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

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

#491

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 8:48 PM UTC

mmooss wrote: post #487

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While the fact that the artist ended up selling a piece of art for $100k is absolutely reliant on the full totality of the social context .. what happens next is where wealth concentration does or does not happen. And that is (to a good approximation) almost entirely the realm of tax policy.

That is why I gave two different societies as examples - both have managed to construct a social context where this happens, but what happens next is different in each of them.

Put more crudely, wealth concentration is about not taxing high levels of income at high marginal rates. It is not about the specifics of how those high levels of income arise, who they happen to, etc. etc.

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

#492

Post by __d » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 9:29 PM UTC

rich_sasha wrote: post #119

elictronic wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manufacturing will start coming back based on the high tariffs just with two big caveats. 1. Manufacturing takes time and money to setup. This is a software forum where changes are made at lighting speed. Manufacturing requires capital, years, and will. In software it might take a day to make an obvious change. Manufacturing hopefully 6 months. Working with physical systems takes time. 2. Manufacturing does not mean…

> It will be automated with a fifth or less required to setup and maintain. It is genuinely a hard problem. Even 50 years ago or so, simply having two hands and reasonable health was a gateway to a decent-paying job. These jobs have kind of evaporated, and aren't going back. That's a bit part of the nostalgia for manufacturing, I would imagine. In an ideal world, you would ramp up free education, churn out more skill…

What does/did Switzerland do?

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

#493

Post by achierius » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 9:30 PM UTC

rainsford wrote: post #187

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flaw is in putting these things out as alternatives to each other. The future of manufacturing is in automation, but in order to do automation you need machinists and computer science. You need people who can design a machine that makes other machines, which is a physical device that operates under the direction of software. Getting people to learn to code instead of learning how to build machines doesn't get it.

I agree you need a variety of skills and jobs, but "learning how to build machines" is just as white collar as learning to code. Particularly since the functionality of any modern machine involves just as much code as it does mechanical engineering. Don't get me wrong, mechanical and software engineering are completely different fields and we need both of them. But they're both unarguably college educated white colla…

Exactly the point -- the dichotomy of "white collar jobs" and "manufacturing jobs" is a false one.

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

#494

Post by didericis » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 10:45 PM UTC

munksbeer wrote: post #486

didericis wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 administrat…

Likewise. I enjoy commenting here because it’s one of the few places online where there’s actually discourse, and I like to think conversations like these have trickle effects/lead to more cross pollination and rational outcomes. Your pushback is valid; there’s a very real danger of getting too much in bed with Trump’s base and letting dumb populism overrule any need for strategic pivots if this doesn’t end up working. There was also some interesting pushback about European market demand for US weapons being more important than supply chain security which I hadn’t considered from the strategic angle; I don’t think I agree that it’s more important than eliminating foreign chokepoints in US military supply chains, but that’s a point in favor of these tariffs being too blunt and extreme an instrument for addressing the need to boost domestic industrial capacity for the defense industry.

I’ll keep an open mind as well. I hope things eventually work out for the best, but we’ll see what happens.

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

#495

Post by xenadu02 » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 10:57 PM UTC

bitmasher9 wrote: post #228

xenadu02 wrote: post #211

I just bought a lathe to lock in prices before tariffs cause them to rise. Its a hobby I've wanted to get into for a long time. There are no manufacturers of screw cutting lathes (a variant of engine lathes and what most people think of as a manual lathe) left in the USA. If you look at old 60s/70s catalogs of lathes the basic models would cost around $15,000 in adjusted money. The Chinese imports are $3000. Could so…

A lot of manufacturing doesn’t have the market cap to gain investment in the US, lathes included. The total annual lathes sales are <$50b/yr, so you’d have to corner the global market to make it into the Fortune 500. Maybe you could get investment, but you would need killer patents and a working prototype first.

That's true and unfortunate. In the past many more banks were local and there was greater appetite for investments in small and medium businesses, without the expectation that the business had to make the Fortune 1000 or it wasn't worth doing.

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

#496

Post by jkubicek » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 11:54 PM UTC

jkubicek wrote: post #83

elictronic wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manufacturing will start coming back based on the high tariffs just with two big caveats. 1. Manufacturing takes time and money to setup. This is a software forum where changes are made at lighting speed. Manufacturing requires capital, years, and will. In software it might take a day to make an obvious change. Manufacturing hopefully 6 months. Working with physical systems takes time. 2. Manufacturing does not mean…

> Manufacturing takes time and money to setup... Manufacturing requires capital, years, and will. And a stable political system. If I were in the manufacturing industry, I wouldn't make big bets on moving manufacturing back to the states unless I had some real guarantees that these tariffs weren't going to go away in the next week.

