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America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

molsonhart.com

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Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#841

Post by Kirby64 »

makeitshine wrote: post #827
Kirby64 wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps Literally forced labor camps. Of course, the PRC denies these allegations, but it certainly seems like there's some forced labor due to the numerous reports across many years of a variety of forced labor operations from these camps.

The US has forced prison labor. We can talk about how bad the Chinese government is, but their economy is not built on forced labor anymore than the US is built on prison labor.

I also think any form of forced work in the US prison system is pretty awful, but don’t try to equivocate Chinese “reeducation” camps with regular prison. Not anywhere close to the same thing.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#843

Post by underdeserver »

charlie0 wrote: post #810
korse wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm American and heavily involved in manufacturing for industrial/mining/agricultural customers. 'We just don't want to employ people' is a gross simplification. We do want to employ people, and lack of skilled labor is a serious problem which has hampered business growth for years, The first unspoken problem is that very few young people want to live where many factories are located. I can't blame them. I certainly…

Lol, $25hr. McDonald's entry-level wage is $20hr in CA. The $5 premium is not enough of an incentive to move to the middle of nowhere for a job.

Adjusted for cost of living, this could be double the wage.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#844

Post by Ostrogoth »

hilux wrote: post #839
jdietrich wrote: post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that we're talking about "manufacturing" as one big homogeneous thing. The US obviously makes a bunch of stuff, but it has very limited ability to make lots of kinds of stuff, especially in a hostile trade environment. The US manufacturing sector is about half the size of China's in terms of value-add, but it's much smaller by any other measure. The US has focussed on high-value verticals like aerospac…

> The US has focussed on high-value verticals like aerospace Which is about to take a huge nosedive, as both Europe and China pull back on buying critical systems from the US. And can you blame them? There's an excellent youtube series (by a Finnish ex-military officer) on the likely impact of recent events on US arms sales to Europe. They do have choices! Trump and Musk's threats to invade and blackmail (e.g. by cut…

Can you share the link? I’d like to watch that.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#845

Post by akircher »

mystified5016 wrote: post #788
NoTeslaThrow wrote: post #581

We never stopped manufacturing, we just stopped employing people. > We don’t have the infrastructure to manufacture That's trivially false given we're the second-largest manufacturer in the world. We just don't want to employ people, hence why we can't make an iphone or refine raw materials. The actual issue is that our business culture is antithetical to a healthy society. The idea of employing Americans is anti-bus…

I think it's worth specifying even further: wealthy business owners don't want to pay what a US employee costs. Most jobs are wholly unsustainable. You have to job hop every couple of years to keep up with inflation because God knows you're not getting a raise that keeps you comfortable. This has led to churn and brain drain and the slow collapse of US domestic business. It's not that people don't want to work, it's…

The USA is number 1 in median disposable income at purchasing price parity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...

This makes me think that it at least as much to do with high (unrealistic?) employee expectations as business stinginess.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#846

Post by heavymetalpoizn »

charlie0 wrote: post #810
korse wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm American and heavily involved in manufacturing for industrial/mining/agricultural customers. 'We just don't want to employ people' is a gross simplification. We do want to employ people, and lack of skilled labor is a serious problem which has hampered business growth for years, The first unspoken problem is that very few young people want to live where many factories are located. I can't blame them. I certainly…

Lol, $25hr. McDonald's entry-level wage is $20hr in CA. The $5 premium is not enough of an incentive to move to the middle of nowhere for a job.

[dead]

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#847

Post by heavymetalpoizn »

42772827 wrote: post #672
NoTeslaThrow wrote: post #581

We never stopped manufacturing, we just stopped employing people. > We don’t have the infrastructure to manufacture That's trivially false given we're the second-largest manufacturer in the world. We just don't want to employ people, hence why we can't make an iphone or refine raw materials. The actual issue is that our business culture is antithetical to a healthy society. The idea of employing Americans is anti-bus…

The last time we got employers to care about employees it was because the unions dragged the bosses into the streets and beat the daylights out of them.

[dead]

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#848

Post by Terr_ »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #703
glitchc wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concur, employee training and retention are at an all-time low. There are no positions available for junior employees, minimal onboarding and mentoring of new employees. Organizations have stopped planning people's careers. Used to be that the employee's career growth was their manager's problem, while the employee could focus on the work. Now the employee must market themselves as often, if not more often, than actu…

> minimal onboarding and mentoring of new employees. Organizations have stopped planning people's careers. I hear from all the much more senior devs about how they learned OOP in company training after years of C, or how their employers would give bonuses for finished projects, and that sort of thing. I always seem to join the ship when the money train and training train leaves the boat. I think R&D for tax reasons n…

> I always seem to join the ship when the money train and training train leaves the boat.

From a statistical point of view, that's probably to be expected. Kind of like how open umbrellas get rained on more.

When a hard-to-hire minority gives way to a big growth in the workforce, by definition the majority arrive after the change.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#849

Post by gsf_emergency »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #703
glitchc wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concur, employee training and retention are at an all-time low. There are no positions available for junior employees, minimal onboarding and mentoring of new employees. Organizations have stopped planning people's careers. Used to be that the employee's career growth was their manager's problem, while the employee could focus on the work. Now the employee must market themselves as often, if not more often, than actu…

> minimal onboarding and mentoring of new employees. Organizations have stopped planning people's careers. I hear from all the much more senior devs about how they learned OOP in company training after years of C, or how their employers would give bonuses for finished projects, and that sort of thing. I always seem to join the ship when the money train and training train leaves the boat. I think R&D for tax reasons n…

It's deep hubris in our leaders that assumes existing capital/values/structures/motivations are sufficient to allow newcomers ( & new generations) to contribute..

  However. Bell Labs did it, so what sort of humility existed then that (mostly) does not exist now?!?
Tangentially, I have not personally tried, but it seems possible:

("Unintentionally moderate"[1-2] business thinkers like PG/YC partners do it all the time)

  Wonder if hubris is necessary for continued survival of the economy.
[1] https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html

>Have to be an asshole or something

[2] https://archive.today/latest/coralcap.co/2022/02/why-japanes...

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#850

Post by UltraSane »

glitchc wrote: post #589
NoTeslaThrow wrote: post #581

We never stopped manufacturing, we just stopped employing people. > We don’t have the infrastructure to manufacture That's trivially false given we're the second-largest manufacturer in the world. We just don't want to employ people, hence why we can't make an iphone or refine raw materials. The actual issue is that our business culture is antithetical to a healthy society. The idea of employing Americans is anti-bus…

Concur, employee training and retention are at an all-time low. There are no positions available for junior employees, minimal onboarding and mentoring of new employees. Organizations have stopped planning people's careers. Used to be that the employee's career growth was their manager's problem, while the employee could focus on the work. Now the employee must market themselves as often, if not more often, than actu…

In networking the situation is just ridiculous. Companies just expect people to know Cisco Nexus, ASA, XE, Palo Alto, Linux, AWS VPC, and do a bit of database and backup admin all for less than $100,000 a year.
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