Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

barchart.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 527 posts

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

#221

Post by terminalshort »

pessimizer wrote: post #213
terminalshort wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's what tariffs are for. These are macroeconomic decisions, not decisions that should flow down to individuals, to be thought of as their responsibility and their moral failing. Individuals shouldn't be expected to choose to buy American. It's a cost with an at best extremely distant (in time and space) benefit for an individual, and a non-existent benefit unless everyone does it. Instead, when goods are produced…

You seem to think I'm trying to make some moral point but nothing I said has the slightest thing to do with morality. It is simple fact of incentives and human behavior.

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

#222

Post by spankalee »

themaninthedark wrote: post #211
afavour wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manufacturing in particular... it's very easy for folks to say we should bring those jobs back to the US but people are often shocked when confronted with the prices of items manufactured in the US. I don't say that to dismiss the thought but it would be a lot more difficult for folks to swallow than they think it would be.

Theoretically wages should rise due to the increased demand in labor. In practice, not sure. But it's not like the prices dropped drastically when mfg. was outsourced, the companies pocketed a most of the savings as profit.

Prices absolutely _did_ drop dramatically for many, many things that are manufactured overseas. Goods from from clothes to electronics are vastly cheaper.

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

#223

Post by Timon3 »

stuffn wrote: post #214
wvenable wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The United States provides over 40% of the world's humanitarian aid, and spends around 1% of its budget on foreign aid, including military aid . Surveys suggest that Americans believe 20% of the federal budget is spent on foreign aid, and that 59% of Americans believe the government spends too much on foreign aid" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14169

Wikipedia isn’t a primary source. Your entire point can be disregarded.

Do you have a primary source showing that "the party who supports raising wages also supports near limitless spending on the less fortunate countries"?

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

#224

Post by NickC25 »

terminalshort wrote: post #170
vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

>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.

This part is true.

>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.

Except that's an incredibly stupid short-term way of thinking. Because regardless, we end up paying for people's mistakes. As we should, because that's the whole point of society - we need to take care of the failures, the degenerates, the pieces of shit, etc because they play an important role in society - they too are humans and some of them weren't gambling away their savings out of a sense of fun, they did so to be able to continue to live in a day and age where costs continue to skyrocket, job growth is negative, and the economy is being hollowed out. We have many tools and mechanisms to help the winners in society. We need that for the opposite party, too. In winner-take-all capitalistm, the losers will always outnumber the winners. And you need to make life palatable for the losers, in hopes that their luck may one day change. Because if you don't take care of people who continue to lose and have nothing going for them, they will grow in numbers and eventually eat you.

And besides, we've bailed out enough bad actors in important sectors of the economy that main street deserves to be taken care of too.

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

#225

Post by smallmancontrov »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #101
afavour wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manufacturing in particular... it's very easy for folks to say we should bring those jobs back to the US but people are often shocked when confronted with the prices of items manufactured in the US. I don't say that to dismiss the thought but it would be a lot more difficult for folks to swallow than they think it would be.

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

Pretending to not understand how game theory works is a choice -- more of a choice than customers have.

Companies are also constrained to do labor arbitrage once the rules allow it, but they were the ones who lobbied the rules into place and they were the ones to profit from the rules, so they have far more culpability here.

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

#226

Post by potato3732842 »

mothballed wrote: post #207
afavour wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manufacturing in particular... it's very easy for folks to say we should bring those jobs back to the US but people are often shocked when confronted with the prices of items manufactured in the US. I don't say that to dismiss the thought but it would be a lot more difficult for folks to swallow than they think it would be.

The jobs also generally suck. I've worked a wide array of blue collar jobs and manufacturing I always found some of the worst, even worse than stuff like general labor building houses or working on fishing trawlers in the Bering sea because at least that stuff wasn't nearly as rote. You stand at a machine doing the same fucking thing over and over. Do one thing wrong, your finger gets chopped up -- you think that sou…

Because in a lot of people's minds having ~1/1000 of your coworkers killed for every decade you work at the factory still sucks less than taking orders from some algorithm crafted in a downtown office by someone who wants to exploit you at best and hates you and your way of life at worst.

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

#227

Post by mothballed »

terminalshort wrote: post #203
mothballed wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The expertise to do that isn't here anymore on a scale to satisfy the majority of the market. However that is likely exactly what happened when it was finally pretty much killed of in the 90s. At some point clothes were made largely domestically. Some manufacturers started offshoring while others didn't. At that point consumers had a choice, the choice they made was to drive the onshore industries out of business or…

This is true, but let's not pretend that "healthcare, healthy food for their children, education, housing" is what's absorbing all the money. Average car payment is around 700 bucks a month now.

The median car payment is $0.

