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Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

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Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#401

Post by tracker1 »

filleduchaos wrote: post #375
leptons wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we cut costs and automate the way China has automated - some factories run without any lighting at all because it's all robots running in the dark - then there aren't going to be a lot of jobs created by on-shoring. And the only way to create a product on-shore that approaches the pricing of the Chinese equivalent is to heavily automate.

Clothes are nowhere near as heavily automatable as people like to believe they are, is the problem. Unlike many other goods, nearly every article of clothing produced today is still produced with human hands. This does not mesh well with the fact that the modern public has been trained not to value apparel; people expect to casually buy items of clothing for less than they'd spend on a single meal.

It's not like the cost of clothes would be that much more if produced domestically though... the difference is the margins would be lower, a domestic employee would have a job and the domestic economy as a whole would be stronger as a result. Not to mention, the lower margin also means the wealth gap would be more narrow and there would be less incentive to stoke the flames of class warfare.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#402

Post by epicureanideal »

closeparen wrote: post #271
epicureanideal wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Baumol effects might have raised wages a bit, sure. How could the relative positions of these workers not fall as all these tech-enabled and scale-enabled neighbors come on to the scene? Supply and demand? If the population of hairdressers was small, so they could charge more and more, then their wages could keep up as a percentage. And that would be possible if for example so many people moved into high productivi…

That’s the Baumol effect. The rising tide does lift all boats to an extent, but not the same extent.

I agree, I’m just saying the extent is influenced heavily by the increasing availability of workers at the lower end of the automation distribution.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#403

Post by amluto »

sudosteph wrote: post #331
amluto wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How could the relative positions of these workers not fall as all these tech-enabled and scale-enabled neighbors come on to the scene? I’d like to see this worked out for real. On the one hand, sure, a hairdresser cuts the same amount of hair as they did 25 years ago, and a fancy tech worker produces enormously more output than 25 or 50 years ago. On the other hand, why does it follow that that tech worker should h…

You seem to just be describing Marx's Labor theory of value. It sounds more fair to pay people according to how much and how hard they work, but economically it tends not to work out.

I’m thinking more of paying people on the margin or of some kind on tax system that compensates for inequality a bit.

Not fully worked out, but consider: suppose there are 100 people in the population, and a bunch of them are ambivalent between tech work and jobs like hairdressing. If tech work paid 10% more than hairdressing, some would do tech work and some would cut hair. If tech work paid 200%, then maybe there would be too many applicants and the employers would reduce wages. (I’ve occasionally contemplated that perhaps one reason that the big Silicon Valley employers pay so much is kind of anticompetitive: they can afford it, so they might as well, because it makes it more expensive to compete with them.)

Or alternatively, imagine if taxes were structured so that owning more than one house were highly discouraged (with appropriate provisions to make owning properties to rent them out make sense, which is something that a lot of legislators get wrong), and if permitting to build houses were not absurdly restrictive, then many different jobs with very different salaries would could still result in having enough income to afford to live in approximately one house. Some might afford two (!), and some might afford one that is much fancier than someone else’s, but if the pressure that makes someone like a hairdresser need to compete against a highly paid tech worker to pay for a similar house went away, the situation could be much improved.

(California, like many places, has strictly too few residential units in the places that people want to live, so just adjusting prices won’t help much.)

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#404

Post by cduzz »

nickff wrote: post #347
cduzz wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, let's look at UnitedHealth Group; do they deliver health care? If there were single payer, what would their role be in the healthcare delivery process? Apparently they made 2.3 billion in profits on 113 billion in revenue in Q3 of 2025. How much of that friction would evaporate if they weren't in the healthcare delivery infrastructure. Someone once said "the best part is no part" ?

Compare UPS or FedEx to USPS; the first two companies are profit-seeking, yet very competitive with the 'public-oriented' (and legally privileged) USPS. Having the government in control does not necessarily lead to better value.

I've lived in cities where the city ran the utilities; they were generally way cheaper than the utilities from PG&E.

The USPS is obligated to deliver letters at the same cost to everyone in the country, and they do a pretty okay job at it -- I've certainly had horrid events from UPS and FedEx, and those guys get to just pass the crap delivery tasks off to USPS if they don't like it.

Lots of old people in the USofA seem to like their government run medical insurance, same with people in the VA system.

The Doge crew spent months looking for fraud waste and abuse and I don't see any big law enforcement results from all the fraud they found, and I don't see anyone crowing over all the waste they curtailed.

It's possible that the world's more complex than you imagine, and that sometimes people just do their jobs (IE the bureaucrats) and hard problems get solved.

Now, tell me again, what part of the health care system is UnitedHealth? What critical problem do they solve?

