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

Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 166 posts

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#71

Post by Aaronontheweb »

donw wrote: post #28
Aaronontheweb wrote: post #2

Andy makes an excellent point: when we outsource the manufacturing and scaling processes to another country, what we lose in addition to jobs are the innovations and experience necessary to maintain a strong defensive econosystem with respect to our economy. However, I disagree with Andy's recommendation that we should tax offshore labor - we should focus on making labor in the United States less expensive. Neuter th…

Have you actually ever been to an industrialized country that lacks an equivalent of the EPA and OSHA? Go to Beijing, and enjoy the brown air, which is pretty unbreathable on the bad days, and just moderately smelly on the good ones. Whatever you do, don't drink the tapwater, because it'll make even local residents sick. Don't go for a swim in the river, either. Be careful near construction sites; there are gaping ho…

Read what I said - I said "muzzle" them, not eliminate them, Captain Strawman, And I've been to China, and yes it feels like stepping into a smoke-filled room.

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#72

Post by Aaronontheweb »

Hubbert wrote: post #11
Aaronontheweb wrote: post #2

Andy makes an excellent point: when we outsource the manufacturing and scaling processes to another country, what we lose in addition to jobs are the innovations and experience necessary to maintain a strong defensive econosystem with respect to our economy. However, I disagree with Andy's recommendation that we should tax offshore labor - we should focus on making labor in the United States less expensive. Neuter th…

Aaronontheweb, why wait for government action? Come work at my apartment TOMORROW 16 hours/day for $0.20/hr. I'll try to find a way for you to inhale some heavy metals and asbestos while you work. Imagine the fun of trying to predict whether you will be functionally retarded or die of painful cancer first. Either way, you will die painfully, because I do NOT provide health insurance. Seriously: How did we get from "l…

Is there a reason why you chose to pivot to this extreme immediately after all I did was argue to attack things that result in high labor costs for domestic manufacturing, or are you just an unserious hyperbolic reactionary by nature?

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#73

Post by dasil003 »

CamperBob wrote: post #65
mkramlich wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

great comment! btw, do you ever think we'll reach a point where it will be common to have 99.9%+ automated factories? (robotic, possibly even full input/output lifecyle & distribution, etc.)

btw, do you ever think we'll reach a point where it will be common to have 99.9%+ automated factories? (robotic, possibly even full input/output lifecyle & distribution, etc.) I think one way to answer this is by analogy to farming. Every year, less and less of our food is touched by human hands on its way to the market. According to the USDA, in 1900 41% of the American workforce was employed in agriculture. If you…

If you went back to 1900 and told a farmer that fewer than 2% of Americans would be involved in the production of food in 100 years, would he believe you?

And he would be wise not to... well at least not if you add Farmville numbers in there.

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#74

Post by dasil003 »

cageface wrote: post #51
rbranson wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this true? 100 years ago there was virtually nobody employed doing purely intellectual work, yet this has grown to be a huge labor market. Your ideas here kind of trail off to be "The Bell Curve"-ish. Many of these "unskilled laborers" will instead find work in service industries and the arts. For an HN-geared example: look at what Ruby on Rails, Django, etc has done for web development. It allows web develope…

There may be a net gain of IP jobs in the future but are we going to find anywhere close to 5 billion of them? Service jobs will decline over time too as more and more of them are automated out of existence. When was the last time you actually went into a bank? The number of people making a real living in the arts will remain very small. The optimistic scenario is that world population self-regulates down over time a…

It's entirely possible that we could move to entirely IP jobs. Why not? If all our physical needs are taken care of, we could became gainfully employed in the metaverse, or maybe just end up as a bunch of WALL-E-style couch potatoes. It's probably ultimately a more likely direction than an unending escalation in widget production.

There's also the question of what percentage of the population would be suited to these IP jobs, but geeks are getting more action than ever before, so I think the population will shift in that direction as well.

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#75

Post by aero142 »

rbranson wrote: post #70
aero142 wrote: post #59

I find this line of thinking very disturbing. Mr. Grove follows others in believing a common fallacy, by ignoring secondary effects, and fails to see how issues in macroeconomics affect each other. Where to start... The American standard of living is higher than China. In order for a worker in the US to continue to enjoy his standard of living and salary, she must contribute to creating something of value equal to wh…

He agrees with you. You both come to the same conclusion. What you fail to realize is that we've essentially paid the capital to educate people and build infrastructure in another country. Once their wages rise and our massive capital investments no longer make economic sense, they've gained these, and we are stuck without domestic manufacturing capacity. Essentially, we are mortgaging our future.

I don't think that we do. My post was largely spent explaining why jobs move overseas, which is not the same as agreeing on what to do about it. He concludes that protectionist policies will result in manufacturing jobs staying in the US, but doesn't look past that to see that those policies will not create value and will just redistribute it around by moving the wage decreases to tariff increases. Wealth comes from innovation and productivity increases. You cannot "create jobs" by instituting tariffs.

