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

741–750 of 1001 posts

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#741

Post by torginus »

presto8 wrote: post #225
pokot0 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone explain to me why EU VAT is considered a tariff, while US sales taxes are not? They both seem a sale tax to me.

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…

Im fairly certain VAT is collected at point of sale in the EU.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#742

Post by OfficeChad »

s_dev wrote: post #612
potato3732842 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fall of the Soviet Union was arguably more graceful than the two world wars and myriad of colonial worlds it took Europe butt out. Even if you exclude the world wars it probably holds.

The fall of the Soviet Union was anything but graceful. Within months of the dissolution of the USSR Russia had children becoming prostitutes in order to get money for food.

[dead]

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#743

Post by dh2022 »

potato3732842 wrote: post #456
Herring wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empires come and go, that's just a fact of life. The question was whether they'd fall back relatively gracefully like (Western) Europe, now with multiple countries ranking at the top of "World's Happiest Countries", or whether they'll become Russia 2.0 with the biggest guns, richest oligarchs, and the worst quality of life. It's still far from played out, but right now they're solidly on the road to Russia 2.0, with…

The fall of the Soviet Union was arguably more graceful than the two world wars and myriad of colonial worlds it took Europe butt out. Even if you exclude the world wars it probably holds.

I think the current Russia-Ukraine war is the delayed end of Soviet Union collapse.

Boris Yeltsin in Aug 1991 called for "Russian Federation to reserve the right to review its borders with any adjacent republic" [0]. Yeltsin did that for a couple of weeks - until Leonid Kravchuk (Ukraine's last Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR and Republic of Ukraine's first president) said he will not support Yeltsin in dissolving USSR. By then the Baltics were already independent countries, but Yeltsin still needed Ukraine's Belarus' and Kazakhstan's support to get rid of Gorbachev.

So Yeltsin acquiesced the borders at that time, four months followed up with the Belovezha Accords and USSR dissolved without a fight a couple of weeks later.

I think what we see today is are some repressed conflicts being fought out in the open.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/27/world/soviet-turmoil-yelt... - free to read with NYT registration

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#744

Post by themaninthedark »

thechao wrote: post #97
csense wrote: post #46

There are plenty of people saying these tariffs will not work. But a person used to be able to graduate high school and get a job that could support a house with a yard, a car, a non-working spouse and children. How we get that level of prosperity back? That's the people really want. Tariffs are simply a means to that end. I wish people would stop writing articles about 100% criticizing tariffs and instead write arti…

When I was studying economics, my macro professor used to belabor the point that post-WW2 US socioeconomics was a highly unique (and special) time-and-place; and, it is a mistake to generalize economic theory from that time-and-place. So... here goes: rather than proclaiming a "housing crisis", maybe we're seeing the end of an exceptional period of "housing affordability". (A similar analysis of Europe and Asia appli…

Maybe if we stopped viewing housing as an investment vehicle, with the expectation that house prices are going to rise forever then you would see affordable housing.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-much-will-home-equity-level...

The last time that I know of housing losing values was 2008 before that, it was 1991

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#745

Post by nitwit005 »

pjc50 wrote: post #307
42772827 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American Empire never existed, because it never could. The US made the explicit decision not to occupy the defeated forces after WWII, save for strategic forces in place to protect the interests of the host countries. The US opened its market (the only market of size left and still the largest consumer bases in the world, by far) with no tariffs. What the US got in return was cheap goods and a whole lot of debt.…

> The American Empire never existed, because it never could This theory doesn't really explain what was going on at tremendous expense in Iraq, Afghanistan or even all those years ago in Vietnam. If there is a decline, I expect it to be in internal security and the transition from high-trust to low-trust society.

Fighting wars isn't the same as having an empire.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#746

Post by nitwit005 »

potato3732842 wrote: post #129
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.

