Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

rand.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 523 posts

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

#321

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

WalterBright wrote: post #316
runako wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was not true in the immediate postwar period. The turning point was roughly the 1980s. Wealth concentration has been a deliberate US domestic policy for decades. This is, to a large degree, separate from the stability of our currency or military protection. It's the stated intent and logical result of relaxing taxes on the rich while enacting policies designed to hurt the working classes (e.g. reducing union pow…

> Wealth concentration has been a deliberate US domestic policy for decades. Wealth is not concentrated in a market society. It is created. Some people creating more wealth than others is not "concentrating" wealth in their hands. Another way to put it is it is not a fixed pie, where if one gets more another necessarily gets less. If I buy some art supplies for $20, and paint a masterpiece I sell for $100,000, wealth…

Two societies. In each one, someone buys $20 of art supplies, paints a masterpiece and it sells for $100,000.

In one society, a marginal tax rate system taxes the artist with an upper rate of 92%, and they end up retaining about $50,000 of the income, with the rest flowing back into the control of the society (via its government).

In the other society, a margin tax rate system taxes the artist with an upper rate of 28%, and they end up retaining about $70,000 of the income. In this society, the artist retains control over twice as much of the income as flows back into the control of society.

"Wealth concentration" is not a policy related to markets, production, and trade. It's a policy related to taxation.

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

#322

Post by WalterBright »

mmooss wrote: post #282
blululu wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2020 during the largest public health crisis in a century, non-woven respiratory masks were found to be an effective intervention. The country that manufactured 90% of the world's respiratory masks took care of itself first and foremost at the expense of all other countries. You can't blame them for doing so, but you can avoid this scenario repeating itself in the future.

> The country that manufactured 90% of the world's respiratory masks took care of itself first and foremost at the expense of all other countries. You can't blame them for doing so Yes you can. People have a moral obligation to help others, including when they have to sacrifice, and they do it all the time. People make sacrifices all the time for the greater good. In fact, many of the extreme self-interest capitalist…

Everybody is selfish, including you and I, including the people you believe are selfless.

A functioning society cannot be built around people being selfless.

But a functioning society can be built around selfishness - free markets - and irony of ironies, free markets also do a great job of helping the less fortunate, a much better job than the selfless attempts.

(In the news a couple days ago, the CEO of an NGO charity funded by the government had awarded herself a $750,000 salary.)

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

#323

Post by rat87 »

consumer451 wrote: post #254
lesuorac wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an economic theory - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism The general idea is that when you buy stuff you're losing wealth so if you never buy anything then you never get poorer. Since we constantly dig gold up from the ground we still get richer over time even if nobody buys our stuff. This is also why its importantly to gain colonies (Greenland/ Canada) or mineral rights from other countries so that the…

My main concern is that de-globalizing trade will remove a large barrier for real kinetic war. Bombing your economic partner is generally a dumb move, and that has been pretty nice for humanity in the last ~50 years.

I think it won't change much because frankly the peace trade theory has not worked out very well. I think it was first formulated around WW1 and didn't stop it or WW2.

Most modern wars don't make financial sense when accounting for everything but they are still fought. Often over stupid reasons.

For example Russia invaded Ukraine despite trade partnership with Ukraine and EU.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_peace_theory has a better run

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

#324

Post by WalterBright »

mmooss wrote: post #277
Spooky23 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a little event a few years ago that answered your question. You give people money and they make crap. I helped procure like 30M masks. Nature finds a way. As a society, we’re more productive than we ever have been. We’re not breaking society to create a nation of workshops. This is a cynical power play.

> We’re not breaking society to create a nation of workshops. That's what Mao tried in the Great Leap Forward: They tried to shift steel production to a cottage industry in back yards. You can imagine the results. And also relevant: Everyone learned to say whatever Mao wanted to hear, so they all reported high and increasing production. It turns out that disinformation isn't economically productive, even if it feels…

The Soviet Union was famous for imaginary factories cranking out imaginary tractors.

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

#325

Post by mindslight »

WalterBright wrote: post #316
runako wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was not true in the immediate postwar period. The turning point was roughly the 1980s. Wealth concentration has been a deliberate US domestic policy for decades. This is, to a large degree, separate from the stability of our currency or military protection. It's the stated intent and logical result of relaxing taxes on the rich while enacting policies designed to hurt the working classes (e.g. reducing union pow…

> Wealth concentration has been a deliberate US domestic policy for decades. Wealth is not concentrated in a market society. It is created. Some people creating more wealth than others is not "concentrating" wealth in their hands. Another way to put it is it is not a fixed pie, where if one gets more another necessarily gets less. If I buy some art supplies for $20, and paint a masterpiece I sell for $100,000, wealth…

When people talk about wealth concentration, they're not talking about artists with high-variance paydays. They're focusing on all of the captive-market middlemen that have been allowed to set up shop playing negative sum games via regulatory capture, externalities, lack of anti-trust enforcement, etc.

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

#326

Post by wqaatwt »

lesuorac wrote: post #158
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…

It's an economic theory - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism The general idea is that when you buy stuff you're losing wealth so if you never buy anything then you never get poorer. Since we constantly dig gold up from the ground we still get richer over time even if nobody buys our stuff. This is also why its importantly to gain colonies (Greenland/ Canada) or mineral rights from other countries so that the…

When the global economy was close to being a zero sum game and the concerns about too much of your silver/gold flowing to China/etc. were real (Great Bullion Famine) it wasn’t that absurd. These days.. yeah..

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

#327

Post by WtfRuSerious »

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…

answer: people who solve every problem with war tend to advocate preparing for war... this would include re-implementing all our supply chains currently residing in the coutries we, imagined or not, see ourselves going to war with...

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

#328

Post by WalterBright »

klooney wrote: post #314
Tiktaalik wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA is already a lot more productive than everyone else. This is because the USA generates an enormous amount of wealth through very few people thanks to its technology and finance industry. Irony is that there's no end to handwringing editorials in Canada about our "productivity gap" between us and the USA and the USA under Trump is wanting to move itself backward and become less productive. Everyone else in the…

> thanks to its technology and finance industry There's been a great sucking sound from all the electrical and mechanical engineers switching to writing CRUD apps because the pay is double.

I switched from mechanical engineering to writing software because of the instant gratification of software machines. If you're designing a gearbox, it takes years to see the actual hardware, and you'd better have gotten the design right the first try, as changing the box gets very expensive.

I would have been much happier as an engineer working next to the shop where I could partner with the machinists.

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

#329

Post by WalterBright »

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…

> hang drywall

I can frame, but I'm a disaster at hanging drywall. I finally hired a craftsman to do it, and zip slap bang he had hung it and it was straight and the joints were tight and even and I could hardly believe it.

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

#330

Post by WalterBright »

mindslight wrote: post #325
WalterBright wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wealth concentration has been a deliberate US domestic policy for decades. Wealth is not concentrated in a market society. It is created. Some people creating more wealth than others is not "concentrating" wealth in their hands. Another way to put it is it is not a fixed pie, where if one gets more another necessarily gets less. If I buy some art supplies for $20, and paint a masterpiece I sell for $100,000, wealth…

When people talk about wealth concentration, they're not talking about artists with high-variance paydays. They're focusing on all of the captive-market middlemen that have been allowed to set up shop playing negative sum games via regulatory capture, externalities, lack of anti-trust enforcement, etc.

When people like Sanders talk about wealth concentration in billionaires like Musk, how did Musk make his money with negative sum games, regulatory capture, etc.?
Post reply on HN