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Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

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Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#101

Post by rangestransform »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #45
Sporktacular wrote: post #32

This article just kind of assumes the reader should prefer US firms succeed in making these magnets over Chinese firms. I'm not sure why I should prefer that if China do it cheaper and better. Some nationalistic readers or those concerned about US national security and supply chains might care. Or maybe the US should just maintain better trade relations, and vote to do so.

It's definitely rewriting of history / priorities based on the current political climate. 30 years ago the opposite was celebrated as the saviour of American capitalism (by short term thinking people who are probably billionaires now, and therefore, as individuals, insulated against any of the '30 years later' repercussions). The US is going to need to naturalise all of its illegal immigrants to have a chance at ramp…

The US could also have a migrant worker program a la Singapore

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#102

Post by refurb »

yardie wrote: post #46
gkanai wrote: post #33

Time and time again we see the US moving production of some key product or material overseas only to regret that decision a number of years later. It happens over and over again. Market forces are great, but should be ignored in key sectors that are important for national security. That goes for rare earth minerals or shipbuilding or key supplies for munitions or PPE that we needed during the pandemic, (etc.)

The free market will always chose to go to the places for the cheapest material and labor. There is no strategy to it. But, there are some industries the US have placed strategic value on and will subsidize no matter the cost. - USPS - literally written into the Constitution - Passenger rail - Amtrak keeps pudding along even though financially it doesn’t make sense. - Merchant marines - cargo is cheap. And cheaper in…

> The free market will always chose to go to the places for the cheapest material and labor.

That's absolutely not true and anyone who has been involved in sourcing knows this.

There are plenty of other factors other than price alone. Reliability of source, quality, ability to response to changing volume demands, reputation, customer service, sustainability, overall capability, regulatory compliance, IP protection, financial health, quality management systems, etc.

It's the reason why any large corporation has a months long supplier due diligence process.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#103

Post by oskarkk »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #65
lotsofpulp wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the US does or would subsidize USPS. USPS is required to earn enough money to pay for itself, which it mostly does by delivering advertising to people’s mailboxes.

The USPS isn't subsidized with money, but it has a lot of special treatment legally. Things like "the inside of your mailbox becomes federal property" and the office of the postmaster general come to mind. Other than that, as you said, the USPS is supposed to earn enough to pay for itself, which means that mail in cities tends to subsidize rural services.

> which means that mail in cities tends to subsidize rural services

Do USPS or other mail services in the US have pricing that depends on location? In Poland where I live (much smaller, more uniformly populated and not federal country), I've seen no such things. The prices are the same everywhere, so it seems to me that in every private, commercial mail service the cities kinda subsidize the rural areas.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#104

Post by pclmulqdq »

oskarkk wrote: post #103
pclmulqdq wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USPS isn't subsidized with money, but it has a lot of special treatment legally. Things like "the inside of your mailbox becomes federal property" and the office of the postmaster general come to mind. Other than that, as you said, the USPS is supposed to earn enough to pay for itself, which means that mail in cities tends to subsidize rural services.

> which means that mail in cities tends to subsidize rural services Do USPS or other mail services in the US have pricing that depends on location? In Poland where I live (much smaller, more uniformly populated and not federal country), I've seen no such things. The prices are the same everywhere, so it seems to me that in every private, commercial mail service the cities kinda subsidize the rural areas.

USPS is equal priced as you say. A letter sent to Manhattan is cheaper for the USPS than a letter sent to Nome, Alaska, but both cost the sender 73 cents. Parcels sent by USPS are priced based on regional zones (roughly corresponding to distance traveled), but these are very coarse-grained.

UPS and FedEx and some of the other private shipping services have much more fine-grained pricing based on where something is going. This means that if you are Amazon, it is generally cheaper to send packages to cities by private carrier and cheaper to send to rural areas by USPS.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#105

Post by lesuorac »

freeone3000 wrote: post #100
sandworm101 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because movement between countries is not possible for the vast magority of the workforce. An americqn steelworker cannot just up stakes and move to canada/china/europe. Such things take many years and, unless you are allowed to renouce your citizenship, you will still be talking to the IRS every year.

Shouldn’t we be trying to (have local manufacturing) to reach the goal of a better life for our people, rather than sacrificing that life in order to (have local manufacturing)? Isn’t “oh we’ll just make sure our population can’t leave” a tad dystopian?

I'm really not sure where this sub-thread has gone.

My point is that moving manufacturing to China is not done at the government-level; it's a very smart move by business to break the unions in manufacturing while also increasing the current profit margin. Even if the American workers tried to move to China you wouldn't hire them because they're in a union so its pointless for them to moving (ignoring practical issues like language/family network/etc).

---

> Shouldn’t we be trying to (have local manufacturing) to reach the goal of a better life for our people, rather than sacrificing that life in order to (have local manufacturing)?