I'm not so sure. The tariffs most certainly will dissipate but we can't discount the chance that they may be replaced with actual written in law voted on by congress and signed by the president taxes that have similar but much more durable effects. Manufacturing and heavy industry really hates off-shoring. They only do it because the sum total of other policy makes it the only viable option. I can see them taking a d…

If it looked like congress was eager to vote these tariffs into law, things would be different, as that sentiment might outlast the current administration, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#747

Post by ninetyninenine »

maxsilver wrote: post #575
ninetyninenine wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a solution of human rights and is orthogonal to becoming competitive to China. No question human rights needs to be fulfilled and we need to pay people living wages. But the conversation here has he orthogonal goal of being competitive with China as well. I can assure you just paying everyone living wages is one of the main reasons why we are not competitive with China. It’s the main reason why China is beatin…

> So paying everyone living wages doesn’t really do anything to solve the problem because the products created by people who are paid living wages are by definition more expensive due to labor costs. They aren't though. In America, "Paying living wages" always means "pay way more", because America underpays labour and overcharges for literally everything (products, services, basic cost of living -- every product on A…

That's right now. For China to even get to the state they are in now, workers were heavily, heavily exploited.

In fact exploitation is the reason why they are the way they are now.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#748

Post by austin-cheney »

Keegs wrote: post #646
austin-cheney wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In a broker/agent model agents are people doing most of the client-facing work, but they defer an offset of both liabilities and earnings to a broker. This is how real estate agents, lawyers, teachers, doctors, and many others enter their professions, at least in the US. Because the broker carries civil, and possibly criminal, liable for the violations of their represented agents they have a vested interest in the quality of product/service those agents deliver. In the medical industry the agent phase is described as residency and internship. Its a matter of who actually holds the license that allows a person to perform professionally.

In criminal enterprise drug mules and prostitutes often subscribe to this business model. Drug mules will transport drugs as part of an illegal enterprise and are paid by criminal organizations that have vested interest in the successful completion of the logistical services provided by the drug mules. Likewise, in some geographies prostitutes will voluntarily pay pimps a percentage of their earnings in exchange for physical security and those pimps stake the value of their services on the success and reputation of the services they provide to their prostitute agents.

You also have to understand most of the software industry loves to bitch and cry about all these problems they see in hiring and practicing and yet don't really want any of these problems to be solved.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#749

Post by [deleted] »

themaninthedark wrote: post #738
quickthrowman wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem and its underlying factors are so obvious to me that I'm constantly amazed to see well-informed, intelligent people who don't seem to understand it. Do you understand that labor is priced into the cost of the product? Who is going to buy all of these American products made by highly paid unionized workers? I understand the Rust Belt situation sucks, but people can’t afford to buy everyday consumer goods…

Hey, guess what would help the average American with being able to afford something that is expensive? A job that pays a living wage! I am reminded of when the great offshoring started and everyone was looking down on poorer folks for shopping at Walmart because it was filled with cheap junk and they should know better than to buy that stuff(when in reality it's all they could afford since their good job was gone...)…

[deleted]

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#750

Post by torginus »

looseyesterday wrote: post #144
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…

On crime they most centrically do, watch the China Show (not the bloomberg one) on youtube. One example given on the show is that Once you go into northern villages and small towns you start seeing propganda posters on why you shouldn't take drugs. Homelessness is widespread and present too but you just wont see it in city centers more on the outstkirts.

Do not watch it please unless you want to consume worldview-distoring propaganda and become more ignorant as a result. It's made by 2 American expats who gotten kicked out of China when visa-requirements were tightened, and no-skill immigrants were no longer welcome.

They've become anti-China youtubers serving the hungry China-hating audience on how China is bad and a paper tiger.

Instead watch this guy (https://www.youtube.com/@Awakening_Richard). I'm not saying he's unbiased, either, but he's thoughtful and I think he brings insight into how the Chinese intelligentsia thinks about how the world works.

But back to your point - it's oft repeated that Chinese population decline will destroy China in the long run and poverty in Chinese society.

He made a video on this exact issue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdRH7aPWGGc

The TLDR version is that about half of the Chinese population lives in desperate poverty (and are economically invisible), and just a couple decades ago 90+% of Chinese lived like this. One cannot bring about a transformation into an industrialized wealthy lifestyle overnight, but coming from the experience of the past decades, the Chinese have been remarkably effective in this, and the following decades will see these people lifted up to modern societal standards as well.

By this alone, one can conservatively expect a doubling of Chinese GDP, as there will be twice as many consumers and laborers who consume and work at the level of the current workforce.

This also means that China has a huge and high marginal utility domestic demand for goods, and even if sanctioned, they wont run of people to sell to.

Post reply on HN