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America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

molsonhart.com

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Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#511

Post by hylaride »

vixen99 wrote: post #439
Manuel_D wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At UC Berkeley, over 75% of faculty applicants were rejected solely based on reviewing their diversity statements: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/480603-what-is-uc-davi... Rather conspicuously, Asians had the highest rate of rejection, followed by whites. Latin applicants had the second highest pass rate, Black applicants had the highest. The diversity statements were not anonymized (as in, the reviewers could…

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For the schools that have them, I consider legacy admissions to be more appalling. Those are overwhelmingly white.

The other issue is that many of these schools have not been expanding enrolment numbers to population growth. Less seats per-capita mean more exclusivity over time.

Get rid of them both (DEI and legacy admissions) and the government should create a policy that those endowments need to be used to expand the size of the schools.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#512

Post by JKCalhoun »

_1tem wrote: post #466
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's almost like the U.S. is going to lose either way.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#513

Post by m000 »

dynm wrote: post #444
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-…

There's absolutely no contradiction here. Currently less than 20% of Americans work in factories. All those 80% need to want is that the 20% of people who want to work in factories can do so.

If that 20% never had a factory job before, it is not a reliable indicator. It just means their current job is already shitty. They may get a factory job and realize that they were better off flipping burgers, even with less pay.

From TFA:

> When I first went to China as a naive 24 year old, I told my supplier I was going to “work a day in his factory!” I lasted 4 hours.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#514

Post by phendrenad2 »

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.

This is a big one. Once upon a time, the Democrats and Republicans listened to the same think tanks, so there was continuity in planning. Now, they seem to be opposed to plans simply because the "other side" came up with them. The whiplash we've been experiencing has torn the economy apart and scared businesses away.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#515

Post by imchillyb »

rsfern wrote: post #451
kelipso wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weren't we hearing for years about how it went to waste because Intel did stock buybacks or whatever using the CHIPS money. Now we are supposed to believe it's critical?

CHIPS incentive funding is way bigger than just Intel, so it’s a bit disingenuous to write off the whole program just because of one (or even several) high profile bad actor. We should have a nuanced discussion and fix the shortcomings of our programs, but at least assess things in a balanced way. If you check the transcript of the confirmation hearing for the current Commerce secretary, practically every Senator bra…

R&D is a cost center that can no longer be written off of a company’s taxes.

I don’t believe that cost centers are a good example of returning manufacturing onshore. Or an example of a state using federal funding well.

Cost centers are not a good investment for federal funding, without a clear path to paying back our taxed dollars.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#516

Post by phendrenad2 »

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-…

Everyone wants more manufacturing in the US, but nobody wants to be a factory worker. People would rather starve or go homeless than work in a factory. Until Americans overcome their pride, this is going to make building manufacturing in the US very difficult.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#517

Post by hylaride »

mapt wrote: post #228
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…

When I visited China, the expats told me that recreational drug supplychains were strictly compartmentalized. There was the supply of illicit drugs for Westerners (imported by the sons of Nigerian businessmen, the cliche went), the supply of illicit drugs for Chinese people (who only dealt with Chinese people), and then there were the vast array of drugs that are completely legal to get over the counter in China with…

> hat the official line from the CCP was that China had no drug problems, no prostitution, a variety of other things

Reminds me of a book I read years ago about the Soviet Union. Officially prostitution didn't exist there either, so there were no laws on the books about it. Enforcement usually was around various "antisocial" laws and usually for the street-walkers. Crime in general was mostly fine, so long as it wasn't a threat to the state, against well-connected people, or otherwise visible.

No wonder Russia got so bad after the strong state dissipated.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#518

Post by codedokode »

zero_k wrote: post #87

America is not a country, it's a continent. I know, Canada will be a province, and soon Panama of course, but in the meanwhile, it's a continent, not a country.

But famous American themselves call their country "America".

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#519

Post by mschuster91 »

digikata wrote: post #283
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…

I think the mistake here is the model of low-skill/high-skill labor is not a useful distinction. Manufacturing is high skill period, however there are low-infrastructure and high-infrastructure products and factories. The labor wages themselves are a factor, but an increasingly minor factor in product costs. By bypassing investment in US manufacturing skills and infra, the US sat itself on the sidelines for the abili…

> I think the mistake here is the model of low-skill/high-skill labor is not a useful distinction.

IMHO it still is. There are tasks, especially in assembly, that for now require humans to do because robots can't match our dexterity. Stuff like mounting through-hole components like a cable from the battery compartment to the main PCB. That's a few seconds worth of time, and you need barely more than a few days worth of training to get a worker up to speed - a low-skill job. China, Thailand, Vietnam and a bunch of other places have an ample supply of people coming out of utter poverty, which means the pressure on wages is massive - a Chinese worker on average earns about 13200 dollars a year [1], an American worker is 3x-4x that amount and more if the shop is unionized. And on top of that, Chinese workers work 996, American or European workers have much MUCH more employee rights.

The problem is, low-skill employment opportunities are going down and down because automation gets better. For now, China can compete because Chinese workers are cheaper than machines... but once that changes, it's going to get nasty.

> The labor wages themselves are a factor, but an increasingly minor factor in product costs.

There's soft factors as well. Stuff like workplace safety/OSHA regulations, environmental regulations... Silicon Valley is a bunch of Superfund sites from decades of toxic emissions. China? They barely have regulations in place, and other sweatshop countries are even worse.

The core problem we're talking about anyway is that a certain percentage of any population is just, plain and simple, dumb as rocks. Over half the US population is barely literate [2]. No matter how good your education systems are, no matter how much money you invest into equality in schools, no matter how much you protect them from stuff like lead - they are dumb, will remain dumb, and probably their children will also remain dumb. In ye olde times you put them on farms, meatpacking or in factories so they had gainful employment... but that all went away, and now we got hordes of utterly dumb people with no hope of ever getting smart and, crucially, no hope of ever getting a meaningful job.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/743509/china-average-yea...

[2] https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literacy-s...

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#520

Post by patmorgan23 »

pjc50 wrote: post #263
presto8 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because VAT is collected at the border on imports, some people (wrongly) consider VATs a tariff. Considering that VAT is rebated on exports, VATs are trade neutral. Sales tax as implemented in the US is not as tax efficient as VAT due to the impact of sales taxation on intermediate transactions during manufacturing. VAT only taxes the incrementally the value added at each transaction) whereas sales tax applies to the…

Does the US charge sales tax on B2B transactions? Really? Well no wonder you have problems with domestic manufacturing.

There's no federal sales tax so it varies by state.
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