Earlier quoted context omitted.
People do buy $3000 Apple products. You're going to be more specific and talk about price difference as a percent not an absolute value to make your point. But let's be charitable and assume that you're saying that the price of Apple products will double if the cases are machines in America -- I don't think that would be the outcome. What percent of the cost of an apple product goes to towards the aluminum case? What…
The price of Apple products in the US is literally doubling as of today, so we get to test this hypothesis in real time.
The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)
201–210 of 523 posts
Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
The USA already dictates the direction of much of the world economy through its position in the WTO, and you are correct that the tariffs will cause more independent production. That’s part of the intention. Europe specifically is underproductive and the hope is that these tariffs and the change of tone for defense agreements will bolster Europes domestic industrial and defensive capabilities. I also realize how incr…
Let me get this straight… > That’s part of the intention. Europe specifically is underproductive and the hope is that these tariffs and the change of tone for defense agreements will bolster Europes domestic industrial and defensive capabilities So, rather than sell Europe weapons that we create in the United States, part of the “intention” of this policy is to cut off the European demand for our weapons systems and…
Are you asking why a single point of failure is a bad thing?
To restate what you asked: “if the USA weapons manufacturing capability is compromised and cannot sell weapons to approved parties, and said parties also cannot manufacture their own weapons, how is this in the interest of the US?”
What do you think?
Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)
#203Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
The flaw is in putting these things out as alternatives to each other. The future of manufacturing is in automation, but in order to do automation you need machinists and computer science. You need people who can design a machine that makes other machines, which is a physical device that operates under the direction of software. Getting people to learn to code instead of learning how to build machines doesn't get it.
I agree you need a variety of skills and jobs, but "learning how to build machines" is just as white collar as learning to code. Particularly since the functionality of any modern machine involves just as much code as it does mechanical engineering. Don't get me wrong, mechanical and software engineering are completely different fields and we need both of them. But they're both unarguably college educated white colla…
Writing code is sitting in an office and typing stuff into a computer, all the way into production.
Making machines is a physical thing. You can do a lot of the design on a computer, but to do even that you need a handle on the physical reality of the thing that benefits from experience with the physical object. If you want a prototype it's something you build with your hands rather than something you run in a container on your commodity PC.
It's not just a matter of whether you call it white collar or blue collar. It's that the physical work is considered dirty and vulgar, even though it's something valuable and important.
Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)
#205Defenders of these tariffs say they might bring back manufacturing or say they are a response to some bad effect of the current state of America... They don't accept what the experts say, but what their authority says, and their authority says that these will bring manufacturing back. The current argument in the face of backlash is "let's wait and see."
Mao Zedong, another populist authoritarian who didn't like to listen to experts or acknowledge reality implemented the four pests campaign. Sparrows were eating Chinese crops, much like trade deficits eat American labor. Mao decided it would be wise to kill these pests to protect the crops, failing to predict that the death of these sparrows would cause even worse pests to damage crops.
This led to one of the worst famines the world has ever experienced.
China's cultural revolution (our project 2025) and great leap forward (liberation day) had truly disastrous effects like the four pests campaign for those who lived through them.
If there are no checks on this administrations power soon, we are likely to see even more short sighted incompetent policy that radically changes society that will damage us for generations.
In china they erase history because history gives you a foundation to judge your leaders. "Purifying" the Smithsonian is an admission that understanding history there there would make you dissent from what will happen or be dissatisfied with some of your leaders in the past who might be similar to current leaders. We should take the lesson's of history and understand that what is happening now rhymes with everything the America I grew up in, including the conservative America, stands against, like unchecked power.
It might get better... but it can also get much much much worse.
Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)
#206I keep seeing people advocating that the idea that we should build everything, and every piece or everything, here is a good one. Why? Is this just an isolationist dream? The reductive, absurd, extreme of this is why don't individual people go out and build all their own stuff like cars and houses. Let's all go out and learn how to mine and refine metal ore so we can get started on building the family sedan! There is…
There are two main reasons that individuals don't build their own houses and cars from scratch. 1) They don't know how. Specialization is a thing. But this is a thing that applies to individuals rather than nations. You don't need every person to know how to mine ore or hang drywall as long as somebody does. But a country the size of the US could certainly contain someone who knows how to do any given thing. 2) They…
We can argue some nations have been pretty unfair with their tariff rates over the years, but let’s not ignore 200 years of economic science.
Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
People do buy $3000 Apple products. You're going to be more specific and talk about price difference as a percent not an absolute value to make your point. But let's be charitable and assume that you're saying that the price of Apple products will double if the cases are machines in America -- I don't think that would be the outcome. What percent of the cost of an apple product goes to towards the aluminum case? What…
Computers used to be made like this. The hardware cost the modern equivalent of tens of thousands to tens of millions, partly because the assembly workers were well-managed, well-trained, and well-paid. This was DEC's business model, and it worked well for a couple of decades.
Offshoring from the early 80s on allowed US corporates to double dip and explode their margins. Local workers were laid off and replaced with cheaper offshore workers, wages for most jobs were cut in real terms (with a few critical exceptions, like software dev), but the people who did have jobs had access to much cheaper imports.
Property became catastrophically expensive, but other sectors, including consumer goods, electronics, non-premium clothes, and domestic essentials like furniture became much cheaper in real terms - which took the sting out of the loss of the better-paying jobs.
You can't reverse that overnight without catastrophic damage, because prices will explode but wages will still be depressed.
You will be making domestic commodity products that have no market.
Reindustrialisation is a fantasy. You can't bring the factories back without reinventing the economy from the ground up and making all of the parts fit together in new ways.
That would take decades, and a level of strategic insight the US is completely unable to imagine for political reasons.
Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)
#208I keep seeing people advocating that the idea that we should build everything, and every piece or everything, here is a good one. Why? Is this just an isolationist dream? The reductive, absurd, extreme of this is why don't individual people go out and build all their own stuff like cars and houses. Let's all go out and learn how to mine and refine metal ore so we can get started on building the family sedan! There is…
That is a pretty hyperbolic paragraph only to imply that we as a nation would loose out on innovation by doing so; nowhere do we want to isolate as a country. Look at all the jobless Americans in once thriving industrial cities. Generations left without pensions or skills all because we outsource our workers to other countries. That’s one of the many problems that need to be solved and by manufacturing here in the US…
Have jobs been lost to outsourcing? Sure. But far more jobs have been lost to automation and the elimination of obsolete industries. While companies might have avoided investing in automation through the use of cheap labor in other countries, there is little doubt that will change if they re-shore.
Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
the gist is: When you can manufacture ships, you can also manufacture warships. When you can manufacture warships, you can protect your economy. or: If all you sell are financial services, and a pandemic hits and you need to protect your people, where will you find masks? We don't need to build literally everything ourselves, that's a reductionist argument, we just need to become a lot more productive than we are now…
Was mask manufacturing capacity during the pandemic an issue?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/in-the-early-d...
Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)
#210Earlier 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.
You're taking a swipe at factory workers, and elevating Software Engineers to the intellectual strata of doctors?
Most working-age adults can be a contemporary Software Engineer (even without LLM cheating).
For that matter, I could teach bright 12 year-olds to apply the technical skills that your average Software Engineer does (though that would be mean, and stunt their development).
You'd better pray that your doctor is much more capable and professional than your typical Software Engineer.