421–430 of 527 posts
> The largest segment of the economy is manufacturing. And we’ve offshored that for too long. For 20 years. We got to bring that back. Lie. The largest sector is Services at 70%. Besides, if it were the largest how can you also say it is offshored and needs to be brought back?
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Manufacturing jobs bring the entire supply chain of the manufacturer with them. The area where I live, Greenville, SC used to be the textile capital of the world and then became essentially destitute when the entire industry offshored. BMW and Michelin locating their US HQ here essentially rebuilt this entire corner of the state with jobs and associated supply chains. Now, Greenville is booming with a more diverse ec…
To answer the GP, you'll have to take a look at why the entire industry offshored at the same time. What makes you think the problem that caused the industry to go won't also cause it to fail if somebody forces them to stay or tries to bring them back? Also, why one industry leaving made people there destitute? Those things are always more complicated than they seem.
There was a strong dollar making imports cheaper and exports more expensive. At the same time there were reductions in tariffs (Tokyo Round of GATT) as well as increased quota allowances from other countries, particularly China, than were previously allowed (the Multi-Fiber Arrangement).
At the time, this particular area of the country had turned into a global textile hub and it was devastated as a byproduct (over-saturation of a single industry). Now if you come to the area, you will see all of the old mills converted into apartment complexes, coworking spaces, wedding venues, etc just to preserve the architecture.
The whole area is beautiful now and has been one of the fastest growing parts of the country for almost a decade. I moved here 25 years ago when the changes were just starting but the natives will tell you the whole story. I think a PBS documentary was being made about it too.
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I believe you have it right. In theory, power generation should have been a well-regulated monopoly. Unfortunately, as soon as you add investors, aka rent seekers, the system is pushed to increase profits at the expense of the customer. We should reset the monopoly by publishing and documenting tariffs for power and carriage. Third-party power suppliers should still have access to the power grid, with complete, trans…
From personal experience the closer to a regulated monopoly an industry is the worse its products are and the customer service is nonexistent.
Snark aside, let me remind you of the term "enchitification": it came about because companies in theoretically competitive markets make good products shittier.
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> There is no economic rule that says that riveting should pay more than taking care of the elderly or food delivery. There is, in fact. Baumol's Cost Disease, and it's a real bitch. Manufacturing has compounding productivity gains - one worker today produces vastly more than one worker in 1950. Elderly care doesn't. You can't make a caregiver 10x more productive through better tooling. The productivity ceiling is fi…
> It means wanting isn't a mechanism. Well we still have demand in the equation. If demand for service workers grows, so will their compensation. (And so will the cost for those services.) So the possibility is there. People with more disposable income (the high-productivity ones I guess) demand more services. The question will be whether that demand will grow sufficiently to raise the compensation to where we want i…
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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…
As someone paying for a family on a marketplace bronze plan, that’s a bargain! I think our premiums will exceed $20K this year. With all of the medical group consolidation, all of the wait time woes our Canadian friends always complained about are the reality here now as well. So I’m paying more than anywhere else on the world and have to wait 6 months for a PCP appointment. We have the worst of both worlds.
Individuals do not cost $10k per year under any normal circumstances, and if you're paying almost $2k a month for a family bronze plan, you either have a lot of kids, you have some unusual needs, or you are getting ripped off. Even more so if you're waiting for a PCP appointment, because that is unusual as well.
There are so many underlying changes to the established relationship between Labor and Capital in the US that would be a necessary part of keeping jobs here that it would effectively make us a completely different country. For example -- suppose one could snap one's fingers and "bring back" millions of manufacturing jobs. What would lead one to conclude those would be the kind of "good jobs" everyone is envisioning?…
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Sure, let's adopt the Soviet model of "we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay" because what could go wrong there! You're basically asking every consumer to pay more for goods so someone can feel better about themselves personally (at the cost of someone who they don't share a country with). I'm not sure if you've met many people, but it's not a very compelling argument, nor a morally superior one due to the glob…
It’s going to cost the consumer one way or another. Either taxes, (cities still need to take in taxes, so if they lose taxpayers, their option is to levy more taxes), quality of life (more homeless, less municipal money for maintenance due to social costs, etc.) I’d prefer things to cost more than to have cheap crap but at the cost of social/employment issues. I don’t need new fashion every year. I don’t need new app…
It's actually not, because people aren't required to live near people who consume more in social services than they contribute in taxes. Areas like you describe exist, but basically contain the people who are unable or unwilling to leave an economically depressed area. Most people just leave.
> I’d prefer things to cost more than to have cheap crap but at the cost of social/employment issues. I don’t need new fashion every year. I don’t need new appliances every few years. I can do with less consumerism in exchange for my neighbor being able to have a job, boring as it may be. At least he’s not calculating the cost of suicide and wondering if he’ll be around for the kids 18th birthday.
I don't disagree entirely, but most people do based on behavior.
It's not a simple problem at all, including what is fair to consumers and the businesses themselves which have to compete with other companies that don't have artificially inflated expenses.
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Manufacturing jobs bring the entire supply chain of the manufacturer with them. The area where I live, Greenville, SC used to be the textile capital of the world and then became essentially destitute when the entire industry offshored. BMW and Michelin locating their US HQ here essentially rebuilt this entire corner of the state with jobs and associated supply chains. Now, Greenville is booming with a more diverse ec…
> Manufacturing jobs bring the entire supply chain of the manufacturer with them. Not really... Manufacturing today is a global process and the entire supply chain is usually spread around the world. One example for a cotton shirt ( https://apps.npr.org/tshirt/ ): the cotton is grown in Mississippi. It's then shipped to Indonesia to spin the cotton into yarn. The yarn is shipped to Bangladesh for rough cut and sewing…
You're both right but you appear to differ on particularities, like if it's good to bring all manufacturing onshore.
I'd rather address Jensen's could-be-apology which pretty much mimics Grok's "Oops, I made some pedo images, sorry... but move on, nothing to see here."
Yes, Nvidia, Apple and AMD are the companies that drove the US chip manufacturing overseas. The problem is, thanks to that, they are now forcing us to pay for their enormous margins and for bringing chip production back here, all the while they swim in money.
On top of that, we are now supposed to appreciate their newly acquired wisdom and be thankful when they lecture us about what's good for America.
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Good point. "Free trade between free countries" is a nice concept but unfortunately Americans have cancelled that subscription.
What countries, beyond the US, are you speaking to? I mean, I'm interested in what countries you're talking about that don't leverage tariffs and other restrictions to favor domestic industries in those countries.
Strategically, it does not make sense for democratic countries to have higher trade barriers with each other than with autocrat states. But over time the hybrid warfare by autocrat states leveraged social media to convice people to vote against their own interest e.g. brexit.