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Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

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Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#171

Post by glofish »

mech1234 wrote: post #141
wasdfff wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 1940s sweaters were american made, did not cost $400, and the median american had more disposable income than now. The people who benefitted from outsourcing were those buying shares, not sweaters.

If you think the median american had more disposable income in 1940 than today, you are hilariously uninformed. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DSPIC96 (only goes back to ~1960, and the I think this is mean, not median, but also a huge enough trend that it is impossible to deny).

I am trying to understand that graph, it is not so easy actually.

What does it mean that 2020 shows 15K average disposable income in the US? That the average person has 15K left once they pay absolutely necessary to subsist? I find it hard to believe.

I think most people using the word "disposable income" would use the term the way I stated. Also the post you reply to uses it in that sense, not as a relative value to taxes.

I believe this graph shows something different altogether, it simply shows wages - taxes. It has no bearing as to the purchasing power of that salary and what you could afford with it.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#172

Post by lightbritefight »

whatshisface wrote: post #111
baq wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US on a federal level 'has done nothing and is all out of ideas' as the memes go, except perhaps suppressing states to do their own testing. This is in a way inverse of what happened in China and arguably worse because in China when the federal-level authority caught wind of the scale of the problem they dropped the hammer so hard the whole world is still ringing. The US on the other hand knows there's an epidemi…

One of the biggest advantages of the US system is that power is spread out between the federal, state, and local governments, and corporations, and private individuals. Rampant incompetence at one level of the system can be fixed by other levels.

Can be fixed, but wont necessarily be fixed. In fact, it means that multiple levels can be incompetent or even actively malicious, increasing the dysfunction past what a central authority is capable of. Each "check and balance" can be used to force an otherwise working system into deadlock, which can have very destructive to whomever or whatever depends on that system.

You can see this in our easily manipulated and poorly deployed voting system, our poor response to the current pandemic, our limited and overly expensive healthcare, on and on.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#173

Post by Seenso »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #98
kentosi wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking of this the other day. Perhaps this pandemic will help reshape our global economy away from its current monolithic structure into self-sustainable micro-service economies where all regions can self-sustain to a large level. (Apologies for the nerdy analogy but this is Hacker News...)

Sounds incredibly inefficient

> Sounds incredibly inefficient

Just like having redundant servers for your applications and backups for your data.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#174

Post by heymijo »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #157
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They didn't want a $400 locally knitted sweater, made from neighborhood sheep. They wanted a $40 sweater that was made as efficiently as possible, and $360 of change. Except that the difference was never that large and never had to be that local. What happened was that they didn't want a $42 sweater made on the same continent over a $40 sweater made on the other side of the world, because it gave back $2 in change.…

I actually looked into american made clothing: Jeans. American-made jeans are anywhere from $160-300. I can also buy some jeans at Levi's for $60-100. It is not as small as you depict and also not as large as you are responding to, but it is still a very real gap.

I'm not sure those are comparable.

Comparing almost boutique level jeans made in the U.S. with mass produced Levi's made elsewhere doesn't help us determine price differences in off-shoring vs. manufacturing in the U.S.

I think what we would need to know is how much would a pair of Levi's cost if all of them were produced in the United States.

tl;dr: What is, isn't necessarily what could be.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#175

Post by hinkley »

hef19898 wrote: post #149
hinkley wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Resiliency only pays off when there's a crisis resiliency mostly pays off when there's a crisis. You can reduce latency in systems by sourcing things closer to use, but having a fallback farther away. It's a tradeoff though. If I have two suppliers, the odds that I have 'a supplier issue' are doubled. But the odds that I have no supply at all is lower.

Two suppliers are more resilient so, you always have a fall back. Suppliers run into trouble all the time, single sources screw you in that case. Cluster risks are always bad.

You can also play the suppliers off each other. My dad's employer did a lot of data processing. They had two computer vendors they liked to keep near a 50-50 split when they weren't punishing one of them for some perceived slight.

