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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

#631

Post by ragazzina »

californical wrote: post #365
Workaccount2 wrote: post #184

I think most people have a very confused understanding of money(currency) and value. Workers produce value, not money . Workers get a cut of that value, which is converted to money. To get by comfortably in the US, a first world developed economy, you need to be producing a lot of value. Everything is made to accommodate high value workers. Producing t-shirts, window fans, or toilet brushes is not high value work. Th…

I somewhat agree with your point, but it’s also important to include the other side of that pricing. If it actually costs $60 (really more like $25 for made-in-America t-shirts I’ve bought) to make a t-shirt, with environmental regulations and human costs accounted for, then isn’t that the actual cost of a t-shirt? And they were artificially cheap at $10 for imported ones due to ignoring externalities? In that case,…

> isn’t that the actual cost of a t-shirt? And they were artificially cheap at $10

Maybe a part of the $15 difference is in marketing.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#632

Post by almosthere »

epolanski wrote: post #610
NoTeslaThrow wrote: post #581

We never stopped manufacturing, we just stopped employing people. > We don’t have the infrastructure to manufacture That's trivially false given we're the second-largest manufacturer in the world. We just don't want to employ people, hence why we can't make an iphone or refine raw materials. The actual issue is that our business culture is antithetical to a healthy society. The idea of employing Americans is anti-bus…

> We just don't want to employ people I don't think it's a matter of willingness, but simple global geo economics. There's places where producing A, whatever A is, is economically more efficient for countless reasons (energy prices, logistics, talent, bureaucracy, cost of labor, etc). That's not gonna change with whatever investment you want or tariff you put. But the thing I find more absurd, of all, is that I'd exp…

Cost of labor is the issue: china is enslaving people to work.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#633

Post by myrmidon »

9rx wrote: post #578
myrmidon wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is also that absolutely nothing about the overall situation changed meaningfully over the last 50 years or so. People had the exact same concerns and fears when electronics manufacturing started shifting to Japan like 50 years ago-- they went in the same way up the value chain that China did, and they started losing a lot of the industry with rising wages, too, exactly like what we see with China => Vietnam…

> I think 90% of the whole political debate about the economy is misplaced nostalgia combined with problematic local wealth inequality When Trump said that new manufacturing facilities would be fast-tracked to being able to build their own on-site power plants because the grid is "at risk of bombing", I've come to think that the whole political debate is really about: What the hell are we going to do if WWIII happens…

> When Trump said that new manufacturing facilities would be fast-tracked to being able to build their own on-site power plants because the grid is "at risk of bombing", I've come to think that the whole political debate is really about: What the hell are we going to do if WWIII happens?

I'm not buying that whole argument. At all. Because this looks too much like a "lets find favorable talking points for the middling plans we already put in motion"-exercise.

Can you honestly argue that current economic policy and decisionmaking was mainly driven by strategic military interests and planning, as opposed to Trump being a big fan of tariffs as a concept?

Because I don't think you can. And I think we don't need more than a glance at the liberation day proposals to identify this; if the aim was to war-proof US supply chains, then you would expect a big focus on military relevance of tariffed goods, coupled with long term investments into defense-relevant local industry and a glut of defense-spending in general.

Instead we got blanket tariffs that were so ill-conceived, they mostly had to be rolled back/suspended the next day, and generally pretty much no apparent guiding focus or much thought at all.

Concerning possible war: Russia is not a credible military opponent to the US and is not gonna be one within decades, either. Their land army basically got stopped by a country a fifth of their size on mainly donated (and frequently old) western equipment, and the Russian Navy embarassed itself even worse.

China is a somewhat credible opponent, but what would they even go to war over that would actually affect the US? Panama? They might be more serious about taking Taiwan back, but I honestly doubt that the US would involve itself in that business too much anyway; considering how the whole support for the Ukraine, whose territorial integrity it formally agreed on to protect, amounted to some military hand-me-downs and a bit of intel sharing (no longer even that from what I know?), I would NOT hold my breath waiting for US carriers in a Taiwan invasion...

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#634

Post by glitchc »

RoyalHenOil wrote: post #629
glitchc wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Employees have always been responsible for managing their own career growth and always will be. How can it be otherwise? On the contrary, from the 40s to the 70s (possibly well into the 80s) the corporation was heavily invested in your career. Employees were expected to dedicate their lives to the firm, and the firm, in turn, was expected to take care of them. This "free-for-all" employment model is fairly recent.…

It didn't stop in the 70s. In many countries in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere, it's still common for businesses to retain employees over the arc of their career.

