9 ms·

Some of the most competitive products in some categories are from China, for example in drones. It's only a matter of time until they work their way up the cha

Some of the most competitive products in some categories are from China, for example in drones. It's only a matter of time until they work their way up the chain. Remember the Tim Cook quote how it's difficult to fill a room with machinists in US, while in China you can fill 3 football fields with them.

rsj_hn 5y ago
That is confusing cause and effect. Because companies move their manufacturing operations to china it becomes harder to manufacture in the US. They did not initially move to China because of a lack of dometic skilled workers, but because of lower costs. The result of that move was, after a delay, the de-skilling of the US labor force, creating the lack of domestic skilled workers we have now. To recover from that would require a reverse migration of manufacturing activity which would, after a delay, create more skilled workers in the US. Skills follow activity, they do not lead activity. You learn by doing. If you want to develop good bridge building skills, then build a lot of bridges. As a result of that process, you will, after a delay, have a labor pool that knows how to do it well, and the bridges you build later on will be higher quality than the bridges you started out building. You do not wait for the labor pool to sprout up like mushrooms spontaneously from the ground, so there are all these bridge builders standing around with nothing to do, and then you decide that you'll have them fill up a few rooms and and hire some of them to build a bridge.
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  It's not just a lack of domestic skilled workers. I'm not really sure there is much of a lack. It's just that US labor is so much more expensive compared to earning power. US workers can't pay other US workers. Getting parts CNCed in China may be 10x less than the cost in the US, and materials are a tenth the cost as well (in small qty) as they haven't been transported yet. You can get roughly the same throughput in the US if you want to pay for it, but it will be vastly more expensive.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    > US workers can't pay other US workers. That is just logically false. It's not even a question of measurement, it is false by definition. The income paid to produce is by definition always sufficient to purchase the output that has been produced. But remember that income paid to the factors of production includes both labor and capital income, because both the owners of capital and the suppliers of labor purchase the products that are created by the combining of labor and capital to produce output. What is unsustainable is running persistent trade deficits overseas. E.g. by allowing foreign capital inflows, we have allowed the foreign sector to distort prices in an unsustainable manner.
    - R0b0t1 5y ago
      The buyer of US labor is the government and capital. Taxes on all US economic activity and coffers filled with worldwide profits are what purchases comparatively expensive US labor. This is why, e.g., most people can not afford new housing construction -- excess money has been dumped into it from the stimulus, driving costs up. Similar things have happened on a longer timescale for IT and engineering. Take what I said with some restrictions, like "US workers can't afford skilled or semiskilled US labor" which is afaict true. I work in production automation, life sciences, and software; my hobby projects in these area are unfortunately quite expensive due to US labor costs. As much as possible I must avoid using US labor if I want to get anything done.
- kreelman 5y ago
  "Skills follow activity, they do not lead activity. You learn by doing." Nicely put. Thanks for pointing that out. That really resonates for me as I think about my career and skillset. I'm where I am now because of building things with somewhat inferior skills (risky) at the start and growing my skills . I need to repeat that with new tools/processes now. It all seems obvious looking back. ...Perhaps another skill is having the foresight to see what will be needed in the next phase. I did it then, hopefully I'll be able to do it again. A bit like running a small company of one person. Where is the next investment made? China - the populace - seem to be pretty good at this.
bigphishy 5y ago
As far as I'm aware, the biggest innovation out of China in the past 300 years has been the face-kini. Seriously though, has this country produced any new invention? I would expect a country with 1.5 billion would come up with something novel. I can think of nothing unique, only modification of existing inventions.
- croes 5y ago
  Have you an example of a western invention not based on existing technology?
  - jhgb 5y ago
    Depends on what you mean by "existing technology". Do electronic devices using quantum effects in solid state materials count? There you have the whole semiconductor industry. What about exploiting the behavior of charge carriers in vacuum? There you have the whole vacuum tube industry. Etc. etc. Before these things existed, nothing even remotely similar was being utilized by human civilization in our technological ventures at the very least in these two cases (or at least nothing did that readily comes to my mind, but considering the physics involved, it seems unlikely).
    - kragen 5y ago
      > Do electronic devices using quantum effects in solid state materials count? There you have the whole semiconductor industry. That was invented by Jagadish Chandra Bose in Bangladesh, who built working millimeter-wave radios using Schottky diodes in 01894. Of course, he didn't understand the quantum effects, but then, semiconductor diodes were in wide industrial use (mostly in the rich West) for decades before Shockley's Equation in 01949. The quantum theory was largely a Western discovery during those 55 years, but also included significant contributions from non-Western people like Shinichiro Tomonaga, Yoshiro Nishina, Leo Esaki, Tsung-Dao Lee, Hideki Yukawa, and Hantaro Nagaoka, and of course since 01949 quantum theory has been a field of investigation dominated by non-Western people. As you may be aware, there have been significant improvements in solid-state electronics since 01949, including full-color LEDs that permit LED lighting (due to Shuji Nakamura) and the switch to MOSFETs (due to Mohammed Atalla and Dawon Kahng, who were not from the West but were in the West) which eliminated the power consumption barrier that restricted 01960s electronics to dozens of transistors on a chip. China in particular has had a pretty bad couple of centuries, in between being invaded by the US, England, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, the Austro-Hungarian empire, Russia (twice), and Japan (three times), having two of the most ruinous civil wars in human history, and having the worst famine in human history. So it's been innovating a bit below par, though it seems to be doing okay now. > What about exploiting the behavior of charge carriers in vacuum? There you have the whole vacuum tube industry. It does seem that the whole cathode-ray thing was a Western discovery, but it was built on the Hindu ayurvedic techniques of mercury distillation that formed the basis for Arabic and then Western alchemy (necessary for the Sprengel pump, which was for decades the only source of a hard enough vacuum); also, building the apparatus drew on the Mesopotamian techniques of glassmaking, which are usually considered to hail from Asia Minor, though some believe they originated in Egypt. (It's possible that the Hindus imported the techniques of mercury distillation from China, but that is far enough back that it's difficult to know. At any rate, the Europeans got them from the Arabs, who got them from the Hindus.)
ticviking 5y ago
Depends on the region. In the Midwest and southeast most towns have several “jobshops” that keep the local industry running.
nebula8804 5y ago
What does the west do? Tech is the only real growth industry left in the US. Right now 80% of the county slaves away in dead end jobs to cater to the remaining 20% white collar professional+capital class. That 20% seems like its going to get smaller :/ Eventually something has got to give in this country. Soon nothing will be left but a hollow husk.
- kreelman 5y ago
  Could tech and manufacturing combine to become automated high-end tech? Could robotics and aggressive automation of production lines make this shift? ...Or is it in fact more complex than it seems and the lead times for setting up these kinds of businesses too large to have a useful effect in the short/medium term?
- AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  And Nukes. I remember right around 2000 George Will bloviated about how Russia was a third world nation by economy size, why do we treat them with such deference. Psst George: They still have a LOT of nukes. That might be us. A shell of a country with a failing economy, strong military, and huge number of nukes. Of course right around then global warming might really start taking off and a billion or two people are starving and become refugees. Then we see what happened in the EU and Syria, but worldwide and 100x worse.
- scythe 5y ago
  The US manufacturing real output continues to increase and never really declined (briefly in the Great Recession but quickly restored). Manufacturing employment on the other hand continues to drop. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_Sta...

