7 ms·

Why American manufacturing is becoming less efficient

42 points by pg_1234 3y ago

pg_1234 3y ago
https://archive.ph/2NCxL https://archive.ph/2NCxL
- gdiamos 3y ago
  Doesn’t work
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    Does for me. USA, Linux, Firefox 119.
  - defrost 3y ago
    Very likely due to you using Cloudflare DNS ? arcvhive.xxx and cloudflare famously don't play nice with each other.
    - OrderlyTiamat 3y ago
      It's not just Cloudflare anymore, there was a recent post on hn that more people are getting infinite captchas. I've had intermittent problems over the last couple of months, and I'm not on Cloudflare.
lnsru 3y ago
Because stupid thing called work safety was invented. I had a chance to look at the machines used at Chinese factories. Wow, you couldn’t put them anywhere in US or Europe. Manufacturing is risky, experiments making it safer end up being it less efficient. The question is simple: better +3% more output from worker and 20% chance to loose a limb or -5% less output from worker with totally safe gear.
- simbolit 3y ago
  I suspect you are being ironic, but it doesn't come across in your writing. You sound like a run-off-the-mill Laisser-faire market fanatic, un-ironically.
  - lnsru 3y ago
    I am sad. I am forced to work with a safety knife. It’s absolutely not ergonomic. Paper cutter is completely forbidden. Then safety shoes and coat. Just to sit in different environment at the computer in production area. I see this thing as a bit overstretched. People are trying to hide accidents because then the whole department will have weekly safety meetings after some minor thing like dropping a monitor on your foot. Afterwards we got carts to transport lab equipment and computers between tables. I am in Germany and this is shocking.
    - simbolit 3y ago
      I think if this is the biggest problem you have at your job, you are fine.
- Phiwise_ 3y ago
  I'd love to know particularly what 2011 worker safety initiatives you'd point to that ended the infamous american worker limb amputation crisis of the late 1990s, and also if you have any insight into why Britain and the EU haven't done the same for their own poor workers, who are still rolling a d5 on major disfigurement sometime in their working life to this day to maintain their own productivity growth.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  I guess I know what the capitalist answer dealing with employees as disposable work force would be.
shiroiuma 3y ago
It seems like the American economy is only "growing" because Americans are constantly reselling houses to each other for ever-increasing prices, rather than producing any actual useful stuff.
- chiefalchemist 3y ago
  Or it's growing from solving for symptoms, not root problems. Brief examples: Divorce? That's not a fractured family, it's an extra household of goods (e.g., TVs, sofa, outfitted kitchen, etc.). It increases demand for housing, which drives up those prices. End up with more stuff than you need? Put it in storage. Weight control / obesity? Aside from the gym, there's fad diet books, meds, meds, and more meds, etc. As you add weight, you naturally need new clothes. No free time? The solution is fast food or shite frozen meals, etc. Not to worry, the "Healthcare" Industrial Complex welcomes this "solution". To your point, the system favors revenue over efficiency. Profits over prevention.
  - smitty1e 3y ago
    > To your point, the system favors revenue over efficiency. Profits over prevention. We live in the present tense, not the future. Hence the primacy of the tactical over the strategic.
    - chiefalchemist 3y ago
      So we? Or does believing in the paradigm confine us in a more profitable way? Imagine if we saw 2x as many prevention ads as we see "now now now" ads, would our mindset not change?
      - smitty1e 3y ago
        The more we can peek out into the future and think strategically, the more liberated we are. > Imagine if we saw 2x as many prevention ads Many business models are predicated upon the "now now now", instant gratification mentality. I'm as capitalist as they come, but that doesn't mean all should be for sale.
hunglee2 3y ago
Premature doom-ism from the Economist here, but perhaps not surprising seeing that they are historically a magazine for the capitalist class. US state intervention into the free market - a.k.a 'Bidenomics' - is in its early stages and will require multi-decadal commitment to seed and train an entire generation of skilled workers in the new / old manufacturing industries. Redirecting excess capital from the services to as-yet unprofitable de facto state enterprises will only bear fruit when those enterprises start producing products which become competitive in the global market. The timeline is measured in decades, US can see it through, though will need an 'economic deep state' to see the policies through the oscillations of the democratic political system
- injeolmi_love 3y ago
  It’s quite unlikely for the state enterprises to prove profitable, because political motivations will supersede profits when handling managerial decisions.
  - hunglee2 3y ago
