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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

#251

Post by aphyt »

adwn wrote: post #176
aphyt wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even reading up on his history is difficult given how credulous tech media is in general. With tech media basically turning the smoke machines on all around something, I can't blame people from assuming there is fire somewhere. I've often said that the most reliable way to get "rich rich" is to watch where money is flowing from point A to point B, stand in the middle and stick your hand out. Elon has certainly master…

> I've often said that the most reliable way to get "rich rich" is to watch where money is flowing from point A to point B, stand in the middle and stick your hand out. Oh come on. If it were this simple, everyone would be doing it. Why aren't you "watching where the money is flowing and sticking your hand out"? > Elon has certainly mastered that, but I don't have to ascribe "genius" to it. Musk is vastly overhyped b…

I'm content with being rich. Most people are content with less than that. Maybe I'm reading the guy wrong, but he doesn't seem happy or content. So why would I do something I don't want to do to achieve something that I don't need.

As for the real value of SpaceX and Tesla. I think there is value there, but probably less than most and I don't buy into "great man theory", so I would probably ascribe the success to the actual engineers and designers that did a majority of the work. He is a good leader for what he is trying to accomplish with those two companies as far as I can tell.

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

#252

Post by polygamous_bat »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #250
polygamous_bat wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you also preach everyone to learn self-defense when they propose making mugging illegal? No, in the best world we do both.

Clicking radio button on a website is not at all comparable to learning self defense. Also, front running is already illegal. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/frontrunning.asp

> Clicking radio button on a website is not at all comparable to learning self defense.

However, stealing money is still stealing money.

> Also, front running is already illegal.

Great! Which means there are sometimes legitimate reasons to clamp down on "hyper-efficient" but socially negative actors.

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

#253

Post by tim333 »

Some of this isn't as bad as it looks due to the way the accounting works. Take Apple products. They basically lead the world in laptops and phones, designed in America but because the manufacturing is done abroad it appears as a trade deficit even though most of the design and profit accrue to Apple shareholders.

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

#254

Post by klyrs »

tim333 wrote: post #253

Some of this isn't as bad as it looks due to the way the accounting works. Take Apple products. They basically lead the world in laptops and phones, designed in America but because the manufacturing is done abroad it appears as a trade deficit even though most of the design and profit accrue to Apple shareholders.

It looks this bad: the rich get richer and the middle class slide toward poverty.

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

#255

Post by ianburrell »

coliveira wrote: post #126
bell-cot wrote: post #17

Obvious Solution: Re-establish the military draft, but with a far smaller pool of potential draftees - and make sure the families of current & recent members of Congress, Wall Street big-shots, Fortune 500 CxO's, McKinsey consultants, and such are all assigned to serve in front-line "meat shield" battalions on the western shores of Taiwan, just south of Korea's DMZ, etc.

You should remember that the US military is a two-tier system: there are the officers who rarely see real battle, and the rank and file who effectively die. In the case of war, if the rich ever serve they will be officers, they will only command other less fortunate to battle.

Junior officers had a higher death rate than enlisted in Vietnam. Junior officers lead their men and suffer the same risks. It is the senior officers that command behind the lines.

That might be changing with smart weapons. 15 Russian generals have died in Ukraine, enough to have Wikipedia page.

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

#256

Post by tharmas »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #158
sudosysgen wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEOs are employed by the board, the board is made of major stockholders, those are pensions funds and other investors mainly interested in stock prices. No need for conspiracy theories or pitchfork waving, it's just all working exactly how it's openly designed to.

If you were a major shareholder in a company, would you favor a CEO who ran it into the ground?

Please see the story of Jack Welch CEO of GE.

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

#257

Post by pphysch »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #133
pphysch wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's like saying the US economy is doing great in 2010 by using data that ends in 2006.

The last 3-4 years have been awful for the median American. The "prosperity" of 201X-2019 was funded by loose financial conditions: it's basically just debt. Purely debt-driven "growth" should not be mistaken for a healthy economy. And we are feeling the consequences of that debt-driven growth now, with high inflation, recession conditions, and a global sidle away from the dollar.

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

#258

Post by CoastalCoder »

yterdy wrote: post #232
michaelt wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEO pay is certainly way too high, I agree. But look at any big corporation, take the CEO's total compensation and divide it by the number of employees. The CEO of IBM earns an obscene $16.5 million per year - but divide that by IBM's 288,300 employees and it's $60 per employee per year. Wal-mart's CEO makes $25.31 million, but it's only $12 per employee per year. Even if we redistributed the CEO's entire salary to w…

This is quite an arbitrary metric.

I find GP's metric useful.

It helps address the question: wouldn't the company perform better if we did other things with that excess money?

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

#259

Post by jdk354 »

layer8 wrote: post #193
madengr wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saving is futile with a 3% loss on your money each year. Unless you invest it you are losing it.

Investments come with risks. The trade-off of cash losing its value over time is that it’s relatively less risky. You split your assets into cash and investments to achieve an overall combined risk profile. In that sense, cash is just another investment with a certain risk-return ratio (even when the return is negative).

Your cash over time is guaranteed to lose almost all its value. While, if you invest in something, it could be even gold or silver, could be a house, could be a global market cap index fund, it holds more of its value than a fiat currency does. So no, fiat currencies lose everything and even with risks involved with other investments, the risks are still less than cash. Cash over time is one of the worst investments.

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

#260

Post by no_wizard »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #137
no_wizard wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 -- bu…

It is beneficial. I generally believe in free trade as long as both sides have agreements in place that follows laws and policies mutual to both parties

However not every situation is like this. For instance, offshoring was used to artificially suppress wages of IT workers. That’s not mutually beneficial in the slightest. It’s abusing one cost advantage over another without a clear benefit to both sides, it only served to enrich shareholders

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