Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by almosthere » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 5:40 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #273

mothballed wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Out of all the many industries out there, I don't understand why we keep glorifying and romanticizing manufacturing and trying to "bring it back." I've also worked a few of these jobs and you're right: THEY SUCK. Depending on what you are manufacturing, it can be boring, stressful, stinky, physically taxing, or dangerous. And most of them, even the highly skilled ones, don't pay well. For the sake of our own society,…

Because there are 300M people in the US and not all of them can have your cushy SSE role. See all the homeless people - it's because we're selling them out.

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

#282

Post by bflesch » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

cpursley wrote: post #249

bflesch wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So European companies brought new jobs and prosperity to Greenville, SC, and the local Americans thanked Europe by voting 60% for Trump in the last election. How do you explain that? Why do the locals vote against the countries that provide them the jobs? Are you also pro-Trump because you live in that town?

HN sure does like beating up on folks in the Southern US by painting us all with the same brush, it's the worst kind of ugly.

Stop playing the victim. When you have time to hang out on HN you're obviously part of the privileged class. The area is hugely profiting from "stolen" EU jobs, which according to Trumpistan logic is something that is not good. I don't see any uprising of all the "folks in the Southern US" against the lawlessness of your government. And if you're called out for it the victim reflex sets in.

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

#283

Post by _DeadFred_ » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

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?…

Every healthcare post: 'this isn't the biggest cost in healthcare' 'this isn't going to fix things'

Every jobs post: "this doesn't fix X" 'this isn't the biggest issue'.

And the republicans keep dog walking straight to their goals while we talk about the best arrangement for deck chairs.

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

#284

Post by jaarse » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

tharkun__ wrote: post #212

jonhohle wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 curious to compare this to other countries that have state owned/mandated insurance and are so far still mostly covering everything and which are always touted as "superior" to the US, who "have the most expensive health care system". Can't use Canada as OHIP et. al. don't cover much and the same employer tied insurance scheme as in the US exists and is necessary. An example of a country with "good healthcare" an…

Canadian (OHIP recipient) here. As a long time employer, and former employee, I can tell you that no one takes a job here for the heath care. Some things like dental and vision are not covered (unless you are under 18, over 65, or low income), but everything else is. Over the course of a decade my father in law had 3 heart attacks, a stroke, and ultimately lost a year long battle with lung cancer. The total health care bill to him (or his employer) was $0.

Now the downside … because health care is free, everyone uses it and the wait times are longer. My grandfather recently required an MRI (non life threatening). The wait time in Ontario was 3 months. He drove to the USA, paid out of pocket, and had it done within in week …

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

#285

Post by almosthere » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

mothballed wrote: post #232

potato3732842 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the factory you get both. With essentially zero chance to change the algorithm. When my father worked in the factory he found a way to manufacture the product faster and cheaper and just as safely, and rearranged the factory to do so. He was punished by management for altering the algorithm and also ostracized by fellow workers because they perceived it as reducing the demand for jobs.

That's the American dream story- always starts with dad getting yelled at for making things better and faster - the next sentence in the founding documents: So he went his own way and now we have NicoCloth Inc. which in the years since has become a global corporation.

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

#286

Post by gosub100 » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 5:45 PM UTC

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…

> I don't know why on earth you would want to bring back people getting burned alive in steel mills

We don't want to bring back their 3rd world safety standards. We just want to bring the jobs. Factory work can be less rote if teams rotate or their employer provides enough rest. Unions are a potential solution to this issue.

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

#287

Post by mullingitover » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 5:45 PM UTC

tasty_freeze wrote: post #263

cpursley wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN sure does like beating up on folks in the Southern US by painting us all with the same brush, it's the worst kind of ugly.

I'm a liberal and I've lived in Texas (Austin) for 20 years. It is infuriating when I am on some liberal-oriented forum, someone says we should force Texas out of the union or whatever, and everyone cheers. ~40% of Texans didn't vote for Trump, and in absolute numbers are a greater number of liberals than most other states in their entirety ... yet my supposed fellows want to write us off. Ugly indeed.

Are you...doing to liberal-oriented forums what they do to Texas? Tarring everyone with the same brush?

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

#288

Post by fooker » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 5:47 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #241

fooker wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That money could have been spent on America This is wishful thinking, and similar to how how video game producers think if they stop N people from pirating a game, there will be N more copies of the game sold. No, instead of that the game will be played less. And analogously, less iPhones would be produced. You could argue that less iPhones would be good for the world, but that’s orthogonal to the topic.

You're overestimating the proportion of the price attributed to labor that goes into an iPhone. The reason that production is offshored is to shave off a few percentage points. The price difference is almost nothing to the buyer, but a lot to the owners of Apple. iPhones have nothing to do with videogames. They are material objects, not zero marginal cost copies. edit: and the point is that, across the economy, it is…

> price attributed to labor that goes into an iPhone

Oh, that was not my point at all.

It's that we simply do not have the scale and manpower to do it. Maybe in ten years with more automation sure, but definitely not in the Steve Jobs era.

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

#289

Post by bflesch » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #237

bflesch wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So European companies brought new jobs and prosperity to Greenville, SC, and the local Americans thanked Europe by voting 60% for Trump in the last election. How do you explain that? Why do the locals vote against the countries that provide them the jobs? Are you also pro-Trump because you live in that town?

They extended their operations there because Biden lured them with insane subsidies. Don't commit the mistake of thinking Trump politics is a rupture from what came before when it comes to how the US treats Europe. It's been economic aggression after economic aggression from both parties since Obama. Different styles, same core ideas.

Good point. "Free trade between free countries" is a nice concept but unfortunately Americans have cancelled that subscription.

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

#290

Post by almosthere » Mon, Jan 05, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

terminalshort wrote: post #144

luma wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Service jobs are hard to export, it's just moving money around inside your country. Riveting is a job that produces goods that can be exported for incoming cash, elderly care isn't.

That's why we import cheap illegals for those.

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