    that's true, but you can expose SOE's to national free market, then global free market to weed out those who fail. State intervention needs to be seen as a temporary step to (re)build an industry, once it is strong enough, you can set it free.
- throw932490 3y ago
  It is just another excuse to print more money. What Biden is doing now, is just "lets print a few trillions and buy some solar panels in China!". For mass reindustralization, you need reforms and technically skilled people. For example you will need way more oil and cheap energy. You also must stop shitting on imaginary "white men", and offer them free industrial-tech education. Army did that quite a lot, but that avenue is closed now.
  - hunglee2 3y ago
    Biden is definitely printing money, but to be fair that is what the US has been doing for the past several decades. What is different with Bidenomics is the allocation of that money - the attempt at least is being made to convert excess capital into productive economy. Will surely be massive wastage though - probably up to 90%. Point is though, some SOE's might succeed, particularly if they are early to emergent economic niches. One legit criticism of Biden policy is that it is playing catch up rather than looking around the corner
CSMastermind 3y ago
The summary seems to be that we need more robots in our factories. That seems reasonable to me though I do wonder if some of the comparisons to Europe are misleading given that the US is in a very different place demographically.
- tetris11 3y ago
  > very different place demographically Like the US, Europe is diverse and large parts of it not at all homogenous
  - simbolit 3y ago
    Very true. Tho, we also have to acknowledge that "moving to the other side of the continent, because of jobs and housing" is much more common in the us than in Europe. Edit: My child comments make some very good points which me, living in a rich country, didn't fully consider. I think it's still very different, but not as different as my comment makes it out to be.
    - thriftwy 3y ago
      A huge number of Poles and Latvians moved to UK for better opportunities. It is less distance as crow flies but way more cultural difference distance.
    - tormeh 3y ago
      From one rich country to another, yes, not at all common. But the EU consists of both really rich and really poor countries. Moving from a poor country to a rich one for a job is rather common, especially if the two countries are close, like Poland and Germany. More mobile remote workers occasionally make the trip in reverse for CoL (and weather) reasons.
      - nicolaslem 3y ago
        Foreigner living in Poland here, I feel that qualifying Poland as a "poor country" is kind of dated and less true with each passing year.
pjc50 3y ago
Is it just me or is this very short on detail? It's looking at the high level productivity stats but with no insight into what the reality on the ground might be.
spacecadet 3y ago
Americans wanted this. A huge chunk of the population has fought tooth and nail (to their own detriment) to: - Prevent the use of Automation (Robots taking jobs) - Prevent Outsourcing (Mexicans taking jobs) - Prevent Unions (Don't collaborate) So now they got what they wanted? pre-revolutionary manufacturing? low pay, low responsibility, little growth. Uncompetative(in a bad way)! Way to go.
- samirillian 3y ago
  Who exactly are these Americans who are against all three of those things. It would seem that the workers would be against the first two and the owners would be against the Unions. How exactly does outsourcing jobs and automation increase a factory worker's pay?
  - spacecadet 3y ago
    Im not saying all 3 are correlated... As someone who grew up in American Manufacturing, built a tech company around it. Americans at large argued for these 3 counter intuitive things within the sector and weakened it. IMO.
    - samirillian 3y ago
      I don't know how to unravel this knot you've tied with out having a lot more questions answered, but your concepts seem a little muddled. Automation and outsourcing jobs will not lead to higher pay here. That much should be obvious.
      - spacecadet 3y ago
        Im not a researcher, just some bloke on the internet, I feel like commenters on hacker news expect too much from these obviously personal opinions.
dalbasal 3y ago
Our understanding of economic "classics" like manufacturing often seems to be one generations' propoganda layered onto previous ones. Labour productivity, today, is a very hard metric to understand. I'm not sure it means anything as an aggregate. The ideal/goal of industrial policy (mostly determined in trade agreements) forthe last 40+ years has been... I think Apple is the cleanest, best understood example. Apple US (or Ireland) houses the engineering. The marketing. It's where the "creativity" lives. It's where the intellectual property is. Where the "platform strategy" takes place. Where "network effects live." Foxconn (taiwan+china) is where the hard capital investments live. It's where the factories are. Where the workers are. United States (apple) gets most of the profit. They get most of the market returns (see apple share price, Vs foxcon/etc.). Most of the taxable corporate income. The lion's share