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America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

americanaffairsjournal.org

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

#131

Post by h0l0cube »

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

The other point that’s often forgotten is that labor costs have risen, and shipping has gotten cheaper. This is just how economics plays out. Protectionism can be great for national security and employment, but people would have to stop expecting things to be cheap.

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

#132

Post by bugglebeetle »

mortureb wrote: post #94
narrator wrote: post #73

Has anyone asked Elon how to fix manufacturing in the U.S? Has he given anyone any ideas. The guy probably does as good or better job at manufacturing in the U.S than anyone else, and he has plenty of plants in foreign countries, so he can compare and contrast. Alas, the current administration hates the guy, and you can't have a guy who's clearly on the wrong team get to take credit for anything these days. Edit: He…

Honestly we need more strong figures like Musk if we have any chance of pulling this off (preferably the pre insane Musk because that Musk seemed way more capable and productive). Bureaucratic, ladder climbers are not going to be able to pull something hard like this off.

This is a truly hilarious comment when you consider the manufacturing capacity of China vs. the US.

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

#133

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

pphysch wrote: post #117
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stats I linked are adjusted for cost of living. As stated on the "Chart" tab: "This data is adjusted for inflation and for differences in the cost of living between countries." People who earn the median income are hardly elite.

The data you linked only goes to 2019. That's cherry-picking, if anything. Bad economics. Median income earners will never own a home in current conditions. That's a significant downgrade from past generations. We are not better off.

If you toggle the year to 2021, you'll see that US data on that page ends in 2019. No cherry-picking, I just chose 10 most recent years which had US data easily available.

House prices in the US are high, but not remarkably so. (E.g. Canada's house prices are higher.) I'd argue that expensive US houses have more to do with NIMBYism than the overall health of the US economy.

Focusing on housing in particular is itself a form of cherry-picking a single statistic. The median income data I linked is adjusted for cost of living, which includes housing and other stuff.

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

#134

Post by di4na »

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…

All I will add is...

You are close to realising the problem. Financialization is a consequence not a cause.

The cause is demographic. Why and how did pension funds grew so much need to own everything and get money?

Spoiler: this happened in steps with Boomers investing in their retirement. Because they were so numerous it flooded everything.

Second Spoiler: they also had (and still have) the political power by sheer number, which warped the regulatory environment.

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

#135

Post by Animats »

pphysch wrote: post #38
kranke155 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The production of physical goods - physical capitalism - no longer had anywhere to go really when most people employed started having a decent standard of living, so we looked for ways to continue infinite GDP growth and we found it in financialisation. It worked but only by destroying/rotting away everything else.

This explanation doesn't quite convince me, because if this really were the primary issue, USA could have globalized its consumer base not just for low quality products and pop culture, but high quality development. I think the root problem is political: recognizing that USA's extraordinarily successful mid-century economic model was the result of a compromise by the ruling capitalists to avoid facing a European-styl…

> I think the root problem is political: recognizing that USA's extraordinarily successful mid-century economic model was the result of a compromise by the ruling capitalists to avoid facing a European-style revolution (e.g. Bolshevism) at home.

Yes. Communism was a competitor which kept capitalism from acting like a monopoly. Once communism was no longer taken seriously, capitalism was unrestrained. When the USSR finally ran down, there was no stopping the push to plutocracy.

It's not that communism was a better system. It was that the existence of an alternative kept capitalism from getting out of control.

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

#136

Post by polygamous_bat »

ChatGTP wrote: post #93
dwallin wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because a behavior may end up profitable for its owners doesn’t mean we should be just accepting it as a society. Also viewing a company as just a collection of assets owned by capital can be somewhat limiting. Companies are generally made up of human employees, and many schools of thought treat employees as one of several stakeholders in a company and assign various rights to them and various responsibilities t…

Just because a behavior may end up profitable for its owners doesn’t mean we should be just accepting it as a society I 100% agree with you, but isn’t this how capitalism works? I do notice similar sentiments to use more frequently on HN lately. Feels like people are actually aware there are problems now but unsure what’s to be done?

Random thought, but perhaps trying to enshrine "customer or consumer rights" and "employee rights" as seriously as "shareholder rights" would be a good step.

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

#137

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

no_wizard wrote: post #130
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…

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

As I stated elsewhere, America's median income, adjusted for cost of living, is one of the world's highest. Americans benefit from cheap goods from other countries.

It might be socially acceptable to put the domestic economy first, but that doesn't mean it is right. Ultimately, it's basically the same as the "looking out for #1" philosophy that rich people allegedly have, which is being condemned in this thread -- but at the rich country level rather than the rich individual level.

Try this calculator: https://howrichami.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i

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

#138

Post by Rooki »

ChatGTP wrote: post #93
dwallin wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because a behavior may end up profitable for its owners doesn’t mean we should be just accepting it as a society. Also viewing a company as just a collection of assets owned by capital can be somewhat limiting. Companies are generally made up of human employees, and many schools of thought treat employees as one of several stakeholders in a company and assign various rights to them and various responsibilities t…

Just because a behavior may end up profitable for its owners doesn’t mean we should be just accepting it as a society I 100% agree with you, but isn’t this how capitalism works? I do notice similar sentiments to use more frequently on HN lately. Feels like people are actually aware there are problems now but unsure what’s to be done?

> but unsure what’s to be done?

Can feel Lenin spinning in his tomb from here.

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

#139

Post by stouset »

twoodfin wrote: post #67
stouset wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are likely suggesting that incremental, hypothetical increases in market efficiency appear to come at increasingly steep costs which primarily borne by the rest of society at large.

And the evidence for this is … ?

Finance is 12% of the entire US economy.

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

#140

Post by stouset »

twoodfin wrote: post #68
stouset wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I own 100 shares of Apple… Tim Cook goes on CNBC and says he’s all in on printers. So I want to sell my Apple shares and buy Microsoft. I’m being a smart investor. No, you’re being a schmuck. The market moved on that information well before you saw it on the news, loaded up your web browser, and executed the transaction. Time and time and time again it has been demonstrated that actively trading is negatively corre…

Sorry a colorful example seems to have gone over your head: A financial transaction tax dulls the market response to new information. The primary purpose of markets is to translate information into prices. Markets that are less efficient in that task hurt long-term retirement investors and day-traders alike.

> Markets that are less efficient in that task hurt long-term retirement investors and day-traders alike.

On some level this is true, but the insane quantities being siphoned out of the economy through the financial system is wildly disproportionate to the increasingly-infinitesimal gains in “price efficiency”.

As a long-term investor in the market as a whole, whether Apple’s true per-share value today is 175.01 and not 175.07 is almost completely irrelevant. Even less so the difference between 175.008913 and 175.008916.

We have long since passed a point where there is sufficient liquidity and sufficient price discovery for the purpose of buy-and-hold investment, and every extra dollar that goes to financial services in the name of more accurately determining prices is just a transfer of money from people who provide value to the economy to a class of leeches who provide nearly nothing.

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