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This seems like it's a natural result of the US economy being concentrated in the finance, insurance and real estate sectors, i.e just shuffling money around ra
by ehmish 7y ago
This seems like it's a natural result of the US economy being concentrated in the finance, insurance and real estate sectors, i.e just shuffling money around rather than production.
- perfunctory 7y agoIf only it was just shuffling money around. From another post today: > in the three years since the signing of the Paris climate accord, which was designed to help the world shift away from fossil fuels, the banks’ lending to the [fossil fuels] industry has increased every year, and much of the money goes toward the most extreme forms of energy development. [0] Also I wonder how much of that "dematerialization" is due to outsourcing manufacturing to other countries. [0] https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/money-is-the-oxygen-on-which-the-fire-of-global-warming-burns https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/money-is-the-ox...
- RyanAF7 7y agoThe Paris Accord was just another UN attempt to strangle the autonomy from the US via Article 6 of the Constitution. Let it go.
- sanxiyn 7y agoSurely some of it is US outsourcing relatively material-heavy manufacturing and concentrating on relatively material-light manufacturing (US manufacturing is up, it's not total outsourcing of manufacturing), but that doesn't explain the case of global dematerialization of paper for example. For the case of, say, substitution of paper book with ebook, dematerialization does seem to be happening.
- wallace_f 7y agoThat's nice virtue signalling, but at what point would finance's share of US GDP be alarming to you? Should 1 in 10 people really be working to allocate resources? In another industry, healthcare, people complain passionately about the costs but never about the fact that while technology, efficiencies have improved there has been a 100-fold increase in the number of healthcare administrators per capita. A lot of our economy is just shuffling people and money around -- not actually efficiently allocating resources to produce useful goods and services--oh about that abnormal growth in the people who are supposed to be responsible for that?
- perfunctory 7y agoThe finance's share of US GDP, as well as the number of BS administrative jobs, IS alarming to me. I am not sure how my comment implied otherwise.
- golemiprague 7y agoYeah, and one of those industries, fracking to be precise, is responsible for most of the decrease in emissions because electric companies moved to use is instead of coal. Much more than renewable energies and much more than whatever the Paris accord was preaching for.
- WalterBright 7y agoOr computer sectors, where the product is information.
- omegaworks 7y agoOr entertainment sectors, where the product is [most frequently digitized] art.
- sanxiyn 7y agoThis is not the case. Overall production is not down, and dematerialization can be seen even if you restrict to particular sector that is not finance. OP discusses the case of agriculture for example.
- mntmoss 7y agoOne of the topics that comes up in article praise for cap & trade, pointing to the success of existing pollution laws. In practice - last I checked, and I admit to not having followed them closely - I don't think carbon credit schemes have had a big payout just yet. I'm not ready to dismiss them, on the other hand. This might just be because more of the CO2 emissions get exported to the developing world, and so a true ROI has to wait until global economic goals start aligning.
- ac29 7y agoUS manufacturing output is at a ~30 year high (perhaps an all time high, the data only goes back to 1987): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS
- squidlogic 7y agoAccording to this site [0], there actually has been a dip. Here's an excerpt, draw your own conclusions: "Essentially, with access to a more granular data set than had been publicly available, the economists could see that growth in manufacturing over the decades was almost entirely a result of statistical adjustments for improvement in semiconductor performance." [0] https://www.cassandracapital.net/post/manufacturing-job-losses-are-from-trade-not-automation https://www.cassandracapital.net/post/manufacturing-job-loss...
- Gibbon1 7y agoSteel production in the US is a third of what it was 45 years ago. While the population increased by 60%. Notable: Bullshit jobs still contribute to GDP.
- jjoonathan 7y agoNot really. https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about-manufacturing-thats-cost-americans-millions-of-jobs/ https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about-manufacturing-...
- anm89 7y agoI think this is misleading to some degree. The world produces and consumes vastly more than it did at other points in that period and as a percentage Im guessing the percentage of what we produce to what we consume (ie our self reliance and share of the global production pie) has been steadily decreasing. Id be interested to see numbers which prove or disprove this.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- refurb 7y agoThose are called services and important part of the economy.
- glbrew 7y agoThe vast majority of the "FIRE" economic sector is not an important part of the economy. Before neoliberal economic policies and the government handing $10 Trillion + handouts to the FIRE sector, yes, it was important and efficient. Not now though, unfortunately.
- DeonPenny 7y agoUS Manufacturing is still the second biggest in the world. Theres just a lot more robots and less people. Also tech moves more than anything as far as tech is a category which it really shouldn't be anymore.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 7y agoPart of that is wrong (fertilizer/agriculture is a particular salient example). And part of it is the article's point: there are now industries that produce information or services that can fully replace some physical goods: If Google Maps saves you from getting lost, you burn less fuel. If financial markets "shuffle around" smartly enough, those 50 metric tons of pork go into McRibs instead of spoiling, etc.