of high paying jobs. China (via foxconn/etc.) gets jobs. Industrial development. Labour productivity... all the benefits of manufacturing. That was the deal. It was (and still is) what the US and China wanted. They both liked the deal. It worked well. Both governments got what they expected and more. Apple (and others) did very well. Insane profit margins, market caps... financial returns beyond all expectation. What they wanted. China did get lots of jobs, industrialised their economy, developed whole regions. They also got what they wanted... in spades. This had had consequences though. Instead of modernising manufacturing and continuing to get real productivity gains... Manufacturing got to go backwards. More labour intensive options work again. Fewer capital intensive, high productivity options, were necessary. That game is kind of played out, but we did not go down the path of manufacturing efficiency. Trying to design the factories of the 2030s now... inevitably speculative work. Risky. Hard. Meanwhile, the market is used to factories/manufacturing representing the low risk, low margin part of the economy. The proverbial "commodity" business. Adding innovation, risk to big chunky investments for tight margins... you can see why US (especially the financiers) wanted out of this game originally. Meanwhile, 1950s manufacturing-based suburban lifestyles... that mind's eye ideal is... Hard to know where reality relates to this now or in the future.
- gruez 3y ago
  >Instead of modernising manufacturing and continuing to get real productivity gains... Manufacturing got to go backwards. More labour intensive options work again. Fewer capital intensive, high productivity options, were necessary. Are we just going to ignore all the productivity gains that china got from moving away from an agrarian economy to a manufacturing economy? In the same vein, are we going to ignore all the labor in North America that was freed from doing low value tasks like assembling phones?
orwin 3y ago
Can it just be rising energy costs?
lordfrito 3y ago
At the risk of suggesting something unpopular, the timing of the productivity decline seems to coincide with larger social and mental health issues that started showing up in the 2010s, largely due to social media affects on mass society. Related?
doingtheiroming 3y ago
The answer might be in the article already. The proportion of manufacturing that is in industries like construction has increased versus heavy industry, semiconductors, auto-manufacturing etc. The reasons for a decline in productivity in those industries seems pretty clear. If you have to build anything in NYC or any big city, your people are going to spend a lot of time standing around waiting for things to happen. When you can't put a hole in the ground without significant paperwork, is it any surprise that it's hard to drive productivity increases? The obvious contrast is Tesla. The level of productivity with which model 3s are built now is clearly a vast improvement over where it was and the improvements (single casting for e.g.) keep coming. As long as US / UK and EU manufacturing continues to substitute making things in factories for making them in the street, and heavy industry for light industry, it's hardly a surprise that productivity overall is going nowhere.
CapitalistCartr 3y ago
When I was young, manufacturing was everywhere. All the support needed was all around. Specialist companies, specialist people, it was easy. Now they bulldoze industrial districts, or turn the factories into condos. If you want to make stuff, skilled workers are rare and all old like me. Support is rare to non-existant. Supplies, tooling, etc. are ordered from far away. All of this makes every step harder. Being in the middle of your industry is an order of magnitude easier.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
It seems like a natural law: manufacturing hubs get established, wages increase and then they die as new hubs get created in places with lower wages. UK to Pittsburgh to Detroit to Silicon Valley to Shenzen, et cetera. Everybody assumes that new hubs will get created in Vietnam or Mexico or Africa or similar that will displace the Chinese hubs. But it seems manufacturing is now automated enough that the advantages of a hub outweigh the advantages of cheap labor elsewhere. And there's no doubt that Shenzen has a concentration of resources and talent in electronics manufacturing unmatched anywhere else in the world. So it seems possible that Shenzen will never lose this pre-eminence in electronics manufacturing the way that Silicon Valley lost it.
- mcphage 3y ago
  > And there's no doubt that Shenzen has a concentration of resources and talent in electronics manufacturing unmatched anywhere else in the world. How long did it take to build that concentration?
  - jhanschoo 3y ago
    It's not a matter of time but of volume.
jacknews 3y ago
So maybe the problem is actually the measurement, GDP, and market structure, etc. Actually making things that people need is obviously a large and essential part of 'the economy', and, well, what people actually need, even if it is 'a small percentage of GDP' or other economic/market measurements.

