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I agree with your point, and it makes me really sad. Let me try to make some optimistic spins? - Intel is hopefully turning their foundry business around. I t

by c54 5y ago

I agree with your point, and it makes me really sad. Let me try to make some optimistic spins? - Intel is hopefully turning their foundry business around. I think this will be a slow (1-2 decades?) process but will pay results. - Tesla and SpaceX are actually really positive spins, though I agree Tesla isn't completely isolated from the rest of the eletronics world. It's what we've got and it's not half bad. SpaceX in particular I is world-class at this point and hopefully will continue to get better - Toyota makes more cars in the US than not. Worst case, these are still functioning production lines staffed by good workers, that talent and working knowledge (hopefully) doesn't just disappear - A lot of your examples are lower down the value chain, for instance Intel doesn't produce commodity RAM since they famously got out of that game in the 80s(?) to focus on the higher margin CPU business. Maybe this is good? Ultimately though, I agree that working in ads or finance is largely flat or negative sum to society (as someone who has or is in both). It's worse than that, too. People actively look down on manufacturing, as somehow less exciting and less complex than finance.

baybal2 5y ago
USA sells quite a lot of cars to China, out of all places... But these are not American cars, these are German cars made in America. Americans I meet are always surprised when they see how close are manufacturing jobs salaries in China, and US.
- dragonelite 5y ago
  I was surprised when I discovered that the VW group sells like half of their inventory in China and ASEAN region.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  If they're German cars made in America, what about all the American goods made in China?
pm90 5y ago
That’s a little naive. No political entity in history has been able to reverse economic decline by looking at what it did best in an earlier age and try to do that again. There are other countries that are simply better than the US at doing certain things. I don’t understand why Americans can’t just accept that. Embrace the things we’re really good at, work with others to get from them the things they’re good at.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  There's arguably a strategic need to keep at least some expertise and a minimal operational capacity even for things that are cheaper to import[0]. COVID-19 demonstrated how fragile supply chains are, and that was just a global emergency, and not purposeful economic warfare. America is good at things at the edge of the value chain. High-end goods. Services. Demand manufacturing[1]. Things that have value during good times, where the earlier links in the chain are healthy, and consumers have plenty of money to spend. In times of crisis, all this can evaporate quickly. Also, I feel it might be that the kind of jobs America is good at are different from the lower-level jobs in ways that are not conductive to having a healthy middle class. I've read some convincingly-sounding arguments going in this direction, but I can't recall any right now, and I haven't thought about this topic hard enough to come up with one myself. -- [0] - This is not an unprecedented idea. See Boeing as a point of comparison. From what I read, the company would've been dead long ago if not for government spending. This spending looks wasteful if you look at what gets produced, but not when you realize it's really a way to ensure that manufacturing plants and people knowing how to use them are available in case they're needed for war production. [1] - Without being too bitter about it in this thread, I feel quite a lot of ways US brings in money are fads and artificial scarcities, created using marketing and intellectual property laws.
  - pm90 5y ago
    I agree with your assessment but I don’t think the solution is to try and artificially shore up domestic manufacturing capacity to the extent that it was before. There also isn’t any reason to believe that those that supply us with what we want desire the kind of economic warfare you’re describing. As for the middle class: I do agree here, we made a huge mistake gutting the manufacturing sector too quickly. But I suspect where we failed was in providing assistance to the affected communities rather than artificially trying to prop up manufacturing. The increased savings from manufacturing abroad could have been used to fund better healthcare and educational opportunities. Provide some kind of unemployment assistance. Instead all the rewards disproportionately went to a small minority of the owner/shareholder class.

by c54 5y ago

baybal2 5y ago

USA sells quite a lot of cars to China, out of all places... But these are not American cars, these are German cars made in America. Americans I meet are always surprised when they see how close are manufacturing jobs salaries in China, and US.

dragonelite 5y ago
I was surprised when I discovered that the VW group sells like half of their inventory in China and ASEAN region.
HPsquared 5y ago
If they're German cars made in America, what about all the American goods made in China?

pm90 5y ago

That’s a little naive. No political entity in history has been able to reverse economic decline by looking at what it did best in an earlier age and try to do that again. There are other countries that are simply better than the US at doing certain things. I don’t understand why Americans can’t just accept that. Embrace the things we’re really good at, work with others to get from them the things they’re good at.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
There's arguably a strategic need to keep at least some expertise and a minimal operational capacity even for things that are cheaper to import[0]. COVID-19 demonstrated how fragile supply chains are, and that was just a global emergency, and not purposeful economic warfare. America is good at things at the edge of the value chain. High-end goods. Services. Demand manufacturing[1]. Things that have value during good times, where the earlier links in the chain are healthy, and consumers have plenty of money to spend. In times of crisis, all this can evaporate quickly. Also, I feel it might be that the kind of jobs America is good at are different from the lower-level jobs in ways that are not conductive to having a healthy middle class. I've read some convincingly-sounding arguments going in this direction, but I can't recall any right now, and I haven't thought about this topic hard enough to come up with one myself. -- [0] - This is not an unprecedented idea. See Boeing as a point of comparison. From what I read, the company would've been dead long ago if not for government spending. This spending looks wasteful if you look at what gets produced, but not when you realize it's really a way to ensure that manufacturing plants and people knowing how to use them are available in case they're needed for war production. [1] - Without being too bitter about it in this thread, I feel quite a lot of ways US brings in money are fads and artificial scarcities, created using marketing and intellectual property laws.
- pm90 5y ago
  I agree with your assessment but I don’t think the solution is to try and artificially shore up domestic manufacturing capacity to the extent that it was before. There also isn’t any reason to believe that those that supply us with what we want desire the kind of economic warfare you’re describing. As for the middle class: I do agree here, we made a huge mistake gutting the manufacturing sector too quickly. But I suspect where we failed was in providing assistance to the affected communities rather than artificially trying to prop up manufacturing. The increased savings from manufacturing abroad could have been used to fund better healthcare and educational opportunities. Provide some kind of unemployment assistance. Instead all the rewards disproportionately went to a small minority of the owner/shareholder class.