Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late
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Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late
#2Andy makes an excellent point: when we outsource the manufacturing and scaling processes to another country, what we lose in addition to jobs are the innovations and experience necessary to maintain a strong defensive econosystem with respect to our economy.
However, I disagree with Andy's recommendation that we should tax offshore labor - we should focus on making labor in the United States less expensive. Neuter the Department of Labor, get rid of labor regulations with heniously expensive and obnoxious unintended consequences like the mandatory 8-hour work day in California, eliminate the concept of wrongful termination, and put a muzzle on the EPA.
Negative incentives aren't the way to go to encourage job creation. Make the climate more hospitable for large businesses within the U.S. instead.
Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late
#3Andy makes an excellent point: when we outsource the manufacturing and scaling processes to another country, what we lose in addition to jobs are the innovations and experience necessary to maintain a strong defensive econosystem with respect to our economy. However, I disagree with Andy's recommendation that we should tax offshore labor - we should focus on making labor in the United States less expensive. Neuter th…
>Neuter the Department of Labor, get rid of labor regulations with heniously expensive and obnoxious unintended consequences like the mandatory 8-hour work day in California, eliminate the concept of wrongful termination, and put a muzzle on the EPA.
Enjoy your third world working conditions. But you are an executive and/or a shareholder, are you not ?
Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late
#4Andy makes an excellent point: when we outsource the manufacturing and scaling processes to another country, what we lose in addition to jobs are the innovations and experience necessary to maintain a strong defensive econosystem with respect to our economy. However, I disagree with Andy's recommendation that we should tax offshore labor - we should focus on making labor in the United States less expensive. Neuter th…
Oh yes, the EPA and Department of Labor, with their obnoxious "don't fuck up the environment" and "don't treat people like shit" rules. God damn them.
Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late
#5Andy makes an excellent point: when we outsource the manufacturing and scaling processes to another country, what we lose in addition to jobs are the innovations and experience necessary to maintain a strong defensive econosystem with respect to our economy. However, I disagree with Andy's recommendation that we should tax offshore labor - we should focus on making labor in the United States less expensive. Neuter th…
I'm sorry, I don't think this is the place for a thread that will inevitably devolve into tit-for-tat politics, but I really have trouble stomaching the commentary that the EPA should have less regulatory power over industry when proof of the big-picture bankruptcy of environmental deregulation is current gushing into the gulf at a few tens of thousands of barrels a day.
Yes, it raises costs to force industries to comply with environmental protection standards. Yes, this is bad for the short-term of our economy. But we will continue to suffer the consequences of the environmental harm we do, even at the current regulatory levels, and more so with "a muzzle on the EPA".
Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late
#6Andy makes an excellent point: when we outsource the manufacturing and scaling processes to another country, what we lose in addition to jobs are the innovations and experience necessary to maintain a strong defensive econosystem with respect to our economy. However, I disagree with Andy's recommendation that we should tax offshore labor - we should focus on making labor in the United States less expensive. Neuter th…
While I'll agree that OSHA/EPA are often overzealous when you look at the cost-effectiveness (i.e. dollars spent per statistical life saved), and that labor is expensive, I don't think the rapid abandonment of our standards in a race to the bottom is the solution.
The problem is that places like China have low/non-existent standards that are politically acceptable there (or citizens can't say otherwise). This is their comparative advantage -- not accounting for the externalities of their industrial efforts. As Larry Summers said, some countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted. Not great in the long term perhaps, but harmful for western workers competing for the same contracts in the short term.
So what do you do? Tarrifs on imported goods to make US production more competitive? Limiting trade to countries that have similar standards regarding externalities? Or is it okay for countries to have low/no work and environmental standards because that's (at least in the beginning) the road to economic development?
Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late
#7An article worth reading for a lot of astute observations. Andy doesn't shy away from making painful points. One of his more striking quotes:
"But what kind of a society are we going to have if it consists of highly paid people doing high-value-added work -- and masses of unemployed?"
(Actually, my guess is the over-dependency of faith of individual meritocracy will cause us to miss the deeper structural problems that Grove is pointing to.)
EDIT: (Anedoctal single point of data with limited context), My friend worked in a Battery startup company in the Silicon Valley. After the initial design phase, the VCs and management decided not scale up into manufacturing, they rather lay most people off and sell the design.
Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late
#8Andy makes an excellent point: when we outsource the manufacturing and scaling processes to another country, what we lose in addition to jobs are the innovations and experience necessary to maintain a strong defensive econosystem with respect to our economy. However, I disagree with Andy's recommendation that we should tax offshore labor - we should focus on making labor in the United States less expensive. Neuter th…
No, Aaronontheweb makes a good point. Of course he's not arguing in favor of environmental disasters or slavery-in-all-but-name. Pay attention to his main point: attack high labor prices here, rather than low prices elsewhere. Andy Grove can be protectionist if he wants, but just because he's not ashamed of it doesn't make it any better of an idea.
Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late
#9[deleted]
Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late
#10Andy makes an excellent point: when we outsource the manufacturing and scaling processes to another country, what we lose in addition to jobs are the innovations and experience necessary to maintain a strong defensive econosystem with respect to our economy. However, I disagree with Andy's recommendation that we should tax offshore labor - we should focus on making labor in the United States less expensive. Neuter th…
>Neuter the Department of Labor, get rid of labor regulations with heniously expensive and obnoxious unintended consequences like the mandatory 8-hour work day in California, eliminate the concept of wrongful termination, and put a muzzle on the EPA. Enjoy your third world working conditions. But you are an executive and/or a shareholder, are you not ?
Enjoy _your_ third world economy, free from pesky pollutant-causing industry and manufacturing.
The poster has correctly identified the value proposition that causes companies to locate their manufacturing facilities elsewhere, and points out (also correctly) that making our tax codes as unfriendly to business as our labor laws will only encourage _those_ bits of the business to relocate as well.
You cannot have all of:
* high wages for manufacturing workers
* cheap products for consumers
* high taxes on business
* large profits that make it attractive to operate a company.
* cheap products for consumers = higher standard of living.
* higher profit potential = more business growth.