We will not be left with no domestic manufacturing, we will be left with the manufacturing that we are most efficient at. Anything else is just fighting gravity. We need to be making tomorrow's jobs, not fighting over yesterday's. Tariffs will not solve unemployment.

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#76

Post by lionhearted »

donw wrote: post #28
Aaronontheweb wrote: post #2

Andy makes an excellent point: when we outsource the manufacturing and scaling processes to another country, what we lose in addition to jobs are the innovations and experience necessary to maintain a strong defensive econosystem with respect to our economy. However, I disagree with Andy's recommendation that we should tax offshore labor - we should focus on making labor in the United States less expensive. Neuter th…

Have you actually ever been to an industrialized country that lacks an equivalent of the EPA and OSHA? Go to Beijing, and enjoy the brown air, which is pretty unbreathable on the bad days, and just moderately smelly on the good ones. Whatever you do, don't drink the tapwater, because it'll make even local residents sick. Don't go for a swim in the river, either. Be careful near construction sites; there are gaping ho…

> Go to Beijing... brown air... sick... gaping holes with no signs... break your leg... welding rain down on your head... boss rapes you and you're not connected, that's too bad...

Dude, I was in Beijing two months ago. It's not like you make it out to be. Actually, it's a hell of a lot nicer than Detroit.

In fact, I was in China five years ago and again two months ago. It's trending upwards quickly - the pollution was near unbearable five years ago and is rapidly improving. Infrastructure is improving. Air and water quality are improving. The country is gradually politically liberalizing... almost everything is improving in China quickly. Scary quickly, actually.

Over the last 10 years, China is trending upwards quickly and the USA and trending downwards slowly... you might prefer living in Washington D.C. to Beijing right now (but would you, really?)... but you almost certainly won't prefer D.C. to Beijing in 10 years unless something changes.

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#77

Post by CamperBob »

rbranson wrote: post #69
CamperBob wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

btw, do you ever think we'll reach a point where it will be common to have 99.9%+ automated factories? (robotic, possibly even full input/output lifecyle & distribution, etc.) I think one way to answer this is by analogy to farming. Every year, less and less of our food is touched by human hands on its way to the market. According to the USDA, in 1900 41% of the American workforce was employed in agriculture. If you…

Many of them shifted into fields that didn't exist in 1900 because in 1900, food and shelter were the majority of what people in the US worked for.

Many of them shifted into fields that didn't exist in 1900 because in 1900, food and shelter were the majority of what people in the US worked for.

Exactly -- science led to technology which led to job creation. That's the whole story of the 20th century, with a couple of wars tossed in to keep things moving.

Meanwhile, in 2010, science and technology are just two more things most Americans take for granted. We still have to fight the Scopes monkey trial every few years, we couldn't get back to the Moon with any less time and money than it took the first time, and especially since 9/11, we're no longer a place where the world's STEM students come to study and live.

That farmer from 1900 would say we're "eating our seed corn."

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#78

Post by adammichaelc »

rbranson wrote: post #69
CamperBob wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

btw, do you ever think we'll reach a point where it will be common to have 99.9%+ automated factories? (robotic, possibly even full input/output lifecyle & distribution, etc.) I think one way to answer this is by analogy to farming. Every year, less and less of our food is touched by human hands on its way to the market. According to the USDA, in 1900 41% of the American workforce was employed in agriculture. If you…

Many of them shifted into fields that didn't exist in 1900 because in 1900, food and shelter were the majority of what people in the US worked for.

I wonder if something similar will happen in the future, except replacing "food and shelter" with "food, shelter, manufacturing, electronics, clothes, etc.". Would new industries then come out of the ashes of manual labor in these different fields?

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#79

Post by lokiujhytyu »

CamperBob wrote: post #35

The real elephant in the room, which Grove and practically everybody else knows very well but refuses to talk about, is that nobody starts a company to employ people. People start a company to make stuff . To the extent this can be done with fewer people, this is always a good thing from that company's perspective, with no exceptions I can think of offhand. People suck, and you don't want to deal with them if you can…

The only purpose of a public company is to make money for shareholders.

Not make stuff, not employ people, not even turn a profit - just increase the share price / pay dividends

Re: Andy Grove: How To Make An American Job Before It's Too Late

#80

Post by CamperBob »

binaryfinery wrote: post #56
Aaronontheweb wrote: post #2

Andy makes an excellent point: when we outsource the manufacturing and scaling processes to another country, what we lose in addition to jobs are the innovations and experience necessary to maintain a strong defensive econosystem with respect to our economy. However, I disagree with Andy's recommendation that we should tax offshore labor - we should focus on making labor in the United States less expensive. Neuter th…

You can not make labor in the US as cheap as it is in China because if you did they would not be able to afford food.

You can not make labor in the US as cheap as it is in China because if you did they would not be able to afford food.

I wonder if that's really true. Food's pretty cheap nowadays.

Post reply on HN