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America's advanced manufacturing problem and how to fix it

• lemonwaterlime 3y ago
  The key topics missing from this article are management and culture. Manufacturing companies by and large are stubborn with outdated practices that haven’t kept up with the times. The number of mechanical engineers who switched to web development, for instance, because of poor pay and improper management is insane. And during the pandemic, even more either fled or were pushed out from lack of opportunity. It’s easy to blame these policies and say that industries aren’t connected, but when these firms are refusing to embrace new technologies and take calculated risks, they do this to themselves all by themselves. They commonly keep employees using the simplest heuristics that someone at some point in the past developed which worked then, so why break it? And they push this mediocrity throughout the entire organization and industry. Then they swap out one failed CEO for the same person with a different name like a pair of gloves, wondering what ever happened as there was nothing more that could be done. Meanwhile their ageist management policies block out the insights of the young, all but ensuring that no new ideas are brought into the mix—all until it’s time for another bailout.
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  • throw__away7391 3y ago
    OK, but this was also true of many software companies in the past. What is keeping manufacturing companies from experiencing the same kind of disruption?
    • Nasrudith 3y ago
      If I had to guess it would be higher amount of capital investment as a requirement and its impact on scaling - physical things can't just explode in-a-good-way the same way software can. This means both more time and more capital is required to scale up. Incumbents benefit from economies of scale and newcomers face dis-economies of scale. Which we know takes time from the economies Growing new competitors becomes hard and requires some cleverness to get around. Just look at electric cars and how they choose luxury/sports cars as their first models for a reason, so that the higher costs can be hidden in the high luxury margins. They need to be able to grow past that awkward point. The same economies of scale which made the industrial revolution possible essentially props up "gigantic idiots" (companies which perform poorly but are sizable enough that their economies of scale made up for bad habits) until their "stupidity" (bad decisions) becomes great enough a disadvantage that others can compete with them. The type of disruption that the manufacturing companies seem to engender is funding outsourcing to some remote cheap locale, and then wake up wondering where all of their competitors came from after they taught people enmasse how to build their product.
• peepeepoopoo36 3y ago
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• mensetmanusman 3y ago
  I work in one of the last remaining large industrial manufacturing labs in the US. Some of my colleagues worked at Bell before that was shuttered. My sense from talking to the previous generation is that financialization of the US has started (finally) failing the American people. The previous generation cashed in on major profits by off shoring (Kodak), but we overdid it. In a round about way our company is run by pension funds, and I work on projects that would get 8-9 figure investments if we were doing this in APEC, but we would rather have stock buybacks, so we end up getting 6 figures and puttering along. Meanwhile the higher ups wonder ‘what happened to R&D?!’
  • version_five 3y ago
    I work on projects that would get 8-9 figure investments if we were doing this in APEC Are the apac equivalents of those projects generating returns commensurate with the extra investment? Or is it a strategic choice that they typically focus more on advanced manufacturing while the US focuses more on software? I'm just wondering what the right way to think about this is.
    • flybrand 3y ago
      Both. They get high returns and there is high social benefit. Because the US thinks of industry as ‘dirty’ we’ve lost touch with how valuable these jobs can be. In the US the returns would have longer duration and would not be viewed as ‘important’ bc the business isn’t suitable for a FANG exit.
  • joe_the_user 3y ago
    Yeah, "financialization" is absolutely the answer and the articles' claim of lack institutional integration (or whatever) seems wrong. You can look at how Boeing gutted it's highly skilled Pacific North West operations to move lower skilled, lower paid areas elsewhere and generalize this to a multitude of similar industries.
    • sanxiyn 3y ago
      2001 Boeing paper, Out-Sourced Profits: The Cornerstone of Successful Subcontracting, is a required reading. This article gives a good introduction. https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/
• mdorazio 3y ago
  Here are the key points the article suggests (it spends quite a long time explaining how we got here): 1) Improve the [government sponsored] Manufacturing Institutes 2) [federally] Back R&D for manufacturing technologies 3) Provide scale-up financing [by the government] 4) Use government procurement power to promote new manufacturing technologies 5) Direct production support [to sectors deemed critical] 6) Provide both “top-down” [gov picks a tech and supports development of it] and “bottom-up” [broad incentives like IRA] support 7) Build a manufacturing focus into existing industrial policy programs 8) Map and fill gaps in supply chains 9) Fix workforce education [by refocusing on legitimate vocational tracks] 10) Put someone in charge [of coordinating agencies, budgets, and efforts] This is all effectively trying to copy large segments of the China playbook, but in my opinion it misses some rather important points. Namely, protectionism and implicit incentives. On the first point, you can't really compete with China when it is actively hostile to foreign companies and de facto encourages outright theft of knowledge and expertise in exchange for access to its market. As long as we have a significant portion of people yelling about "trade wars don't solve anything" any time someone proposes leveling the playing field, competition is a nonstarter. On the second point, the elephant in the room is that smart people in the US can make 2-3X as much in software or finance as they can in manufacturing, so what do you think they're going to pick? Which company is private investment going to fund - the SaaS co. with 40% margins and rapid growth or the manufacturing co. scraping 10% margins and 5% CAGR? It's hard to see where the skilled labor and private investment side of the equation is supposed to come from when the incentives are so mismatched - you almost have to find a way to decrease incentives in the currently lucrative pools first.
