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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)

#371

Post by aj7 »

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…

Nobody is concerned with any of that. A $15,000 Chinese mechanical engineer is just as productive as an American who expects $70,000 for his efforts. This repeats over and over, from the lowest level workers to the executives. It is destroying the lives of our non-elite workers, who in turn, voted for a mad man. It’s only going to get worse. The hunger for knowledge and development is much stronger outside the U.S. than inside.

Tariffs are going to put our high tech industries under enormous pressure. There are two reasons. It makes sense to import parts and lower tech components of everything we manufacture because our trading partners have developed an economic advantage in the production of those types of parts. If we make materials and those lower tech factors of production more expensive, we kill ourselves. It’s economic suicide. And high tech industries live by exporting. In equilibrium, the market outside the U.S. is much larger than the internal market. As we are to China and the rest of the world, as Germany, roughly, is to us, we will prosper only by exporting high tech, advanced design products. Everything we do has to cultivate that process.

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

#372

Post by protocolture »

dalemhurley wrote: post #280
bitmasher9 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is really effective at increasing the amount of gold in your vault, but The Wealth of Nations (Admin Smith) made a strong case against that primary goal. Crucially for the HackerNews crowd, Mercantilism increases the value of physical goods relative to services, and services becomes a smaller portion of the overall economy. Most of us sell server-time wrapped in software that performs a service…

Ironically, Adam Smith would be called a socialist in modern USA with his views on preventing monopolistic behaviours, the need for government oversight and controls, and the need for strong public goods where the private market fails. So many people would benefit from reading his works.

I am a big believer in taking part of someones idea set doesnt mean you need to import their entire idea set.

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

#373

Post by Danmctree »

hayst4ck wrote: post #205

These tariffs are a radical action that rhymes with the "Four pests" campaign of Mao Zedong's China which led to one of the worst famines in human history. Defenders of these tariffs say they might bring back manufacturing or say they are a response to some bad effect of the current state of America... They don't accept what the experts say, but what their authority says, and their authority says that these will brin…

Yes the current period is reminiscent of the Mao period in more than one way. You've got blind loyalty and optimism by the followers, unwillingness to listen to critism, anti-intellectualism, attempts to purge aspects of culture and dissappearing disliked people to faraway prisons.

It's not gone nearly as far as in that period, but we ought to be careful not to get closer. When information countering government policy is suppressed, the mistakes keep growing bigger until the consequences become so grave they can no longer be ignored.

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

#374

Post by FloorEgg »

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…

When a country controls the world reserve currency they need to net export dollars, which means they need to import more goods than they export, satisfying the world's demand for dollars.

When a country doesn't control the world reserve currency, and there is no global demand for their currency, they cannot sustain a significant imbalance of importing more than they export without devaluing their own currency and causing hyperinflation.

The US controlled the world reserve currency through the bretton woods era with a fixed currency, successfully transitioned to neo liberal era with a floating currency, and is now going through another transition into something new.

If the USD loses its reserve currency status, or if it's extremely weakened, then the US may need to reconfigure its economy accordingly in order to prosper again.

The administration may say they are doing what they are doing for one reason, the media may make up another, and the actual reason may be yet another.

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

#375

Post by pyrale »

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…

> This is also why its importantly to gain colonies (Greenland/ Canada) or mineral rights from other countries so that the amount of stuff we have increases.

So, basically, blueprint for the new opium wars. Or, more likely, WW3.

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

#376

Post by aj7 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #196
mechagodzilla wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So applying this to China and the USA - the USA has a median household income of ~$80k, and China, in terms of purchasing power parity, has a median household income of $32k. China has a workforce of ~775M people vs 163M people in the USA. The USA has ~7M unemployed people. For the USA to stop importing goods from China, we would need to 1) stop consuming those goods altogether (even if they're intermediate goods tha…

> the equivalent of ~20M people's output if we naively scale Or about 12% of the US labor force. Meanwhile the 12th percentile US income is ~$22,000, i.e. less than the $32k median in China, and half of the jobs there are above that median. Obviously these numbers are all useless napkin math and none of it really works like that, but the premise isn't inherently absurd. If China is subsidizing manufacturing in order…

No one will hire the people you are describing. We had 3.5% unemployment, before Trump began destroying the world economy. People in most fast food restaurants are making $30k. In fact the “entry level workers” and “illegals” were relatively happy. It’s the middle class workers who vary between desperate and enraged, because $45-$65k does not approximate the expectations raised in their childhood. What I’m saying is vastly oversimplified, but you get my drift. There is tremendous housing shortage, due to government policies that surreptitiously favored rising prices for incumbent homeowners, and corporate speculators. Healthcare is apportioned according to education level. Food is remarkably expensive.

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

#377

Post by aj7 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #227
SideQuark wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US manufactures more than ever, and the % of GDP in manufacturing has been flat for 70+ years now. The jobs didn’t leave, so they’re never coming back. They got automated. Just like we need vastly less farmers than in 1900 to farm more than ever, we need vastly manufacturing jobs to manufacture more than ever.

Automation increases production efficiency. Jevon's paradox says this will generally increase consumption, and in fact it has, so US consumption has gone up but production is flat. The difference comes from increasing imports from manufacturing in China. If the US manufactured the additional stuff instead of importing it, it would have more manufacturing jobs than it does now.

At what wages? Come on, man. Do you know what the average wage is in China on an iPhone assembly line? The pressures on workers?

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

#378

Post by aj7 »

mmooss wrote: post #294
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…

It's a revolutionary economic argument that specialization doesn't apply to countries, and you omitted organized groups of individuals called 'companies'. Economic structures are far larger and deeper than individuals (or companies). > a country the size of the US could certainly contain someone who knows how to do any given thing. Ore may be much cheaper to mine in another country - maybe because of geology or weath…

Exactly.

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

#379

Post by aj7 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #274
WillPostForFood wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question isn't whether maximum global free trade maximizes efficiency. The question is whether maximizing global economic efficiency creates optimal outcomes for a nation, for groups within a nation, or for individuals in the nation. It is clearly a mixed bag, so there is pushback. Ask these questions. Besides maximizing monetary efficiency: Does free trade maximize a nation's resiliency? Does free trade maximize…

With respect to the US: - We’re the richest nation on the planet and have been until recently been adept in response to many types of disasters. - Unemployment has been The idiocy of conflict with China is just that. We’re better and richer together.

Fascists need an enemy, an “other.” Your last sentence describes globalism. But 51% of the voters voted for something else, and you and your children will now lead your lives in “interesting times.”

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

#380

Post by xigency »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #92
xigency wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's a bit different. Laziness is a virtue in our field in ways that it is not in other fields. Math is a good example. Mathematicians are even more lazy than programmers. That's how they end up with shorter proofs than our programs and end up able to work lying down as well as just sitting on a computer.

This feels like cope; ignoring that there are multiple kinds of “lazy.” There’s the kind that focuses on simplicity and avoiding unnecessary work to achieve the same goal (the good kind); and there’s the kind that just ignores necessary work and drags out the process delaying the goal (the bad kind). There are plenty of programmers, and machinists, in both camps. Many programmers actually are lazy knuckleheads in the…

Well, I guess democracy has spoken. And so has the market as the do-nothing people continue to get paychecks and I collect unemployment.
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