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Living standards for people doing lower-skilled manufacturing work are decreasing because that work is (in a whole lot of cases) not economic to do in the U.S.

Living standards for people doing lower-skilled manufacturing work are decreasing because that work is (in a whole lot of cases) not economic to do in the U.S. any more. That isn't anything to do with "coastal elites" or whoever you're referring to as the disdainful part of the population here. The causes are globalization and automation; and both of those look like utter inevitabilities at this point. Rather than making this into a culture war, perhaps we should be talking about policy alternatives that don't result in a trajectory of helplessness for those affected by those global, secular changes.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> causes are globalization and automation; and both of those look like utter inevitabilities at this point The gains from these trends are accruing to the educated and the urban. That’s a big part of the problem.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  And globalisation of US manufacturing was a political choice. Does nobody remember Ross Perot, who ran for President twice saying that NAFTA would doom the US manufacturing workers? There was some kind of assumption that as long as the West kept the jobs requiring education, everything would be fine. The results, somewhat predictably, were (amongst other things) Brexit and Trump.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > globalisation of US manufacturing was a political choice Not really. Fundamental economic costs are fundamental. Protectionism would have delayed the inevitable. Instead of a snap, we would have had a slow decline through loss of exports, fall in economies of scale and finally starvation of R&D funds. What was a political choice was abandoning those workers and communities. And pissing away trillions and a decade of political capital on a war.
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      For my money, these things are almost always a political choice. Can you explain how the fundamental economic costs necessitated the globalisation of US manufacturing?
      - whatshisface 6y ago
        It was cheaper to get stuff made overseas. If you see the economy as a perfect optimizer that can't be stopped, that necessitates it.
        bsanr2 6y ago
        Cheaper how, though? It does seem that a lot of the costs have been externalized or have gone otherwise unacknowledged. Factoring in the losses sustained by unrest, despair, missed opportunity, rent and interest, and so forth, I think you come to see a more accurate model than the "stocks go up" one that outputs a much rosier picture of America's economic wellbeing than is reality. At the very least, the War on Terror blows a $6 trillion hole in whatever the calculations are; a less anxious, more homogeneously affluent America might not have acted so rashly following 9/11, and might not have even conjured the political and economic global paradigm that gave rise to al Qaeda in the first place.
        JumpCrisscross 6y ago
        > It does seem that a lot of the costs have been externalized or have gone otherwise unacknowledged Probably. But if you’re selling a dishwasher to someone in Poland or Peru at 5x your competitor, you’re going to lose market share.
        disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        Yeah, but that cost differential was dependent on a political choice to allow imports from poorer countries. There's no law of the universe that required this to be so. To a large extent, it's the removal of capital controls and the signing of trade agreements that facilitated this, and those were 100% political choices.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
  No, I don't think so: the benefits are accruing to the entire U.S. population who get cheaper goods - the concentration of the downside is the problem.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - pbourke 6y ago
    It’s hardly a benefit if your goods are 20% cheaper but you no longer have a stable job to pay for them with.
    - NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
      No, obviously not. But your small-town tax preparers in Iowa are benefiting, and they're hardly your urban, coastal elites.
  - Qwertious 6y ago
    I'm not convinced that lowering wages actually decreases price of goods enough to compensate for the lower wages - for that to happen, the money needs to cycle all the way through the economy and back to the workers without ever being "leaked". Depending on the entire economy to not break sounds like a way-too-large-scope solution. Things that could ruin the effect: 1. Any sort of natural monopoly 2. The "free market for senators" letting a corporation buy itself an un-natural monopoly through regulatory capture (either unnecessary regulation, or refusal to create necessary regulation) 3. Any sort of repeated irrationality in human nature that can be systematically exploited 4. Workers with lower wages purchasing less in the interim, resulting in fewer purchases and higher prices due to less economy of scale, resulting in fewer purchases and less economy of scale, etc etc 5. This probably overlaps with several of the above, but market distortions as a byproduct of initiatives to "create jobs", which is something everyone (as in both industrialists and working class) wants/needs to keep the economy afloat. IMO this is a result of people refusing to acknowledge that past a certain point, demand for wages is inflexible and will be paid, and if market mechanisms don't deliver then political forces will.
coryrc 6y ago
The "coastal elites" refuse to make their cities affordable for people to live in, so how are people supposed to move there to get better jobs?
- NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
  It's not clear to me why you think I'm suggesting the answer is to have people move to coastal cities. That is almost certainly not the answer.
  - coryrc 6y ago
    Rural areas throughout the world are poor. Rural Indiana is not going to ever again have such a high relative standard of living at it did fifty years ago. Appalachian communities don't have anything highly productive to offer; resource extraction doesn't require much labor anymore. The jobs aren't coming back. If you don't want so many poor, we need to let them move to where the jobs are and will continue to be.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> causes are globalization and automation; and both of those look like utter inevitabilities at this point The gains from these trends are accruing to the educated and the urban. That’s a big part of the problem.

