America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back • Hacker News Board

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#401

Post by constantcrying » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:06 PM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #376

constantcrying wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not a loophole. Also prison labor tends to be "unskilled", so useless and even counterproductive in manufacturing roles the US would need if they were to compete with China.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unskilled-labor.asp

"Unskilled" is what I meant. People with zero economic value who only can do tasks where machines are already superior to them. That definitely is the case for much of the prison population. It is better that they are kept far away from manufacturing because they are unskilled.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#402

Post by bluGill » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:08 PM UTC

constantcrying wrote: post #339

bluGill wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would act against China - because China is making political moves that I do not like. (they are supporting Russia in Ukraine, they are building up to invade Taiwan, they are supporting terror in the middle east...) By acting against China that means I applaud moving manufacturing to Vietnam. I want to help Botswana grow - and I wish there were more countries in Africa I could name that seem to be on a good path (I…

What would prevent Vietnam or Botswana do make political moves 20 years down the line? Surely it is not their economic reliance on you, as China clearly demonstrates. I see exactly zero point in repeating the example of China again. Why would the outcome be different? Vietnam is another Communist pseudo-dictatorship. Why is this one so different that it won't support Russia?

Vietnam is making moves in directions I want to encourage. Only God knows the future and he isn't talking. (there are some who will disagree with various parts of that statement, but they have offered no evidence that they get useful information on the future.

Vietnam has been at war with China in the recent past. Today China is claiming seas that the US and internal law both call Vietnam's territorial waters - though currently they are not at war. Thus even if Vietnam doesn't move in a good direction, just keeping them where they are (as opposed to supporting China) is useful if only because all indications today are China will start a war in the future. (again nobody knows if they will, but they are preparing as if they will)

Nothing prevents anyone from making moves 20 years from now that are bad. All we can do today is encourage those who seem to be moving for the better. We have no clue how things will turn out. Even when we make what in hindsight now looks like a bad decision, we have no idea how it would have been if we had done something different.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#403

Post by bluGill » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:12 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #149

npiano wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A genuine question, presuming no correct answer: what is to be done about it? China is reportedly on track to run more than 50% of global manufacturing by 2030, if the World Bank is correct. What would you do to act against this? Is doing nothing acceptable?

A great analyst once taught me the response question: "yes, and so what?" What's so magic about manufacturing as opposed to all the higher value work of the US economy? Have people not noticed that the average American is still richer than the average Chinese person by a long way, and (yes, painfully) more so than the average European? If you're going to talk wars, then .. US military manufacturing is still the world…

Here is a what: there are a lot of Americans (and similar for Europe) who did not go to college, and their kids are not going to college. Of they went to college but got a degree that doesn't have good job prospects. These people would be better off with manufacturing jobs than what they can find. This is probably a minority, but it is a large enough minority to swing elections and thus important.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#404

Post by constantcrying » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:14 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #402

constantcrying wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would prevent Vietnam or Botswana do make political moves 20 years down the line? Surely it is not their economic reliance on you, as China clearly demonstrates. I see exactly zero point in repeating the example of China again. Why would the outcome be different? Vietnam is another Communist pseudo-dictatorship. Why is this one so different that it won't support Russia?

Vietnam is making moves in directions I want to encourage. Only God knows the future and he isn't talking. (there are some who will disagree with various parts of that statement, but they have offered no evidence that they get useful information on the future. Vietnam has been at war with China in the recent past. Today China is claiming seas that the US and internal law both call Vietnam's territorial waters - thoug…

>Vietnam is making moves in directions I want to encourage.

Just like China did? They had a whole phase of economic liberalization and opening trade.

>Nothing prevents anyone from making moves 20 years from now that are bad.

Vietnam is literally another communist pseudo-dictatorship. Their place in the world is obviously far more ambiguous than that of e.g. England. The idea of shifting manufacturing to Vietnam because you do not like the positions of China is just absurd.

>All we can do today is encourage those who seem to be moving for the better.

Why should the US not focus on supporting long term allies who aren't communist single party states?

