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

The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

rand.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 523 posts

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#131

Post by creato »

antisthenes wrote: post #120
arcbyte wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are an enormous number of people who would love to make $50k working a lathe in the US. Enormous amounts of them. But they can't. They're working at Walmart making minimum wage.

No one will take the risk of educating them to work the lathe. Working the lathe is probably not any easier to learn than "vibe coding" or generic office work like customer support or data entry. The unspoken problem is that it's enormously expensive to re-educate adults to do something different. Adults just have worse brain plasticity and don't pick things up as quickly as younger workers. Some just refuse to learn…

The modern equivalent of working a lathe is running a CNC machine tool, and I would bet that if we suddenly killed off the tech industry and ramped up CNC machining in the US, the CNC machine industry would have far more former SWEs than former "lathe workers".

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#132

Post by convolvatron »

antisthenes wrote: post #120
arcbyte wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are an enormous number of people who would love to make $50k working a lathe in the US. Enormous amounts of them. But they can't. They're working at Walmart making minimum wage.

No one will take the risk of educating them to work the lathe. Working the lathe is probably not any easier to learn than "vibe coding" or generic office work like customer support or data entry. The unspoken problem is that it's enormously expensive to re-educate adults to do something different. Adults just have worse brain plasticity and don't pick things up as quickly as younger workers. Some just refuse to learn…

learning to operate a lathe for alot of the low-precision work that goes on for mass market production is really pretty easy. but those job are _never_ coming back, anywhere except places that lack sufficient capital or prototyping/research environments. you can program a swiss machine to take in stock from behind the head and dump completely finished parts in a tray at the bottom. depending on parts complexity you can easily vomit out 1000s of parts per hour with a single unskilled operator dumping out trays and loading new stock across several machines.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#133

Post by neuralRiot »

palmotea wrote: post #126
neuralRiot wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the US is already behind in innovation on that field, and better machines produce better machines. So it’s “backwards in time” because you have to start manufacturing the shovel to start digging when your competitor has a backhoe. And even if you could somehow steal the design and build it you don’t have anyone who could operate it.

> The problem is that the US is already behind in innovation on that field, and better machines produce better machines. That's not a permanent situation, proven by the fact that the countries that are now ahead in machine tools used to be behind the US in machine tools. > So it’s “backwards in time” because you have to start manufacturing the shovel to start digging when your competitor has a backhoe. And even if yo…

>All you need is a little bit of investment and will.

We’re cooked then. To give you some perspective I had some Chinese sales reps visiting my shop, they saw us working on some designs and casually asked about working hours i told them about 40hs/wk they laughed and said “in China engineers work 12hs a day 7 days a week”.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#134

Post by jopsen »

Teever wrote: post #116
analog31 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put a finer point on it: How's basing the US economy on advertising looking? I went to college and eventually got a PhD in physics. I've built specialized machine tools. Yet I'm considered a schmuck because I didn't go into software development, and the software developers are considered schmucks if they didn't go into financial services or advertising. And none of that was about emphasizing college. Becoming a pr…

The west coast is in for a rude awakening when they realize that they can't win a war against china with code, and they don't have jobs because they don't have chips to run their advertising code on anymore because China took Taiwan. Manufacturing is what builds up strong economies and it's what saves lives by preventing wars as long as possible and minimizes casualties on your side in war by fielding troops with mor…

If only the US had allies. But I guess it's hard to count on them when you're actively threading invasion!

A war with China won't be won with manufacturing. It'll be won by having allies.

If it actually comes to pass, you'll probably declined fighting the hot war, and opt for a cold one. But without allies it'll get real cold.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#135

Post by BobaFloutist »

simgt wrote: post #98
anon84873628 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which people got the COVID vaccine first? Why is HN in English and always talking about FAANG? Why do kids all around the world play with Spiderman? Asking for "vital" and "21st century" is a paradox, so maybe it's not what you really meant. But the proof of our success is all around if you're willing to actually look.