disgruntledphd2 6y ago
And globalisation of US manufacturing was a political choice. Does nobody remember Ross Perot, who ran for President twice saying that NAFTA would doom the US manufacturing workers? There was some kind of assumption that as long as the West kept the jobs requiring education, everything would be fine. The results, somewhat predictably, were (amongst other things) Brexit and Trump.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > globalisation of US manufacturing was a political choice Not really. Fundamental economic costs are fundamental. Protectionism would have delayed the inevitable. Instead of a snap, we would have had a slow decline through loss of exports, fall in economies of scale and finally starvation of R&D funds. What was a political choice was abandoning those workers and communities. And pissing away trillions and a decade of political capital on a war.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    For my money, these things are almost always a political choice. Can you explain how the fundamental economic costs necessitated the globalisation of US manufacturing?
    - whatshisface 6y ago
      It was cheaper to get stuff made overseas. If you see the economy as a perfect optimizer that can't be stopped, that necessitates it.
      - bsanr2 6y ago
        Cheaper how, though? It does seem that a lot of the costs have been externalized or have gone otherwise unacknowledged. Factoring in the losses sustained by unrest, despair, missed opportunity, rent and interest, and so forth, I think you come to see a more accurate model than the "stocks go up" one that outputs a much rosier picture of America's economic wellbeing than is reality. At the very least, the War on Terror blows a $6 trillion hole in whatever the calculations are; a less anxious, more homogeneously affluent America might not have acted so rashly following 9/11, and might not have even conjured the political and economic global paradigm that gave rise to al Qaeda in the first place.
        JumpCrisscross 6y ago
        > It does seem that a lot of the costs have been externalized or have gone otherwise unacknowledged Probably. But if you’re selling a dishwasher to someone in Poland or Peru at 5x your competitor, you’re going to lose market share.
        disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        Yeah, but that cost differential was dependent on a political choice to allow imports from poorer countries. There's no law of the universe that required this to be so. To a large extent, it's the removal of capital controls and the signing of trade agreements that facilitated this, and those were 100% political choices.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
No, I don't think so: the benefits are accruing to the entire U.S. population who get cheaper goods - the concentration of the downside is the problem.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- pbourke 6y ago
  It’s hardly a benefit if your goods are 20% cheaper but you no longer have a stable job to pay for them with.
  - NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
    No, obviously not. But your small-town tax preparers in Iowa are benefiting, and they're hardly your urban, coastal elites.
- Qwertious 6y ago
  I'm not convinced that lowering wages actually decreases price of goods enough to compensate for the lower wages - for that to happen, the money needs to cycle all the way through the economy and back to the workers without ever being "leaked". Depending on the entire economy to not break sounds like a way-too-large-scope solution. Things that could ruin the effect: 1. Any sort of natural monopoly 2. The "free market for senators" letting a corporation buy itself an un-natural monopoly through regulatory capture (either unnecessary regulation, or refusal to create necessary regulation) 3. Any sort of repeated irrationality in human nature that can be systematically exploited 4. Workers with lower wages purchasing less in the interim, resulting in fewer purchases and higher prices due to less economy of scale, resulting in fewer purchases and less economy of scale, etc etc 5. This probably overlaps with several of the above, but market distortions as a byproduct of initiatives to "create jobs", which is something everyone (as in both industrialists and working class) wants/needs to keep the economy afloat. IMO this is a result of people refusing to acknowledge that past a certain point, demand for wages is inflexible and will be paid, and if market mechanisms don't deliver then political forces will.

coryrc 6y ago

The "coastal elites" refuse to make their cities affordable for people to live in, so how are people supposed to move there to get better jobs?

NovemberWhiskey 6y ago
It's not clear to me why you think I'm suggesting the answer is to have people move to coastal cities. That is almost certainly not the answer.
- coryrc 6y ago
  Rural areas throughout the world are poor. Rural Indiana is not going to ever again have such a high relative standard of living at it did fifty years ago. Appalachian communities don't have anything highly productive to offer; resource extraction doesn't require much labor anymore. The jobs aren't coming back. If you don't want so many poor, we need to let them move to where the jobs are and will continue to be.