42 points by pg_1234 3y ago

pg_1234 3y ago

https://archive.ph/2NCxL https://archive.ph/2NCxL

gdiamos 3y ago
Doesn’t work
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  Does for me. USA, Linux, Firefox 119.
- defrost 3y ago
  Very likely due to you using Cloudflare DNS ? arcvhive.xxx and cloudflare famously don't play nice with each other.
  - OrderlyTiamat 3y ago
    It's not just Cloudflare anymore, there was a recent post on hn that more people are getting infinite captchas. I've had intermittent problems over the last couple of months, and I'm not on Cloudflare.

lnsru 3y ago

Because stupid thing called work safety was invented. I had a chance to look at the machines used at Chinese factories. Wow, you couldn’t put them anywhere in US or Europe. Manufacturing is risky, experiments making it safer end up being it less efficient. The question is simple: better +3% more output from worker and 20% chance to loose a limb or -5% less output from worker with totally safe gear.

simbolit 3y ago
I suspect you are being ironic, but it doesn't come across in your writing. You sound like a run-off-the-mill Laisser-faire market fanatic, un-ironically.
- lnsru 3y ago
  I am sad. I am forced to work with a safety knife. It’s absolutely not ergonomic. Paper cutter is completely forbidden. Then safety shoes and coat. Just to sit in different environment at the computer in production area. I see this thing as a bit overstretched. People are trying to hide accidents because then the whole department will have weekly safety meetings after some minor thing like dropping a monitor on your foot. Afterwards we got carts to transport lab equipment and computers between tables. I am in Germany and this is shocking.
  - simbolit 3y ago
    I think if this is the biggest problem you have at your job, you are fine.
Phiwise_ 3y ago
I'd love to know particularly what 2011 worker safety initiatives you'd point to that ended the infamous american worker limb amputation crisis of the late 1990s, and also if you have any insight into why Britain and the EU haven't done the same for their own poor workers, who are still rolling a d5 on major disfigurement sometime in their working life to this day to maintain their own productivity growth.
pjmlp 3y ago
I guess I know what the capitalist answer dealing with employees as disposable work force would be.

shiroiuma 3y ago

It seems like the American economy is only "growing" because Americans are constantly reselling houses to each other for ever-increasing prices, rather than producing any actual useful stuff.

chiefalchemist 3y ago
Or it's growing from solving for symptoms, not root problems. Brief examples: Divorce? That's not a fractured family, it's an extra household of goods (e.g., TVs, sofa, outfitted kitchen, etc.). It increases demand for housing, which drives up those prices. End up with more stuff than you need? Put it in storage. Weight control / obesity? Aside from the gym, there's fad diet books, meds, meds, and more meds, etc. As you add weight, you naturally need new clothes. No free time? The solution is fast food or shite frozen meals, etc. Not to worry, the "Healthcare" Industrial Complex welcomes this "solution". To your point, the system favors revenue over efficiency. Profits over prevention.
- smitty1e 3y ago
  > To your point, the system favors revenue over efficiency. Profits over prevention. We live in the present tense, not the future. Hence the primacy of the tactical over the strategic.
  - chiefalchemist 3y ago
    So we? Or does believing in the paradigm confine us in a more profitable way? Imagine if we saw 2x as many prevention ads as we see "now now now" ads, would our mindset not change?
    - smitty1e 3y ago
      The more we can peek out into the future and think strategically, the more liberated we are. > Imagine if we saw 2x as many prevention ads Many business models are predicated upon the "now now now", instant gratification mentality. I'm as capitalist as they come, but that doesn't mean all should be for sale.

