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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)

#231

Post by histriosum »

dgfitz wrote: post #202
histriosum wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 cause them to manufacture their own? How is that helpful to the United States and our bottom line? How is that at all in the US interests? Are you asking why a single point of failure is a bad thing? To restate what you asked: “if the USA weapo…

> 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?”

You can't equate weapons manufacturing to server uptime or data center diversity -- it's fundamentally different.

In terms of what is in the best interests of the United States -- yes, having a single point of weapons manufacture and having that be the United States would very much be in the US interests. It would allow the US to dictate, even more than we do today, how the rest of the world operates. Although we have not been a single source for weapons (Europe does make their own), our role as primary supplier would be (and has been) very profitable.

How is it that we can afford to create the advanced weapons that we do? F-35, Patriot, etc? It's because we can spread that research and development cost across other (allied) countries, because they buy our gear instead of developing their own. Reduce the market for our weapons, and you're going to reduce the quality of our weapons and increase their per-unit cost -- both things that are very much not in the interests of the United States.

This was sparked by the remark that this was all part of the "intention" of the policy. Since that intention would by definition be very contrary to US interests, both financial and strategic, it seems dubious that this was the intention.

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

#232

Post by vharuck »

no_wizard wrote: post #167
slicktux wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. And we didn't pay for re-skilling, re-training, re-education. We didn't give them welfare benefits to hold over while they learned these new things. We did near nothing, and expected these areas simply to…

Guaranteeing that families won't go bankrupt due to market forces beyond their control would make so many things so much easier. For example, in my state of Pennsylvania, fracking is a political issue. It's a fossil fuel industry, so ideally we'd be weaning off it. But we actually encourage it by having no severance tax on any extracted energy sources. The state is leaving money on the table, and voters seem to like it that way. But, in truth, they don't care about taxes for fracking companies. They care about not ruining towns economically dependant on fracking. They're terrified of those companies leaving, because a chunk of the town's workforce would fall into poverty and take the town with it. Very few people care about where their electricity and heat come from, as long as they can afford it. There's no good reason to oppose moving to renewables except household economics, which is a very good reason for individual voters. If we made sure they weren't going to freeze and starve if the one big employer left town, that employer wouldn't have such an outsized influence on state politics.

In a healthy free market, companies go bust. It just happens: better competitors show up, services or goods aren't needed, plans don't pan out. But we've created a system that keeps companies afloat ala Weekend at Bernie's, instead of what people actually want: keep families afloat.

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

#233

Post by dullcrisp »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #196
mechagodzilla wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So applying this to China and the USA - the USA has a median household income of ~$80k, and China, in terms of purchasing power parity, has a median household income of $32k. China has a workforce of ~775M people vs 163M people in the USA. The USA has ~7M unemployed people. For the USA to stop importing goods from China, we would need to 1) stop consuming those goods altogether (even if they're intermediate goods tha…

> the equivalent of ~20M people's output if we naively scale Or about 12% of the US labor force. Meanwhile the 12th percentile US income is ~$22,000, i.e. less than the $32k median in China, and half of the jobs there are above that median. Obviously these numbers are all useless napkin math and none of it really works like that, but the premise isn't inherently absurd. If China is subsidizing manufacturing in order…

Back of the napkin, we could spend 3% of the federal budget to pay each of those 20 million people an extra $10k a year, and avoid destroying some 10% of the global economy. If we wanted to do that, I guess.

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

#234

Post by WillPostForFood »

SideQuark wrote: post #224
michaelhoney wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the reductive, absurd version of something is reductive and absurd, but that doesn't mean that the nuanced, appropriate version is wrong

But it provides a tool to see how and why the “nuanced, appropriate version” is actually wrong. When one limits the choices for purchases or sales, one reduces efficiency, whether it’s limiting to products made at your home, in your city, in your state, or even in your country. It’s failed for so many centuries across hundreds of countries and attempts that it’s not even a question except among politicians stoking fe…

The question isn't whether maximum global free trade maximizes efficiency. The question is whether maximizing global economic efficiency creates optimal outcomes for a nation, for groups within a nation, or for individuals in the nation. It is clearly a mixed bag, so there is pushback.

