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Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

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Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#121

Ross Perot in 1992 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRr60nmDyu4 We have shipped millions of jobs overseas, and ... a strange situation, we have a process in Washington where after you serve for a while, you can cash in, become a foreign lobbyist. We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. You're paying 12, 13, 14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the Border, pay a dollar an hour for yo…

And yet the timeframe Huang mentions does not go beyond 20 years ago, indicating his statement is little more than political posturing. Also, last I saw, he wasn’t prevented from speaking at any point in those past 2 decades and I don’t remember any mention from him about these issues despite the fact that there’s been bipartisan concerns about manufacturing in China for at least a decade. It’s almost like he’s tryin…

>And yet the timeframe Huang mentions does not go beyond 20 years ago, indicating his statement is little more than political posturing.

20yr ago you could at least plausibly lie to yourself and say that things were ok. The seeds were sown back in the late 60s early 70s at least. Fair amount of gas was put on the fire in the 80s.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A modern data center needs 50-100 people I doubt it. Job density for land usage and other externalities generated is going to be one, maybe two, orders of magnitude greater for manufacturing.

One CNC laser cutter replaces the 40 humans in a factory. I don't know how many people the automated paint system replaced... factories are not near as labor dense these days as you would guess.

> One CNC laser cutter replaces the 40 humans in a factory. I don't know how many people the automated paint system replaced.

In any new, expanding, or relocating factory, nobody is getting replaced by these things, because they are already priced in.

> factories are not near as labor dense these days as you would guess.

That's a bit presumptuous of you.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#124
Easiest way to do it is to financially and legally cut off all avenues to offshore and outsource.

Then make it litigative open season for any affected or displaced person to court mandate a near-blank check to make up for the generational contempt of US citizens.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#125
post #36

There are so many underlying changes to the established relationship between Labor and Capital in the US that would be a necessary part of keeping jobs here that it would effectively make us a completely different country. For example -- suppose one could snap one's fingers and "bring back" millions of manufacturing jobs. What would lead one to conclude those would be the kind of "good jobs" everyone is envisioning?…

>> We have jobs, we have just decided that the people working those jobs are not deserving of prosperity.

I read an article years ago talking about a man that worked as a janitor for a US public school. He was just getting by on whatever that job paid. Someone (school board, business person, IDK) said if he wanted to make more money he should get more education himself, or learn some new skills so he'd be worth more and could get a "better" job. And hey, I'm all for some amount of meritocracy and all that but... If he did improve himself and get a better job the school would presumably find someone else to be the janitor for similar pay. The bottom line is that they expect an able-bodied adult to work a job that most people look down on for barely a living wage. At some point it's not about him needing to upskill it's about expectations about who gets paid how much, and America expects a lot of people to "make a living" at just above poverty wages.

I'm not sure how you change that, to some extent employers can't pay more because it's become structural and they don't actually have the money to pay those jobs more. So I have to agree with parent poster:

>> There are so many underlying changes to the established relationship between Labor and Capital in the US that would be a necessary part of keeping jobs here that it would effectively make us a completely different country.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my main arguments for a universal health care scheme in the united states is how horrendously expensive, for employers, health care is. Lets totally ignore efficacy, moral arguments, expense for the patient, etc. If you are a company in the US a large percentage of the effective compensation of employees is healthcare. A moderately good PPO is like ~$10k+ a year per employee. You can pay workers in some other…

Asking as not an American - $10k per year, how much % of a yearly salary is it? In Europe (here: Germany example), which is frequently seen here as the ideal example of healthcare spending: Employees and employers typically split around 14.6% of gross salary for public health insurance. [1] [1] https://feather-insurance.com/blog/germany-healthcare-statis...

The problem is that in the US it's a fixed amount vs in Germany a proportion of your income. This works OK for higher incomes but for lower incomes it's a big problem. And as always, the people in the middle get screwed. Not enough money to afford the premiums easily but too much money to get subsidies.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#127

the us is 16% of global manufacturing by value with 4% of the population, i dont know how this fact isn't brought up more. on a population weighted basis the us manufactures more by value than china. A bunch of people salivating for a world where the us was 52% of world gdp, not because it was great, but because the rest of the world was ash.

Also US unemployment has been low. The idea that Americans need more jobs just doesn't fit the numbers. There are plenty of good paying non-backbreaking jobs for Americans but they just don't seem to believe it.

> There are plenty of good paying non-backbreaking jobs for Americans but they just don't seem to believe it.

Where at?

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#128

Ross Perot in 1992 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRr60nmDyu4 We have shipped millions of jobs overseas, and ... a strange situation, we have a process in Washington where after you serve for a while, you can cash in, become a foreign lobbyist. We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. You're paying 12, 13, 14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the Border, pay a dollar an hour for yo…

Indeed, this was one of the first things I thought of too. I remember well the jokes about Perot being crazy, frequently used to dismiss his views. I'll never forget talking with an educated Perot voter (a friend of mine) at the time and actually being confronted with the real views, not a shallow strawman, and realizing I didn't have any good answers because I hadn't actually thought about it. That was a good matura…

I had a similar experience when I learned about Ron Paul back around the 2008 election. It was also the first time I had my eyes opened to information suppression when Fox News edited some of his answers out of rebroadcasts of debates.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#129

The counter point here is that the US and EU have benefited with a lot of economic growth in the past few decades. The fact that this growth effect has now run its course just means that things may need to change again and that old assumptions may need to re-evaluated. Which might include looking at strategies to re-shore. Not because off shoring was a mistake 40-50 years ago; but because technology now enables autom…

What growth?

A bunch of assholes in offices (edit: and a handful of C-suite above them of course) got rich on RSUs at the expense of the entire rest of the economy. The factory shut down and all those workers are getting screwed driving for some gig service or order picking for ecommerce or whatever.

Number go up only matters if the number going up is strongly associated with things getting better.

And it didn't even necessarily get better for the asshole in the office. A few of them won but most of them can't afford to live within an hour of where he works, have a family, etc, etc.

Whole lot of good it did us.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#130
post #46
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes that leadership has a vision beyond the next quarterlies. Offshoring is seen as a solution to organized labor, unfortunately. Exec compensation above a reasonable salary needs to to tied somehow to longer term outcomes.

Forgot the whole crux of my point. Labour needs to be empowered globally, to minimize the benefits of offshoring.

Labour is still going to be cheaper in offshore countries simply because of purchasing power parity.

Even good conditions and everything in country like India paying them around 10-30k$ is seriously really really good (source: I live there) and its english speaking and well integrated etc.

I saw another comment which mentioned that just merely healthcare in america can cost around 10k$/year

So Labour should be empowered in a good way but this idea still won't help america simply because of power purchasing parity.

Not to forget that America is going through some really tough economic crisis right now which it needs to figure out on. The deficit is still high and everything and companies are favoured completely capitalistic and so combined with all of these factors, we really come to the situation where it is.

I appreciate your optimism but I have my doubts. Especially when one reads the tense atmosphere of America right now

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