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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)

#501

Post by forgetfreeman »

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…

The deficit should count, but since Federal taxes haven't been increased to service it it doesn't, so there is that. Likewise, CA and WA are what they are, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to suggest they're so central to the US economy that their local tax structure is driving tracked changes to household income and savings, real wages, inflation, etc. metrics on a national level. Additionally relatively recent changes in these states do nothing to explain flat wages and the declining middle class over the last 50 years.

"So the mountains of new regulations have no effect?"

Difficult to say until there's a few specific examples to examine. I've just spent the last half hour digging around for evidence that suggests there's been a spike in enforcement actions by the government at any point in the last three presidential terms and I'm not coming up with anything so until some evidence surfaces I'm going with probably not.

As for local goings on in LA and Seattle, neither are "the market". This isn't the first time I've been exposed to the apparent self-absorption of West Coast politics but I gotta tell you, y'all aren't the singularity around which the US economy or global markets pivots around. That'd be the oil and gas industry.

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

#502

Post by WalterBright »

mmooss wrote: post #474
WalterBright wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has done quite well with a mostly free market.

> The US has done quite well Some do extremely well, many don't do well at all. > with a mostly free market. We both know there are massive social programs, and the market is unfree in many ways - powerful participants often make markets very non-free for others, and of course some are highly regulated to the point of distortion. I actually favor using the free market whenever possible, most importantly because of th…

> Some do extremely well, many don't do well at all.

Some people don't like ice cream, too.

When one makes general statements, replying that it isn't 100% is pointless.

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

#503

Post by WalterBright »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #501
WalterBright wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The deficit should count, but since Federal taxes haven't been increased to service it it doesn't, so there is that. Likewise, CA and WA are what they are, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to suggest they're so central to the US economy that their local tax structure is driving tracked changes to household income and savings, real wages, inflation, etc. metrics on a national level. Additionally relatively recent c…

> The deficit should count, but since Federal taxes haven't been increased to service it it doesn't, so there is that

Inflation is the result of the deficit, and it is the equivalent of a tax. This is why politicians work so hard to deny that inflation comes from the deficit.

Want more examples of burdensome regulation? Try Lina Kahn of the FTC with her frivolous (but very expensive) lawsuits. Regulation is why the California high speed rail failed to be built, and why Biden's big spending program to install car charging stations resulted in zero chargers being built. Nearly every aspect of a car is subject to regulation, which is why they pretty much all look the same (unlike the variety in earlier years). EV regulation have been resulted in massive costs for the auto industry.

As for oil and gas, Biden blocked the pipelines that would have saved a ton of money.

The only unregulated market in the US is the software industry. And look how spectacularly successful it has been!! Prices have been driven down to literally zero! I'm in the software business, and I do not need approvals, permits, licenses, or any regulations pertaining to the software I write and sell.

(Other than laws against fraud, theft, etc.)

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

#504

Post by WalterBright »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #490
WalterBright wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, whethe…

> the state has $40b of wealth under its control to invest.

Defense spending is not an investment in the economy, neither are entitlements.

The returns on government investments that are legitimate investments, however, are quite a bit less than the returns on the investments of rich people. The reason is simple - people who get rich off of investments are very, very good at it. Government bureaucrats are not.

Government investments are socialism, which have an inglorious history of poor returns.

> The belief in the business genius really is overblown

4 out of 5 business ventures fail. The survivors tend to be pretty good at it. You'd be very hard pressed to find a dummy who grew a business to a billion dollars. The ones who have done it more than once are very, very rare. (Like Steve Jobs, who did it 3 times.) If you want to argue that Jobs, Gates, Musk, Bezos, etc., just fell into it, go right ahead!

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

#505

Post by ashoeafoot »

consumer451 wrote: post #254
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…

My main concern is that de-globalizing trade will remove a large barrier for real kinetic war. Bombing your economic partner is generally a dumb move, and that has been pretty nice for humanity in the last ~50 years.

It did not prevent WW1.

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

#506

Post by ashoeafoot »

consumer451 wrote: post #259
toomuchtodo wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fair take, but also consider that Germany attempted to use purchasing fossil gas from Russia to prevent aggression, and it did not.

That's an extremely good point, which hits really close to home. I wonder if Putin would have still invaded Ukraine, knowing the extent of sanctions that would hit them. He might have been lulled into thinking that the EU would not care, given the existence of people like Gerhard Schröder and his ilk. edit: I am not sure that the reason for the Russian-German energy alliance was an attempt at pacification. It seems m…

Its prussian restorationism, it oozes out of berlin since the reunification and with it and its disciples (AFD) comes that idea that you can ignore the small countries if you are a big country. There are people not falling for it, but real-imperialists like Steinmeier, Schröder or Gauland are ready to send other smaller nations to the slaughter for their own benefits .