rsj_hn 5y ago

That is confusing cause and effect. Because companies move their manufacturing operations to china it becomes harder to manufacture in the US. They did not initially move to China because of a lack of dometic skilled workers, but because of lower costs. The result of that move was, after a delay, the de-skilling of the US labor force, creating the lack of domestic skilled workers we have now. To recover from that would require a reverse migration of manufacturing activity which would, after a delay, create more skilled workers in the US. Skills follow activity, they do not lead activity. You learn by doing. If you want to develop good bridge building skills, then build a lot of bridges. As a result of that process, you will, after a delay, have a labor pool that knows how to do it well, and the bridges you build later on will be higher quality than the bridges you started out building. You do not wait for the labor pool to sprout up like mushrooms spontaneously from the ground, so there are all these bridge builders standing around with nothing to do, and then you decide that you'll have them fill up a few rooms and and hire some of them to build a bridge.

R0b0t1 5y ago
It's not just a lack of domestic skilled workers. I'm not really sure there is much of a lack. It's just that US labor is so much more expensive compared to earning power. US workers can't pay other US workers. Getting parts CNCed in China may be 10x less than the cost in the US, and materials are a tenth the cost as well (in small qty) as they haven't been transported yet. You can get roughly the same throughput in the US if you want to pay for it, but it will be vastly more expensive.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  > US workers can't pay other US workers. That is just logically false. It's not even a question of measurement, it is false by definition. The income paid to produce is by definition always sufficient to purchase the output that has been produced. But remember that income paid to the factors of production includes both labor and capital income, because both the owners of capital and the suppliers of labor purchase the products that are created by the combining of labor and capital to produce output. What is unsustainable is running persistent trade deficits overseas. E.g. by allowing foreign capital inflows, we have allowed the foreign sector to distort prices in an unsustainable manner.
  - R0b0t1 5y ago
    The buyer of US labor is the government and capital. Taxes on all US economic activity and coffers filled with worldwide profits are what purchases comparatively expensive US labor. This is why, e.g., most people can not afford new housing construction -- excess money has been dumped into it from the stimulus, driving costs up. Similar things have happened on a longer timescale for IT and engineering. Take what I said with some restrictions, like "US workers can't afford skilled or semiskilled US labor" which is afaict true. I work in production automation, life sciences, and software; my hobby projects in these area are unfortunately quite expensive due to US labor costs. As much as possible I must avoid using US labor if I want to get anything done.
kreelman 5y ago
"Skills follow activity, they do not lead activity. You learn by doing." Nicely put. Thanks for pointing that out. That really resonates for me as I think about my career and skillset. I'm where I am now because of building things with somewhat inferior skills (risky) at the start and growing my skills . I need to repeat that with new tools/processes now. It all seems obvious looking back. ...Perhaps another skill is having the foresight to see what will be needed in the next phase. I did it then, hopefully I'll be able to do it again. A bit like running a small company of one person. Where is the next investment made? China - the populace - seem to be pretty good at this.