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#405

Post by bluGill » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:14 PM UTC

smcl wrote: post #251

bluGill wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amazing things to me is people still are not asking why people are so mad about the state of things they voted for Trump in the first place. Trump is the only one promising to make some changes to make life better for those who don't want to go to college. "Maybe he will, maybe he won't, but everyone else is ignoring us" is what I keep hearing when I listen to those people. Fix health care - socialism isn't the o…

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…

To answer your first question which I just realized I hadn't: I don't think Trump as useful ideas on fixing healthcare of school.

Healthcare and schools are both important and hard problems. Most people with ideas have bad ideas IMHO.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#406

Post by philistine » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:15 PM UTC

like_any_other wrote: post #163

pjc50 wrote: post #35

> China generates over twice as much electricity per person today as the United States. Why? This appears to be completely wrong? All the stats I can find say that the US has about 4x the per capita electricity generation of China. Other than that it seems to be mostly good points, especially the overall one: you cannot do this overnight. > If you’re building a new factory in the United States, your investment will a…

> Other than that it seems to be mostly good points, especially the overall one: you cannot do this overnight. It's annoying Americans were given only two choices - offshoring is great and let's keep doing it, and, as you say, the opposite, meth-fueled let's bring back manufacturing overnight. The kind of slow and steady protection and promotion of home-grown industry that China and most of Asia so successfully used…

The candidate who opposed Trump during the primaries would have done something very similar to what you said. But then she was born with ovaries so the Republican Party wanted nothing to do with her as the top boss.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#407

Post by charlie90 » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:19 PM UTC

vFunct wrote: post #7

Our economy was designed to NOT have citizens work at factories. We pay thousands of dollars a year in our public schools to teach each of our citizens calculus, literature, world history, and physics, so that they DON'T have to work at a factory, or perform manual labor like picking strawberries or driving trucks or cleaning toilets. Why would anyone want to go back to an economy that can be run by a third worlders?…

>Economics works when the people do the things they are most efficient at.

If you believe this statement, then you must be supportive of open borders.

People in China might be more efficient at doing local US service jobs. Whose to say we dont let them do it?

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#408

Post by 486sx33 » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:20 PM UTC

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…

Actually I think it’s variation of this. Tariffs can protect high skill jobs with high value product output. They can also force the Chinese to make cheap stuff even cheaper ( back down below $1 goods plus tariffs ).

We don’t want the Chinese making high value goods at slightly lower prices. We want Americans making high value goods and we want to push cheap stuff as cheap as possible. Next step is enforcing environmental rules on Chinese goods and requiring escrow of the funds to pay the Chinese in American accounts until the goods are inspected and pass.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#409

Post by saati » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:25 PM UTC

mppm wrote: post #34

Jonathan Blow's "Preventing the collapse of civilization" [1] makes a similar point. It is easy to assume that, if we can build EUV machines and space telescopes, then processing stainless steel and manufacturing PCBs is baby stuff, and is just waiting for the proper incentives to spring up again. Unfortunately that is not the case -- reality has a surprising amount of detail [2] and even medium-level technology take…

The US can't even make EUV machines, just parts of it.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#410

Post by bluGill » Tue, Apr 15, 2025, 9:29 PM UTC

mikevm wrote: post #79

rkozik1989 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans have a very 1980s idea of manufacturing (and China in general) in that there aren't actually that many humans being used in Chinese factories let alone the American ones some of them want to build here. There's even a concept of, "Dark Factories" in China which are 100% automated factories that operate in the dark. The only jobs that will come from bringing manufacturing back to the states will be in automa…

Well, even a better argument to bring those factories to the US. Why not develop the know-how on manufacturing and improve automation in the US rather have China lead there.

Because automation is expensive. It pays off in volume. A skilled human can often build a single widget faster than an engineer can write the automation for the robots (because a skilled human will see parts that don't fit and "file to fit" while the robot demands more effort to double check all that). When you only need 10, the program is faster to write, but you still need to pay for the robots and they are expensive (often $million each, while the human is only a few thousand for his time)

Of course there are a lot variables in the above. As time goes one automation gets better. You can buy cheap robots for some common operations, and a good engineer with good CAD can run various automated analysis to ensure fit and then export to the robot and build even a single part cheaper than the human - amortizing the cost of the robot over thousands of different single parts made this way. However as the widget gets more complex you reach the point where humans are needed. In some cases you just have humans to take the parts off of one machine and put them into the next, but it is still humans. We can automate even that, but often the robot to do that would cost more than a human for 10 years.