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America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

americanaffairsjournal.org

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Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#81

Post by ramraj07 »

narrator wrote: post #73

Has anyone asked Elon how to fix manufacturing in the U.S? Has he given anyone any ideas. The guy probably does as good or better job at manufacturing in the U.S than anyone else, and he has plenty of plants in foreign countries, so he can compare and contrast. Alas, the current administration hates the guy, and you can't have a guy who's clearly on the wrong team get to take credit for anything these days. Edit: He…

I agree that you shouldn’t discount what Elon does or says. He’s clearly one of the most important individuals of our time. Doesn’t mean whatever he says is gold though. Same standards should apply.

I agree that his naysayers are making a grave mistake of calling him universally stupid. He’s a vile selfish person, who makes a lot of bigoted stupid statements and actions, but ignoring him would be the end of us.

A Tamil saying I like translates (by ChatGPT) in English as, “Regardless of the speaker’s guise, Seek the truth that in the statement lies.”

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#82

Post by madengr »

yterdy wrote: post #55
liquidpele wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that’s only half right… the financialization is driven via a priority of short term profits that are incentivized by the market to executives. They play the BS game to just get rich and then dip, company be damned in the long run.

Not quite. As GGP mentioned, the necessity of keeping stock prices (and property values, and anything else securitized) high so as to not impoverish pension funds, 401Ks, IRAs, etc., is real. That is, if you care about Silent, Boomer, and Gen X retirees - who invested , but didn't save - being able to cover their myriad outlays. Millennials and younger need not apply, of course; we're just never going to be able to r…

Saving is futile with a 3% loss on your money each year. Unless you invest it you are losing it.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#83

Post by balderdash »

Much of this is about the dirty part of the supply chain. Take solar panels, china makes like ~90% of the worlds supply, yes there is the high end research, but then there is the poly silicon mining and refining/ingots, wafer, cells, and modules. You can’t just reshore some it - you have to do all of it, otherwise it doesn’t make a ton of sense, and that means mines and refineries which we’ve rightly or wrongly stopped building here in the US.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#84

Post by peyton »

chii wrote: post #79
CPLX wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the closest thing to an answer. The economy has essentially been ruined by looting. People finding ways to strip out assets from companies. Variations on this include private equity racking up debt and bankrupting companies. Executives doing stock buybacks to boost their options while hollowing out the company's resources. Hedge fund management fees. It's everywhere.

> People finding ways to strip out assets from companies. If those people don't own the company, what is the owner doing by allowing this to happen? If those people _are_ the owners, then there shouldn't be a problem, since it's their own company, and they ought to be allowed to do anything they wish. Including short term reward for long term loss (if it is worth it in their eyes). So i dont think it's "looting" (imp…

I think fiduciary duties get way more nuanced. You can’t always do anything you wish to a company, even if you own it outright.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#86

Post by dwallin »

chii wrote: post #79
CPLX wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the closest thing to an answer. The economy has essentially been ruined by looting. People finding ways to strip out assets from companies. Variations on this include private equity racking up debt and bankrupting companies. Executives doing stock buybacks to boost their options while hollowing out the company's resources. Hedge fund management fees. It's everywhere.

> People finding ways to strip out assets from companies. If those people don't own the company, what is the owner doing by allowing this to happen? If those people _are_ the owners, then there shouldn't be a problem, since it's their own company, and they ought to be allowed to do anything they wish. Including short term reward for long term loss (if it is worth it in their eyes). So i dont think it's "looting" (imp…

Just because a behavior may end up profitable for its owners doesn’t mean we should be just accepting it as a society.

Also viewing a company as just a collection of assets owned by capital can be somewhat limiting. Companies are generally made up of human employees, and many schools of thought treat employees as one of several stakeholders in a company and assign various rights to them and various responsibilities to the company for them.

Looking at it this way, the “owner” of a company can easily be described as looting the company if they are destroying a lot of value in the company for marginal benefit for themselves.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#87

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #4

I work in one of the last remaining large industrial manufacturing labs in the US. Some of my colleagues worked at Bell before that was shuttered. My sense from talking to the previous generation is that financialization of the US has started (finally) failing the American people. The previous generation cashed in on major profits by off shoring (Kodak), but we overdid it. In a round about way our company is run by p…

An important point is that the recent wave of globalization has been very good for poor people in developing countries outside of the US. From the perspective of US workers, outsourcing looks greedy. From the perspective of foreign workers, outsourcing looks altruistic.

https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty-in-brief

Even with recent globalization, Americans are still far richer than most people in other countries. I believe those people matter just as much as Americans do.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#88

Post by psychlops »

mdorazio wrote: post #6

Here are the key points the article suggests (it spends quite a long time explaining how we got here): 1) Improve the [government sponsored] Manufacturing Institutes 2) [federally] Back R&D for manufacturing technologies 3) Provide scale-up financing [by the government] 4) Use government procurement power to promote new manufacturing technologies 5) Direct production support [to sectors deemed critical] 6) Provide bo…

I mean they could simply weaken the dollar and then US manufacturing (and other) exports would become attractive again.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#89

Post by chii »

peyton wrote: post #84
chii wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People finding ways to strip out assets from companies. If those people don't own the company, what is the owner doing by allowing this to happen? If those people _are_ the owners, then there shouldn't be a problem, since it's their own company, and they ought to be allowed to do anything they wish. Including short term reward for long term loss (if it is worth it in their eyes). So i dont think it's "looting" (imp…

I think fiduciary duties get way more nuanced. You can’t always do anything you wish to a company, even if you own it outright.

> fiduciary duties

only agents acting on behalf of the owners have fiduciary duty. Of course, if you are a majority owner, but there exists minority owners, you cannot screw the minority owners to profit yourself - i guess this is a form of fiduciary duty.

But if you own it outright 100%, then you don't have such a fiduciary duty to yourself.

Re: America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

#90

Post by avs733 »

twoodfin wrote: post #68
stouset wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I own 100 shares of Apple… Tim Cook goes on CNBC and says he’s all in on printers. So I want to sell my Apple shares and buy Microsoft. I’m being a smart investor. No, you’re being a schmuck. The market moved on that information well before you saw it on the news, loaded up your web browser, and executed the transaction. Time and time and time again it has been demonstrated that actively trading is negatively corre…

Sorry a colorful example seems to have gone over your head: A financial transaction tax dulls the market response to new information. The primary purpose of markets is to translate information into prices. Markets that are less efficient in that task hurt long-term retirement investors and day-traders alike.

I would caution you against assuming disagreement is misunderstanding,

A spring only suspension system responds quickly to a bump in the road. If that’s your only metric, it’s good. But a car without a damper is going to be hella uncomfortable. The shock makes it respond slower - it doesn’t mean it doesn’t respond.

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