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The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

fortune.com

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Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#91

Post by pm90 »

reallydontask wrote: post #48
bandrami wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it not happen? Even poor people today have objectively much better living standards than rich people 100 years ago.

Please explain what you mean by: poor people today, rich people 100 years ago, living standards. hard to argue with your statement, one way or another, if those aren't clearly defined.

Objectively, there are many health indicators that have improved dramatically. Elimination of many commonly fatal diseases, prevention of starvation, better communication, cheaper goods and services, fairer laws (i.e. anti-discrimination against minorities and women).

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#92

Post by hibikir »

rrggrr wrote: post #77
bbctol wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been finding this graph: https://tropicsofmeta.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/2007-real-... very helpful (y-axis is percentages of GDP and workforce.) Manufacturing never left the US, in terms of output, it's just that jobs did.

This chart is almost worthless as a measure of US Manufacturing capacity or production. Why? Because sizable orders to a handful of companies (eg. Boeing, GE, Lockheed, etc.) offsets and distorts the disappearance of thousands of medium and small manufacturers over the past two decades. Its tempting to attribute the associated job losses to automation, but one look at this table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of…

True, millions of similar jobs are created overseas, but that's when salaries are so cheap that automation is more expensive than just manual labor. As wages go up, automation makes more sense in manufacturing, and job losses happen to those countries too.

When looking at developing countries that are actually developing (instead of stuck in the middle income trap) what we see is a picture of a more developed country decades ago, except with access to modern tech. While the modern tech makes them move faster, you should expect them to be more like the US or the EU every year. Look at pollution: China has a huge pollution problem, but that's not unlike LA in the 70s and 80s. People are getting wealthy enough to demand environmental regulations, and in a decade their government will care about environmentalism.

So instead of thinking about how China or India have things that we've lost and try to turn back the clock, it's more productive to think that we have to deal with our own problems today, as China will also have them in 20 years.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#93

Post by amluto »

ddlatham wrote: post #61
throwaway2016a wrote: post #7

I haven't been myself but my wife is a process engineer and had to go to China to install and train people on a new machine so this is only second hand... But one of the reasons China is so good at manufacturing is because everything is in one place (or at least clusters)... need 10,000 of an Integrated Circuit? The company that makes it is literally down the street. Need some raw materials? That's down the other str…

> I do feel like shipping goods by container ship is bad for the environment and bad for consumers. How is it bad for consumers (beyond the environment)? Shipping goods does include an environmental cost which is not incorporated into the price of things - an unfortunate externality. We should have a carbon tax to properly reflect the true cost of items made and shipped so the market can choose between a locally made…

> We should have a carbon tax to properly reflect the true cost of items made and shipped so the market can choose between a locally made good and one made elsewhere.

I agree, but the results may be a bit surprising. Shipping by container ship is extremely efficient [1]. On the West coast, for example, it might be cheaper (possibly far cheaper) to buy goods from Asia than from the Midwest. And wine drinkers in New York who care about energy consumption might be better of with French wine than "local" California wine.

[1] http://business.tenntom.org/why-use-the-waterway/shipping-co... for example

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#94

Post by dragonwriter »

maxerickson wrote: post #44
dragonwriter wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

since it's usually a policy goal supported by the voting public, I don't see how it's a policy failure. Now, the fact that it is a policy goal with that kind of support may be a failure on a more fundamental level, but that's a different issue.

What I wrote is perfectly compatible with your pedantry. "We should also start"... Obviously I didn't go on and on about it, but it is implied there that attitudes would need to change.

You seem to have read a "No, we shouldn't, because..." into my post that wasn't there.

My point was directly that it is, in fact, not a policy failure in the usual sense since it is working both as policy makers and voters intend, and, on a deeper level, that --given that people who, in fact, benefit from housing price appreciation are overrepresented among those who actually vote -- changing this is likely to require either changing who actually votes or getting people to vote against their own financial interests.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#95

Post by mercurysmessage »

dang wrote: post #62
mercurysmessage wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, exactly are you thanking him for? You know that they will all be automated jobs right? That is where manufacturing is going. You can love a corrupt egomaniac all you want, but you should wake up and smell the coffee, you sound like a shill from your amazingly defensive two comments.

Please don't respond to a bad comment by making the thread even worse.

OK. I'll refrain from replying to comments like this from now on.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#96

Post by carsongross »

witty_username wrote: post #80
carsongross wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm perfectly happy with that, although I think it is oversold and used as an excuse in many cases. So long as the productive capacity, intellectual property and knock on effects are kept domestic, good.

Have you heard of comparative advantage? It may not be advantageous for the U.S. to keep such things domestic; instead the intellectual property may be better utilized in China.

I took two years of economics indoctrination at Cal. Yes, I'm aware of the theory.

Suffice to say, I no longer believe that ceteris is paribus.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#97

Post by sandworm101 »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #7

I haven't been myself but my wife is a process engineer and had to go to China to install and train people on a new machine so this is only second hand... But one of the reasons China is so good at manufacturing is because everything is in one place (or at least clusters)... need 10,000 of an Integrated Circuit? The company that makes it is literally down the street. Need some raw materials? That's down the other str…

That may be true for inegrated circuits, but for other things north america has clusters. Im in vancouger. Want to film a movie? Everything from costumes to CG is here. And we can have whatever celebs you need here overnight. China cannot do that. Want to build something out of wood? We got that too, with a world-class wood sciences program in town (UBC). If you want you can see your product from tree to shelf all within an hour's drive. China cannot do that either. Get out of the consumer elecronics mindset and you will find all sorts of local clusters.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#98

Post by marcosdumay »

paulmd wrote: post #89
marcosdumay wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd be better off renting from someone else losing money. Certainly, if houses stop appreciating rent prices will increase to cover some of the difference.

Maybe if housing/land didn't appreciate over time then investment dollars would stop chasing it, and the overall price of renting would stay flat or decline due to the lack of capital inflow to the underlying asset. Who can say? The problem with these thought experiments is you have to assume some reason why housing prices have stopped increasing, but also that nothing else about the economy has changed . Otherwise t…

It's a complex system. One can identify the immediate consequences of a change, but they certainly work more like some "pressure", where other factors will also change and apply their "pressure" on dissimilar ways.

Reducing the lucrativity of owning a house will put pressure into less housing stock and higher rent prices. If it is a fast change the rent price will almost certainly not keep up with it, because the housing stock is kind of fixed at the short term. And yes, some unrelated action may overwhelm that factor. Some unforeseen consequence may also do that, but this one is much less likely.

Re: The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

#99

Post by witty_username »

carsongross wrote: post #96
witty_username wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of comparative advantage? It may not be advantageous for the U.S. to keep such things domestic; instead the intellectual property may be better utilized in China.

I took two years of economics indoctrination at Cal. Yes, I'm aware of the theory. Suffice to say, I no longer believe that ceteris is paribus.

Why?
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