  • mschuster91 3y ago
    > On the second point, the elephant in the room is that smart people in the US can make 2-3X as much in software or finance as they can in manufacturing, so what do you think they're going to pick? Make unions stronger and kill off all of Wall Street finance shenanigans that's purely devoted to creating money out of thin air or skimming (especially HFT). That house of cards is going to crash hard anyway, so best tear it down in a controlled fashion than risk yet another 2008-style uncontrolled implosion.
• deleted 3y ago
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• Animats 3y ago
  Note the absence of tax policy changes that favor manufacturing. Here are a few: * A tax on financial transactions. This is sometimes called a "Tobin tax". The US financial services sector has doubled in size as a fraction of the economy. It's currently around 12%. That's an overhead cost, and a big one. Could be half that. * A tax on advertising. The tax deductiblity of advertising as a business expense should be limited. No more than a few percent of the cost of a good or service should be advertising. Domestic US advertising is almost zero sum, anyway, because Americans are spent out. All advertising does is move consumption around a bit. * Standards for imports. If it plugs into AC power, it has to have UL certification. No more fires from power supplies, including small electric vehicles. Anything medical has to be sample tested after import. Criminalize willful violations. Hold resellers (i.e. Amazon) criminally responsible.
  • jwells89 3y ago
    Big agree on UL certification of electronics imports. So much dangerous stuff is coming in and getting sold in places like gas stations where customers probably won’t suspect safety issues.
    • namibj 3y ago
      Is it currently legal to just sell your DIY power supply to US consumers? Or is there still like FCC certification required? Assuming, say, a USB-C charger.
      • systems_glitch 3y ago
        "It depends" mostly on how DIY it is. PCB + parts kit is usually fine for most things that would have FCC or UL requirements, but selling something that's "assembled in USA" like tractors (wheels bolted on here, everything else done there) would probably still need certified.
        • punkybr3wster 3y ago
          The problem is design and tech companies and cloning resellers sling stuff direct to consumers via ungodly amounts of facebook ads. Because they’re direct shipments so many of those products are not safe or certified and many clones are labeled as certified but aren’t because they’re cheap knock offs made to look like the originals.
• bell-cot 3y ago
  Obvious Solution: Re-establish the military draft, but with a far smaller pool of potential draftees - and make sure the families of current & recent members of Congress, Wall Street big-shots, Fortune 500 CxO's, McKinsey consultants, and such are all assigned to serve in front-line "meat shield" battalions on the western shores of Taiwan, just south of Korea's DMZ, etc.
  • avs733 3y ago
    Or maybe just treat blue collar workers better? And enshrine such treatment into law so this doesn’t happen again. That would seem to be simpler
    • Slava_Propanei 3y ago
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    • 20after4 3y ago
      Laws are so easily changed. Nothing is enshrined in law that can be nullified by the next court case or a hidden rider clause on a 'must pass' spending bill.
      • avs733 3y ago
        Personally I see this as a better option than the one from the dead comment below. We can argue about rules begetting culture or culture begetting rules, I think there is some back and forth and one set of changes is concrete.
    • bell-cot 3y ago
      While "treat blue collar workers better" sounds like a nice goal in itself...I fail to see how that would do anything at all to address the problem which the article is about. In other news - treating your oxen wonderfully will not transmute a wooden moldboard into an iron plow.
