America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented • Hacker News Board

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#41

Post by Kranar » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #25

nikanj wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stock market and housing prices are higher than ever, so a large part of the population is doing good. Not just the elites have benefited from the spoils, people with retirement portfolios and paid-off houses are sitting nice and flush.

84% of wealth in the stock market is in the hands of the top 10% Not sure about housing.

I did not believe this to be true, but after researching it turns out that your figure is accurate for 2016 and that it's likely only gotten worse since then.

Page 19 of this document produced by the NBER states that indeed, the wealthiest 10% own 84% of all publicly traded stocks, mutual funds, trusts, or various pension account assets:

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24085/w240...

It has many other interesting insights that are worth quickly reading through, for example you mention you are unsure about housing, but that report says the top 10% own 41% of all housing in the U.S.

The other interesting figure is debt, where the top 10% owe 28% of all debt.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#42

Post by Ar-Curunir » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

aeternum wrote: post #5

fermienrico wrote: post #2

I wish Silicon Valley wasn’t just about software, particularly adtech. Some of the most brilliant minds are working on optimizing click ratios. There is some hardware tech (Apple, nVidia, Intel, Tesla), but vast majority of the engineers are working on cushy jobs paying $400k to serve ads. SV should be leading investments in Semiconductors, automation and manufacturing tech. It doesn’t even live up to its name. If yo…

Thinking about SV as just adtech is pretty reductionist. Through another lens, SV basically solved big data and global software distribution and scalability. Big tech has contributed to both the tools that allow handling massive data streams and ML. That foundation is what is helping data-driven manufacturing companies pull ahead.

> big data and global software distribution and scalability. Big tech has contributed to both the tools that allow handling massive data streams and ML

Yes, because mass surveillance is good.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#43

Post by adventured » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:16 PM UTC

nikanj wrote: post #18

fermienrico wrote: post #2

I wish Silicon Valley wasn’t just about software, particularly adtech. Some of the most brilliant minds are working on optimizing click ratios. There is some hardware tech (Apple, nVidia, Intel, Tesla), but vast majority of the engineers are working on cushy jobs paying $400k to serve ads. SV should be leading investments in Semiconductors, automation and manufacturing tech. It doesn’t even live up to its name. If yo…

Apple: Made by Foxconn, not in the US. nVidia: Made by TSMC, not in the US. Intel and Tesla are made in the US afaik, but even the hardware startups we do have still tend to manufacture abroad.

Apple: assembled by Foxconn.

If your premise were accurate, the primary value would be in Foxconn and they'd destroy Apple by competing with them and take their $60 billion per year in profit.

Most of the value is from Apple and the other component makers, not the company doing primitive assembly. Further, Foxconn makes nothing in the iPhone, so once again it's very obviously not "made by Foxconn." And that's why Foxconn gets such a tiny slice of the profit.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#44

Post by iphorde » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:17 PM UTC

recursivedoubts wrote: post #6

We were sold down the river by our own elites, particularly on Wall Street and with the full complicity of the Economics Departments of the west. "Comparative Advantage", something something about corn and wool, meanwhile the whole supply chain was moved to China, our middle class was decimated and we went into tremendous amounts of debt to pretend everything was fine... Left, right... whatever. The elites have faile…

Those Elites are back in power in a few days. Enjoy it. America voted for it.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#45

Post by adamnemecek » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:17 PM UTC

iphorde wrote: post #44

recursivedoubts wrote: post #6

We were sold down the river by our own elites, particularly on Wall Street and with the full complicity of the Economics Departments of the west. "Comparative Advantage", something something about corn and wool, meanwhile the whole supply chain was moved to China, our middle class was decimated and we went into tremendous amounts of debt to pretend everything was fine... Left, right... whatever. The elites have faile…

Those Elites are back in power in a few days. Enjoy it. America voted for it.

The elites have been in power since idk when.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#46

Post by l3v3ll » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:17 PM UTC

Kranar wrote: post #41

habosa wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

84% of wealth in the stock market is in the hands of the top 10% Not sure about housing.

I did not believe this to be true, but after researching it turns out that your figure is accurate for 2016 and that it's likely only gotten worse since then. Page 19 of this document produced by the NBER states that indeed, the wealthiest 10% own 84% of all publicly traded stocks, mutual funds, trusts, or various pension account assets: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24085/w240... It has many othe…

Thanks for the link. I’m on mobile and only got a second hand source on my comment below. I totally agree it must be worse now. It would be interesting to see the latest numbers.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#47

Post by npmaile » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:18 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #25

nikanj wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stock market and housing prices are higher than ever, so a large part of the population is doing good. Not just the elites have benefited from the spoils, people with retirement portfolios and paid-off houses are sitting nice and flush.

84% of wealth in the stock market is in the hands of the top 10% Not sure about housing.

Much of that stock market wealth is tied up in the retirement accounts of people who are about to retire or are retired. A large portion of it is the elites without a doubt, but much of it is just people who've been contributing to a 401k for the last 50 years. Obviously they should both be in the upper percentages of income/wealth as well as own much of the stock market. They've been contributing for years and years.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#48

Post by babaganoosh89 » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

recursivedoubts wrote: post #6

We were sold down the river by our own elites, particularly on Wall Street and with the full complicity of the Economics Departments of the west. "Comparative Advantage", something something about corn and wool, meanwhile the whole supply chain was moved to China, our middle class was decimated and we went into tremendous amounts of debt to pretend everything was fine... Left, right... whatever. The elites have faile…

The problem isn't comparative advantage, it's that the US left the poor states to languish with poor education. So instead of higher quality manufacturing / blue collar jobs, non-educated folks got minimum wage service jobs.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#49

Post by earthboundkid » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

liminal wrote: post #13

"Made in America" is a nice slogan, but "Not Made by an Enemy" would be more apt. Made in an Ally would be fine too (Canada, Mexico, Western Europe...)

I felt like we should have done that with Saudi oil after 9/11. Why did we let them have no consequences when their policies were most directly responsible for it, out of all countries in the world? We should have put a tariff on their oil and used Canadian crude until they stopped promoting extreme Wahabiism.

Re: America Can’t Even Produce the Things It Invented

#50

Post by outworlder » Mon, Jan 04, 2021, 9:20 PM UTC

boringg wrote: post #34

tomjen3 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took 2 days for the Moderna vaccine to be created, and it still hasn't been approved in the EU. We could be doing amazing things in bio with mRNA, Crisper and deep learning but the entire thing is so wrapped up in regulation in order to protect the incumbents that it is not a space worth working in.

2 days to determine what the Moderna vaccine should be from a computer. Building the vaccine, bio-reacting it to scale and testing across appropriate populations took a considerable amount of time. Health regulations are in place for a reason, to protect the public not to protect incumbents. Sometimes I am sure it does, other times it makes sure poor products don't go into the public market.

> 2 days to determine what the Moderna vaccine should be from a computer

This step used to take years. And require state of the art facilities, with biohazard containment, viral samples, etc.

Now? Given a virus sequence done in a lab on the other side of the planet, one can design a vaccine in a day. Sure, it took many years of research (and in coronaviruses in particular) to reach this stage, specially on how to stabilize the spike protein. But one cannot understate how amazing this new technology is.

And then once done you can send the results to a machine to get it "built". At a low scale, sure, but it's still impressive.

With the mRNA approach we no longer have to resort to things like using eggs to make the vaccines, we can use the cellular machinery for that. It's mind-boggling.