Ask these questions. Besides maximizing monetary efficiency:

Does free trade maximize a nation's resiliency?

Does free trade maximize a nation's employment?

Does free trade maximize a nation's security?

Does free trade promote equitable distribution of a nation's wealth?

Unless the question is yes to every answer, it is fair to have a policy debate about how much you are going to limit free trade. Every nation does it to some degree, no matter how much free trade rhetoric they promote.

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

#235

Post by [deleted] »

neilv wrote: post #210
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.

> Not everyone can be a SW engineer. Same how not everyone can be a doctor. [...] 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 brigh…

[deleted]

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

#236

Post by bluGill »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #172
jmward01 wrote: post #142

I 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…

You missed one: the person they can pay is better. I have rebuilt engines, but my cars go a mechanic because it is done in a day not a month. I can texture drywall but I need a lot more practice before it looks even like it should. I know 'scabs' who did a job while the union was on strike - the union people were 10x faster for similer quality - give a few months and they would be that fast. (The strike didn't last that long)

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

#237

Post by lazide »

Avicebron wrote: post #226
mindslight wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if we're lucky, one of these sophomores will have an epiphany that military protection and a stable currency are some of the most complex exports , and that getting imports by trading away a self-created currency is a pretty great way to not give away any gold or silver... Just sayin'.

> military protection and a stable currency are some of the most complex exports And how come that always seems seem to come wrapped in ways that inexorably seems to concentrate wealth, so that the benefits of those exports seem to be less evenly distributed?

People like to get rich, so any system they create tends to get the people best at creating systems richer.

That has been true for every economic system ever - some are just more transparent and fair about it.

Would you rather it be people taking bribes, a king, a hereditary merchant class, oligarchs, or people setting up companies?

It has been as true about the USSR and Cuba as it has been about Venice, Canada, the USA, etc.

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

#238

Post by bluGill »

esafak wrote: post #151
wil421 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you wouldn’t. The trades will take your body. I work with field techs who are close to 50 and they tell me their bodies are not going to make it past 50 and not even close to retirement age. Office work is so easy on the body compared to almost any job.

And techies face the prospect of becoming obsolete, with ageism rife.

Get out of sf and old techies are appricated. Of course many go into management but there are a few who retire and are doing just fine.

some places like it when we remind the kids that this new thing has been around several times before under different names.

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

#239

Post by cduzz »

This is weird.

There was a huge disruption to lots of industries between the 1950s and the 1990s. Lots of established machine tool companies (bridgeport and such) didn't modernize and went out of business or otherwise shrank.

But at the same time Haas automation started in the early 80s and is now quite large and successful.

The US economy is huge. Lots of other parts of it have made the US manufacturing part of it seem quite small.

If Canada invaded us very slowly, I'm sure we'd figure out (over the course of 2-3 years of massive disruption to our economy and lifestyle) how to make munitions and other engines of war at a much larger scale than we do right now.

Unless someone's willing to cut long-term contracts nobody is going to make this stuff in the USA when it's 10x more expensive to do so here than there. And right now, the counter-parties for any such contracts aren't trustworthy.

I think most people are happier just paying someone else to make these same things. "I want to wear nikes, not make them" is how people feel everywhere...

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

#240

Post by WillPostForFood »

master_crab wrote: post #206
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Specialization also applies to nations. It is literally the foundation on which David Ricardo described the comparative advantage economic model. 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.

Economics isn't science, and while Ricardo has some brilliant insights, it isn't a science; he barely models anything. It isn't even a hypothesis since you can never really test it. The core of his idea is this:

the rate of profits can never be increased but by a fall in wages [...] If, therefore, by the extension of foreign trade, or by improvements in machinery, the food and necessaries of the labourer can be brought to market at a reduced price, profits will rise.

I.e., use trade to get to lower wages

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