451–460 of 527 posts
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Clothes are much cheaper than they were in 1960. You could bring the garment industry back to the US but you wouldnt be able to sell your products because they wouldnt be price competitive with sweatshop products.
You can just ban imports of the sweatshop products.
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Clothes are much cheaper than they were in 1960. You could bring the garment industry back to the US but you wouldnt be able to sell your products because they wouldnt be price competitive with sweatshop products.
You can just ban imports of the sweatshop products.
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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.
For instance, actual MiUSA jeans from companies like 3sixteen and Raleigh Denim retail for ~$200+, which is a far cry from the $30 to $50 that most people think jeans "should cost" (and that companies like American Eagle, who have long since outsourced their manufacturing, are happy to provide). Sure, it's not as if MiUSA jeans HAVE to be a few hundred dollars (I believe there are some Gustin's jeans you can pick up for $120 or so), and there are offshored jeans like Levi's which are already overpriced. But you'd have to be very naive to think that there would not be a massive and quite frankly unbearable sticker shock for the vast majority of people if you were to somehow force all domestic clothing demand to be met through domestic production. You could maybe sell it with some very effective austerity propaganda, but good luck with that.
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?…
> What would lead one to conclude those would be the kind of "good jobs" everyone is envisioning Your entire political statement aside manufacturing was always a good job. I’m not sure if you realize what kind of skilled labor went into manufacturing: 1. Machining 2. Tool and Die 3. Welding 4. Etc Hell when I was working in construction I was making 20 dollars an hour at 18. That’s good money, and at the time if I wo…
- $20/hr for hazardous work is "good money"
- your suggestion that we become an export economy, here on a forum where many people are working on products that will be purchased by the world but not counted as exports (examples of non-exporters who collect money from around the globe: Meta, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, AWS)
- the idea that the way to prosperity is for Americans to move back into lower-productivity jobs. (Here I ask you to look up the revenue per employee of Costco and JP Morgan and on the other hand good manufacturers like Steelcase and Lockheed Martin and Eaton. What do you think happens if we move the workforce from higher-productivity jobs to lower-productivity jobs?)
- your confusion of an economic point with a political point
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?…
What’s your point? Say everything you just said again, but with software engineering and Indians, instead of manufacturing and the Chinese, or textiles and Vietnam and Pakistan. There’s no reason American cars need to exist either, they basically all perform worse dollar-for-dollar, feature-for-feature, than foreign cars. In fact, let’s offshore everything. There’s no reason not to use Filipinos for McDonald’s and In…
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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" ?
$2.3 billion is nothing in a $5 trillion system. Doctors make around $500 billion in the US. Their wages are much more significant than insurance profits.
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?…
Jobs aren’t good or not because they government declares it so by fiat, there’s substantive differences between different kinds of jobs. “Service jobs” are bad because they typically require little skill, just a human body physically present in the U.S. In contrast, many people will never be good riveters. They lack the strength, coordination, and stamina to do the job. Similarly, many people cannot be plumbers or el…
Reading this, one would make certain incorrect assumptions about pay in service jobs based on imperfect knowledge of skills required. One might assume service jobs in general do not require any skills at all beyond the capability to slightly warm a room.
The famous counterpoint is obviously "teacher" with its starting salary in the $20 range, but that's too easy so I will start with phlebotomist (starting under $15/hr). And I'll toss in chef (~$22/hr-$25/hr in my city) as an alternate to suggest that even in service industries skill matters (because there is a range here).
> 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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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.
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?…
>we have just decided that the people working those jobs are not deserving of prosperity. We've also decided that labor needs to be taxed more heavily than capital, which is fucking stupid. Taxing the lower end of society who actually works at a higher rate than wealthy people is just so shortsighted.
It'd be interesting if we greatly reduced personal income taxes in the majority of cases. Removed corporate income tax (the idea being corporate income tax hurts all equity owners, whereas we specifically want to target the very wealthy), and then implemented a progressive wealth tax that kicks in starting at 7.5M or something (maybe something like 1.5% from 7.5M-15M, 2.0% from 15M-50M, and then 3% from 50M+, this could be done more smoothly if desired). We'd need to penalize capital flight with something (something like a 40% exit tax or something). The IRS would have to be greatly empowered to support this, net worth declarations would all be declared by the tax filer, and if audited and found to be incorrect, the IRS will purchase the asset at 70% of its declared value (or some other better mechanism can be thought of to ensure that NW is declared accurately). We'd also simplify the tax code in all other cases, removing all forms of credit/deductions/etc on income. This will free up IRS audit resources to focus on declared net worth fraud. Remove all forms of non-sin tariffs entirely.
Get rid of entitlements taxes and spend and replace it with a negative income tax that is calculated to provide a very base level of existence that never disincentives work.
Then remove government backed student loans, but make them treated the same as other loans (ie. students can declare bankruptcy). Kids should also get a 5k per annum payment that's held in trust by the government that's invested into the US total market that gets linearly released to them from the age of 18-30.
I also propose that we remove all consumption taxes that aren't a sin tax. Ie. keep taxes on alcohol, gas, etc. Implement a very high luxury goods tax.
Then completely change the medical system to be more similar to Singapore with mandatory copays of something like $20-50 (to prevent abuse), but also provide universal coverage with the government setting prices with pharma/providers.
Dissolve the ability of states to collect taxes and provide federal funding per head. Standardize/centralize all stuff like the DMV. Ie. have a single federal agency to de-duplicate work.
I don't think this stuff is viable at all (would require dramatic tweaks), but it'd be a very interesting thought experiment to see how something that tries to encourage business friendliness, the strength of the income earning population, and incentives capital effiency (over tax effiency) and investment does.
I really think that the fundamental market forces of capitalism are very powerful, we just need to change the incentives structure so that the benefits aren't captured strictly by the ultra wealthy.