bigphishy 5y ago

As far as I'm aware, the biggest innovation out of China in the past 300 years has been the face-kini. Seriously though, has this country produced any new invention? I would expect a country with 1.5 billion would come up with something novel. I can think of nothing unique, only modification of existing inventions.

croes 5y ago
Have you an example of a western invention not based on existing technology?
- jhgb 5y ago
  Depends on what you mean by "existing technology". Do electronic devices using quantum effects in solid state materials count? There you have the whole semiconductor industry. What about exploiting the behavior of charge carriers in vacuum? There you have the whole vacuum tube industry. Etc. etc. Before these things existed, nothing even remotely similar was being utilized by human civilization in our technological ventures at the very least in these two cases (or at least nothing did that readily comes to my mind, but considering the physics involved, it seems unlikely).
  - kragen 5y ago
    > Do electronic devices using quantum effects in solid state materials count? There you have the whole semiconductor industry. That was invented by Jagadish Chandra Bose in Bangladesh, who built working millimeter-wave radios using Schottky diodes in 01894. Of course, he didn't understand the quantum effects, but then, semiconductor diodes were in wide industrial use (mostly in the rich West) for decades before Shockley's Equation in 01949. The quantum theory was largely a Western discovery during those 55 years, but also included significant contributions from non-Western people like Shinichiro Tomonaga, Yoshiro Nishina, Leo Esaki, Tsung-Dao Lee, Hideki Yukawa, and Hantaro Nagaoka, and of course since 01949 quantum theory has been a field of investigation dominated by non-Western people. As you may be aware, there have been significant improvements in solid-state electronics since 01949, including full-color LEDs that permit LED lighting (due to Shuji Nakamura) and the switch to MOSFETs (due to Mohammed Atalla and Dawon Kahng, who were not from the West but were in the West) which eliminated the power consumption barrier that restricted 01960s electronics to dozens of transistors on a chip. China in particular has had a pretty bad couple of centuries, in between being invaded by the US, England, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, the Austro-Hungarian empire, Russia (twice), and Japan (three times), having two of the most ruinous civil wars in human history, and having the worst famine in human history. So it's been innovating a bit below par, though it seems to be doing okay now. > What about exploiting the behavior of charge carriers in vacuum? There you have the whole vacuum tube industry. It does seem that the whole cathode-ray thing was a Western discovery, but it was built on the Hindu ayurvedic techniques of mercury distillation that formed the basis for Arabic and then Western alchemy (necessary for the Sprengel pump, which was for decades the only source of a hard enough vacuum); also, building the apparatus drew on the Mesopotamian techniques of glassmaking, which are usually considered to hail from Asia Minor, though some believe they originated in Egypt. (It's possible that the Hindus imported the techniques of mercury distillation from China, but that is far enough back that it's difficult to know. At any rate, the Europeans got them from the Arabs, who got them from the Hindus.)

ticviking 5y ago

Depends on the region. In the Midwest and southeast most towns have several “jobshops” that keep the local industry running.

nebula8804 5y ago

What does the west do? Tech is the only real growth industry left in the US. Right now 80% of the county slaves away in dead end jobs to cater to the remaining 20% white collar professional+capital class. That 20% seems like its going to get smaller :/ Eventually something has got to give in this country. Soon nothing will be left but a hollow husk.

kreelman 5y ago
Could tech and manufacturing combine to become automated high-end tech? Could robotics and aggressive automation of production lines make this shift? ...Or is it in fact more complex than it seems and the lead times for setting up these kinds of businesses too large to have a useful effect in the short/medium term?
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
And Nukes. I remember right around 2000 George Will bloviated about how Russia was a third world nation by economy size, why do we treat them with such deference. Psst George: They still have a LOT of nukes. That might be us. A shell of a country with a failing economy, strong military, and huge number of nukes. Of course right around then global warming might really start taking off and a billion or two people are starving and become refugees. Then we see what happened in the EU and Syria, but worldwide and 100x worse.
scythe 5y ago
The US manufacturing real output continues to increase and never really declined (briefly in the Great Recession but quickly restored). Manufacturing employment on the other hand continues to drop. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_Sta...