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The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

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Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#481

Post by mindslight »

WalterBright wrote: post #466
mindslight wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh boy. There have been tomes written on how Musk's companies are set up around capturing government subsidies. If you're earnestly interested, such analyses are not hard to find. The stock market itself is a shining example of regulatory capture - a perma-bubble due to fake "fiscal responsibility" political marketing that causes massive streams of newly printed money to be handed out to banks to dump into the asset…

So how much subsidy did Musk receive for SpaceX? (The answer is $0.) SpaceX is worth around $390 billion. > some of Musk's riches are due to actual wealth creation Very generous of you! LOL

> So how much subsidy did Musk receive for SpaceX? (The answer is $0.)

Wut? SpaceX's largest customer is the government. If you're just looking to play semantic games where that revenue isn't a "subsidy" then I don't see how it's possible to have a conversation.

You also didn't address the other point, which is especially salient given that Musk has now spent a chunk of his concentrated wealth lobbying to gain significant control of the government that gives him funding. But I guess revolving doors, corruption, and grift is just normalized good behavior in 2025 as long as the person is wearing the right color hat?

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#482

Post by mmooss »

DeathArrow wrote: post #413
mmooss wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that support protectionism? For one thing, it involves imports and exports, which requires trading partners who will want to sell you things too. Maybe the argument for colonialism? Regardless, countries that largely operate without protectionism or colonialism have become the wealthiest in the history of the world, without any real competition. There's not much argument remaining.

>Regardless, countries that largely operate without protectionism or colonialism have become the wealthiest in the history of the world, without any real competition. There's not much argument remaining. The wealthiest economies now are those of China and US. And both used colonialism and protectionism. The further we look in history, the more we see most powerful economies practicing both colonialism and protectioni…

> The wealthiest economies now are those of China and US.

China is not, unless you just add up the large number of people and their bank accounts (those who have any savings). Per capita, the "countries that largely operate without protectionism or colonialism have become the wealthiest in the history of the world, without any real competition.", as I said.

> both used colonialism and protectionism

Could you give examples? I mean, they used some, but not substantially. Unless you mean the distant past.

Note how this discussion is framed - for countries. I'm concerned with, and I think we should be concerned with, people.

> The further we look in history, the more we see most powerful economies practicing both colonialism and protectionism.

If you look at history, we are overwhelmingly nomadic hunter-gathers with stone tools - ~190,000 of 200,000 years of Homo sapiens. We are well beyond that history, and the history you name. Our economies far outstrip those empires, as well as our freedom and human rights and the benefit our economies provide to those outside aristrocracy.

Why do you keep trying to go backward to a relatively poor, oppressive time.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#483

Post by wil421 »

esafak wrote: post #151
wil421 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you wouldn’t. The trades will take your body. I work with field techs who are close to 50 and they tell me their bodies are not going to make it past 50 and not even close to retirement age. Office work is so easy on the body compared to almost any job.

And techies face the prospect of becoming obsolete, with ageism rife.

I’m not in the SF or start up bubble so this is not really a concern for me.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#484

Post by mmooss »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #319
WalterBright wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adam Smith died in 1790, a time when the world had little experience with free markets. He was a pioneer in economic thought, but that doesn't automatically mean all of his prognostications about the future are correct.

His prognostications were not necessarily considered by him to be "about the future". Smith believed that most of what he was writing was about things that were true for all time. He may (or may not) have been wrong about that, just as he may have been wrong about any of the specific things he wrote. But he was generally not predicting the future in any real sense.

> Smith believed that most of what he was writing was about things that were true for all time.

Theory is incredible - when it's right, it's right everywhere for all time. I don't know why people disparage it (other than to signal their anti-intellecutallism).

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#485

Post by mmooss »

cryptonector wrote: post #359
lesuorac wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an economic theory - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism The general idea is that when you buy stuff you're losing wealth so if you never buy anything then you never get poorer. Since we constantly dig gold up from the ground we still get richer over time even if nobody buys our stuff. This is also why its importantly to gain colonies (Greenland/ Canada) or mineral rights from other countries so that the…

Mercantilism is certainly what we have today, with much of the world exporting to one perennial importer. Perhaps Trump means to reverse that state of affairs (i.e., make the U.S. mercantilist), which I surmise from your comment that you think would be bad (certainly I think it would be bad!), or perhaps he means to not have mercantilism at all, which I surmise you think would be good.

> much of the world exporting to one perennial importer

There are lots of importers all over the world, some very large.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#486

Post by munksbeer »

didericis wrote: post #461
munksbeer wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US didn't get to be the worlds global superpower out of nowhere. You formed alliances in the west and have pushed your global economic agenda for what, seven decades, with Europe going along with it (along with many other countries), including fighting in wars the US pushed for. That is what you got in return for your military backing. The US also didn't get into the cold war because of Europe,. MAGA won't sell t…

Again, I'm explaining, not endorsing. I believe the reason it feels like I'm pushing is that in a sense, I am: I'm not adding any caveats or disclaimers to that narrative or explaining why other narratives do or don't matter. I think counter narratives to the ones supporting these tariffs are already well understood by most people here. The original person I was responding to was asking why this happened (presumably…

I'm actually appreciating this discourse, thank you.