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

#507

Post by csdreamer7 »

defrost wrote: post #351
oceanplexian wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see that happening since the US has historically been the least protectionist of nations. The EU loves protectionism. The single market is totally dysfunctional with a recent study saying it was equivalent to a 45% tariff between member states for manufacturing, a 110% for services. If this is the cohort you expect to save the world economy with free trade I certainly wouldn’t be betting real money on it.

Historically , the United States of America pursued a protectionist policy from the beginning of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century. Between 1861 and 1933, they had one of the highest average tariff rates on manufactured imports in the world. After 1942, the U.S. began to promote worldwide free trade. Within the EU single market, there are no tariffs or customs duties between member states for manu…

> Between 1861 and 1933, they had one of the highest average tariff rates on manufactured imports in the world. After 1942, the U.S. began to promote worldwide free trade.

The US did this because of the free trade treaties between west European states after WW2. This eventually led to the EU. The US, not wanting to be isolated, pushed for their own treaties.

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

#508

Post by mindslight »

WalterBright wrote: post #503
forgetfreeman wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deficit should count, but since Federal taxes haven't been increased to service it it doesn't, so there is that. Likewise, CA and WA are what they are, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to suggest they're so central to the US economy that their local tax structure is driving tracked changes to household income and savings, real wages, inflation, etc. metrics on a national level. Additionally relatively recent c…

> The deficit should count, but since Federal taxes haven't been increased to service it it doesn't, so there is that Inflation is the result of the deficit, and it is the equivalent of a tax. This is why politicians work so hard to deny that inflation comes from the deficit. Want more examples of burdensome regulation? Try Lina Kahn of the FTC with her frivolous (but very expensive) lawsuits. Regulation is why the C…

> Inflation is the result of the deficit

This is extremely myopic.

Price inflation is the result of the explicit government policy that says price inflation must happen, and that enough new money will be created (monetary inflation) to make it happen. The part of the deficit that is debt owed to non-government entities is those entities wanting the large-scale equivalent of a savings account, and is not any more inflationary than a savings account. The part of the deficit that is "debt owed to the Fed" is monetary inflation. The other nongovernmental "debt owed to the Fed" like home mortgages is also monetary inflation. If the monetary inflation from that part of the deficit did not occur, then the Fed's technocratic mandate would be to lower rates even further to send even more new money to the banking industry so that price inflation would still occur.

This is the dynamic we've been suffering for the past 40+ years of fake "fiscal responsibility", that has seen the government starved of being able to spend for deliberate purposes like mitigating the damage to our industrial base from offshoring. Meanwhile all that monetary inflation still had to occur, so most of that money was just dumped into the banking sector. This mainly bid up the asset bubble, but to close the feedback loop that new money still has to get back to the consumer price index. This happens through consumer goods that can be financialized (housing, cars, insurance, education). Which is why those things have shot up in price - to bring up the average while manufactured goods have continued to go down in inflation-adjusted terms.

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

#509

Post by Straw »

dalemhurley wrote: post #280
bitmasher9 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is really effective at increasing the amount of gold in your vault, but The Wealth of Nations (Admin Smith) made a strong case against that primary goal. Crucially for the HackerNews crowd, Mercantilism increases the value of physical goods relative to services, and services becomes a smaller portion of the overall economy. Most of us sell server-time wrapped in software that performs a service…

Ironically, Adam Smith would be called a socialist in modern USA with his views on preventing monopolistic behaviours, the need for government oversight and controls, and the need for strong public goods where the private market fails. So many people would benefit from reading his works.

Adam Smith would be considered a right wing economist today, similar to Milton Friedman, perhaps with more support for certain government functions such as education. However, even on that issue, given the wildly different level of education available today, its not easy to predict what he would think.

Often quotations from him are taken wildly out of context to support a 'progressive' viewpoint. An example (From David Friedman's blog):

    "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
But, if we keep reading:

    It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them necessary.
Adam Smith was a proponent of free trade, free markets, and flat taxation (proportional to income). Not very socialist.

(https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/discovering-what-is-tr...)

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

#510

Post by WillPostForFood »

Spooky23 wrote: post #274
WillPostForFood wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question isn't whether maximum global free trade maximizes efficiency. The question is whether maximizing global economic efficiency creates optimal outcomes for a nation, for groups within a nation, or for individuals in the nation. It is clearly a mixed bag, so there is pushback. Ask these questions. Besides maximizing monetary efficiency: Does free trade maximize a nation's resiliency? Does free trade maximize…

With respect to the US: - We’re the richest nation on the planet and have been until recently been adept in response to many types of disasters. - Unemployment has been The idiocy of conflict with China is just that. We’re better and richer together.

We actively pursue fiscal policy to promote inequitable wealth distribution

But you don't see free trade as a policy promoting inequitable wealth distribution? As designed, free trade is literally moving jobs overseas for lower wages. The primary benefit is higher profits for big companies, and the primary loser is middle to lower class that loses jobs. The best case argument is that the people who lose jobs, and end up underemployed, enjoy cheap imports.

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