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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

#151

Post by _delirium »

gojomo wrote: post #114
Hubbert wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are currently losing this non-war. The Chinese are playing to win this non-war.

The trade is mutually beneficial; it's not a zero-sum game that necessarily has winners and losers. From the trade, we in the USA get cheaper products and low-cost loans/investment. We then enact counter-productive feel-good policies that make us less competitive: - employment-depressing labor rules (ranging from minimum wages to complex and expensive mandates) - corporate welfare (including bailouts) - subsidies for…

The benefits are very short-term at the cost of long-term benefits, though. We get cheap products now, at the cost of losing our ability to produce them. There are wide ranges of products now that the U.S. no longer knows how to manufacture. Even if we wanted to build factories to produce stuff again, we no longer know how, unless China were willing to lend us experts. And there's an even bigger range of things that would take us 5-10 years to ramp up if we really needed to make them again.

Basically we traded owning our own production for renting production from overseas. Renting often has lower immediate costs but higher long-term costs (and less freedom).

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#152

Post by _delirium »

starkfist wrote: post #52

It's interesting to hear this from Andy Grove. Intel of the 1990s was constantly being called out as an abusive workplace, exploiting H1B and "home grown" engineers, then laying them off when they got too old and sending their work overseas. Although I agree with most of his essay, I'm not sure I would want to be an employee in whatever scheme he is envisioning.

He doesn't quite come out and say it, but I almost see his own policies as what he's now reacting against. Saying something like: If I were in charge of U.S. policy, I wouldn't allow Intel to do the kinds of things it did when I was in charge of it.

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#153

Post by wslh »

It's sad that after a nice article he ends thinking in taxing, it sounds like a lost case when you need taxes to solve the problem!

My naive point of view sees lowering lifecost (cheaper real state, health insurance, etc) so people needs less money to live in a good way and costs can go down. That can't be done in Silicon Valley or NYC but thanks to the technology and good transportation can be done in other areas of the country with good planning.

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#154

Post by cia_plant »

Aaronontheweb wrote: post #146
cia_plant wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation?

Seriously? Have you been living in a cave for the past two weeks? Try using Google. Ok you know what - I'll do it: The sandberms fiasco was the work of the Fish and Wildlife Service: http://www.wdsu.com/news/23997498/detail.html The "A-Whale" fiasco appears to be a joint fail between the Coast Guard and the EPA - among many other things they've had to sit around and wait for an EPA permit before they can start the wo…

Well, that does have something to do with oil skimmers, and something to do with the EPA, but it doesn't support what anamax said. Obviously I did search google for terms like "EPA oil skimmer", which came up with this "A Whale" stuff and little else - so I was wondering if anamax had a source which addressed his particular claims (apparently not). The sand berms thing seems to be inaccurately paraphrased by anamax as well.

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#155

Post by CamperBob »

timr wrote: post #113
CamperBob wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of them shifted into fields that didn't exist in 1900 because in 1900, food and shelter were the majority of what people in the US worked for. Exactly -- science led to technology which led to job creation. That's the whole story of the 20th century, with a couple of wars tossed in to keep things moving. Meanwhile, in 2010, science and technology are just two more things most Americans take for granted. We still…

"Meanwhile, in 2010, science and technology are just two more things most Americans take for granted. We still have to fight the Scopes monkey trial every few years, we couldn't get back to the Moon with any less time and money than it took the first time, and especially since 9/11, we're no longer a place where the world's STEM students come to study and live." You're actually very wrong about foreign STEM students…

You're actually very wrong about foreign STEM students

Am I?

(every US graduate school is filled with Chinese grad students and post-docs), but that's neither here nor there

What happens immediately after they graduate?

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#156

Post by anamax »

cia_plant wrote: post #133
anamax wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be the EPA that is blocking the use of many oil skimmers in the Gulf and forcing the ones that they approve to run at about 1/6th efficiency. And that's the department of labor that is keeping experienced crews from running the skimmers that the EPA approves. I forget which department decided that oil in sensitive wetlands was better than putting up sand berms.

Citation?

http://www.examiner.com/x-325-Global-Warming-Examiner~y2010m...

You can also Google "Jones Act".

Suppose that my original post hadclaimed that Obama was doing a great job and offered comparable support. Would you have asked for citations?

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#157

Post by linhares »

binaryfinery wrote: post #145
3d3mon wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trade policies and externalities have absolutely nothing to do with that. You're right on that since we're clearly talking past each other :-) Yes, businesses become commodities over time. We agree here. However this is orthogonal to innovation and job creation. If an old mature industry is on its last throes, then by all means, farm that out. Those jobs are gone. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're…

Except that if we do, China will simply stop recycling its share of our government debt and the US government defaults. It will take a president with huge balls to call China on its trade war, and risk having to monetize that debt.

As of now, if I remember correctly, China has over 2 Trillion greenbacks. It's _impossible_ to win a trade war. We're talking about something _very_ much like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis#Financial_pressure

It is easy to be protectionist. But a major selloff of the USD by China would create the mother of all confidence crises, and, while _everyone_ would lose, the world's reserve currency, the USD, would be forever damaged.

This is not a war you can realistically fight to win. I really expected more from someone of Grove's intellect. Much much more.

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#158

Post by stretchwithme »

3d3mon wrote: post #82
CamperBob wrote: post #35

The real elephant in the room, which Grove and practically everybody else knows very well but refuses to talk about, is that nobody starts a company to employ people. People start a company to make stuff . To the extent this can be done with fewer people, this is always a good thing from that company's perspective, with no exceptions I can think of offhand. People suck, and you don't want to deal with them if you can…

> Grove is basically saying we need to start more companies that "scale up" to require factories where people sit doing stuff like what's seen in that video. He's wrong. You have to give Grove more credit than that. Obviously, he does not want to create clock-punching jobs just for the sake of having clock-punching jobs. Grove is known to run a tight ship. His example of the alternative energy space is a perfect one…

"Can't forget their dollar/yuan "managed" exchange rate"

A currency tied to the dollar is not a subsidy, any more than a common currency between New York and New Jersey is a subsidy for New Jersey exports.

Borrowing creates trade deficits. The US has been borrowing massive amounts to simulate prosperity.

When you borrow for the sake of consumption, you import a lot and export a lot less.

It doesn't matter what other countries do. What matters are the choices we make for ourselves. And massive government borrowing and super low rates are bad choices with bad consequences.

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#159

Post by mattmcknight »

He ignores the fundamental problem- the American worker is overpaid. Why would anyone work at the wages of a Chinese laborer when you can make as much money as a Foxconn production line worker ($1.25/hr x 60hr week) in about 10 hours per week at minimum wage here, about 6 hours per week at factory job? We need to find a way to avoid the sticky wage problem, and it will likely involve inflation.

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#160

Post by Vivtek »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #141
Kadin wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it really healthy for Silicon Valley if Apple has a factory cranking out iPhones in Cupertino You're begging the question; there is a country beyond Silicon Valley, and Grove's argument is that what is best for Silicon Valley (meaning, the bottom lines of a few tech firms which together only employ a small percentage of the U.S. population) isn't necessarily what is best for the country as a whole. Put more dire…

Suppose, hypothetically, that we really do reach a stage where we have a small number of highly productive individuals and a large number of unskilled people without manufacturing work to do. In that case, it is likely that the skilled will hire the unskilled as servants, making the skilled people even more productive (every hour spent doing laundry is an hour spent not designing the latest iPhone). People will proba…

Y'know, if you really think that's inevitable, you could try living in the Third World for a while and see how well that works out for you.
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