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America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

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Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#461

Post by wiseowise »

999900000999 wrote: post #248
jghn wrote: post #117

The other day I saw the results of a poll [1] where 80% of Americans thought the *country* would be better off if more Americans worked in factories. However, only 20% of Americans thought that *they* would be better off if more Americans worked in factories. It was surprisingly bipartisan. In other words, people like the idea of this, but no one actually wants this. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/845917ed-41a5-449f-…

We already have a massive prison industrial complex, a lack of basic rights and a complete disregard for due process. Very soon we'll be forced to make shoes and other things behind bars. No trial needed, just indefinite detention.

Old school Soviet school of thinking, very nice.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#462

Post by watwut »

xienze wrote: post #440
philistine wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Pretty clearly republicans, to be honest.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#463

Post by matthewdgreen »

like_any_other wrote: post #163
pjc50 wrote: post #35

> China generates over twice as much electricity per person today as the United States. Why? This appears to be completely wrong? All the stats I can find say that the US has about 4x the per capita electricity generation of China. Other than that it seems to be mostly good points, especially the overall one: you cannot do this overnight. > If you’re building a new factory in the United States, your investment will a…

> 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…

I find it annoying that you think the other choice was “offshoring is great.” Spending on US factory construction surged under Biden. This was largely due to stuff like the IRA and the CHIPS Act. If voters had made different choices in November 2024, in Congress as well as the Presidency, I think we could have had even more aggressive industrial policy — instead of this absolute shitshow that will permanently damage the US’s economic position.

On the other hand, I am a believer in the idea that voters get the government they deserve. So maybe we deserve this.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#464

Post by acdha »

nyeah wrote: post #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.

> But we can make a detailed plan like other countries do

The problem isn’t that we don’t know this: it’s that the person making the decisions rejects the idea of needing to make a detailed plan, or even understand the situation well enough to recognize the problems a plan would need to address.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#465

Post by wiseowise »

potato3732842 wrote: post #456
Herring wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_territory...

Very graceful.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#466

Post by _1tem »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #429
kotaKat wrote: 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…

> demonstrating the power of capitalism with state support

This is actually an excellent reason for tariffs. If we can't beat them at their game because it goes against our principles, then just don't buy their stuff.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#467

Post by [deleted] »

bluGill wrote: post #181
smcl wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is the US already experienced Trump 1.0, so it was presumably easy for many to assume that Trump 2.0 would follow broadly the same pattern and that there'd be an "adult in the room" somewhere to say "this will crash the world economy and do three consecutive 9/11s worth of damage to the stock market". So even though there are some very silly people in very high places saying some very wild things, the assum…

The amazing things to me is people still are not asking why people are so mad about the state of things they voted for Trump in the first place. Trump is the only one promising to make some changes to make life better for those who don't want to go to college. "Maybe he will, maybe he won't, but everyone else is ignoring us" is what I keep hearing when I listen to those people. Fix health care - socialism isn't the o…

[deleted]

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#468

Post by gabrielgio »

lerp-io wrote: post #443

earth doesn’t need more factories, consumer shit needs to be printed out of some sort of organic material that is able to decompose quickly.

or change the consumer habit to consume less, and/or change how things are produce in order to them last longer (reduce planned obsolescence) or even better we rebuild the system to serve human needs instead of feeding capitalism's endless growth.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#469

Post by watwut »

Teever wrote: post #147
tokioyoyo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once again, want to point out how this is simply American leadership not wanting to accept their loss and move on. For the first time in the history they're not being perceived as the "global leader", and that's not acceptable from their POV. Now it's just freaking out and hoping that some extreme policy changes will change the course. From my personal experience, most people act this way when they're in distress and…

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…

Genuinely, USA as of now is threat to both peace and democracy - both at home and abroad. Whether it manages to bring back manufacturing is irrelevant to that.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#470

Post by myrmidon »

_bin_ wrote: post #304
rickdeckard wrote: post #252

Earlier 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…

Completely agree with your main point.

I do disagree somewhat with point 4. I think this is frequently overstated:

Building and operating automated factories is just as wage-dependent as anything else (just the coefficients are a bit smaller). You still need engineers, construction crews, supervisors, repair crews, etc. (and those could all be doing something more profitable as well).

You can see this very clearly in the EU, where there is a pretty smooth wage-gradient, and even the super highly automated automotive manufacturing has moved down that gradient towards Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, despite language/culture barriers.

> Bringing back a big chunk of manufacturing is sustainable; bringing back jobs is not.

I think a decent sized manufacturing industry is a realistic goal long term. But longer term US global supremacy in it is not even a realistic goal to begin with, because not only are you gonna fight against the wage gradient now, you are also gonna face the fact that the US is only ~5% global population, and manufacturing will naturally drift towards the very biggest markets for its goods, which the US probably won't be in half a century or so, simply because of demographics and economical growth in China/India generally.

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