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America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

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Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#641

Post by FpUser »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #490
Delphiza wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving the low-cost jobs offshore was fine until automation filled a lot of those jobs. Now the high skilled automation skills and infrastructure (production lines and robots) are also offshore. I have done my fair share of western factory tours and the number of people on the factory floor is soberingly low... they are simply not needed, as they line runs like a vast, complicated machine.

Japan led in automation in the 90s before the rise of China put a stop to those investments paying off. Now China is making those same investments at a time when the tech is much better. America could solve its manufacturing problem in the future just by importing China automation tech.

>"America could solve its manufacturing problem in the future just by importing China automation tech."

Assuming there is no embargo by then.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#642

Post by mr_toad »

Teever wrote: post #147
tokioyoyo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once again, want to point out how this is simply American leadership not wanting to accept their loss and move on. For the first time in the history they're not being perceived as the "global leader", and that's not acceptable from their POV. Now it's just freaking out and hoping that some extreme policy changes will change the course. From my personal experience, most people act this way when they're in distress and…

This isn't just ego. This is an impending existential issue. America needs to increase manufacturing capacity if it wants to maintain hegemony and possibly world peace. China will soon have the ability to take Taiwan and Korea and Japan. If that happens it's game over for any American interests and perhaps democracy as a whole. Wargames[0] paint a grim picture of an upcoming conflict between China and America over Ta…

> America needs to increase manufacturing capacity if it wants to maintain hegemony and possibly world peace.

This argument is based on experiences in WWII, i.e. the previous war. You need to be cautious about basing military doctrine on the previous war. I’m not sure the next war will be won by churning out aircraft carriers.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#643

Post by DiggyJohnson »

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.

Doesn't that feel like a massive overstatement? They have worse working conditions for sure. "Enslavement" is absurd if we are speaking about the macro level.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#644

Post by CharlieDigital »

andsoitis wrote: post #565
CharlieDigital wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1-2 really just do not matter; I can't imagine anyone in the CCP views that as more important than their own internal matters. 3 as I said, they can just negotiate and throw money at the problem; it's cheaper than fighting a war. 4 they can already buy hardware from them and was doing so just fine before US stepped in. DeepSeek seemed to do fine and China may likely surpass Western AI development in the near future 5…

Just answering your question "What I still don't get is what could China possibly want with Taiwan?". If you don't believe the rational I sketched, informed by analyses such as that by the Council of Foreign Relations[1], you can also learn more by reading directly from China's Mission in the EU about the China One principle: http://eu.china-mission.gov.cn/eng/more/20220812Taiwan/20220... [1] https://www.cfr.org/back…

They can say and write whatever they want, it just doesn't make any logical sense like the US getting all worked up over Cuba.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#645

Post by amanaplanacanal »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #388
FireBeyond wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admit I had not heard this one. But the first thing I saw on it said: > According to Lutnick’s interview with CBS News, Trump’s tax policy goal is to remove federal income taxes for individuals earning under $150,000 annually. (omitted some of the other bullet points around tariff funding and tip exemption) > While Lutnick later walked back the certainty of these plans, he clarified that the proposal is aspirationa…

Trump is a populist president. He is the right wing Bernie Sanders. Eliminating income tax for those making under $150k is right wing version of a "Billionaire Stipend" for everyone under $150k. Of course the republican guard is going to downplay the insanity he spews, but here we are with blanket tariffs and China virtually cut off. Trump and Sanders aren't opposites, they're next door neighbors with a common goal a…

If Trump and Musk aren't "the elite", I'm not sure who is. Unless what you really mean is "the educated".

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#646

Post by Keegs »

austin-cheney wrote: post #639
glitchc wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you expand on this? I can't find any references online.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#648

Post by eYrKEC2 »

dghughes wrote: post #600

Even if you guys did rebuild e.g. textile factories down there in crazy land you're not going to pay workers $300/month to be able to compete globally. Nobody wants to pay $1,000 for a pair of underwear.

Tariffs don't help you compete globally -- they're about disadvantaging the global in favor of the local.

Someone may be able to pay workers $300/month and make them work the "996 working hour system"[1], but if they then have to mark up the end product by 100%, the disparity between local and global price to consumers narrows.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#649

Post by LunaSea »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #286
digikata wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The solution is to pay everyone a living wage, regardless of job, and disconnect healthcare from employment. Lots of inertia against those ideas though. So, instead, "good manufacturing jobs" is the parroted point. Any job is a good job if you can live off of it. (tariffs do nothing to address labor shortages in healthcare, teaching, and other domestic service based sectors, for example)

> Any job is a good job if you can live off of it.

No, just no.

There is a high variance in job qualities beyond pay.

Work hours, over time, outside vs. office jobs, repetitive Vs. varied, physical and psychological impact, etc.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#650

Post by RoyalHenOil »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #546
ImJamal wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a college allocated a minimum of 20% of their jobs to whites, would you still say it wasn't too bad?

If we'd enslaved whites and then turned them second class citizens with minimal rights and very few economic opportunities until fairly recently, putting them in conditions that make it very difficult for them to achieve equal opportunity, then yeah, I wouldn't have a problem with it.

You don't even have to go that far.

I went to school in south Atlanta, where both student body and teaching staff tended to be overwhelmingly Black. The school had a policy of hiring a certain percentage of non-Black teachers, including white teachers, and it had programs designed specifically to attract students from white and Hispanic communities.

The goal was not to give non-Black students and teachers a leg up; it was to promote diversity and ensure students graduated ready to meet all kinds of different people in the workplace. These policies were popular and uncontroversial, at least while I was there — though I dare say they would be deemed illegal now.

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