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America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

molsonhart.com

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Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#821

Post by roenxi »

mdorazio wrote: post #573
roenxi wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make that sound like it was emanating from the business community - the US has had a pretty significant period in there of 0% interest rates determined by a central committee. Return on capital doesn't really matter in a low interest rate environment, the important thing is access to the lending markets. Investors making sensible investments would have been eaten alive by those focusing on companies that were liv…

Uber had EBITDA of $6.5B for full year 2024: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1543151/000154315125... I agree with the rest of your comment, though. The US public markets reward creative accounting and mortgaging the future for quarterly gains. GE and Jack Welch are a great historical example.

If Uber had been founded in 2024 that would be really impressive. The problem is that its lifetime is somewhat longer than that.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#822

Post by perrylaj »

SR2Z wrote: post #773
imglorp wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also fundamental tech and a research pipeline supporting new ones. There are numerous examples of whole competencies were transferred to a foreign partner, leaving only sales and marketing in the US. TV's for example, gone by 2000, leaving only a swirl of patent walls to further prevent them from coming back. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2014/10/22/america... And research? DEC WRL, Bell Labs, Xerox…

Corporate research spending is nearly $1T/yr. Yes, corporations have a lower risk tolerance than the government, but that's not always a bad thing.

Not just risk tolerance - they also have different (generally much more short-sighted) incentives.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#823

Post by danans »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #711
runako wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-producti…

> 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. But did we run that experiment while foreign alternatives were nearly or equally expensive? That's the real test, and whether foolish or not that's what they are trying to do with tariffs. > Lower-productivity jobs mean less income for work…

> > Our poorest states have higher GDPs per capita than many "rich" western EU countries.

Not the OP, but poor as used here seems to refer to average quality of life , quality of infrastructure, etc.

> Is the result of that a higher median income, or is it a reflection of a higher wealth inequality?

Higher wealth inequality leading to stretched public services and infrastructure, which lead to lower quality of life , despite higher nominal GDP per capita.

You are probably much better off being a poor person in Spain (33k GDP/capita) vs Mississippi (40k GDP per capita), because at least you don't need to worry about the cost of healthcare.

You're more likely (but still very unlikely) to get extremely rich in the US though, although probably not in Mississippi.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#824

Post by roenxi »

digikata wrote: post #580
roenxi wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make that sound like it was emanating from the business community - the US has had a pretty significant period in there of 0% interest rates determined by a central committee. Return on capital doesn't really matter in a low interest rate environment, the important thing is access to the lending markets. Investors making sensible investments would have been eaten alive by those focusing on companies that were liv…

Maybe, but 0% interest should have make it easy to invest in capital intensive endeavors that would have turned into great protective moats when the interest rates inevitably bumped up. Did that happen with factories and manufacturing? I also think a significant influence on the Fed was a financialized business community demanding 0% interest.

> Maybe, but 0% interest should have make it easy to invest in capital intensive endeavors that would have turned into great protective moats when the interest rates inevitably bumped up.

It doesn't - if you look at the situation in real terms, the amount of resources available to invest is about the same (probably shrinking because some are diverted to people who aren't creditworthy and consume them). So the major effect of artificially low interest rates is to add a whole heap of artificially supported highly wasteful companies to the mix.

All that changes is the market started rewarding people with access to credit instead of people who were responsible and effective. The credit people aren't particularly capable and it'd be better if they had been forced out.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#825

Post by Enginerrrd »

nneonneo wrote: post #699
paul7986 wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many Americans are dying to and will do tedious labor (not many), as well robots, automation and AI can do a lot of it and or will end up doing a lot of it. If we want to strengthen America (military & economy) immigration reform is needed! This could be unpopular but such reform could be ...those who want to come here must serve in our armed forces for x amount of years and can bring two to four family members h…

Importing immigrants directly into the military sounds like a bad idea. I’m guessing many would be less likely to want to lay their lives down for the new country, so drafting them seems like a great way to end up with a bunch of disloyal troops.

The French Foreign Legion is a famous counterexample to your argument here. They might actually have the best Esprit du Corps in the world. In particular because they have to since they are indeed comprised of random foreigners and historically at least low-level criminals.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#826

Post by epolanski »

dimal wrote: post #736
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…

It's shareholder capitalism. Capitalism can be a great thing, but shareholder capitalism defines profits as the only reason for a corporation to exist. Humans are simply resources to extract work or profit from, and destroying the future of the country is an unfortunate externality. CEOs are obligated to behave like sociopaths. Lying, cheating, stealing, and subverting democracy are all good business if it returns va…

> Humans are simply resources

I thought that the human resources department made that obvious.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#827

Post by makeitshine »

Kirby64 wrote: post #654
SlightlyLeftPad wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps Literally forced labor camps. Of course, the PRC denies these allegations, but it certainly seems like there's some forced labor due to the numerous reports across many years of a variety of forced labor operations from these camps.

The US has forced prison labor. We can talk about how bad the Chinese government is, but their economy is not built on forced labor anymore than the US is built on prison labor.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#828

Post by seanmcdirmid »

mr_toad wrote: post #604
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Trump’s term ends with NATO still intact I’ll be surprised.

If the US left NATO the remaining members would have even more incentive to stick together.

Ya, but not being intact doesn’t mean completely destroyed. I just don’t think the Europeans will ever trust the USA enough again to let them have a close relationship, even if Trump’s presidency ends with the US still a democracy.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#829

Post by seanmcdirmid »

nottorp wrote: post #541
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t handle VAT rebates on your own, but America lacking a VAT system itself can’t really take advantage of that.

What VAT rebates if i import something into the EU? It says "to sell into Europe" not "to buy from Europe". In first case I, the EU buyer, owe VAT. In second case whoever buys may be owed a VAT rebate. But it's not selling any more.

Theoretically, sales tax could act as an anchor for VAT rebates.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#830

Post by seanmcdirmid »

FpUser wrote: post #641
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is theoretical, I also doubt China would help the USA develop like that directly and lose its advantage. We would have to trade something really valuable in return (like modern semiconductor or jet turbine tech).
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