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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)

#91

Post by myrmidon »

sleepyguy wrote: post #20

The problem is cost. We used to buy tooling for Acme Multi-Spindle Screw Machines but the Chinese could produce it for a fraction of the cost. You would have the first set made locally, then send the drawings to China, and pay less than the material cost to have them shipped to your door. In competitive markets, customers hammer you for every penny on a machined item that costs 0.12. These days not many Screw machine…

Completely agree on the cost aspect.

> It won't hurt if we try to bring it all back, but it will take the same amount of time and sacrifice China put in to take it.

I think this is missing a huge aspect: Chinese workers are very cheap compared to US levels of income ($25k/15k with and without adjusting for purchaising parity!).

Those differences are gonna be paid by the average American, but not only that: Inputs for all those industries are gonna become more expensive than they are (because of retaliatory tariffs), and everything else (retail, restaurants, craftsmen, etc.) is gonna become more expensive, too, because the onshored industries compete for labor (and there is not a lot of unemployment in the first place).

Compare agriculture: Faces similar pressure (wages lower elsewhere), but is harder to offshore (goods expire, food safety)-- the US still pays ~20 billion every year just to prop the sector up (and I recon that is money well spent). But I would not want to spend similar amounts in direct/indirect taxes (i.e. tariffs) on mining, ore refining, metalworks, textile processing, electronics assembly and a dozen others, just to have "more self-sufficiency"- you could maybe make an argument for it in some cases (involving Russia or China), but what is the actual problem with buying some machine-tools from allies like Germany or Japan?

I'm very confident that we are NOT gonna see a large, self-sufficient American manufacturing industry in 4 or 10 years; people may continue with the current approach for a bit, but will realize at some point that the situation is not improving (prices rising faster than wages, as well as government debt and/or median effective tax burden spiraling out of control).

My prediction is that we're either gonna see Trump declare "mission accomplished" at some random point, or reverting on the ~20% average import tariff because of mounting pressure.

In conclusion: It will hurt to try to bring manufacturing back, and there probably won't be much to show for it in the end.

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

#92

Post by gjsman-1000 »

xigency wrote: post #43
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have plenty of stories of programmers being lazy knuckleheads. The industry is full of them.

Well, that's a bit different. Laziness is a virtue in our field in ways that it is not in other fields. Math is a good example. Mathematicians are even more lazy than programmers. That's how they end up with shorter proofs than our programs and end up able to work lying down as well as just sitting on a computer.

This feels like cope; ignoring that there are multiple kinds of “lazy.”

There’s the kind that focuses on simplicity and avoiding unnecessary work to achieve the same goal (the good kind); and there’s the kind that just ignores necessary work and drags out the process delaying the goal (the bad kind).

There are plenty of programmers, and machinists, in both camps. Many programmers actually are lazy knuckleheads in the worst sense of the word - and, according to recent researchers, 10% of programmers self-admit to doing nothing at their jobs.

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

#93

Post by gjsman-1000 »

tmpz22 wrote: post #32
whatshisface wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to "solve" this is to reduce US output of valuable goods so that people are attracted to jobs that pay less and make less valuable goods. I don't understand why everyone's so enamored with the prospect of making $50k working a lathe in a world where engineering jobs have been made rarer artificially. It won't even be a job in a factory that makes something cool like rockets or lithography machines, witho…

[flagged]

> Is that what you dream of for your children?

This feels like a justification for slavery and slave-like conditions. I assure you the conditions and salary in most manufacturing countries would cause riots in the US; but as long as it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind, who cares what happens to their children.

Imagine if I used this argument for 1850s plantations (the conditions in many factories not being much better). “Do you really want your children working on the plantations? Is this what you dream of for your children?”

The answer is, of course not; but that sure as hell doesn’t justify enslaving other people (whether literally in chattel; or implicitly with meager wages, long working hours, no other opportunities, and no time to learn alternative skills).

