Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

molsonhart.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

671–680 of 1001 posts

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#671

Post by Kirby64 »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #380
FireBeyond wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Political suicide to roll back tax breaks if they are primarily for the What tax breaks has he aimed at these people beyond some of the overtime and tipping (which is expected to only equate to about $2K)? Instead: >The largest tax cuts would accrue to the highest-income families, the Treasury said. > Household in the top 5% — who earn more than $450,000 a year, roughly — are the “biggest winners,” according to a J…

I don't know what tax plan that is an analysis of, but Trump has stated he wants to eliminate income tax for those under $150k. I don't know what news source you trust, but if you google it, he stated it back in March.

It's already stated in the source quote. Extending the TCJA.

What he says is almost irrelevant to what he actually does most of the time. He 'says' he wants to lower taxes on the lower income folks, but the tax bill he actually passed was essentially a handout to wealthy and businesses. He 'says' he wants to bring back manufacturing, but the reality is his tariff actions do nothing of the sort.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#672

Post by 42772827 »

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…

The last time we got employers to care about employees it was because the unions dragged the bosses into the streets and beat the daylights out of them.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#673

Post by bananalychee »

m000 wrote: post #513
dynm wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This poll is being propped up as evidence that people don't actually want to work in a factory, yet more people voiced interest in doing so than are currently, by an order of magnitude. If you believe there's a disconnect between perception and reality, that's fair, but it would have to be off by an order of magnitude on the positive side to support the premise, and an anecdote about a Chinese factory is very weak evidence of that. I would posit that many people would be happier and more fulfilled working in a factory than being stuck doing gig work or packing foreign products for Amazon or even bullshit desk work, but I'm not elitist enough to pretend to know what blue-collar workers in stagnant towns actually feel, let alone argue that they actually want the opposite of what they say. Personally, I wish I had the chance to work in a factory at 16 years old instead of a call center.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#674

Post by runako »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #564
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-…

> people like the idea of this, but no one actually wants this As others have pointed out, this is not a contradiction. (Read their reply.) However, the question of 'Do YOU want to work in a factory?' is heavily influenced by the fact that we don't see factory work as a high-paying career, or a career at all. Part of the solution to the factory problem is enhancing the value proposition for the employees. I am ambiva…

> If paying domestic workers more raises the price of domestic goods, and if people are willing to pay that price for whatever reason, you will start to see growth in manufacturing.

We ran this experiment for decades. It turns out that Americans are not willing to pay the higher prices, which led to our manufacturing consolidating around higher-value items.

This notion that we should move Americans from high-productivity jobs to lower-productivity jobs, and that such move will somehow enhance our prosperity is nutty. Lower-productivity jobs mean less income for workers, means less income in the system, means lower prosperity for all Americans. Moving tens of millions Americans to higher-productivity jobs while maintaining relatively low unemployment has to be seen as one of the economic success stories of the modern age.

Separately, Americans do not feel like this happened. That's a different discussion, about allocation of wealth. Our poorest states have higher GDPs per capita than many "rich" western EU countries. Mississippi has a higher GDP per capita than the UK. The difference is that the US has designed a system where every citizen lives a precarious existence, potentially a few months from destitution while other rich countries have not done that. We are allowed to make different choices in the US if we don't like this outcome.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#675

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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…

To get employers to invest in employees, they'd need more of a stake in it. Right now if you invest $200,000 to train someone, they can immediately quit and go work somewhere else and you're out $200k, so they don't do that.

A way to fix that would be to e.g. issue student loans for the training and then forgive them over time if the employee continues working there. But that's rather disfavored by the tax code when forgiving the loans is considered taxable income, and you would have people screaming about "abusive" companies sticking you with $200k in debt if you quit right after they give you $200k worth of training.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#676

Post by runako »

maxerickson wrote: post #661
runako wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the creepy business terminology "human capital" implies something that a business actively wants to grow. That is in stark contrast to how most businesses manage their people today.

Not entirely. Businesses don't try to grow things like buildings and inventory, they try to manage them at levels that make sense for their present and projected sales. (So the same sort of mercenary treatment that employees get)

Inventory is part of working capital. Companies generally understand that they want to expand working capital.

Buildings are often leased and are therefore not capital at all.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#678

Post by rchaud »

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-…

Reminds me of the "college is a scam, learn a trade" people, all of whom went to college and plan to send their kids to college as well.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#679

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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.

The other side of this coin is cost of living. If housing costs more in the US, so does everything else. If everything costs more, people have to be paid more in order to make a living, and that makes the US less competitive in the global labor market.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#680

Post by LunaSea »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #559
andsoitis wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Historical claims - the CCP views Taiwan as a breakaway province and considers unification important. After the Chinese Civil War ended in 1948, the defeated Republic of China (ROC) government fled to Taiwan while the CCP took control of China. 2) Political legitimacy - successful unification would be a nationalist victory for the CCP 3) Strategic importance - key geographic asset. It lies in the first island chai…

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…

Nationalism makes it very easy to make it seem like (1) and (2) matter even if they don't.

If you want a semi-serious example, check the "Taiwan #1" gaming video on YouTube for a taste of Chinese nationalism.

Read certain declarations by Chinese ambassadors in Europe for more serious nationalistic takes.

Post reply on HN