I learned much later that the only way to get IBM and some other big vendors to do anything at all for you is to move your checkbook. That is, if the checkbook might be coming out of your pocket, they're interested. If you threaten to put it away, they are very interested. The rest of the time? Fuck you, we have other checkbooks to worry about.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#176

Post by s_dev »

zkms wrote: post #54

This is the cruel and predictable result of a society that has meticulously and senselessly offshored/outsourced most its industrial capacity. If your country can't manufacture, from raw materials , all the electrical/electronic/mechanical components, the tooling, the equipment, and the chemicals (industrial and pharmaceutical alike) it needs to keep everything running, you're dependent on these hyper-fragile and con…

China, the US and the EU are fundamentally different to most other countries/economies. They are political and economic super powers -- effectively.

Ireland simply cannot make everything the way China can from scratch. It's not even an option on the table let alone some abstract trade off. Complex supply chains are the only way to achieve any meaningful economic growth.

This also affects how our economy works. We don't get the same "multiplier effect" that the US will get from a stimulus package.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#177

Post by Notorious_BLT »

brink wrote: post #2

On the bright side, a disruption in supply may teach us what we really need, and what we don't need. Maybe after this breakout we'll realize the importance of slowing down, consuming less, and resting more.

I'll tell you what I do really need: one pack of toilet paper, because I just happened to be running out of my last Costco pack right now. Trying to make whats left last.

Maybe now is the time to buy a bidet add-on seat.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#178

Post by beaunative »

dumbfoundded wrote: post #18

This has happened to my company and a few others I know. We have about $15K of packaging stuck in China. If this is doing anything (to me personally), it's making me reconsider shifting more of the supply-chain to the US. In many cases, the prices aren't really that different.

"In many cases, the prices aren't really that different."

I beg to differ.

To be precise, for trade/production companies, even a 30% difference in price would be huge. But if you only buy souvenirs or gift wrappings etc, those might not matter that much, as they might just be less tha 1% in the final price of whatever you're selling. but for some companies or industries, it means 30% cheaper in terms of all their material and products, which would be insane increase for their profits.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#179

Post by KarlKemp »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #154
KarlKemp wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn’t China’s fault that this disease happened to emerge in the country. And judging by what we see from other countries, their handling of it seems to be at least as good as mosts’, not even taking into account that countries like US had two months extra to prepare. So maybe chill on the nationalism (and the exclamation marks)

Uhh, they could have permanently banned wet markets. Every epidemiologist knew that something like this pandemic was eventually inevitable China absolutely could have prevented this but there wasn't a desire to do so because CCP officials like to eat bats sometimes too

There is absolutely no proof that this originated with someone eating bats. Bats often life close to humans—in attics for instance—and aren’t eaten raw. That makes it far more likely initial transmission was due to someone accidentally touching bat shit than anyone eating bats.

That this theory is widely being accepted as proven fact is itself evidence of the accusation of racism you’re trying to defend against.

Re: Coronavirus has disrupted supply chains for nearly 75% of U.S. companies

#180

Post by remarkEon »

s_dev wrote: post #176
zkms wrote: post #54

This is the cruel and predictable result of a society that has meticulously and senselessly offshored/outsourced most its industrial capacity. If your country can't manufacture, from raw materials , all the electrical/electronic/mechanical components, the tooling, the equipment, and the chemicals (industrial and pharmaceutical alike) it needs to keep everything running, you're dependent on these hyper-fragile and con…

China, the US and the EU are fundamentally different to most other countries/economies. They are political and economic super powers -- effectively. Ireland simply cannot make everything the way China can from scratch. It's not even an option on the table let alone some abstract trade off. Complex supply chains are the only way to achieve any meaningful economic growth. This also affects how our economy works. We don…

>Complex supply chains are the only way to achieve any meaningful economic growth.

I call BS. Complex supply chains are one of the ways to achieve questionably meaningful _GDP_ growth. Hopefully one of the outcomes of this crisis is that we start to question the "number go up" ethos of most conventional economists. It's true that Ireland can't make "everything" from scratch. But do they need to? Though, this becomes an almost circular philosophical discussion very quickly.

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