~75% of cars are bought used and according to Experian only 33.5% of those are financed. When adding 80% new cars financed you're already under 50%. Then consider already paid off vehicles.

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

#228

Post by itsyonas »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #176
itsyonas wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think that this is at the heart of the problem. The issue is not an overall lack of wealth, but how it is distributed. This is not going to change, no matter how many data centres or factories are built in the US. Ultimately, all the wealth will still end up in the hands of a select few. Not to mention that we are already exceeding a number of planetary boundaries, which endanger humans. The ever-growing demand…

After spending quite a long time on this thread writing my thoughts etc, I feel like this is the most correct explaination of the situation Distribution of wealth is the biggest issue and In my opinion, the most tangible way to solve things but then again, this is the core of the issue Either you need a really anti corrupt body which can do their work and fight against such issues But with causes like lobbying etc.,…

> Either you need a really anti corrupt body which can do their work and fight against such issues

If changing the system is off the table, then this is what any solution would inevitably look like. I do not think the problem is a flaw in the system though. Calling it a systemic issue is misleading, because the system is largely functioning as designed. The logical response, therefore, is to change the system itself.

That idea sounds frightening, largely because most political parties treat the system as untouchable, presenting it as if there are no viable alternatives (thus convincing people that there are none, making them feel helpless). This creates a dead end: people experience the full force of the system's pressures while being told that nothing fundamental can be changed.

In that vacuum, scapegoating becomes an easy outlet. When the system itself cannot be questioned, frustration is redirected towards marginalised groups, under the implicit belief that punishing or excluding them will somehow relieve the pressure on everyone else, and that's how we ended up at this point (imho).

A system centered on people's needs would judge success by outcomes like health, stability, and quality of life rather than by growth metrics. If a policy reduces stress, improves wellbeing, and lowers long-term costs, it should be pursued even if it shrinks parts of the economy or even the economy overall. The fact that we currently treat any reduction in economic activity as a failure, regardless of human benefit, reveals how misaligned our priorities are.

I hope Zohran succeeds in improving people's lives, but I'm not holding my breath. I've been burned too many times before...

> But one of the things which we saw was that although zohran won, I just didn't expect so much competition in the first place when Cuomo got around 40% I think?

I think this primarily relates to how people are socialised. In Germany, we call this an 'elbow society', i.e. a society where people aggressively push their own interests and compete ruthlessly, showing little regard for cooperation, solidarity or fairness. People feel so lost in the world that they are losing their humanity, only looking out for what maximises their own outcomes. I believe this can be changed, but it will require a large-scale cultural shift driven by society, education, the media, and so on - the same institutions that pushed us in the other direction in the first place.

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

#229

Post by volkadav »

jonhohle wrote: post #59
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…

As someone paying for a family on a marketplace bronze plan, that’s a bargain! I think our premiums will exceed $20K this year. With all of the medical group consolidation, all of the wait time woes our Canadian friends always complained about are the reality here now as well. So I’m paying more than anywhere else on the world and have to wait 6 months for a PCP appointment. We have the worst of both worlds.

I'm pretty sure the original 10+k/yr/employee for good ppo coverage is a radical underestimate, for what it's worth, though I guess "way more than ten" is technically part of the "ten+" range, haha.

The last time I had reason to look at full market-rate price for a family of four for a good PPO (Seattle market, circa five years ago, large tech company), it was around 3300 USD per month, or over $39k/yr. That was for cobra coverage, so a combination of what I would have normally paid and what the employer would've (about one third us and two thirds them when I was employed by that corp). I can only imagine it's gotten more expensive since then; we left the country three years ago.

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

#230

Post by YY4398742398 »

terminalshort wrote: post #190
freedomben wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about Jensen specifically, and I can't remember the guy at the moment, but there have been a few tipped hands including one where the guy on national TV said something about "Americans should be gluing the iPhones together in the factory, not Chinese" and it really made a lot of this stuff click for me: they want to provide low-paying American jobs in American factories. That's probably not the whole vis…

You have one of 3 choices here: 1. Low paid American workers glue iphones together in sweatshops 2. Low paid Chinese workers glue iphones together in sweatshops 3. Well paid American workers glue iphones together in sweatshops, and to make this possible we have a massive tariffs regime that makes consumer goods massively more expensive and massively increases the price of all manufactured goods. Pick your poison. The…

Chinese workers are not "low paid" relative to prices of goods in China though. A Chinese worker gluing an iPhone together can afford a decent middle class lifestyle, the Chinese version of the "American dream".

What America really needs is massive deflation in the cost of everything, curbing income inequality (which is driving inflation) and moving to renewables (cost of oil/gas also drives inflation).

Post reply on HN