hunglee2 3y ago

Premature doom-ism from the Economist here, but perhaps not surprising seeing that they are historically a magazine for the capitalist class. US state intervention into the free market - a.k.a 'Bidenomics' - is in its early stages and will require multi-decadal commitment to seed and train an entire generation of skilled workers in the new / old manufacturing industries. Redirecting excess capital from the services to as-yet unprofitable de facto state enterprises will only bear fruit when those enterprises start producing products which become competitive in the global market. The timeline is measured in decades, US can see it through, though will need an 'economic deep state' to see the policies through the oscillations of the democratic political system

injeolmi_love 3y ago
It’s quite unlikely for the state enterprises to prove profitable, because political motivations will supersede profits when handling managerial decisions.
- hunglee2 3y ago
  that's true, but you can expose SOE's to national free market, then global free market to weed out those who fail. State intervention needs to be seen as a temporary step to (re)build an industry, once it is strong enough, you can set it free.
throw932490 3y ago
It is just another excuse to print more money. What Biden is doing now, is just "lets print a few trillions and buy some solar panels in China!". For mass reindustralization, you need reforms and technically skilled people. For example you will need way more oil and cheap energy. You also must stop shitting on imaginary "white men", and offer them free industrial-tech education. Army did that quite a lot, but that avenue is closed now.
- hunglee2 3y ago
  Biden is definitely printing money, but to be fair that is what the US has been doing for the past several decades. What is different with Bidenomics is the allocation of that money - the attempt at least is being made to convert excess capital into productive economy. Will surely be massive wastage though - probably up to 90%. Point is though, some SOE's might succeed, particularly if they are early to emergent economic niches. One legit criticism of Biden policy is that it is playing catch up rather than looking around the corner

CSMastermind 3y ago

The summary seems to be that we need more robots in our factories. That seems reasonable to me though I do wonder if some of the comparisons to Europe are misleading given that the US is in a very different place demographically.

tetris11 3y ago
> very different place demographically Like the US, Europe is diverse and large parts of it not at all homogenous
- simbolit 3y ago
  Very true. Tho, we also have to acknowledge that "moving to the other side of the continent, because of jobs and housing" is much more common in the us than in Europe. Edit: My child comments make some very good points which me, living in a rich country, didn't fully consider. I think it's still very different, but not as different as my comment makes it out to be.
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    A huge number of Poles and Latvians moved to UK for better opportunities. It is less distance as crow flies but way more cultural difference distance.
  - tormeh 3y ago
    From one rich country to another, yes, not at all common. But the EU consists of both really rich and really poor countries. Moving from a poor country to a rich one for a job is rather common, especially if the two countries are close, like Poland and Germany. More mobile remote workers occasionally make the trip in reverse for CoL (and weather) reasons.
    - nicolaslem 3y ago
      Foreigner living in Poland here, I feel that qualifying Poland as a "poor country" is kind of dated and less true with each passing year.

pjc50 3y ago

Is it just me or is this very short on detail? It's looking at the high level productivity stats but with no insight into what the reality on the ground might be.

spacecadet 3y ago

Americans wanted this. A huge chunk of the population has fought tooth and nail (to their own detriment) to: - Prevent the use of Automation (Robots taking jobs) - Prevent Outsourcing (Mexicans taking jobs) - Prevent Unions (Don't collaborate) So now they got what they wanted? pre-revolutionary manufacturing? low pay, low responsibility, little growth. Uncompetative(in a bad way)! Way to go.

samirillian 3y ago
Who exactly are these Americans who are against all three of those things. It would seem that the workers would be against the first two and the owners would be against the Unions. How exactly does outsourcing jobs and automation increase a factory worker's pay?
- spacecadet 3y ago
  Im not saying all 3 are correlated... As someone who grew up in American Manufacturing, built a tech company around it. Americans at large argued for these 3 counter intuitive things within the sector and weakened it. IMO.
  - samirillian 3y ago
    I don't know how to unravel this knot you've tied with out having a lot more questions answered, but your concepts seem a little muddled. Automation and outsourcing jobs will not lead to higher pay here. That much should be obvious.
    - spacecadet 3y ago
      Im not a researcher, just some bloke on the internet, I feel like commenters on hacker news expect too much from these obviously personal opinions.

