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Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

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Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#291

Post by themaninthedark »

convolvatron wrote: post #245
themaninthedark wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some people who like the rote work. You and I may not but some of the people I talk to like that they can basically "turn their thinking off" and get paid. >Do one thing wrong, your finger gets chopped up This should not be possible in the US. OSHA is still in existence(you could argue that the future state is unknown) https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/19... >1910.212(a)(1) >Types of…

I've worked some in metal fabrication and supported some light industry. if you think anyone in a normal business in the US that hires less than 50 hourly people has even read the OSHA regs, you're completely unconnected with the reality we really do call those stamping machines 'finger eaters'

I work in manufacturing and stamping machines scare the shit out of me, usually because of the forces involved but I did work on some that were not guarded. That was not in the US however.

My first job with a stamping machine was in a company with about 30 production workers. This was early 2000s in the southern US, all the workers were from Latin America and I think that most of them were not here legally(I say this because the company used temp agencies to employ the workers and at one point later they wanted to bring one of them on in a management role so they had me(also a temp) ask if the person wanted too switch the the higher paying but also requiring them to submit legal documents role).

Even under those circumstances, I never saw the company do something that skirted OSHA regs. Their stamping machine was a POS that was annoying as hell to use, mostly because the light curtain and other safetys kept tripping but it was never bypassed.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#292

Post by detourdog »

runako wrote: post #36

There are so many underlying changes to the established relationship between Labor and Capital in the US that would be a necessary part of keeping jobs here that it would effectively make us a completely different country. For example -- suppose one could snap one's fingers and "bring back" millions of manufacturing jobs. What would lead one to conclude those would be the kind of "good jobs" everyone is envisioning?…

I think with the advancement of manufacturing techniques the future is in small run manufacturing. Manufacturing won’t return with a few companies employing thousands of people. My thinking is that manufacturing will return with thousands of companies employing around 10 people. The future will be more customized solving detailed problems with unique specification.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#293

Post by topspin »

Andrew Grove, in his later years, held the same view. He explained essentially everything we had seen till then and since: the decline of US semiconductor manufacturing, the loss of talent, critical dependence on foreign nations and companies, etc.

It turns out you can't cherry pick the intellectual work and fob the rest off on foreign supply and still maintain global leadership and domestic prosperity. The whole stack must be at least competitive domestically. Only trade policy can achieve this.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#294

Post by amalcon »

cpursley wrote: post #249
bflesch wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So European companies brought new jobs and prosperity to Greenville, SC, and the local Americans thanked Europe by voting 60% for Trump in the last election. How do you explain that? Why do the locals vote against the countries that provide them the jobs? Are you also pro-Trump because you live in that town?

HN sure does like beating up on folks in the Southern US by painting us all with the same brush, it's the worst kind of ugly.

To be fair -- there are a lot of people in the southern US who do the same thing to various demographics that HN users are likely to belong to. You can actually see serving politicians do that on TV, and have been able to see that for a long time. Not everyone does it, but not everyone on HN does it either. Indiscriminately doing the same thing back isn't good, but that kind of ugly seems to just be human nature.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#295

Post by almosthere »

psunavy03 wrote: post #131
runako wrote: post #36

There are so many underlying changes to the established relationship between Labor and Capital in the US that would be a necessary part of keeping jobs here that it would effectively make us a completely different country. For example -- suppose one could snap one's fingers and "bring back" millions of manufacturing jobs. What would lead one to conclude those would be the kind of "good jobs" everyone is envisioning?…

"We" have not "decided" anything other than collectively making decisions about what we are willing to pay for a given service. That ultimately is what sets wages. The only reason software development pays so well is because the market will bear it, and the market isn't some cabal of fat cats in top hats, monocles, and tails (or hoodies and Patagonia for that matter). It's the collective decisions of 330 million peop…

The largest reason software development costs a lot is that a cabal of people had been desperately trying to lock out smaller companies from having access to software engineering resources at such a cheap rate and eventually get taken out.

I get that from another perspective your answer is also correct, but the reality is the large pay is really so that EA's blockbuster video game sells and a small upstart of 45 software people that want to make their own amazing game does not beat them. Those 45 people will take the paycheck rather than collectively start a game company now.

