of labor mean that we have more manufacturing jobs in the US today?

There are a lot of manufacturing jobs. In fact, the "Manufacturing" category is four times larger (12M vs 4M) in terms of employment than "Information." The primary interests of people working in manufacturing are higher pay and better working conditions. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/release/tables?rid=50&eid=4881#s...

right, but what i am missing is the connection to ‘more machinist jobs’. unions pretty much necessarily trade off number of jobs with average pay for that job, it’s the whole name of the game to restrict entry and wage negotiation.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#90

Post by hagbard_c »

ryandrake wrote: post #15
jackyinger wrote: post #4

How’s basing the US economy on services looking now? My brother is an extremely skilled machinist, the sort who could build machine tools if he had the resources. And let me tell you there ain’t many of them, especially not young ones. Why? Because the US has emphasized college as the only respectable education path, as well as the only path to well paid jobs. That’s how you end up with a manufacturing industry full…

> Because the US has emphasized college as the only respectable education path, as well as the only path to well paid jobs. If I could make as a machinist what I make as a software monkey, all other things being equal, I'd go back in time and train to be a machinist. People will go where the money is.

If you, as a machinist, can get to live in a lower-price region, go hunting and fishing or just traipsing through the woods instead of doing that next release drive, build or repair your own HVAC or PV array + storage and get to raise a family while doing so I'd say that's worth quite a bit of that discrepancy in salary. You'll get the added advantage of seeing your handiwork being used and lasting for years to decades instead of being replaced in a few months or never used at all.

Replace 'machinist' with a choice of other hands-on 'blue collar' professions for the same effect. Even better is to replace it with a profession which allows you to combine manual dexterity with software development.

Or do as I did and buy a farm which allows you to flex all your muscles - mental as well as physical.

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