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

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

#211

Post by xenadu02 »

I just bought a lathe to lock in prices before tariffs cause them to rise. Its a hobby I've wanted to get into for a long time.

There are no manufacturers of screw cutting lathes (a variant of engine lathes and what most people think of as a manual lathe) left in the USA. If you look at old 60s/70s catalogs of lathes the basic models would cost around $15,000 in adjusted money. The Chinese imports are $3000.

Could someone make a competitive lathe for around $3000 in the USA? Perhaps. But it will take significant investment to make that happen. I'm not sure where that investment will come from as Wall Street has no interest in such things.

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

#212

Post by dgfitz »

anon84873628 wrote: post #115
pjc50 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, I believe we're talking about switching our role from consumer in the global economy to producer. What do you think the Chinese could even buy with all the trade deficit cash they're squirreling away, when we don't make anything? Some large chunk of it is buying up stock, real estate, etc. Give them something else to buy. Meanwhile over at the People's Daily, someone starts to type up "Why should we accept the…

It the *right wing* Americans who go bananas calling you a communist. The left by and large wants to implement more social programs to reduce inequality and allow the growth of a middle class in our existing economy. You could probably say this is the crux of the culture war.

I have never understood this.

If everyone is educated, who is going to collect your garbage, fix your car, replace your broken pipe in the wall, cut down the rest of the tree that fell across the street, stock your groceries, sell you fast food, drive trucks across the country, build houses and buildings, pump septic tanks… I can keep going.

I don’t get it, never have. Education is not some magical bullet. In fact, having attended college and graduated with a now-lucrative job as an sw engineer, I can say I learned almost nothing at all in college because of the institution itself. At best it made me teach myself whatever was in the class textbooks. The professors mostly spoke English as a second or 3rd language and the TAs were even worse.

“Oh the culture, the diversity!” Meant absolutely nothing to me, I’ve had diverse family and friends since I was a child.

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

#213

Post by alabastervlog »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #23
elictronic wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manufacturing will start coming back based on the high tariffs just with two big caveats. 1. Manufacturing takes time and money to setup. This is a software forum where changes are made at lighting speed. Manufacturing requires capital, years, and will. In software it might take a day to make an obvious change. Manufacturing hopefully 6 months. Working with physical systems takes time. 2. Manufacturing does not mean…

> Manufacturing takes time and money to setup. Trump has 4 years if he survives that long. He's an old man. The trade war can't possibly last long enough for manufacturing to be forced to restart domestically. Even if this was his first term and he got a second, by the time the second rolls around everyone would just hope to wait it out until the Democrats retook the White House and they could import everything from…

Besides, all the "I'm tariffing! Maybe not. I'm tariffing! I'm super serious this time! Maybe not" leading up to this destroyed confidence that these'll even be fully implemented—the tariffs are still rolling out, and will be until early next month. And if implemented, will he keep them going? Month after month? I don't think most people with capital believe it.

Proof of the uncertainty is that Wall Street clearly thinks there's a good chance he'll back off. That's why the market still has room to keep falling, rather than having already fallen as far as it will for a while. It's got a lot of room left. All that room is people betting he's not going to keep this up.

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

#214

Post by squigz »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #172
jmward01 wrote: post #142

I keep seeing people advocating that the idea that we should build everything, and every piece or everything, here is a good one. Why? Is this just an isolationist dream? The reductive, absurd, extreme of this is why don't individual people go out and build all their own stuff like cars and houses. Let's all go out and learn how to mine and refine metal ore so we can get started on building the family sedan! There is…

There are two main reasons that individuals don't build their own houses and cars from scratch. 1) They don't know how. Specialization is a thing. But this is a thing that applies to individuals rather than nations. You don't need every person to know how to mine ore or hang drywall as long as somebody does. But a country the size of the US could certainly contain someone who knows how to do any given thing. 2) They…

> Specialization is a thing. But this is a thing that applies to individuals rather than nations. You don't need every person to know how to mine ore or hang drywall as long as somebody does. But a country the size of the US could certainly contain someone who knows how to do any given thing.

When you scale up the thinking past rudimentaries like 'hanging drywall', it still applies to nations - instead of "do we have enough people who know how to mine ore" it's "do we have the capability of mining enough ore to meet our needs" and the various intricacies that come with those massive-scale problems - problems that are much more easily solved when backed by a global economy.