Certainly true, my comments are specific to the North American workplace.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#635

Post by Vegenoid »

cratermoon wrote: post #218
pjc50 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem to want jobs with the macho kudos of manual labour, but with the physical comfort and salaries of email jobs, and I have some very bad news about that combination.

Those people need to watch a few episodes of Mike Rowe's "Dirty Jobs". Also people need to stop saying "unskilled labor". There is no such thing as labor without skills, outside a category in an archaic way of justifying low wages. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unskilled-labor.asp

I think it is pretty useful to be able to distinguish between jobs that don't require much education/training, and jobs that do. "Unskilled" and "skilled" are how we do that. Do you have alternative words you'd use?

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#636

Post by mr_toad »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #529
nottorp wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To sell in Europe, we must register for their tax system and nominate a legal representative. American companies? Register for EU tax system? I can buy from anyone in the US and worldwide for that matter, and as long as they're willing to figure out shipping they don't need to register anywhere, I can handle taxes myself when receiving. What "AI" did they use to write this?

You can’t handle VAT rebates on your own, but America lacking a VAT system itself can’t really take advantage of that.

> You can’t handle VAT rebates on your own

Individuals (sole traders, contractors etc) can claim VAT rebates. You don’t have to have a lawyer or an accountant if you’re prepared to figure out the rules yourself.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#637

Post by SlightlyLeftPad »

almosthere wrote: post #632
epolanski wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We just don't want to employ people I don't think it's a matter of willingness, but simple global geo economics. There's places where producing A, whatever A is, is economically more efficient for countless reasons (energy prices, logistics, talent, bureaucracy, cost of labor, etc). That's not gonna change with whatever investment you want or tariff you put. But the thing I find more absurd, of all, is that I'd exp…

Cost of labor is the issue: china is enslaving people to work.

Source?

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#638

Post by 9rx »

myrmidon wrote: post #633
9rx wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think 90% of the whole political debate about the economy is misplaced nostalgia combined with problematic local wealth inequality When Trump said that new manufacturing facilities would be fast-tracked to being able to build their own on-site power plants because the grid is "at risk of bombing", I've come to think that the whole political debate is really about: What the hell are we going to do if WWIII happens…

> When Trump said that new manufacturing facilities would be fast-tracked to being able to build their own on-site power plants because the grid is "at risk of bombing", I've come to think that the whole political debate is really about: What the hell are we going to do if WWIII happens? I'm not buying that whole argument. At all. Because this looks too much like a "lets find favorable talking points for the middling…

> Can you honestly argue that current economic policy and decisionmaking was mainly driven by strategic military interests and planning, as opposed to Trump being a big fan of tariffs as a concept?

Well, like we established in a discussion here yesterday, argument only takes place if you don't know. It is the mind's way to explore and learn. So, yes, obviously I could as I don't have enough information to know for sure. If I did, there would be nothing argue about, now would there? I'd already know everything there is to know. It would be a pointless endeavour.

But I don't think an argument is what you are actually looking for. It seems you're simply looking for someone to do free work for you. As great as that may sound to you, there is no reason for anyone else to cater to that. For the sake of good faith, I'll spare you anything more that would be serving to me.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#639

Post by austin-cheney »

glitchc wrote: post #589
NoTeslaThrow wrote: post #581

We never stopped manufacturing, we just stopped employing people. > We don’t have the infrastructure to manufacture That's trivially false given we're the second-largest manufacturer in the world. We just don't want to employ people, hence why we can't make an iphone or refine raw materials. The actual issue is that our business culture is antithetical to a healthy society. The idea of employing Americans is anti-bus…

Concur, employee training and retention are at an all-time low. There are no positions available for junior employees, minimal onboarding and mentoring of new employees. Organizations have stopped planning people's careers. Used to be that the employee's career growth was their manager's problem, while the employee could focus on the work. Now the employee must market themselves as often, if not more often, than actu…

You fix it the way every other industry has fixed it: broke/agent model.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#640

Post by mcv »

saati wrote: post #409
mppm wrote: post #34

Jonathan Blow's "Preventing the collapse of civilization" [1] makes a similar point. It is easy to assume that, if we can build EUV machines and space telescopes, then processing stainless steel and manufacturing PCBs is baby stuff, and is just waiting for the proper incentives to spring up again. Unfortunately that is not the case -- reality has a surprising amount of detail [2] and even medium-level technology take…

The US can't even make EUV machines, just parts of it.

"Can't even". I think there's only one country that can, so the US is not alone.
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