This is a false dichotomy. Manufacturing jobs while not as cushy as sitting in an office chair do not need to be deadly. There have been a ton of advances in robotics that allow you to be in significantly less harms way compared to the days of when you use children to repair equipment because their fingers fit in between the blades better.

I wouldn't be surprised if most manufacturing jobs had a lower mortality than dating while female.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#106

Post by lazide »

mindslight wrote: post #79
lazide wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can pay $5 for something instead of $10, why wouldn’t that be better for you?

It's better for you individually-immediately, but on the larger scale the government policy is that average prices cannot go down. So then the government created enough new money to make the lower priced item cost $10. And due to kayfabe "fiscal responsibility", the government couldn't even spend that new money (representing shared surplus from tech/market progress) on useful things, and instead just dumped it into t…

What, consequences?!! In my economy?

Clearly that isn’t actually why and it’s all the fault of (checks notes) illegal immigrants. I’ll warm up the military transports right now!

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#107

Post by KETHERCORTEX »

mschuster91 wrote: post #81
lesuorac wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, "price stability" in this case means a higher price compared to absence of government intervention. I'm all for a country subsidizing food to ensure sufficient domestic production but I am not for pretending it's good for a "price stability" reason. We are also well beyond sufficient domestic production. Our population has doubled in the past 50 years [1] while food production has tripled. We do not need…

> I'm all for a country subsidizing food to ensure sufficient domestic production but I am not for pretending it's good for a "price stability" reason. Price stability itself is a valid goal. Yes, consumers may pay a liiiitle more for their eggs, milk or bread, but the price of the good can be relied upon which is very important for low-income households and their financial planning.

> Yes, consumers may pay a liiiitle more for their eggs, milk or bread

> very important for low-income households and their financial planning.

Paying more is beneficial for low income households, I see. That looks like expert level mental gymnastics detached from the reality.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#108

Post by 1oooqooq »

lazide wrote: post #60
fooqux wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was taught during grade school that capitalism drives lower prices, and since capitalism is good, it's alluded that paying less money for a product of similar value is almost a moral obligation. That company selling the "same thing" for more is obviously fleecing people and should go bankrupt. That model may have worked hundreds of years ago when comparing horseshoes made by local blacksmiths, and possibly still he…

If you can pay $5 for something instead of $10, why wouldn’t that be better for you?

as if you ever read the ingredients label of you soap or shampoos....

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#109

Post by myrmidon »

lesuorac wrote: post #72
myrmidon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that this is an obvious decision at all, and it is very easy to be deceptive about upsides and gloss over the downsides of forcefully retaining domestic industry sectors: If you want to keep industries like this, you are basically arguing that taxpayers should subsidise them-- the jobs you retain are not a straightforward net gain, you pay for the wage difference in tax money (or price, where typically…

Pretty sure it's a very obvious decision. Fire your unionized US workforce. Replace them a cheaper non-unionized workforce. Sell the goods at the same price. Increase your current profit margin while protecting future profit margins from unions. Like half the reason why people do manufacturing in China is because all the manufacturing is there. If you had a problem with the item after it's been molded you can go to t…

> Like half the reason why people do manufacturing in China is because all the manufacturing is there

It sure helps, but the primary reason is price. And the main driver for that are wages.

Chinese manufacturing pays workers an average $24k/year, for 49h/week. This is after adjusting for purchasing power-- actual mean wage is You can shoot suspected union members on sight and allow dumping dimethyl mercury straight into the next river-- no amount of "regulatory streamlining" will come anywhere close to making the US competitive here.

Re: Advanced Magnet Manufacturing Begins in the United States

#110

Post by myrmidon »

michaelt wrote: post #69
myrmidon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course in practice this has gone badly in the long term. The current generations are certainly feeling the consequences. Has it though? Because I think preventing lower-skill industry from migrating to lower-wage countries would have been a MASSIVE intervention into market dynamics with extremely unclear outcome, and it is very easy to be dishonest about its price and possible consequences. An example: If we had…

> Has it though? Well, the hope that trade with China would lead to them becoming more democratic doesn't seem to have come through. And there was a hope the West would keep doing the design work, and high-tech manufacturing. There isn't much Silicon being produced in Silicon Valley these days. I'm not saying there's an alternative - I can't take a time machine back to the 1980s and explore a different timeline. I'm…

I fully agree with you that effecting "better"/more democratic politics abroad via trade has a poor track record (EU buying Russian gas would be another example).

But answer honestly: Do you think that the US/Europe shaped their trade policies in a way that maximized foreign political improvement (especially pre-Crimea)? Because to me, that sounds almost comically self-delusional: We did not try to foster democracy when trading with Russia/China-- we traded to get stuff for cheap.

Looking at GDP development, this was very effective: Yes China grew more wealthy as well, but current trends are not looking like Chinese real wages will ever catch up to US levels, even in the next several decades...

I honestly believe that the US has profitted immensely from trade with China-- it would be insane to try to avoid this (and hold on to domestic industry) from a perspective of how it affected the average American citizen.

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