      • avs733 3y ago
• Slava_Propanei 3y ago
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• wonder_er 3y ago
  "America" is so hideously crippled by the heavy duty ethnic cleansing and regimes of social control baked into land use laws and transportation/mobility networks that 'advanced' problems are not even eligible to be solved. Sorta a 'do not pass go, do not collect $200, until {x} is solved' situation. If a city still has parking minimums on the books, I evaluate all involved parties as utterly unserious, pseudo-scientific religious zealots. Do you think the American south, in the era of chattel slavery, could solve 'advanced manufacturing problems'? NO! of course not! So why does anyone think 'america' could solve an advanced problem? Meh. I shouldn't be surprised by the article, though. The authors probably think the USA isn't a backwater country that is 'on top' only via a willingness to use economic and actual violence to achieve all aims.
  • goodluckchuck 3y ago
    You say willingness as if the rest of the world didn’t try to use violence first, and lost.
    • wonder_er 3y ago
      when two people are playing a game, and one of them is willing to use violence, it's quite a bit harder for the other person to not use violence as well. The US uses violence and coercion as a matter of fact, continuously, in every way, shape, and form. If you tried to 'play' with the US from a position of mutuality and co-creation... you get colonized and cleansed and westernized.
      • goodluckchuck 3y ago
        Exactly. If England would have left the colonies alone, not imported enslaved people, not attacked when we declared independence, then they wouldn’t have seen violence from us. Insert list of subsequent wars.
        • aragonite 3y ago
          > Insert list of subsequent wars. Like the Mexican–American War? OP's explanation of why US is the top-dog can't be whole story, but there's something to it. For example, it's hard to imagine the US would be half as powerful without the territorial gains made as a result of the conflicts surrounding the Mexican–American War (for example, by far the most economically important states are California & Texas!), yet at the same time virtually everyone agrees that the War was completely indefensible (Grant in a diary called it "one of the most unjust [war] ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation").
• 0xDEF 3y ago
  Advanced manufacturing, R&D, and high quality STEM education are three sides of the same coin. Shenzhen is the manufacturing capital of world because all three is tightly integrated.
• narrator 3y ago
  Has anyone asked Elon how to fix manufacturing in the U.S? Has he given anyone any ideas. The guy probably does as good or better job at manufacturing in the U.S than anyone else, and he has plenty of plants in foreign countries, so he can compare and contrast. Alas, the current administration hates the guy, and you can't have a guy who's clearly on the wrong team get to take credit for anything these days. Edit: He did have something interesting to say about the "idiot index" which is the price of a component over the cost of the raw materials. If that's very high, it means there are serious problems at that manufacturing organization. https://officechai.com/stories/elon-musk-idiot-index/ https://officechai.com/stories/elon-musk-idiot-index/ There's so much inefficiency in American manufacturing. It cost SF $1 billion a mile to extend the subway for example.
  • 6kVShitPost 3y ago
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  • ramraj07 3y ago
    I agree that you shouldn’t discount what Elon does or says. He’s clearly one of the most important individuals of our time. Doesn’t mean whatever he says is gold though. Same standards should apply. I agree that his naysayers are making a grave mistake of calling him universally stupid. He’s a vile selfish person, who makes a lot of bigoted stupid statements and actions, but ignoring him would be the end of us. A Tamil saying I like translates (by ChatGPT) in English as, “Regardless of the speaker’s guise, Seek the truth that in the statement lies.”
    • callalex 3y ago
      The idiomatic translation to English would be: “A broken clock is right twice a day.”
      • 3y ago
• balderdash 3y ago
  Much of this is about the dirty part of the supply chain. Take solar panels, china makes like ~90% of the worlds supply, yes there is the high end research, but then there is the poly silicon mining and refining/ingots, wafer, cells, and modules. You can’t just reshore some it - you have to do all of it, otherwise it doesn’t make a ton of sense, and that means mines and refineries which we’ve rightly or wrongly stopped building here in the US.
• Rooki 3y ago
  Is forming State Owned Enterprises in the desired industries with attached R&D Labs and apprenticeships impossible in the US?
  • coliveira 3y ago
    The US had for most purposes a system of quasi-owned state enterprises after WW2. The US gov had zero equity, but was a partner providing research, funding, and diplomatic backing. The list included companies like IBM, GE, Exxon, AT&T/Bell Labs, Boeing, etc. All these companies had large R&D departments financed directly or indirectly by the gov. Most of this was dismantled after the Raegan era, when they decided to move all production to other countries with the goal of running everything from Wall Street, through the power of dollar-based financialization. They wanted to control everybody else as modern colonies, where developing countries would perform the role of workers and the US the role of a business owner. It just happened that some countries never really wanted to play by these rules, that's why the US is threatening to dismantle the globalization system.