What happens next no one is sure, but I can tell you, that if the amount of cheap software surfaces because 1 man army companies take out TeamViewer, Photoshop, Jira, etc... because of LLMs - then those wages will drop, and drop fast and it has nothing to do with the 330 million people "having a say".

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#296

Post by t43562 »

You cannot replicate the situation where the US was the workshop of the world at a time when other major industrial powers had been smashed by war...unless you try to smash them or encourage them to have a war....

Other countries develop and need less of the basic products that they can begin to make for themselves, they create trade blocs where they can begin to achieve scale greater than the US or they simply are bigger anyhow. If the US can substitute imports then so can they.

IMO the US has ridden the wave because that was the only sensible thing to do and it has stayed rich as a result. Adjustments may be needed - it's not safe to not be able to make fairly modern chips - but the whole world will get poorer if one splits it up and prevents scaling.

What to do now...well....

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#297

Post by _DeadFred_ »

phkahler wrote: post #125
runako wrote: post #36

There are so many underlying changes to the established relationship between Labor and Capital in the US that would be a necessary part of keeping jobs here that it would effectively make us a completely different country. For example -- suppose one could snap one's fingers and "bring back" millions of manufacturing jobs. What would lead one to conclude those would be the kind of "good jobs" everyone is envisioning?…

>> We have jobs, we have just decided that the people working those jobs are not deserving of prosperity. I read an article years ago talking about a man that worked as a janitor for a US public school. He was just getting by on whatever that job paid. Someone (school board, business person, IDK) said if he wanted to make more money he should get more education himself, or learn some new skills so he'd be worth more…

It used to be 'America, land of the free' and we hero worshiped homeless dudes who happened to chase after cattle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy

Now it's 'America, land of the greed' and fox news talking heads say homeless dudes should just be executed.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade saying that homeless people should receive "involuntary lethal injections"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phYOrM3SNV8

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#298

Post by naasking »

efitz wrote: post #81
okaram wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Porque no los dos? He was a super-rich guy, who had had too many people telling him he was a genius for way too long (reminds you of anybody?), and so was way too sure of himself. A bunch of his ideas were crazy, which doesn't mean others weren't trying to dismiss his views.

> A bunch of his ideas were crazy Which ones? btw young idealistic me voted for Perot in 1992

I too would like to know.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#299

Post by gosub100 »

terminalshort wrote: post #142
afavour wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of that many times where I've had a choice. I could get a nice, expensive dress shirt made in the US but for general clothing it's extremely difficult to buy domestic. Frankly, a lot of the corporations are still to blame because they're the ones actively concentrating wealth at the top. If I had more disposable income I'd buy more made in the US products but my budget simply doesn't allow it.

But you wouldn't. You, and everybody else, would see several shirts that looked basically the same and not pick the expensive one without giving it any more thought. If you think I'm wrong, go start a company that makes shirts in the US. You will make a fortune because demand is completely unmet.

I recently came to a tangential realization (obviously I'm not the first to notice) regarding "cheap Chinese knockoffs":

The US company outsources the manufacturing to China because "they have to" (I don't necessarily agree with that), Chinese company keeps the assembly line running a few extra hours and resells the units back in the US under a slightly different name.

This equation is so comical to me:

The greed-driven US company screams that it's "fake", yet they didn't do anything illegal by outsourcing, just put Americans out of jobs. But if they don't build in China, a competitor will.

The Chinese company is driven by the same "profit over everything" motive and doesn't infringe on the US companys trade mark, but competes with the US company with essentially an identical product minus the R&D costs.

US company cries foul, "they're stealing our trade secrets!" Creates FUD about China but has no legal standing to do anything about it. Reeks of the same "immoral but completely legal" argument the former/would-be employees make

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#300

Post by dr-detroit »

almosthere wrote: post #281
ryandrake wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of all the many industries out there, I don't understand why we keep glorifying and romanticizing manufacturing and trying to "bring it back." I've also worked a few of these jobs and you're right: THEY SUCK. Depending on what you are manufacturing, it can be boring, stressful, stinky, physically taxing, or dangerous. And most of them, even the highly skilled ones, don't pay well. For the sake of our own society,…

Because there are 300M people in the US and not all of them can have your cushy SSE role. See all the homeless people - it's because we're selling them out.

[dead]
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