Oh hey, look what (mostly) went away in a week

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

#497

Post by TrapLord_Rhodo » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 12:05 AM UTC

InkCanon wrote: post #394

walterbell wrote: post #12

Andy Grove, "How to Make an American Job" (2010), https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/documents/areas/adm/loeb/11_35... The first task is to rebuild our industrial commons. We should develop a system of financial incentives: Levy an extra tax on the product of offshored labor. (If the result is a trade war, treat it like other wars—fight to win.) Keep that money separate. Deposit it in the coffers of what we might call the…

The second one is so delusional. It assumes you can build a moat for all manufactured products. This is true in extremely specific, high value cases like lithography machines or chips. But when you talk about screws, glue, plastic bits and what makes up 90% of manufacturing, there is no moat. You're not going to build a monopoly on screws.

>You're not going to build a monopoly on screws.

Obviously you don't know home depot.

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

#498

Post by lesuorac » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 1:30 AM UTC

mmooss wrote: post #478

lesuorac wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > historically very popular > When? Not for a long time. Slavery and witchcraft were historically very popular ... The wikipedia article places it as 16th to 19th century which is a longer time period than Globalism was popular. If the end of my post wasn't clear, I'm not a fan of Mercantilism but one does need to understand the other side. Although a big critique I have of Globalism is that the gains from trade ar…

> Although a big critique I have of Globalism is that the gains from trade are not evenly dispersed automatically so countries like the US really need to raise the top tax rate and increase (or at least not lower) redistribution otherwise you get high income equality. I agree with that critique, though it may be a problem with this specific version of Globalism, not globalism itself. But do you think there is more eq…

> I agree with that critique, though it may be a problem with this specific version of Globalism, not globalism itself.

Well, there's nothing about Globalism that enforces this so it's really a complaint about most if-not all Globalism.

> With only 5% of the population the US would not have nearly enough manufacturing capacity to meet modern needs.

Expand your borders to include say Canada or all of South America. The UK moved up the value chain into industrial jobs while delegating out the cotton farming to their North American _Colony_ (as well as their South East Asian colony).

> If it was handing away money, then why would someone invest in it? They invest because the investment generates returns, in this case massive returns that changed hundreds of millions of lives and provided wealth that was used to buy and invest in yet more things.

Sending over capital goods in exchange for future considerations is not a Mercantilism argument. The reason why somebody would invest in it is because they're a Globalist.

The reason why "we" switched from Mercantilism to Globalism is because it generates more growth but you can't use Globalism arguments in a Mercantilism framework unless you're making the argument to switch frameworks.

(Also Mercantilism is also causing income equality by having an underclass in your colonies to support a wealthier main land; but the mainland isn't going to be complaining about being poor).

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

#499

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 1:50 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #465

forgetfreeman wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes as a % of GDP have been relatively flat over the last 60 years, and on average have been lower over the last 25 years so claiming the government or "entitlements" are the culprit doesn't scan. https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/united-states/tax-reve... Claims that the market has become less free are perfectly baseless and a non sequitur here as even if that claim was true and verifiable it does nothing to e…

Have you counted state & local taxes, as well as the deficit? All those count. Washington State has heaped on a lot of new taxes in the last few years. California has done even worse. > Claims that the market has become less free are perfectly baseless So the mountains of new regulations have no effect? Consider all the thousands of burned out houses in LA. So far, only 4 building permits have been issued. In Seattle…

[deleted]

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

#500

Post by forgetfreeman » Thu, Apr 10, 2025, 2:04 AM UTC

mmooss wrote: post #480

forgetfreeman wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal isn't to block all trade in favor of a purely domestic market. That would be stupid as now your manufacturing base is limited to the quantities of raw materials that can be produced locally and you're burning through non-renewable strategic assets just to float domestic day to day activities while simultaneously artificially limiting your available market for finished goods. This is manufacturing economy 101…

> This is manufacturing economy 101 What is? You haven't spelled out your theory. And I know economics well, and class 101 is free markets and specialization. > how the US built and defended it's manufacturing base before the pivot to a "service" economy Who wants to return to an economy of decades ago? The US was much poorer then. I want to move to the future. Services are much easier on people physically - you don'…

"And I know economics well, and class 101 is free markets and specialization."

Then something must have changed with the introduction texts at some point because the one I had to slog through covered the concept of manufactured goods being inherently more valuable shortly after defining basic terms like "product", "value", and "manufactured goods". Literally 2nd chapter in the book.

"Who wants to return to an economy of decades ago?"

Literally everyone who works for a living making shit or who are stuck in bullshit service industry McJobs that aren't paying the bills. Also every small business owner in the country, although admittedly not all of them realize it.

"The US was much poorer then."

The oligarch class was certainly much poorer then, the same can't be said for the other 99.9% of the population.

"Services are much easier on people physically"

You might want to look into the long term health effects of poverty and stress before you float that statement. Additionally "I'm too soft to actually work" only becomes a compelling argument when you can prove the condition applies to a simple majority of working age Americans. Good luck with that.