For what it's worth, being an immigrant to the UK, I've watched kind of from the sidelines as similar events unfolded here around brexit. I tried very hard to have sympathy for the views of brexit voters. The problem I have, and I have the same problem with MAGA, is despite having real grievances, is the overall narrative is just lie after lie. The MAGA administration lied to the whole world about "trade deficits", completely ignoring services. Maybe the story rings true for a particular voter, but it is a misrepresentation of the whole truth, or more bluntly, is a lie.

I understand very well that certain people have not felt the benefit of deindustrialisation. I do get it.

You say this:

> The original person I was responding to was asking why this happened (presumably because it seemed irrationally stupid, as I think it does to most people here), and what I'm pushing for is an understanding of the point of view which explains it. If you understand the concerns of MAGA and the strategic concerns of the US Military the tariffs make sense.

No. I just don't agree. They make sense if Europe wasn't consuming billions of USD a year of US services, and the US wasn't growing increasingly wealthier than Europe each year.

Trump is pandering to his base. That makes sense. But the tariffs are just a means to that end, and trying to ratonalise the tariffs in other terms, I just don't agree with.

In any case, I have learned stuff from this conversation. I'm not even saying I am definitely correct, there is a chance I'm wrong and you're correct, and I will keep an open mind about that. Thank you.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#487

Post by mmooss »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #321
WalterBright wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wealth concentration has been a deliberate US domestic policy for decades. Wealth is not concentrated in a market society. It is created. Some people creating more wealth than others is not "concentrating" wealth in their hands. Another way to put it is it is not a fixed pie, where if one gets more another necessarily gets less. If I buy some art supplies for $20, and paint a masterpiece I sell for $100,000, wealth…

Two societies. In each one, someone buys $20 of art supplies, paints a masterpiece and it sells for $100,000. In one society, a marginal tax rate system taxes the artist with an upper rate of 92%, and they end up retaining about $50,000 of the income, with the rest flowing back into the control of the society (via its government). In the other society, a margin tax rate system taxes the artist with an upper rate of 2…

> "Wealth concentration" is not a policy related to markets, production, and trade. It's a policy related to taxation.

I agree with most of what you say, but the pre-tax results of income are not some single natural outcome, but the results of policies about business, economy, education, healthcare, international relations, trade, immigration, monetary policy (of course), regulation, government budget, etc. - pretty much everything.

Those things can be adjusted to result in less or more wealth concentration.

They also depend heavily on capital gains tax in particular.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#488

Post by LastTrain »

dgfl wrote: post #436
LastTrain wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The wikipedia article places it as 16th to 19th century which is a longer time period than Globalism was popular. When did globalism stop being popular?

Did you happen to miss recent US news?

Yeah, a percentage of the U.S. Republican Party are isolationist, that doesn’t make globalism 19th century-style dead. Jesus fucking christballs.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#489

Post by LastTrain »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #443
dgfl wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you happen to miss recent US news?

> > When did globalism stop being popular? > Did you happen to miss recent US news? 1. Not every reader lives in the USA 2. In my observation (not in the USA) in the last years (and also months/weeks) it has rather been a strong veering round back and forth of "globalism is good" vs "globalism is bad" with no clear observable direction at which side the pendulum will stop.

Globalism is not a “was” by any stretch of the imagination inside or outside of the US.

Re: The Decline of the U.S. Machine-Tool Industry and Prospects for Recovery (1994)

#490

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

WalterBright wrote: post #468
runako wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example is bad because nobody thinks of $100k as "concentrated wealth" and your argument has some purchase at those numbers. At $100 million, $1 billion, $10 billion, or $100 billion, the argument you put forth does not make sense. There is no motivational quantum for attaining the second, or third, or fourth billion, much less the 200th. Incidentally, most of the people who might be considered to be concentratin…

> There is no motivational quantum for attaining the second, or third, or fourth billion, much less the 200th. That's probably correct. However, if you tax $100b at 40%, then the person has only $60b to invest in creating more wealth.

But in the meantime, the state has $40b of wealth under its control to invest.

And while the $100B winner may have had some insight that contributed to the $100B, there also had to be a $100B winner in an economy structured the way ours is. Consequently, we don't really know whether there's a reason to prefer their investment choices over the ones the state will make.

It currently remains unclear, for example, whether what Musk or Bezos have done with their vast wealth thus far will, in the medium or long term turn out to be a net benefit to society (it certainly has not been so in the short tem).

The belief in the business genius really is overblown. Yes, some folks are better at it than others, but when we run the economy like a casino, there will always be big winners no matter what personal qualities the players bring to the game.

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