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America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

molsonhart.com

451–460 of 1001 posts

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#451
post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also one can't ignore that the GOP managed to remarked the CHIPS act as a key source of inflation, which they also managed to pin on "Bidenomics". Which was another source of "vibes, basically"

Weren't we hearing for years about how it went to waste because Intel did stock buybacks or whatever using the CHIPS money. Now we are supposed to believe it's critical?

CHIPS incentive funding is way bigger than just Intel, so it’s a bit disingenuous to write off the whole program just because of one (or even several) high profile bad actor. We should have a nuanced discussion and fix the shortcomings of our programs, but at least assess things in a balanced way.

If you check the transcript of the confirmation hearing for the current Commerce secretary, practically every Senator brags about their state’s CHIPS funded R&D hub. Lots of growth in small and medium businesses there. And CHIPS incentive funding played a huge role in bringing the new TSMC fab in Arizona

https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/jobs/2024/04/...

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#452
post #39

Missing reason #15: commercial lenders with a brain realize that these tariffs and this self-imposed domestic crisis will dissipate in the next ~6 years. Nobody's going to lend in this market to try to spin up a new greenfield project in the US that will take years to get operational when they can sit and ride it out - ESPECIALLY at these interest rates.

Not only will it take years to get operational, there is no way it would ever reach the scale and reach of Chinese manufacturing, not in six years, not in sixty. Even if they throw trillions of investor money at it. China and others are clearly demonstrating the power of capitalism with state support. The US is too busy infighting and keeping capitalism and politics separate (small government, let the market decide e…

The apostrophe when specifying decades is incorrect, it's a common grammatical error.

Should be "50s" and "1950s". Sorry, I usually don't do this but I otherwise liked your comment and thought you might want to know.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#453
post #338

Earlier 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…

If you’re basing your understanding of the subject based on one anti-DEI activist’s misinterpretation of policies he doesn’t actually know anything about, who didn’t talk to anyone at those schools (even critics of the policy), and who very likely misread statistics and intentionally misrepresented processes, then you are not getting a fair picture. This piece you linked to is a mess of unsubstantiated statements. Several of the links are broken but the one that is still around does not say what he says, so I wouldn’t trust any of the rest of his summarization either.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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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It’s an overhyped exaggeration at best, but very likely a complete misrepresentation of the policies and how they were used in reality. What you should be outraged by is that lazy hacks can make a living by stirring up fake controversies over intentionally misinterpreting this stuff.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that global hegemony by force is long-term (centuries) sustainable at all? What makes you confident that this could ever work on a longer term? The US is only ~5% of people globally, and I would expect any industrial/technological lead to melt over the years unless there is a monumental, continuous difference in spending (like what the US military did since WW2). But I see no indication that you can keep…

Global hegemony of the US is based not on 5% of people, rather the US sphere of influence. US, Canada, EU, Japan, Australia, South Korea, etc. The combination is immensely rich, powerful and advanced. Even more so when you keep India on board as well. It at least stands a fighting chance if it wasn't the case that this alliance is being destroyed before our eyes. I will admit that even an integrated alliance cannot p…

Yeah, but look at what GP is responding to:

    > America needs to increase manufacturing capacity if it wants to maintain hegemony and possibly world peace.
That does not make sense.

Low value manufacturing has been disappearing from the US for decades and arguably the US -- up until the recent turmoil -- has continued to maintain its hegemony.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#456

I think the collapse of the American Empire is no more preventible than the collapse of the British, Spanish, or Roman empires. The issues with the US being the reserve currency has been known for a while now (and was even predicted by Keynes before the Bretton-Woods summit): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma Any discussion of "bringing back manufacturing" that doesn't mention government spending or socia…

Empires come and go, that's just a fact of life. The question was whether they'd fall back relatively gracefully like (Western) Europe, now with multiple countries ranking at the top of "World's Happiest Countries", or whether they'll become Russia 2.0 with the biggest guns, richest oligarchs, and the worst quality of life. It's still far from played out, but right now they're solidly on the road to Russia 2.0, with…

The fall of the Soviet Union was arguably more graceful than the two world wars and myriad of colonial worlds it took Europe butt out. Even if you exclude the world wars it probably holds.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#457
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't just ego. This is an impending existential issue. America needs to increase manufacturing capacity if it wants to maintain hegemony and possibly world peace. China will soon have the ability to take Taiwan and Korea and Japan. If that happens it's game over for any American interests and perhaps democracy as a whole. Wargames[0] paint a grim picture of an upcoming conflict between China and America over Ta…

I don't know why people keep thinking that China will attack Taiwan. It took HK and Macao without a shot. I think China is following Sun Tzu. "subduing the enemy without fighting," is the epitome of strategic thinking in his book, The Art of War. This means achieving victory through cunning, deception, and maneuvering, rather than through direct confrontation and bloodshed" They are increasing their military knowing…

What I still don't get is what could China possibly want with Taiwan?

Naval routes? Just negotiate and use money instead; it'll be cheaper than war.

Brainpower? Just offer higher salaries to come work in China.

Taiwan is a tiny island smaller than Florida with only 20m people.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 environm…

Yes, they could make more use of the Uyghurs. https://www.state.gov/forced-labor-in-chinas-xinjiang-region... not to mention other slaves. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...

Your second links puts the number of slaves in China at 4 per 1000. The USA is at 3.3 per 1000. Why not mention that the USA could make more use of their slaves?

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people in the areas where things used to be made certainly have more free time, but they don't have disposable income. Unless we're just here to repeat canards from the 1990s given by financiers which explained why it was good to shut down the main employers for entire towns.

It's odd how little factories moving from union areas to red states gets mentioned in this context. Areas gutted, jobs lost and some lesser number of jobs with less benefits and pay created elsewhere. So many political ideas seem to only be allowed to be discussed if you can add a garnish of racism or xenophobia to them.

You don't hear people complaining about that because the states that are the net losers of those jobs are full of people who think factories are dirty and unsightly and pay garbage wages, etc, etc, hence why they're fine with their politicians implementing the policies that are driving them out in the first place. Sure, the blue collar people know what's up but they're outnumbered by the white collar economy handily enough that it never becomes a leading political gripe you hear about from these states.

Whereas when states that aren't behaving that way lose jobs, factories and industries to Mexico or China they're all "hey WTF" over it because they actually cared and didn't want that economic activity driven off.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#460
Fine, we underestimate the difficulty. But we can make a detailed plan like other countries do. The US has massive advantages. Just no longer so massive that we can expect to win on sheer awesomeness.

I feel like we in the US have a horrible split evaluation of ourselves: either we're supreme or we're doomed. Both sides of that split are emotional states, not useful facts.

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