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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

#161

Post by jillesvangurp »

potato3732842 wrote: post #129
jillesvangurp wrote: post #116

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…

The 2-3%/year economic growth that has been common since the 1980s. People getting rich is nothing new. You can go back 50 years, 100 years, 150 years, etc. and find the same kind of debates.

The difference is that people work less than ever and obesity is now a sign of poverty rather than wealth. Depression era US had people actually starving. The relative wealth of the middle class in the sixties and seventies is something you might rightfully mourn a little. But even then, there was a lot of poverty.

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

#162

Post by modo_mario »

stuffn wrote: post #94
runako wrote: 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?…

> What would lead one to conclude those would be the kind of "good jobs" everyone is envisioning Your entire political statement aside manufacturing was always a good job. I’m not sure if you realize what kind of skilled labor went into manufacturing: 1. Machining 2. Tool and Die 3. Welding 4. Etc Hell when I was working in construction I was making 20 dollars an hour at 18. That’s good money, and at the time if I wo…

>I can only agree with your point if we simultaneously become an export economy, and reduce or remove all global subsidy.

Would that not come with the end of the dollar as a reserve currency trough which the world essentially subsidizes american imports?

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

#163

Post by ghaff »

terminalshort wrote: post #142
afavour wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of that many times where I've had a choice. I could get a nice, expensive dress shirt made in the US but for general clothing it's extremely difficult to buy domestic. Frankly, a lot of the corporations are still to blame because they're the ones actively concentrating wealth at the top. If I had more disposable income I'd buy more made in the US products but my budget simply doesn't allow it.

But you wouldn't. You, and everybody else, would see several shirts that looked basically the same and not pick the expensive one without giving it any more thought. If you think I'm wrong, go start a company that makes shirts in the US. You will make a fortune because demand is completely unmet.

Even expensive brands are usually made overseas. I looked at a couple of random pieces of expensive Patagonia outerwear in my closet. One was made in Vietnam. The other in Bangladesh.

Sure, you can get custom/semi-custom dress clothing made in the US. Probably other things (at an eye-watering premium). Which may be OK if you buy very little clothing. But mostly forget about going into a store and picking things off the rack.

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

#164

Post by naasking »

tokai wrote: post #29
hackthemack wrote: post #12

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…

Not sending production to the place with the cheapest labour is great way to have your companies being outcompeted by foreign actors. Unless we want to return to mercantilism a global empowerment of organized labour globally is the only real way to fix this.

> Not sending production to the place with the cheapest labour is great way to have your companies being outcompeted by foreign actors.

Or it's a great way to spur innovation in automation, which has other beneficial downstream effects. This is what people always seem to forget to consider, and I don't know why.

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

#165

Post by pepperball »

moogly wrote: post #62
K0balt wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manufacturing means, realistically, bootstrapping the general purpose robots that will foment the “third Industrial Revolution”, which will revolutionize capital and make money largely irrelevant. Energy, materials, and automation are the only relevant factors for capital in the post-employment era.

Oh yeah, I also like post-scarcity SF like Iain M. Banks. Funny names for those ships, right? So we're betting everything on infusing humanoid robots with "AI" and abundance will automatically follow? I'm missing a lot of steps here inbetween. Will we live in harmony or will it be a massive scramble by the various nations to extract every single piece of natural resource by way of PvP? Oh right, the robots will fight…

> Can't we just make the billionaires buy everyone a robot from China instead? Oh wait, their money will be useless in a post-scarcity society and they will just be like any regular Joe. Wait a minute. That seems like a massive conflict of interest. Hmmm.

Dude it’s all good. Just snort another line and fall in the techno-delusion.

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

#166

Post by foobarian »

duxup wrote: post #134
runako wrote: 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?…

Even with a good labor representation, is making cheap tshirts a job people want to do / a good job? I’m not convinced it is, or that it lasts.

I bet many people would find that job a lot more appealing than risking your life doing shopping gigs under time pressure, without even getting health insurance.

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

#167

Post by christophilus »

brightball wrote: post #118
runako wrote: 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?…

Manufacturing jobs bring the entire supply chain of the manufacturer with them. The area where I live, Greenville, SC used to be the textile capital of the world and then became essentially destitute when the entire industry offshored. BMW and Michelin locating their US HQ here essentially rebuilt this entire corner of the state with jobs and associated supply chains. Now, Greenville is booming with a more diverse ec…

Yep. I live here, too, and it's a great place. My primary concern is that we're pretty reliant on just those two companies. If they decide to leave or make major changes, the impact on me (even though I work remotely as a software engineer) would be huge. I hope we manage to diversify.

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

#168

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #106

There’s a huge downside to manufacturing and that is pollution. IMO, I’d rather china be the economic super power and the US leeching off that technological progress and manufacturing the same way say Scandinavia or most of Europe currently does. Those Europeans get 2 months off while china and the US duke it out and they get all the technological benefits with no downsides. It’s genius. Everyone talks about the US b…

The problem is that nothing really stops people from going up the ladder. You mention leeching off technological progress but the reason some are concerned is because they will simply conquer the whole supply chain.

Take an example of tesla vs byd. Heck, The electric MI car I saw looked so good and nice, its wild

Most of the money I feel like America's still has lots of influence is probably from well established tech corporations or similar but even those get challenged by leaner companies but also that all of them have bought into the hype of AI

America's economy is on such a weak line in my opinion because the only thing which stops all hell from breaking loose is that stocks are doing good just because of the AI bubble.

When the AI bubble bursts, I have a predication that all hell might loose free (I sincerely hope that I am not right though)

Ironic that the thing which would in the end hurt america is the company selling hype who is trying to doublespeak itself into showing something but being completely different when you realize the downstream effects of the AI bubble crashing

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

#169

Post by Braxton1980 »

afavour wrote: post #109
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I don't like to blame corporations for outsourcing. The consumers outsource every time they select for cost.

I'm not aware of that many times where I've had a choice. I could get a nice, expensive dress shirt made in the US but for general clothing it's extremely difficult to buy domestic. Frankly, a lot of the corporations are still to blame because they're the ones actively concentrating wealth at the top. If I had more disposable income I'd buy more made in the US products but my budget simply doesn't allow it.

Does your budget not allow it or have you allocated it elsewhere with optional or luxury purchases?

Most people don't drive around in a base Honda Civic.

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

#170

Post by terminalshort »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #120
ecshafer wrote: post #30

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…

"how horrendously expensive, for employers, health care is." So why aren't they pushing for abolishing employer-based health insurance? They had no problems getting rid of pensions but for some reason nobody really lobbies for employers to get out of the health care business. The same for 401k. Why do companies have to manage those instead of just contributing some money and let the employees find the right package o…

Because if they let employees manage their own retirement accounts some of them would gamble all of it on crypto or options and lose it all. Then, because our society has become fundamentally incapable of saying "You are an adult. You have nobody to blame but yourself, and now you will face the consequences," this will become someone else's problem to pay for it.
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