    • Rooki 3y ago
      Seems like a no brainer in the current environment though right? At least temporarily in sectors underserved by the market but still crucial to the national interest? Can always privatise them again down the track if they're ideologically unacceptable for whatever reason?
• thewanderer1983 3y ago
  The problem is larger than Advanced Manufacturing. https://ad-aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/2023-03/PB69-CriticalTechTracker-tab1.jpg https://ad-aspi.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/2023-03/PB69...
  • midoridensha 3y ago
    Where does this come from? It looks like BS to me. The idea that China has the most advanced aircraft engine manufacturing is truly insane: that belongs to the US and UK. China can't even fully build their own commercial aircraft because of this; they have to buy engines. For their military planes, they get engines from Russia.
• csomar 3y ago
  > Currency manipulation by the Japanese government further aided its exports, and the oil shock of 1973 was helpful to Japanese automakers given that they specialized in smaller, more efficient cars while the United States produced gas-guzzlers. Japan’s exports to the United States soared. U.S. automakers, in contrast, took too long to understand and then adjust their manufacturing technologies and techniques to the quality revolution. This ushered the era of Japan (where Japan almost "overtook" the US as the first economy). You can draw lots of parallels to what's happening with China now. I am afraid, given the size of China, that it'll not "just" reach US GDP but will skyrocket beyond it to the stars. The era of Western/US dominance might be over and it's inevitable.
• bandrami 3y ago
  The authors state that the US "is not a global leader in the advanced manufacturing of the twenty-first century" but don't actually support that claim; we're kind of supposed to take it for granted.
  • dalbasal 3y ago
    I don't think this is a problem. A piece like this is not a self contained textbook. It's a hot topic with 100 years of history near the centre of political and economic discourse. Contentious claims are inevitable. The reverse claim also gets made, and whether or not the claim is "supported," it's never sufficiently supported. The reality is that there's a whole debate with vountermoves behind either claim. One side looks at employment, tonnage, plant construction, anecdote and common sense. The other looks at accounting. Accounting says that "manufacturing" has increased. Skeptics consider this an accounting fiction. The reality is that "manufacturing" in 2023 is not quantifiable in the way that it was in 1923. Accounting semantics are abstract and past a point turn into a matter of accountants' naming convention. A 1923 ford factory represented most of the "manufacturing" represented by the cars that they produced. As the industry splits into OEMs, T1s, T2s, toolers and whatnot^ we move into more abstract definitions. Has one of Ford's industrial engineering teams ceased to be "manufacturing," because they now design processes for a Mexican subsidiary? How about the US-based management/overherheads for the subsidiary? Irl, accountants can represent these any way that the tax man, board or market prefers. The same physical change can represent 20% or 5% decrease in manufacturing. There's just a point where quantifications fail, and can't be used to decide such debates conclusively. Where we're at now, imo, requires us to keep purpose in mind, and forget about a single, neutral quantification. If you're quantifying manufacturing for maximum military potential, employment or resilience to trade problems... You probably need different definitions/quantifications of "manufacturing." ^These specific conventions were created to structure trade deals and regulate tarrifs.
    • SyzygistSix 3y ago
      I think the more objective measure might be the holes in the domestic supply chain that represent vulnerability and a lack of robustness.
• dalbasal 3y ago
  >>The Department of Defense’s (DoD) mission has traditionally been one of military security rather than economic security and assuring a strong American industrial base. Yet economic security and military security are now inseparable. I think a big, poorly understood part of these stories is "advanced games" or "long term degeneration." Take government procurement, like fighter jets or new hospitals. Post-war, the way this worked was "cost-plus." Companies accounted for their costs and were promised a fixed profit. The obvious flaw is that companies lose interest in efficiency. But... it did work during the war and resulted in more tanks, ships and jets than anyone thought possible. It also worked post war. But, such games mature. Under "cost-plus" a company increases profits by spending. That's an incentive that will bite eventually. So... they move to competitive bidding. This degenerates into a lawyers-only game, etc. That's the administrative layer, but game maturation also exists at the political layer. Rooseveltism was a thing for a while, and then anti-rooseveltism became it's competition. During the neoliberal era, industrial policy was the devil. Half the international institutions (trade deals, imf, wb) exist mostly to enforce bans and limits on industrial policy. During this era, when governments' job was to "get out of the way," the alternative to (now evil) industrial policy was either big trade deals, or tax policies. Tax breaks and tax complexity counted as "getting out of the way" while trade deals structured markets (eg auto-manufacturing) with more detailed rules than a Soviet five year plan. Anyway.... the statement about making economics a defence job... it feels like an attempt to declare bankruptcy on the "trade-deals and tax breaks" era, and move to an weirder and more awkward model. A bad idea that hasn't played out might be better than a better one that has.
