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America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

molsonhart.com

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Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#391

Post by smcl »

bluGill wrote: post #305
smcl wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think Trump has some ideas on fixing healthcare or school? Is there even a consensus on what needs fixed? You've said re healthcare that "socialism isn't the answer" - assuming you mean "I don't want a single-payer or free-at-the-point-of-use system" then I'm not sure what is the answer then. They've currently got some of the worst health outcomes on the planet despite spending amongst the most per-capita. The…

The US has great health care. It is marginaly worse than some other examples but nowhere close to amoung the worst. As for what I'd do: I would eliminate the employer contribuition - I hate my insurance but if I go elsewhere I leave behind more than $1000/month and nobody can compete with that - thus I'm stuck with health care that my HR department has choosen for me. i'm not suggesting enthusiastic math teachers is…

I mean if you want to compare the US to Angola, Yemen etc then hell yeah it's "great" and you can sorta kid yourself you're up there with the best of the bunch. But as a wealthy nation that is a pretty low bar and really shouldn't be what you're aiming for. Perhaps I didn't word that very well - you're having some of the worst healthcare outcomes among all of the planets developed nations despite spending the most on it. Like it is shocking how much of an outlier the USA is, there are multiple things you can measure but a really nice simple one people can wrap their head around is life expectancy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health.... When you plot it against average annual expenditure it is clear that you're getting a truly terrible deal.

I dunno what to tell you man, it sounds like you're a true believer on this. I reckon everyone who has undergone a healthcare bankruptcy (a uniquely American thing, btw) or could not get treated be cause they couldn't afford it was a true believer before they were let down.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#392

Post by Yeul »

_bin_ wrote: post #306
taylodl wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, manufacturing in America is up. The 2008 crises dealt a blow, but manufacturing has been building-back. I don't think people realize how many high-value items are made in the United States. Let the East Asians make our mass-consumer junk while we focus on the high-value stuff. Just goes to show the administration isn't working with facts and doing the hard-nosed analysis required to drive effective policy.…

The administration is probably aware of this and doesn't care. A huge portion of his base were rust belt voters who want what are essentially handouts, which trump intends to achieve by forcing the American consumer to pay $30/hour for el cheapo goods that could be made elsewhere and have no tangible security impact. You're mistaking the rhetoric he uses to sell this idiocy to the rest of the country for a good-faith…

And America can't even export any off it because Trump managed to start a trade war with the rest of the world.

Apparently the US doesn't need allies anymore against China...

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#393

Post by Yeul »

9dev wrote: post #344
presto8 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many B2B transactions are tax-exempt but it's complicated. And gets really complicated once international transactions are considered. And also whether the company has a physical nexus in the place the product is being purchased. All in all, I think it would be simpler if the US adopted VAT. But that seems very unlikely.

Unlikely, given that the current administration seems incapable of understanding what VAT is in the first place…

Last I checked VAT is the same rate regardless if the product is made in China or by pinguins on Antarctica so why anyone in the US gives a damn is beyond me.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#394

Post by mantas »

myrmidon wrote: post #296
mantas wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how evaluate what is valuable. E.g. here in europe a lot of people think subsidising local agriculture is not valuable and we should just import cheaper food. On the other hand, a lot of people agree that food security is kinda valuable by itself. And want similar security in more fields. In that sense yes, doing „low tech“ is valuable in the long run.

> In that sense yes, doing „low tech“ is valuable in the long run. Sure. But how much tax money do you want to throw at entire industries to hide the basic fact that wages are lower elsewhere? Where do you want to take the labor away from? And where do you draw the essential/wasted subsidies boundary line? Because in my view, Trump tariffs just ignore those very basic questions and don't even attempt to answer them.…

Don't want to make hypothetical shoes? Fine. One day soldiers may end up marching barefooted and loosing a battle though.

IMO the global economy eventually self-levels. Either you go up the chain so far that you eventually go off the rails by being unable to make basic stuff. And eventually being eaten by more hungry people with the basic skills. Or you keep yourself down by forcing yourself to not loose basic skills. Former gives you a short moment of glory with a high price for future generations. Later forces people to be more ascetic if that's the right word.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#395

Post by iteratethis »

myrmidon wrote: post #209
Teever wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't just ego. This is an impending existential issue. America needs to increase manufacturing capacity if it wants to maintain hegemony and possibly world peace. China will soon have the ability to take Taiwan and Korea and Japan. If that happens it's game over for any American interests and perhaps democracy as a whole. Wargames[0] paint a grim picture of an upcoming conflict between China and America over Ta…

Do you think that global hegemony by force is long-term (centuries) sustainable at all? What makes you confident that this could ever work on a longer term? The US is only ~5% of people globally, and I would expect any industrial/technological lead to melt over the years unless there is a monumental, continuous difference in spending (like what the US military did since WW2). But I see no indication that you can keep…

Global hegemony of the US is based not on 5% of people, rather the US sphere of influence. US, Canada, EU, Japan, Australia, South Korea, etc. The combination is immensely rich, powerful and advanced. Even more so when you keep India on board as well.

