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America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

washingtonpost.com

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Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#131

Post by gsf_emergency_4 »

a_bonobo wrote: post #128
lnsru wrote: post #21

Just my 5 cents. Running factory is damn hard job. 10 products built from 50 different parts having 70 different vendors is a small nightmare. So me people can manage that, but the most can’t. Most people in Western world also cannot imagine staying at conveyor belt or table doing the same assembly task whole week. I work in a factory and see this daily.

I used to work in such a factory in Germany and turn-over was high :) A large pool of uni students doing their summer breaks propped up the place. They could afford to work there for 1-2 months mentally because they knew they'd go back to university (me, too). The few long-timers on the factory floor were mostly functioning alcoholics.

This was a family owned biz? Somehow, I imagine, I'd feel better slogging for an SME than in an "externally-funded" place.

I'm guessing that US needs a similar nation-wide service to connect gig-workers of all sorts to factories specifically.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#132

Post by Spooky23 »

petermcneeley wrote: post #80
crote wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people in Western world also cannot imagine staying at conveyor belt or table doing the same assembly task whole week. In my opinion one of the biggest reasons we won't see manufacturing come back to Western countries is that we still believe this is how most factories operate. Chinese people aren't stupid , they have been spending a fortune on automating as much of their manufacturing as possible! Western lab…

Or you could have trade borders.

Yeah, and you’re going to be poorer as a whole. People in backwards places like rural and urban ‘hoods live reasonably well with very low labor productivity relatively speaking.

I don’t think you understand how primitive American society is compared to Asia. Basic survival for rural poor is a car.

When you take away cheap clothes and cheap TVs, all made in modern Asian factories and replace them with shitty American products at 3x the price, the current populist movement will look like a party in comparison.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#133

Post by mikewarot »

Having worked in a job shop, a factory that did gears down to quantity one, I became quite aware of the differences between IT, my previous job, and actual physical production.

The machine tools were all made 50+ years ago. Changing anything was a dangerous thing to do, because you might cause jobs that have known and reliable setups that are done a few times a year in quantity, to fail, erasing the profits for the job, and possibly losing customers.

The rush to fill brand new high energy intensive data centers with hardware that has commercially useful lifetimes measured in months (instead of decades for machine tools) seems quite short sighted to me.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#134

Post by fnordpiglet »

Bratmon wrote: post #126
ryandrake wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why people romanticize 1950-style manufacturing jobs so much, like they are some kind of objectively ideal job. These jobs really weren't great. Bunch of dudes standing at an assembly line all day physically busting their asses and sweating it out. Sometimes in a physically hazardous environment. Sometimes breathing stinky and/or harmful chemicals. Sometimes surrounded by ear-damaging loud noises. Someti…

Manufacturing jobs are mostly unionized and service jobs aren't. Americans actually want unions back, but because anti-union propaganda is so prevalent, they confused themselves into thinking they want manufacturing jobs back

Conservatives don’t want unionized labor - they want 1890’s style manufacturing at best, no unions and rampant exploitation of labor. At worst, no people in the factory of any sort - dark factories end to end. There’s little room in the conservative morality for people not working, or for people who are working.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#135

Post by yibg »

pseudocomposer wrote: post #63
thaack wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people in Western world also cannot imagine staying at conveyor belt or table doing the same assembly task whole week. I work in a factory and see this daily. My family owns a small plastic manufacturing plant in the US. This is the biggest problem they face. The western worker's appetite for a low skill monotonous manufacturing job is very small. The business loses employees to Walmart etc. despite the factor…

Obviously, the “higher pay and significantly better benefits” are not actually significantly better. I’d rather we address that than just exploit some other workers overseas where they’re out of sight, out of mind. Honestly, it seems like tariffs on imported goods would be the way around this, but also, we need to be sure that money is going to the people doing the work, not just the owners. Speaking of which, I don’…

I'm not sure I agree. Tariffs adds cost, unless domestic manufacturing can be done in a more or less cost effective way. Manufacturing works benefit of course but that's a overall small proportion of the population and ought to be (we probably don't want most people to be doing manufacturing work). But the added costs end up be a tax on everyone and a regressive one at that.

I also don't see offshoring manufacturing as inherently problematic or being out of sight, out of mind (of course exploitation can happen, but that's not inherently a part of offshoring manufacturing).

Workers in China, Vietnam etc are paid significantly less, but their cost of living is less as well. Plus unlike in the west, where manufacturing jobs are not desirable, in places where those manufacturing jobs land they typically provide an economic opportunity that isn't otherwise there.

Basically, why not have high cost of living places produce higher cost goods that pay more, and low cost of living places produce lower cost goods that pays less?

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#136

Post by yibg »

mullingitover wrote: post #44

The US spent decades transitioning from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, deliberately. Now there's a populist making political hay, throwing out numbers about trade deficits, which ignores revenue from services . Yes, there is have a trade deficit on goods, that was a long-term strategy because services were a superior investment. Manufacturing is an inferior way to make money unless you're planning to g…

I hear people (media, politicians) talk about bringing manufacturing jobs back to America, but I haven't heard too much well articulated reasons for why.

There are issues with national security, reliance on less than friendly nations etc. For instance, we'd want to grow our own food, even if importing would be cheaper. But those surely aren't the majority of manufacturing jobs.

Given the choice of increasing the number of high paying, high skills jobs or the number of relatively low skill, dangerous manufacturing jobs, why wouldn't we choose the former?

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#137

Post by adabyron »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #134
Bratmon wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manufacturing jobs are mostly unionized and service jobs aren't. Americans actually want unions back, but because anti-union propaganda is so prevalent, they confused themselves into thinking they want manufacturing jobs back

Conservatives don’t want unionized labor - they want 1890’s style manufacturing at best, no unions and rampant exploitation of labor. At worst, no people in the factory of any sort - dark factories end to end. There’s little room in the conservative morality for people not working, or for people who are working.

Can we not call those people "Conservatives". There is very little conservative about them.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#138

Post by jazzyjackson »

keiferski wrote: post #64
scns wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listening to music should work, no pun intended. Watching YouTube though?

Yeah I guess it’s probably not realistic for most factory jobs. I am just thinking that “get paid $20 an hour to do a simple task and watch YouTube/listen to music” is actually kind of appealing to many people.

This is a lot of security guard and front desk jobs. if a boss doesn't like smartphones on the job, I know people who read books or knit between tasks.

Re: America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom

#139

Post by chongli »

snozolli wrote: post #114
stouset wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously there is some ludicrous threshold of pay where more people will decide to do some job. But for practical purposes the pay needs to be in line with still being able to price your products competitively in a global marketplace. Even $10,000/yr more might not be enough to move the needle all that much on a job that’s backbreaking, monotonous, and with little prospects for career growth. Especially if you have…

Obviously there is some ludicrous threshold of pay where more people will decide to do some job Ludicrous only from the perspective of the employer. Everyone wants something for nothing. The fact is that regular Americans (i.e. not exploited, immigrant labor, or oppressed out-groups) used to do manual labor and manufacturing in the United States. They took pride in their labor. People haven't changed, the economics h…

You used to be able to buy a nice house in the suburbs with car in the garage and a white picket fence, support a stay-at-home wife with three kids, put them all through college, and take annual vacations to Disneyland or the Caribbean, and cover the healthcare needs of the whole family, all on the salary of a high school educated factory worker. Now all that sounds impossible. You’d have to pay factory workers well into six figures for a lifestyle like that.

What happened? Cost disease [1]. All of the big ticket things in that lifestyle (except for the car) skyrocketed in price relative to inflation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

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