America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back • Hacker News Board

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#871

Post by chii » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 11:07 AM UTC

strict9 wrote: post #705

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…

> We just don't want to employ people, hence why we can't make an iphone or refine raw materials. This is it. Aside from manufacturing, most recent AI startups are almost universally aligned in the desire to use it to reduce headcount. It's plastered all over their landing pages as a selling point: "use our product and you won't have to hire people." Business culture is eating its own young and hollowing out the futu…

> Business culture is eating its own young

it's not eating its own young. It's externalizing the costs.

And it's understandable, because the cost of employees are perhaps the largest line item in the budget.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#872

Post by e40 » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 11:51 AM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #218

pjc50 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seem to want jobs with the macho kudos of manual labour, but with the physical comfort and salaries of email jobs, and I have some very bad news about that combination.

Those people need to watch a few episodes of Mike Rowe's "Dirty Jobs". Also people need to stop saying "unskilled labor". There is no such thing as labor without skills, outside a category in an archaic way of justifying low wages. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/unskilled-labor.asp

Behind the Bastards podcast on Mike Rowe opened my eyes to him.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#873

Post by e40 » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 11:53 AM UTC

BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #802

nilkn wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends -- do you want the US to become a vassal state of China? That's the trajectory we were on. China is going to catch up rapidly on technology, AI, and services, and before a few months ago the US was going to continue falling behind in every other conceivable area.

That’s a hilarious thing to say considering our behavior towards trade lately. We’ve burned bridges with our closest trading partners and made everyone else uncomfortable to trade with us because they don’t know what the eventual tariff rate will be, or if it will change tomorrow. We’re retreating from the world stage, and guess who’s sitting there ready to take the reins. It’s genuinely the opposite of what you seem…

Want? Parent was predicting not saying what they wanted.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#874

Post by e40 » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 11:57 AM UTC

mlinhares wrote: post #628

alkonaut wrote: post #593

7. Uncertainty seems overlooked these days. The job of politicians is to make people and businesses dare. Making people dare getting an expensive education or starting a business or hiring your first employee or whatever it might be. What that requires will vary (if it's a social security system or a tax break for new companies or whatever). But something it always requires is trust in the stability. That the calculu…

That has been the bane of brazil for decades, every politician, at every level, undoes or stops whatever the previous politician was doing so there's absolutely no guarantee what you're doing today will still work tomorrow. Its a terrible state and situation to invest in a business doesn't benefit anyone. My hometown had a large cultural center built by the mayor, he couldn't run for reelection again, new mayor is el…

For decades one political party has fomented this by pushing disdain for intellectuals and experts and the effectiveness of government itself.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#875

Post by LinuxBender » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 11:58 AM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #865

Bender wrote: post #817

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual issue is that our business culture is antithetical to a healthy society. I agree with the unhealthy society and your statement got me thinking. In regards to health what happens when global trade is shut down and a country can not make it's own pharmaceuticals for example? About 64% of people in the US over age 18 are on prescription drugs. Some of those drugs have really dangerous rebound effects if one s…

To clarify, I just Googled for: what percent of american adults are on prescription drugs? I got back from "AI Overview": Approximately 64.8% of adults in the United States report taking prescription medication at some point in the past 12 months. This figure is based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The key phrase here is "at some point". I guess a huge amount of it is a very short 1-3 we…

I can invoke the powers of Google as well. Let's ask it how many Americans are on blood pressure drugs.

"Approximately 51.2% of Americans with hypertension (high blood pressure) are currently taking medication to lower their blood pressure."

That is not a temporary thing. Most of those people will be on drugs the rest of their unnatural lives. So when the availability of said drugs is gone, 51.2% of Americans will go into full rebound and their BP will spike for several days to weeks. Their risk of stroke and heart attack will go off the charts as any ER doctor can attest to. What should we do for those poor souls?

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#876

Post by e40 » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 11:59 AM UTC

phendrenad2 wrote: post #514

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.

This is a big one. Once upon a time, the Democrats and Republicans listened to the same think tanks, so there was continuity in planning. Now, they seem to be opposed to plans simply because the "other side" came up with them. The whiplash we've been experiencing has torn the economy apart and scared businesses away.

You’re almost right. This is not a both sides issue. One side has made a concerted effort to get us to this point, and it started in the 80s or before.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#877

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 12:05 PM UTC

BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #802

nilkn wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends -- do you want the US to become a vassal state of China? That's the trajectory we were on. China is going to catch up rapidly on technology, AI, and services, and before a few months ago the US was going to continue falling behind in every other conceivable area.

That’s a hilarious thing to say considering our behavior towards trade lately. We’ve burned bridges with our closest trading partners and made everyone else uncomfortable to trade with us because they don’t know what the eventual tariff rate will be, or if it will change tomorrow. We’re retreating from the world stage, and guess who’s sitting there ready to take the reins. It’s genuinely the opposite of what you seem…

[deleted]

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#878

Post by AsmaraHolding » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 12:21 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #675

glitchc wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isn’t that simply the inherent risk associated with business ventures? Not every investment will yield a profit. I recall reading about Ward Parkinson, one of the founders of Micron Technology. During his tenure at Fairchild Semiconductor, the company paid for his Master’s degree at Stanford. However, upon graduating, he promptly left to work for Reticon.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#879

Post by greenie_beans » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 12:21 PM UTC

slfnflctd wrote: post #452

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only will it take years to get operational, there is no way it would ever reach the scale and reach of Chinese manufacturing, not in six years, not in sixty. Even if they throw trillions of investor money at it. China and others are clearly demonstrating the power of capitalism with state support. The US is too busy infighting and keeping capitalism and politics separate (small government, let the market decide e…

The apostrophe when specifying decades is incorrect, it's a common grammatical error. Should be "50s" and "1950s". Sorry, I usually don't do this but I otherwise liked your comment and thought you might want to know.

hacker news is so much fun.

Re: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

#880

Post by greenie_beans » Thu, Apr 17, 2025, 12:24 PM UTC

> Chinese workers work longer hours more happily and they’re physically faster with their hands; they can do things that American labor can’t. It’s years of accumulated skill, but it’s also a culture that is oriented around hard work and education that the United States no longer has. In China, there are no people who are too fat to work. The workers don’t storm off midshift, never to return to their job. You don’t have people who insist on being paid in cash so that they can keep their disability payments, while they do acrobatics on the factory floor that the non-disabled workers cannot do.

he knows a lot about manufacturing but weirdly not much about labor. very unsubstantiated, derogatory comment.

it gets worse!

> In China, there are no people who are too fat to work. The workers don’t storm off midshift, never to return to their job. You don’t have people who insist on being paid in cash so that they can keep their disability payments, while they do acrobatics on the factory floor that the non-disabled workers cannot do.

> Chinese workers are much less likely to physically attack each other and their manager. They don’t take 30 minute bathroom breaks on company time. They don’t often quit because their out-of-state mother of their children discovered their new job and now receives 60% of their wages as child support. They don’t disappear because they’ve gone on meth benders. And they don’t fall asleep on a box midshift because their pay from yesterday got converted into pills.

> And they can do their times tables. To manufacture, you need to be able to consistently and accurately multiply 7 times 9 and read in English, and a disturbingly large portion of the American workforce cannot do that.

like the fuck? where are your sources? this sounds like some ignorant shit to say