dalbasal 3y ago

Our understanding of economic "classics" like manufacturing often seems to be one generations' propoganda layered onto previous ones. Labour productivity, today, is a very hard metric to understand. I'm not sure it means anything as an aggregate. The ideal/goal of industrial policy (mostly determined in trade agreements) forthe last 40+ years has been... I think Apple is the cleanest, best understood example. Apple US (or Ireland) houses the engineering. The marketing. It's where the "creativity" lives. It's where the intellectual property is. Where the "platform strategy" takes place. Where "network effects live." Foxconn (taiwan+china) is where the hard capital investments live. It's where the factories are. Where the workers are. United States (apple) gets most of the profit. They get most of the market returns (see apple share price, Vs foxcon/etc.). Most of the taxable corporate income. The lion's share of high paying jobs. China (via foxconn/etc.) gets jobs. Industrial development. Labour productivity... all the benefits of manufacturing. That was the deal. It was (and still is) what the US and China wanted. They both liked the deal. It worked well. Both governments got what they expected and more. Apple (and others) did very well. Insane profit margins, market caps... financial returns beyond all expectation. What they wanted. China did get lots of jobs, industrialised their economy, developed whole regions. They also got what they wanted... in spades. This had had consequences though. Instead of modernising manufacturing and continuing to get real productivity gains... Manufacturing got to go backwards. More labour intensive options work again. Fewer capital intensive, high productivity options, were necessary. That game is kind of played out, but we did not go down the path of manufacturing efficiency. Trying to design the factories of the 2030s now... inevitably speculative work. Risky. Hard. Meanwhile, the market is used to factories/manufacturing representing the low risk, low margin part of the economy. The proverbial "commodity" business. Adding innovation, risk to big chunky investments for tight margins... you can see why US (especially the financiers) wanted out of this game originally. Meanwhile, 1950s manufacturing-based suburban lifestyles... that mind's eye ideal is... Hard to know where reality relates to this now or in the future.

gruez 3y ago
>Instead of modernising manufacturing and continuing to get real productivity gains... Manufacturing got to go backwards. More labour intensive options work again. Fewer capital intensive, high productivity options, were necessary. Are we just going to ignore all the productivity gains that china got from moving away from an agrarian economy to a manufacturing economy? In the same vein, are we going to ignore all the labor in North America that was freed from doing low value tasks like assembling phones?

orwin 3y ago

Can it just be rising energy costs?

lordfrito 3y ago

At the risk of suggesting something unpopular, the timing of the productivity decline seems to coincide with larger social and mental health issues that started showing up in the 2010s, largely due to social media affects on mass society. Related?

doingtheiroming 3y ago

The answer might be in the article already. The proportion of manufacturing that is in industries like construction has increased versus heavy industry, semiconductors, auto-manufacturing etc. The reasons for a decline in productivity in those industries seems pretty clear. If you have to build anything in NYC or any big city, your people are going to spend a lot of time standing around waiting for things to happen. When you can't put a hole in the ground without significant paperwork, is it any surprise that it's hard to drive productivity increases? The obvious contrast is Tesla. The level of productivity with which model 3s are built now is clearly a vast improvement over where it was and the improvements (single casting for e.g.) keep coming. As long as US / UK and EU manufacturing continues to substitute making things in factories for making them in the street, and heavy industry for light industry, it's hardly a surprise that productivity overall is going nowhere.

CapitalistCartr 3y ago

When I was young, manufacturing was everywhere. All the support needed was all around. Specialist companies, specialist people, it was easy. Now they bulldoze industrial districts, or turn the factories into condos. If you want to make stuff, skilled workers are rare and all old like me. Support is rare to non-existant. Supplies, tooling, etc. are ordered from far away. All of this makes every step harder. Being in the middle of your industry is an order of magnitude easier.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

It seems like a natural law: manufacturing hubs get established, wages increase and then they die as new hubs get created in places with lower wages. UK to Pittsburgh to Detroit to Silicon Valley to Shenzen, et cetera. Everybody assumes that new hubs will get created in Vietnam or Mexico or Africa or similar that will displace the Chinese hubs. But it seems manufacturing is now automated enough that the advantages of a hub outweigh the advantages of cheap labor elsewhere. And there's no doubt that Shenzen has a concentration of resources and talent in electronics manufacturing unmatched anywhere else in the world. So it seems possible that Shenzen will never lose this pre-eminence in electronics manufacturing the way that Silicon Valley lost it.

mcphage 3y ago
> And there's no doubt that Shenzen has a concentration of resources and talent in electronics manufacturing unmatched anywhere else in the world. How long did it take to build that concentration?
- jhanschoo 3y ago
  It's not a matter of time but of volume.

jacknews 3y ago

So maybe the problem is actually the measurement, GDP, and market structure, etc. Actually making things that people need is obviously a large and essential part of 'the economy', and, well, what people actually need, even if it is 'a small percentage of GDP' or other economic/market measurements.