• Liam2010 3y ago
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• Roark66 3y ago
  The article raises and goes fairly deep into explaining many important issues, but I find it's naive belief the numbers China presents quite surprising. Take this for example: >China dominates the production of full electric vehicles And put it in context with the recent revelations of hectares of abandoned new EVs rotting in many locations in China. Why? The financial policy gave incentives to making more EVs, some enterprising individuals managed to manufacture very low quality cars while funding it with "shared car startup model". Then when these car sharing schemes went bankrupt (because many cars wouldn't complete a single trip without malfunction) they had enormous profits regardless. How? The cost of manufacturing was funded by investors in these startups(a third party, or a client from the manufacturer's point of view). After they went bankrupt there would be no warranty claims etc. While the per car gov subsidy was pure profit. I cannot understand why anyone in the West would believe any economic statistic or number coming out of China. The country is known for fudging numbers at all levels. The corruption is endemic to the point one actually pays for government positions with cash (as a bribe to higher ups) and considers it an investment to recoup in own bribes in future. It's Soviet Union all over again. Back then The West to the last moment had many prominent authors praising Soviet advancements in many fields until the very end and the collapse that was a complete surprise to many.
  • krisoft 3y ago
    > Back then The West to the last moment had many prominent authors praising Soviet advancements in many fields until the very end and the collapse that was a complete surprise to many. I hear you. But I am not worried about whatever economic modellers say, or what prominent authors write. What I am worried is when huge companies, predominantly preceived as western ones, spread their arms and swear there is no way they can make their gizmos in the USA. Look at Apple for example, most valuable company on the whole world and 44-47% of their production sites is in china. Did we had anything like that in the Soviet block?
    • Roark66 3y ago
      >I hear you. But I am not worried about whatever economic modellers say, or what prominent authors write. What I am worried is when huge companies, predominantly preceived as western ones, spread their arms and swear there is no way they can make their gizmos in the USA. Yes, you make a very valid point. >Look at Apple for example, most valuable company on the whole world and 44-47% of their production sites is in china. Did we had anything like that in the Soviet block? No, definitely not, there is a difference in how Soviets couldn't overtly accept western investments without it looking like a failure of their central planning. Also the relationship between both blocks(USSR vs the West) was much more openly antagonistic. China is different in these ways. One could write a book about the differences and similarities of both countries. As for large companies doing that I blame the lawmakers (and people voting for them). A share based company is supposed to act in the best interest of shareholders. How long or short the time horizon to prioritise is decided by the shareholders when they hire the board of directors. It is not a surprise a bunch of shareholders will want to prioritize short term gains. It is the lawmakers job to ensure its citizens don't fund enemy regimes. That leads to another point, for a life of me I do not understand how the Chinese Communist Party regime is not officially considered an enemy of the USA and all other deocratic countries. For some countries with very corrupt political scene (like Germany, Austria etc) it is obvious why, but the US? Perhaps the political elite in US has awoken to the fact current China is their biggest enemy, they just don't see any benefit in communicating it clearly at this stage.
• g42gregory 3y ago
  I think that the American manufacturing problems are beyond fixing at this point. Between higher energy costs, higher regulatory/legal costs as well as numerous labor problems, it's just not realistic to imagine that American manufacturing could be competitive.
• justinclift 3y ago
  Good luck with that. :( Rent seeking behaviour is so deeply entrenched in US-led business culture, that any time potential advances are figured out they are viewed through the lens of "can we patent this?". If the answer is "No", then funds for developing that potential advance - eg concept dev, prototyping, potential field testing - just don't exist. It's not about being able to improve manufacturing. It's become "what's the greatest ROI on spending these dollars? Can we lock in a monopoly around it somehow too?". While that short sighted foot gun approach remains prevalent, "fixing" the advanced manufacturing problem is going to proceed pretty damn slowly. Outright abolishing all patents might get things going in the right direction, but the heart attacks that would cause in business circles makes that impractical. ;)
• hnthrowaway0315 3y ago
  This is simply because the American elites have chosen a different way to prosper. They have chosen, to reach the top of the world, and then ripe the easier and larger pies. The might of the US military protects the interests of the financial institutions (and some other oligarchs), and this can go on as long as the US military is strong enough. It is thus NOT the interest of the American elites to promote manufacturing. Not only that, even the American people are getting used to it too, they too do not want to work in manufacturing, tiring and non-prestigious. I don't really see a way to reverse everything. It is not about investing more in education or patching up policies. We are talking about a whole generation, maybe two, of elites and (some of the) people who profit from globalization. You simply cannot rely on the hands to chop themselves off. This is going to be a violent, bloody process because changing tides in politics is always bloody, literally. This is also going to touch the cake of numerous upper-middle class interest groups: landlords, bankers, you name it, anyone who prosper from the last 40 or so years, especially last 10 years since the first QE. Why? Because you are basically saying, OK I'm going to create a new group of middle class people but hey the cake is just that big so I need to cut someone else's piece. Of course, everything has a cheat. The cheat, which I believe was already chosen by the American elites, is to instill conflicts globally and create mass exodus of highly skilled workers from other countries to the United of States.
