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

America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

americanaffairsjournal.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 313 posts

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#121

Post by coliveira »

Rooki wrote: post #85

Is forming State Owned Enterprises in the desired industries with attached R&D Labs and apprenticeships impossible in the US?

The US had for most purposes a system of quasi-owned state enterprises after WW2. The US gov had zero equity, but was a partner providing research, funding, and diplomatic backing. The list included companies like IBM, GE, Exxon, AT&T/Bell Labs, Boeing, etc. All these companies had large R&D departments financed directly or indirectly by the gov.

Most of this was dismantled after the Raegan era, when they decided to move all production to other countries with the goal of running everything from Wall Street, through the power of dollar-based financialization. They wanted to control everybody else as modern colonies, where developing countries would perform the role of workers and the US the role of a business owner. It just happened that some countries never really wanted to play by these rules, that's why the US is threatening to dismantle the globalization system.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#122

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

yterdy wrote: post #55
liquidpele wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that’s only half right… the financialization is driven via a priority of short term profits that are incentivized by the market to executives. They play the BS game to just get rich and then dip, company be damned in the long run.

Not quite. As GGP mentioned, the necessity of keeping stock prices (and property values, and anything else securitized) high so as to not impoverish pension funds, 401Ks, IRAs, etc., is real. That is, if you care about Silent, Boomer, and Gen X retirees - who invested , but didn't save - being able to cover their myriad outlays. Millennials and younger need not apply, of course; we're just never going to be able to r…

>As GGP mentioned, the necessity of keeping stock prices (and property values, and anything else securitized) high so as to not impoverish pension funds, 401Ks, IRAs, etc., is real.

I'm confused about how your model of the economy works. It sounds like you believe CEOs are selfish and greedy when it comes to workers, but when it comes to pension funds, they keep stock prices high out of the goodness of their hearts?

If liquidpele's thesis is true, and executives are looking to "get rich and dip", "company be damned in the long run", then we would expect this to be reflected in the company's stock price in the long run. The stock price is essentially the fair market value of the company. And the American stock market has been performing very well for a good long while.

This entire comment thread strikes me as populist pitchfork-waving with little grounding in economic reality. Here's a question: If you're truly pessimistic about American companies, do you hold any short positions or put options? At the very least, are you overweighting non-American countries in your portfolio? And if so, which ones?

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#123

Post by Rooki »

coliveira wrote: post #121
Rooki wrote: post #85

Is forming State Owned Enterprises in the desired industries with attached R&D Labs and apprenticeships impossible in the US?

The US had for most purposes a system of quasi-owned state enterprises after WW2. The US gov had zero equity, but was a partner providing research, funding, and diplomatic backing. The list included companies like IBM, GE, Exxon, AT&T/Bell Labs, Boeing, etc. All these companies had large R&D departments financed directly or indirectly by the gov. Most of this was dismantled after the Raegan era, when they decided to…

Seems like a no brainer in the current environment though right? At least temporarily in sectors underserved by the market but still crucial to the national interest? Can always privatise them again down the track if they're ideologically unacceptable for whatever reason?

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#124

Post by coliveira »

goodluckchuck wrote: post #60
aragonite wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Insert list of subsequent wars. Like the Mexican–American War? OP's explanation of why US is the top-dog can't be whole story, but there's something to it. For example, it's hard to imagine the US would be half as powerful without the territorial gains made as a result of the conflicts surrounding the Mexican–American War (for example, by far the most economically important states are California & Texas!), yet at t…

It’s not fair to call that a war of aggression on our part. Mexico claiming to own vast swaths of land including California and Texas in the 1840s was about as legitimate as Spain’s prior claim over the same “New Spain” which Mexico merely inherited… again by violence. It’d be as if the US claimed to own Antartica, the moon, or mars. Perhaps there may have been a few people there, but it was never a serious enough po…

But this is not the point. The issue is, the US has become what it is now by attacking other people and taking their land. It has never really stopped. They did it later to Hawaii and other islands. And then it was fighting wars to submit entire countries to their will until the present.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#125

Post by blq10 »

chii wrote: post #108
peyton wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re missing the concept of foreseeable injury.

It is not an injury to an employee to sell the company's operations overseas and close shop in the US. Forseeable injury is applicable to negligence suits, and it is not negligent to change the business model resulting in the employee being out of work. A company has no legal responsibility to maintain the livelihood of their employees at the cost of the business' profit margins.

Livelihood of employees is also a false start, unionization and the accompanying high wages are also a significant factor in the disparity between Western industry and China.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#126

Post by coliveira »

bell-cot wrote: post #17

Obvious Solution: Re-establish the military draft, but with a far smaller pool of potential draftees - and make sure the families of current & recent members of Congress, Wall Street big-shots, Fortune 500 CxO's, McKinsey consultants, and such are all assigned to serve in front-line "meat shield" battalions on the western shores of Taiwan, just south of Korea's DMZ, etc.

You should remember that the US military is a two-tier system: there are the officers who rarely see real battle, and the rank and file who effectively die. In the case of war, if the rich ever serve they will be officers, they will only command other less fortunate to battle.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#127

Post by coliveira »

bell-cot wrote: post #45
avs733 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe just treat blue collar workers better? And enshrine such treatment into law so this doesn’t happen again. That would seem to be simpler

While "treat blue collar workers better" sounds like a nice goal in itself...I fail to see how that would do anything at all to address the problem which the article is about. In other news - treating your oxen wonderfully will not transmute a wooden moldboard into an iron plow.

The root of the problem is exactly that America never wanted to treat blue collar workers in a decent way. That's why they sent all manufacturing jobs overseas: it was getting very expensive to pay for these unionized workers. The goal of destroying unions of blue collar workers was the main reason for deindustrialization.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#128

Post by barry-cotter »

rizwank wrote: post #113
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An important point is that the recent wave of globalization has been very good for poor people in developing countries outside of the US. From the perspective of US workers, outsourcing looks greedy. From the perspective of foreign workers, outsourcing looks altruistic. https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-in-brief Even with recent globalization, Americans are still far richer than most people in other countrie…

An incredibly important point that gets missed very often

That people don’t care about those in developing countries does not mean they missed it.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#129

Post by supportengineer »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #4

I work in one of the last remaining large industrial manufacturing labs in the US. Some of my colleagues worked at Bell before that was shuttered. My sense from talking to the previous generation is that financialization of the US has started (finally) failing the American people. The previous generation cashed in on major profits by off shoring (Kodak), but we overdid it. In a round about way our company is run by p…

The answer is always greed from the top. The concentration of wealth.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#130

Post by no_wizard »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #87
mensetmanusman wrote: post #4

I work in one of the last remaining large industrial manufacturing labs in the US. Some of my colleagues worked at Bell before that was shuttered. My sense from talking to the previous generation is that financialization of the US has started (finally) failing the American people. The previous generation cashed in on major profits by off shoring (Kodak), but we overdid it. In a round about way our company is run by p…

An important point is that the recent wave of globalization has been very good for poor people in developing countries outside of the US. From the perspective of US workers, outsourcing looks greedy. From the perspective of foreign workers, outsourcing looks altruistic. https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-in-brief Even with recent globalization, Americans are still far richer than most people in other countrie…

that being said, there are ways this could be beneficial both ways instead of one way.

I’d also argue that it’s perfectly fine for the US and any other nation to think in terms of putting their domestic economy first, regardless of anything else

Post reply on HN