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

#94

Post by germinalphrase »

markus_zhang wrote: post #36
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Manufacturing takes time and money to setup. Trump has 4 years if he survives that long. He's an old man. The trade war can't possibly last long enough for manufacturing to be forced to restart domestically. Even if this was his first term and he got a second, by the time the second rolls around everyone would just hope to wait it out until the Democrats retook the White House and they could import everything from…

IMO if Trump is serious about bringing manufacturing back to US, his No.1 job is to remove all middle-high managers from all government agencies. The whole government has been bathing in the globalization alcohol for so many years that there is a huge interest group rooted for it to go forever. You can't do much without removing this group. There is no "legal", "orderly" retreat from the current situation IMHO. It's…

Why do you assume it’s governmental middle management that is the driving force of globalization? That project has been a mainstream private industry prerogative for 40+ years.

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

#95

Post by jajko »

Teever wrote: post #75
whatshisface wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way to "solve" this is to reduce US output of valuable goods so that people are attracted to jobs that pay less and make less valuable goods. I don't understand why everyone's so enamored with the prospect of making $50k working a lathe in a world where engineering jobs have been made rarer artificially. It won't even be a job in a factory that makes something cool like rockets or lithography machines, witho…

I don't understand why everyone on HN is so enamored with beautiful looking Apple hardware but doesn't understand that this stuff is made by people and machines that are also made by people. At the end of the day if you want quality products and innovation you need to pay for it. Outsourcing this ability to other countries saves you money up front but it costs you the institutional knowledge to do it at home and all…

Because nobody would buy 3000$ apple products and we wouldn't be even discussing them. Apple got premium price, but not because they manufacture in US, they just have much higher profit margins, hence the valuation of company.Every buyer approved this with their wallets, knowingly or not

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

#96

Post by arcbyte »

whatshisface wrote: post #22
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.

The only way to "solve" this is to reduce US output of valuable goods so that people are attracted to jobs that pay less and make less valuable goods. I don't understand why everyone's so enamored with the prospect of making $50k working a lathe in a world where engineering jobs have been made rarer artificially. It won't even be a job in a factory that makes something cool like rockets or lithography machines, witho…

There are an enormous number of people who would love to make $50k working a lathe in the US. Enormous amounts of them. But they can't. They're working at Walmart making minimum wage.

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

#97

Post by turtlesdown11 »

didericis wrote: post #81
nemomarx wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> 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.

Sources?

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

The US reliably enforces international order and global trade now. Source where this is an issue?

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

#98

Post by simgt »

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.

> But the proof of our success is all around if you're willing to actually look.

Get a slice of humble pie.

The proof of American failure is also all around if you're willing to actually look. Urbanism, health, environment, MAGA, Vietnam, Irak, Afghanistan. Easy to cherry pick, turns out many of us who have the luxury of being able to work in the US if they wanted to chose not to do so, maybe with good reasons? "Most successful" is very subjective. "Dominant", yeah, you are.

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

#99

Post by os2warpman »

whimsicalism wrote: post #51
morkalork wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crushing unions is partly to blame here. I've got relatives whose families have been working in the mining industry for a few generations. They all lament the good old days that are long gone now.

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

Every single country on earth, except China, that has a more robust and profitable machine tool sector than the US has unions strong enough to make a social media libertarian shit their pants.

Indeed, the three countries listed in the report as being better than the US all have EXTREMELY strong machinist/metalworking unions.

Japan: JAM

Italy: FIOM

And Germany, with probably the most powerful union in the entire world: IGM

The problem isn't unions.

The problem is the parasite MBA class, shuffling memos and spreadsheets around to make it look like they're doing something.

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

#100

Post by InfiniteTitan »

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…

This whole line of reasoning is so similar to consumers picking up chicken breast in a grocery store and not realizing that it comes from chickens somehow.

The US manufacturing base is extremely broad, deep, and strong. The onus is on you to try to prove otherwise.

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