Earlier quoted context omitted.
Countries that believe that are dominated by those who plan.
Citation needed. How did those five year plans go?
Seem to be doing OK, actually
America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back
431–440 of 1001 posts
Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back
#432Earlier 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?
Start by realising this is going to take decades to reverse. Given the timescale any solution will require cooperation across political parties. You can’t start something that will get undone in four years. Then accept it won’t make much difference to the inhabitants of bumfuck USA. Automation is what took their jobs. Start at the top of the food chain and gradually work down. If America can make cars but not car tyr…
> Then accept it won’t make much difference to the inhabitants of bumfuck USA. Automation is what took their jobs.
If automation took those jobs then why aren't all those automated factories in USA?
Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back
#433Earlier 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…
Trump et al. really run a motte-and-bailey argument here. They woo reasonable people who agree that critical industries: food, energy, defense-adjacent, metals, etc. - must have substantial capacity on-shore or at least very near. They then flip to what amounts to massive handouts for his rust belt base, basically saying we should make everything here. The obvious answer is this: 1. it doesn't matter if our t-shirts…
china isnt an enemy nation unless we decide we want to fight them
Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back
#434I think there are many people in the United States that would rather have manufacturing jobs than to have fast food or retail jobs.
Kirk
Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back
#435Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
You misunderstand me. The US is making shoes-- just not as many as it imports from Vietnam or China. In fact enough shoes get made locally to export about 1$ billion worth of them (while ~$20 billion are spent on imports).
But I don't see the point in throwing billions of dollars from taxes at this industry just to make all those shoes here-- that is stupid (because the jobs that would create are not gonna be very desirable, they are gonna drive up costs all over by competing for labor, and that kind of protectionism is gonna invite retaliation).
The situation is very similar for a lot of industries.
I also think it is extremely unhealthy to baby an industry long-term by isolating it from competition like this.
I'd be totally on board if there was like 20% unemployment in the US, and this was a short term plan to give those people work/income.
But that's not it. This is in my view really bad policy driven by emotional arguments, and actual numbers, expected outcomes and historical precedent (for "I know better than market economies what ought to be produced") all heavily weight against this.
I'm very confident right now that the whole "20%ish tariffs for everyone to balance trade deficit with everyone" approach is gonna be walked back or lead to abysmal outcomes, and people should have realized that from the start.
Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back
#436Earlier quoted context omitted.
We also need to look at what manufacturing we want. That is why the military needs keep coming up - in case of war we are unlikely to be able to get things from China so we better have a different source (though the source need not be in the US - Canada should be just as good so long as we can keep Canada our friends - same with the EU). Once the military needs are met, I don't care what we make, just that we need go…
> just that we need good jobs for people who are not able to handle more complex jobs If manufacturing becomes more efficient at using labor from automation that seems like that would lower the number of available jobs wouldn't it? Unless consumption grows with the increase in output so that more factories are needed to meet the demand? If you need 1000 cars and automation takes it down to 10 people from 100 people b…
for starters we need to make lots of different things.
we also need education reform so that those people get the education needed to do more complex tasks insteade of droping out. What this looks like I don't really know.
Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back
#437Earlier quoted context omitted.
Start by realising this is going to take decades to reverse. Given the timescale any solution will require cooperation across political parties. You can’t start something that will get undone in four years. Then accept it won’t make much difference to the inhabitants of bumfuck USA. Automation is what took their jobs. Start at the top of the food chain and gradually work down. If America can make cars but not car tyr…
> Then accept it won’t make much difference to the inhabitants of bumfuck USA. Automation is what took their jobs. If automation took those jobs then why aren't all those automated factories in USA?
They are. Manufacturing output in the US has never been higher.
Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back
#438Earlier quoted context omitted.
20 years ago China looked to be going in the right direction. However things change. If they get rid of their dictator I might again support them - depending of course on how they change. we should of course support most of europe which usualy has better government. Likewise the other countries in America - both north and south. And so on for anywhere else we can find friends. I an not a Trump fan even if once in a w…
What does support mean? Ship most of our manufacturing there or politely meet their political leadership once a year?
Free trade. So their ecconomy grows and with it edutated people who can afford to see the world and in turn how thep have been lied to.
Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back
#439Earlier quoted context omitted.
> making logical arguments in this environment feels almost pointless. Unfortunately this is the culmination of social media as a controversy machine, that promotes the worst arguments. > ideological purity tests like required DEI statements Example? There's a controversy industry that cherry picks the worst examples of student-politics excess in these regards and then carefully conflates it with university policy. A…
At UC Berkeley, over 75% of faculty applicants were rejected solely based on reviewing their diversity statements: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/480603-what-is-uc-davi... Rather conspicuously, Asians had the highest rate of rejection, followed by whites. Latin applicants had the second highest pass rate, Black applicants had the highest. The diversity statements were not anonymized (as in, the reviewers could…
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Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back
#440Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Democrat voters didn’t want anything to do with her during the 2020 primaries and didn’t turn out as much for her in 2024 as they did for Biden in 2020, so who are the real misogynists here?