  • datavirtue 3y ago
    Non-union manufacturing work is nearly suicide. Horrid safety, abusive work mandates, random hours, barely any PTO. The list goes on. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. My son joined a non-union shop last year, recruited by his instructor while in a training program for machinists. They had an "assembly department" that was under extremely arbitrary and shifty requirement metrics. They had long time machinists who worked there and if they got hurt (after getting back from medical leave) they were thrown into the assembly department until they quit. That was the tip of the iceberg in that place. Asking for PPE to mitigate cancerous fumes from various chemicals got my son fired. He suffered chemical burns during his short time there and witnessed several serious random safety events involving 400amp 220v live electrical wires making contact with carts and shelving. This was not a small rinky dink shop. They have multiple large facilities in the US.
• vuln 3y ago
  PE firms and Opiate Addiction gutted the US manufacturing industry over the last 30 years. It’s not hard to see, but since a significant portion of these workers are white men, no one blinks an eye.
  • tacocataco 3y ago
    "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - MLK jr
• bohadi 3y ago
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• willmadden 3y ago
  It can’t be fixed with the current form of government and financial system, and no amount of central planning within the confines of the current system will fix this. DC politicians redistributing money to advanced manufacturing will generate wealth for transnational corporations that siphon wealth out of the source economy. It will serve as a grift for those with political connections more than it will repair our industries. The playing field is not level because of regulatory capture and inefficient regulation, and the talent pool that can fill the roles has both dwindled in number and chosen other career paths.
• onthecanposting 3y ago
  I really don't see Chinese-style whole government response with state-owned-enterprises and all happening in the US. That may not even work if it were possible. A viable domestic manufacturing sector is just not a goal of US decision makers (donors and kingmakers). At this point, career administration staff have been so fanatically selected for ideological loyalty that I don't think Washington can accomplish much of anything outside of accounting gimmicks.
• WhiteMasterRace 3y ago
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• tim333 3y ago
  Some of this isn't as bad as it looks due to the way the accounting works. Take Apple products. They basically lead the world in laptops and phones, designed in America but because the manufacturing is done abroad it appears as a trade deficit even though most of the design and profit accrue to Apple shareholders.
  • klyrs 3y ago
    It looks this bad: the rich get richer and the middle class slide toward poverty.
• _8j50 3y ago
  In my very opinionated view, the concept of new company towns is missing. All the current efforts are around bringing jobs to people. Jobs are a side effect, things shouldn't be done for the sake of jobs. The plains of nebraska for example are an excellent place (again, opinionated) for an assembly plant like foxconn but american. Mainly because a crapton of freight via railways passes through there and plenty of undeveloped cheap land. Such factories have high shipping/receiving volume and new towns with new cheap housing for potential workers is feasible. Yuma is another great location because of it's stable (sunniest in US) climate, proximity to mexico boarder and like with TSMC and Tuscon it is very disaster safe, right on I10 and close to CA (the US might starve if Yuma was destroyed! A lot of food processing there for these reasons). Manufacturing at old towns and factories will have minimal competitive advantage. Lastly, the US does not have a "success at any cost" mindset towards manufacturing as the fuel for economic success. It is very much an afterthought. A lot of this and many other issues are a result of political divisions.
• simonblack 3y ago
  It's more than factories that are missing today in the US. It's the millions of workers that have the skill-sets to work those factories. In the 40 years that the US has offshored manufacturing, all of those guys that used to know what's what have retired or died. There's nobody left. It's going to take another 30-40 years to replace them. The US doesn't have the luxury of having those 30-40 years.
  • tacocataco 3y ago
    The market has spoken, US labor is to expensive, until the quality of life here normalizes into the old normal of landed lords and peasants. Almost there.