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

#215

Post by banqjls »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #190
tharne wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Everything” may be a bit extreme, but seriously, have you already forgotten the lessons learned during the Covid supply shocks? I don't why the mainstream media isn't focusing more on this angle. Five years ago the richest, most powerful, country in the world couldn't get basic medical supplies to its citizens during a public health crisis. That should have terrified us into making major policy changes, but instea…

The US can barely get basic medical supplies to much of its population outside of a health crisis - not because of direct supply chain issues, but because the system is designed to put corporate profits over adequate service provision. And in the not so general case, over national security. Is manufacturing the real problem here? Or is it a symptom of decades of systemic mismanagement of opportunity by a culture that…

Way to misdirect a totally valid point

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

#216

Post by WorldPeas »

yojo wrote: post #103
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It turns out production of most goods is commoditized and a race to the bottom (assuming free trade), so if you want margins that can support high salaries, you have to move up the value chain (read: services). I know, right? When you go home and sit down on your Oracle database to relax, then go to the kitchen to cook your evening meal in an AWS Lambda, then afterwards relax a little more by changing into some spre…

To be clear, I’m not saying your or anyone else’s life is “nice.” I’m saying that however nice (or not) your life currently is, it will be worse. Those goods at Walmart will cost 30% more and still be equally threadbare. You’re mixing two things together, the declining quality of goods, and the places those goods are made. Did you know you can buy premium clothes made in China? You can. Check out producers like Bob D…

One of the "big things" people would joke about alongside solving world hunger was world clothelessness. People don't seem to realize that in our global economic state (at least a week ago) we solved that problem so hard that there's a pile of clothes in the atacama desert¹ (not to say it's without its consequences). Plastic microfibers are a problem I admit, but I would happily eat my weekly credit card(/s) knowing that far fewer people have to go naked. I for one hope that thrifting can fill the gaps, it may take a while to replace the 8000+ laborers that take part in making your white t-shirt² and maybe more.

[1] https://www.space.com/mountain-discarded-clothes-chile-satel... [2] https://www2.hm.com/en_us/productpage.0568593005.html

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

#217

Post by AnthonyMouse »

master_crab wrote: post #206
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two main reasons that individuals don't build their own houses and cars from scratch. 1) They don't know how. Specialization is a thing. But this is a thing that applies to individuals rather than nations. You don't need every person to know how to mine ore or hang drywall as long as somebody does. But a country the size of the US could certainly contain someone who knows how to do any given thing. 2) They…

Specialization also applies to nations. It is literally the foundation on which David Ricardo described the comparative advantage economic model. We can argue some nations have been pretty unfair with their tariff rates over the years, but let’s not ignore 200 years of economic science.

That applies when your model of a country is on the scale of something like Switzerland or Ireland, which is to say something on the scale of Pennsylvania or Colorado.

The US is more on the scale of a continent than a country.

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

#218

Post by AnthonyMouse »

squigz wrote: post #214
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two main reasons that individuals don't build their own houses and cars from scratch. 1) They don't know how. Specialization is a thing. But this is a thing that applies to individuals rather than nations. You don't need every person to know how to mine ore or hang drywall as long as somebody does. But a country the size of the US could certainly contain someone who knows how to do any given thing. 2) They…

> Specialization is a thing. But this is a thing that applies to individuals rather than nations. You don't need every person to know how to mine ore or hang drywall as long as somebody does. But a country the size of the US could certainly contain someone who knows how to do any given thing. When you scale up the thinking past rudimentaries like 'hanging drywall', it still applies to nations - instead of "do we have…

That's something different than specialization.

Suppose you have enough mining production to meet half of domestic demand. Then you still have mining production, and know how to do it, and if it was necessary you could scale it up or reduce domestic consumption somewhat from the uses that aren't as important. Whereas if you outsource all of it or nearly so, i.e. actual specialization, it's a vulnerability whether to enemy action or just a single point of failure that subjects the whole world to unexpected localized turmoil in the only place that makes that.

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

#219

Post by TylerE »

olyjohn wrote: post #194
squigz wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was mask manufacturing capacity during the pandemic an issue?

I think so, isn't that why they brought in all the KN95 masks? The K meaning "Korean."

KN95 is Chinese.

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

#220

Post by slicktux »

Aloisius wrote: post #208
slicktux wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a pretty hyperbolic paragraph only to imply that we as a nation would loose out on innovation by doing so; nowhere do we want to isolate as a country. Look at all the jobless Americans in once thriving industrial cities. Generations left without pensions or skills all because we outsource our workers to other countries. That’s one of the many problems that need to be solved and by manufacturing here in the US…

We manufacture more today than at any time in history. We just do it with a whole lot fewer people. Have jobs been lost to outsourcing? Sure. But far more jobs have been lost to automation and the elimination of obsolete industries. While companies might have avoided investing in automation through the use of cheap labor in other countries, there is little doubt that will change if they re-shore.

So tariffs shouldn’t be a problem since we “manufacture more than we did ever before”! we’ll be able to buy USA made and avoid high cost of imports; great!
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