It at least stands a fighting chance if it wasn't the case that this alliance is being destroyed before our eyes.

I will admit that even an integrated alliance cannot push around China in the way it could decades ago.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#396

Post by charlie90 »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #184

I think most people have a very confused understanding of money(currency) and value. Workers produce value, not money . Workers get a cut of that value, which is converted to money. To get by comfortably in the US, a first world developed economy, you need to be producing a lot of value. Everything is made to accommodate high value workers. Producing t-shirts, window fans, or toilet brushes is not high value work. Th…

I disagree with this. Everybody wears clothes. Everybody eats food.

You can't put a monetary value on a t-shirt, because people will buy them anyways. Who is to say that t-shirts aren't $60? People only think that t-shirts are "low value" because we have offshored the labor and are used to very low prices. Meanwhile I bet most Americans can't even sew.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#397

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

digikata wrote: post #283
rickdeckard wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weird part for me is this: While the economy was evolving, Production was offshored from US for cost-reasons, but also in part to focus on higher-skill labor in US, delegating the low-skill mass-production to China. Over time, China also developed mid/high level skills, complemented their low-skill production offering with it and now competes in new industries, new tech, etc. So...to compete with China, the count…

I think the mistake here is the model of low-skill/high-skill labor is not a useful distinction. Manufacturing is high skill period, however there are low-infrastructure and high-infrastructure products and factories. The labor wages themselves are a factor, but an increasingly minor factor in product costs. By bypassing investment in US manufacturing skills and infra, the US sat itself on the sidelines for the abili…

> The labor wages themselves are a factor, but an increasingly minor factor in product costs.

Not disagree with your main points, but labor inputs are still very much a huge part of product costs, and often the biggest driver of where to build a new factory when a company is scaling up. Companies aim to build their new factories wherever there's a sufficient pool of cheap labor with the necessary skills.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#398

Post by bluGill »

smcl wrote: post #391
bluGill wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has great health care. It is marginaly worse than some other examples but nowhere close to amoung the worst. As for what I'd do: I would eliminate the employer contribuition - I hate my insurance but if I go elsewhere I leave behind more than $1000/month and nobody can compete with that - thus I'm stuck with health care that my HR department has choosen for me. i'm not suggesting enthusiastic math teachers is…

I mean if you want to compare the US to Angola, Yemen etc then hell yeah it's "great" and you can sorta kid yourself you're up there with the best of the bunch. But as a wealthy nation that is a pretty low bar and really shouldn't be what you're aiming for. Perhaps I didn't word that very well - you're having some of the worst healthcare outcomes among all of the planets developed nations despite spending the most on…

Those plots are meaningless because countries measure things differently. Many countries for example don't count anyone before they are a year old while the US does. The US shows up very well for life expectancy, yes it costs a lot more to get there the outcomes of the US healthcare system are very good according to your own data (which as I said isn't good data, but it is data)

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#399

Post by gambiting »

danaris wrote: post #389
gambiting wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well of course, but right now they represent the country.

The country contains all of us, all the time. The leadership is not the country.

And yet, the ruling government are the representatives of the country.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#400

Post by const_cast »

nonethewiser wrote: post #359
wormlord wrote: post #150

I think the collapse of the American Empire is no more preventible than the collapse of the British, Spanish, or Roman empires. The issues with the US being the reserve currency has been known for a while now (and was even predicted by Keynes before the Bretton-Woods summit): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma Any discussion of "bringing back manufacturing" that doesn't mention government spending or socia…

America doesnt really have an empire. What is America's Hong Kong, India, etc?

America's empire isn't really built on blantant colonialism (although we do that, too). It's built on "planting" US favorable governments all around the world.

I mean, we have half of Africa shooting themselves in the foot over and over for our own benefit. And every time it looks like an African nation is going to do something about it, some counter-military force appears out of nowhere (with US arms?) and some important political heads are assassinated.

This isn't a conspiracy theory, either. The destabilization of world governments done by our government to our benefit is well recorded.

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