221–230 of 1001 posts
It’s like people excited about the new datacenter being built in their town, think of all the jobs that will bring they cry. Nobody realizes it takes 6 people to run a datacenter. Bringing “manufacturing back to the US” is a fool’s errand. The future of manufacturing is automation, not jobs.
Americans need to get over their view of “Asia” as being about making shoes. When I was working in engineering in the early aughts, we mocked the Chinese as being able only to copy American technology. Today, China is competitive with or ahead of America in key technology areas, including nuclear power, AI, EVs, and batteries. We need to anticipate a future where China is equal to America on a per capita basis, but f…
> US will find itself in the same position the UK is in now The thing is .. there's a point here, but it's not at all tied in with physical products. People are obsessed with one side of the ledger while refusing to see the other. Most of the stuff the UK is struggling with (transport, healthcare, energy) are "state capacity" issues. Things where the state is unavoidably involved and having better, more decisive lead…
This isn't just a UK issue:
"Fishing is a relatively minor economic activity within the EU. It contributes generally less than 1 per cent to gross national product."[0]
and if you look beyond fishing, agricultural policy as a whole is - not sure how to put this politely - not easy to understand:
"The CAP is often explained as the result of a political compromise between France and Germany: German industry would have access to the French market; in exchange, Germany would help pay for France's farmers [..] The CAP has always been a difficult area of EU policy to reform [..]"[1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Fisheries_Policy [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Agricultural_Policy
Americans need to get over their view of “Asia” as being about making shoes. When I was working in engineering in the early aughts, we mocked the Chinese as being able only to copy American technology. Today, China is competitive with or ahead of America in key technology areas, including nuclear power, AI, EVs, and batteries. We need to anticipate a future where China is equal to America on a per capita basis, but f…
Comparative advantage means countries benefit from specializing in producing goods or services where they have the lowest relative opportunity cost - not necessarily where they're the best overall. Even if China focuses on technology (and this is far from decided), America can still thrive by specializing in other areas where its relative efficiency or unique capabilities are better.
Examples: Germany specializes in high-precision manufacturing, India does well with software development, IT services, and medicines, Australia exports minerals, natural resources, and agricultural products, etc. Everybody brings something to the table. The world economy cannot possibly get worse by adding 1B people doing top-level work.
> Ricardo's theory implies that comparative advantage rather than absolute advantage is responsible for much of international trade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
BTW these would have been great ECON 101 discussions to have before the election.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think China missed their opportunity. I think so too prior to the Trump tarrifs. Now their influence abroad is picking up steam again, with former WW2 enemies now becoming trade allies. I think this has reinvigorated their opportunity.
China hasn't changed, as their new "partners" will be reminded of soon enough. I suspect they will squander the opportunity the US unforced error has provided, but we'll see.
Americans need to get over their view of “Asia” as being about making shoes. When I was working in engineering in the early aughts, we mocked the Chinese as being able only to copy American technology. Today, China is competitive with or ahead of America in key technology areas, including nuclear power, AI, EVs, and batteries. We need to anticipate a future where China is equal to America on a per capita basis, but f…
Their population is declining, and they are a long way away from parity with the west on a per-capita basis. I think China missed their opportunity. Also, the UK hasn't dominated finance for a century and has never been dominant in services, so it doesn't seem like an apt comparison.
This can not be overstated. China is on the verge of the largest population collapse in human history.
By 2080 China's population will drop by 600 million. If that trend continues, by 2150 China's population will drop to 280 million.
Other asian countries such as South Korea and Japan are on a similar trajectory.
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Because the market recognized value add is the capital investment and returns, including the credit basis on which inventories flow. These people are operating on a per $ basis, not a per shoe basis. If the margins % lower then the capital will flow to something else more profitable and then prices rise until the margins are relatively flat across similar productive investments.
That doesn’t really make sense to me. The market cares about dollar returned vs dollar invested. If some piece in the middle of the chain goes up and end customer prices go up as well, that doesn’t directly affect investors at all. The way it could and likely will affect investors is if people start buying fewer shoes, but that is a different process than what you are describing. If I’m off base can you help me under…
(If it's not bought on credit, there is still opportunity cost, since that money could have been used for something else.)
Same story here - would you buy a pair of shoes from anyone, seeing the horrible conditions they work in, sleep deprivation and poverty if you knew they'd still get close to nothing? Probably not. You see a fancy store (or website these days), you see a product you like and you're invited to open up your wallet for a fancy pair of shoes. Deep down you still know they came from the people working in horrible conditions but, you know, out of sight, out of mind. And thus, you are willing to pay the extra price.
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This. Anyone who doesn’t believe it — please go spend some time in Shenzhen, Shanghai, or similar cities, like I did. I just got back from China. I’ve been (also lived and worked) to the U.S. many times, and I can confidently say that China’s tier-1 cities are on another level when it comes to development and QoL (and not only T1 cities, I was in smaller regions in the north too). It’s also incredibly clean, super sa…
That's been my current dream trip for a little. I think it woukd be so cool to ride the trains around the country and see what it's really like there. Learning the language is hard though
Even a simple metro ticket.
You can also smile at the CCTV cameras, which are in groups every 100m or so within cities.
According to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41283368 we should be linking to the primary source. Q: Is there a specific reason* that this thread links to threadreaderapp? * other than politics, which we try Really Hard not to bring into HN...
One great reason is that you need an account on X to read the thread. I deleted my account many months ago, along with many, many other people.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a problem with just directly comparing them - because JKR probably brings in more revenue to the UK than fishing, with Potter copyrights. But most of that revenue goes to JKR, whereas most of the fishing revenue may end up in "working class" people's pockets.
JKR's net worth is less than a billion, which means she's probably not raking in over a billion annually.