> But the proof of our success is all around if you're willing to actually look. Get a slice of humble pie. The proof of American failure is also all around if you're willing to actually look. Urbanism, health, environment, MAGA, Vietnam, Irak, Afghanistan. Easy to cherry pick, turns out many of us who have the luxury of being able to work in the US if they wanted to chose not to do so, maybe with good reasons? "Most…

What makes urbanism bad?

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#136

Post by Teever »

jopsen wrote: post #134
Teever wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The west coast is in for a rude awakening when they realize that they can't win a war against china with code, and they don't have jobs because they don't have chips to run their advertising code on anymore because China took Taiwan. Manufacturing is what builds up strong economies and it's what saves lives by preventing wars as long as possible and minimizes casualties on your side in war by fielding troops with mor…

If only the US had allies. But I guess it's hard to count on them when you're actively threading invasion! A war with China won't be won with manufacturing. It'll be won by having allies. If it actually comes to pass, you'll probably declined fighting the hot war, and opt for a cold one. But without allies it'll get real cold.

You can have all the allies in the world but if none of you have weapons and the means to make them you won't win.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#137

Post by chgs »

anon84873628 wrote: post #53
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been coasting on advances made many decades ago. Most developed, sure. Successful? By nearly any metric you can imagine or make up. Strongest? Our economy is eaten hollow by termites. A stiff wind would make it crumble. Worse, there doesn't appear to be any path to true recovery... we can't create the jobs that people need to prosper, but if we could somehow do that we no longer create the people who would grow…

Which people got the COVID vaccine first? Why is HN in English and always talking about FAANG? Why do kids all around the world play with Spiderman? Asking for "vital" and "21st century" is a paradox, so maybe it's not what you really meant. But the proof of our success is all around if you're willing to actually look.

> Which people got the COVID vaccine first?

U.K. and Sweden followed closely by Germany?

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#138

Post by palmotea »

neuralRiot wrote: post #133
palmotea wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that the US is already behind in innovation on that field, and better machines produce better machines. That's not a permanent situation, proven by the fact that the countries that are now ahead in machine tools used to be behind the US in machine tools. > So it’s “backwards in time” because you have to start manufacturing the shovel to start digging when your competitor has a backhoe. And even if yo…

>All you need is a little bit of investment and will. We’re cooked then. To give you some perspective I had some Chinese sales reps visiting my shop, they saw us working on some designs and casually asked about working hours i told them about 40hs/wk they laughed and said “in China engineers work 12hs a day 7 days a week”.

> We’re cooked then. To give you some perspective I had some Chinese sales reps visiting my shop, they saw us working on some designs and casually asked about working hours i told them about 40hs/wk they laughed and said “in China engineers work 12hs a day 7 days a week”.

Oh, the fallacy that grinding harder and longer leads to more and better results. Do you think you do your best work when you're exhausted?

Also, 996 is more typical in China, hated, and I believe illegal too. That kind of thing is one of the (many) reasons their population is starting to collapse.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#139

Post by caycep »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #40
tmpz22 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The factories of today are nothing like the 1980s factories this administration thinks they are going to bring back. Go to FRED or any other economic data site and plot manufacturing output and manufacturing employment on the same chart. The US manufactures more today than we ever have in history and it grows every year. Meanwhile, manufacturing employment is around its all time low and declines every year.

"manufacturing as a service", however that may look, might be more of a fit for the modern economy...unless we really regress back to 1930

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#140

Post by tokioyoyo »

sleepyguy wrote: post #20

The problem is cost. We used to buy tooling for Acme Multi-Spindle Screw Machines but the Chinese could produce it for a fraction of the cost. You would have the first set made locally, then send the drawings to China, and pay less than the material cost to have them shipped to your door. In competitive markets, customers hammer you for every penny on a machined item that costs 0.12. These days not many Screw machine…

I just don’t get what is the long term plan of who is even going to work in these factories. If they completely automate it, then it’s not bringing those jobs back. If they don’t… the median age in the US is 38.5. It’s not 80s when it was like 30. I don’t even think China can do what they did with their current demographics. An average person who will lose their service job won’t be competitive in a factory just because of their physical limits.

Oh well, good luck to you guys.

Post reply on HN