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#405

Post by tracker1 »

ryandrake wrote: post #273
mothballed wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The jobs also generally suck. I've worked a wide array of blue collar jobs and manufacturing I always found some of the worst, even worse than stuff like general labor building houses or working on fishing trawlers in the Bering sea because at least that stuff wasn't nearly as rote. You stand at a machine doing the same fucking thing over and over. Do one thing wrong, your finger gets chopped up -- you think that sou…

Out of all the many industries out there, I don't understand why we keep glorifying and romanticizing manufacturing and trying to "bring it back." I've also worked a few of these jobs and you're right: THEY SUCK. Depending on what you are manufacturing, it can be boring, stressful, stinky, physically taxing, or dangerous. And most of them, even the highly skilled ones, don't pay well. For the sake of our own society,…

Short of going back to a society of married families with a single income, there isn't really a solution to keeping everyone working and making an income though. Without jobs, we revert from a modern society to a third world nation.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#406

Post by mrguyorama »

ecshafer wrote: post #30
hackthemack wrote: post #12

Ross Perot in 1992 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRr60nmDyu4 We have shipped millions of jobs overseas, and ... a strange situation, we have a process in Washington where after you serve for a while, you can cash in, become a foreign lobbyist. We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. You're paying 12, 13, 14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the Border, pay a dollar an hour for yo…

One of my main arguments for a universal health care scheme in the united states is how horrendously expensive, for employers, health care is. Lets totally ignore efficacy, moral arguments, expense for the patient, etc. If you are a company in the US a large percentage of the effective compensation of employees is healthcare. A moderately good PPO is like ~$10k+ a year per employee. You can pay workers in some other…

And yet they never lobby for nationalized health care.

Because "Deal with our illegal, immoral, or stupid work requests or literally lose your healthcare" is such a massive bargaining chip for them.

They would rather spend more money and have more docile and controllable workers, but not spend that money on paying workers more to be docile and controllable.

It's not about the money.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#407

Post by mrguyorama »

bluedino wrote: post #188
naasking wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moving to the government/taxes paying for it doesn't fix that. It kinda does, bigger players have more bargaining power. There is no bigger player than the government in a universal healthcare system. Furthermore, a significant cost in healthcare is all of the bureaucracy around billing. Much of that goes away with single payer.

It would be very tough to reduce pay for doctors and other staff. The United States medical industry is one of the highest paying in the world.

>The United States medical industry is one of the highest paying in the world.

Which the industry views as a historical accident, and now that they basically own all the hospitals and other companies, you can expect them to fix it.

I would expect neutering Doctor labor power will happen soon. This admin will get a small donation or two, and the republicans will insist that letting doctors have high wages is the sole cause of our expensive healthcare. They've never really cared about the truth, seeing as they have often claimed "Medical tort" is the cause of healthcare costs, even though places like Texas, which have limits of Medical tort payout don't have cheaper healthcare.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#408

Post by MisterTea »

mothballed wrote: post #395
MisterTea wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For the sake of our own society, we should be getting rid of these jobs, not adding them. So let me get this strait. You think these dangerous, monotonous jobs are bad for "our own society" so the best thing for "our own society" is to export these dangerous jobs to another society "own own society" doesn't give a shit about. Wonderful. I can't believe how ignorant and callous people can openly be.

You can't seriously believe those other societies are taking manufacturing jobs because they are worse than what they already have. People in the 3rd world are less fortunate; they're not dumb -- they want the same as us: better lives for themselves and their family. If they're working in a factory and not the alternatives it's because they passed something else along the way that was an even shittier option than tha…

> You can't seriously believe those other societies are taking manufacturing jobs because they are worse than what they already have.

My statement is in reply to those who are unconcerned about exploiting desperate societies.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#409

Post by legitster »

There are three things that I think go underrated about America's manufacturing problems:

1. A lot of industries offshored simply because the owners of the facilities just sold and shipped off rare/expensive/important equipment to other countries without a second thought. Especially tool and die equipment. So a lot of industries in countries like Korea and China or India literally use the exact same equipment we used 80+ years ago. Even if we wanted these jobs back, the countries & businesses in question are too smart to ever sell the equipment back at nearly any price (why we can't manufacture them again is a whole other problem).

2. As Jensen alludes here, the cost of energy in the US dropped through the 60s but then flatlined. We became too dependent on fossil fuel and "comfortable enough" consumer prices. But the energy intensive heavy industry all moved to places with nuclear power or heavily subsidized power sectors.

3. The lack of any sort of public welfare solution is a distinctly American industrial policy failure. Manufacturing depends on labor force flexibility - both in finding the right people for jobs, as well as just dealing with stop-and-go or seasonal work. But Americans having their healthcare and retirement tied to their jobs and full employment is a huge boat anchor on both the workforce and industry.

Re: Jensen: 'We've done our country a great disservice' by offshoring

#410

Post by StopDisinfo910 »

quickthrowman wrote: post #396
StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They extended their operations there because Biden lured them with insane subsidies. Don't commit the mistake of thinking Trump politics is a rupture from what came before when it comes to how the US treats Europe. It's been economic aggression after economic aggression from both parties since Obama. Different styles, same core ideas.

> They extended their operations there because Biden lured them with insane subsidies. Biden, really? If you’re attempting to stop disinformation, please start with yourself. Michelin opened their US headquarters in Greenville in 1984 . BMW opened their plant in South Carolina in 1994 . How was (at the time) Senator Joe Biden of Delaware responsible for that in any way? Why would he care so much about South Carolina?…

I said "extended" not "opened". That's indeed intentional. Please don't use a strawman to avoid addressing the point I'm actually making.

Michelin invested significantly in the site recently and BMW added a ton of EV manufacturing capacities, we are talking of a 1.7 billions dollars investment.

All of this is linked to subsidies they got through the IRA on top of local South Carolina subsidies. They had to do these investments to remain competitive in the US market as the subsidies are tied to local manufacturing and the conditions significantly limit what parts they can import. It was a direct attack on European manufacturing masquerading as green investments.

Guess which president passed the IRA.

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