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> I think you and the op are both missing that the vast majority of those mid skilled jobs still exist, they just exist in countries whose labor costs are drast

> I think you and the op are both missing that the vast majority of those mid skilled jobs still exist, they just exist in countries whose labor costs are drastically lower. They exist in lower income countries, but the work quality is often shoddy and poor at best. The talented ones have already migrated to the West. Case in point, a factory we built for a project in the Middle East with a fully European team took just 9 months to finish from the start of laying the foundation stone. Similar projects in the same country by a Chinese or local company would have taken 3-4 years. Another American team executed a project in Singapore in 2.5 years, but that same project was estimated to take 6 years in India.

snapplebobapple 3y ago
That's literally point two and three of the argument I made in the second half of the first paragraph as something that is incorrect to bet on continuing forever. What would your project spread have looked like 20 years ago? I am guessing quite a lot worse. What will the spread look like in 20 years? I would bet on it being closer than it is now.
- nradov 3y ago
  Most Middle Eastern countries have made approximately zero progress on worker training and productivity in the past 20 years. Some have even gone backwards. There's no reason to expect they will do better in the next 20. It's a sad waste of human potential due to toxic politics and unfavorable geography.
  - snapplebobapple 3y ago
    If progress was equal everywhere we wouldn't have all these laggards willing to work for peanuts to improve their life (because the peanuts they were working for locally are even smaller than foreign peanuts). ~5% of the population currently not getting the job done doesn't invalidate any part of my argument. It just means that 5% might be the last guys left in the dark ages if progress continues and the policy of offshoring doesn't reverse (either for political reasons or because we cracked the full automation code and labor costs no longer matter because we aren't using much labor to produce things. If that happens the dirty stuff will still be offshored but the calculus will be different for the foreign country).
    - nradov 3y ago
      Political instability means that manufacturing will never be significantly offshored to the Middle East. It doesn't matter how cheap the labor is if you're worried your factory is going to get blown up. For all the faults of the Chinese government, they have at least created a safe environment for manufacturers to operate.

snapplebobapple 3y ago

That's literally point two and three of the argument I made in the second half of the first paragraph as something that is incorrect to bet on continuing forever. What would your project spread have looked like 20 years ago? I am guessing quite a lot worse. What will the spread look like in 20 years? I would bet on it being closer than it is now.

nradov 3y ago
Most Middle Eastern countries have made approximately zero progress on worker training and productivity in the past 20 years. Some have even gone backwards. There's no reason to expect they will do better in the next 20. It's a sad waste of human potential due to toxic politics and unfavorable geography.
- snapplebobapple 3y ago
  If progress was equal everywhere we wouldn't have all these laggards willing to work for peanuts to improve their life (because the peanuts they were working for locally are even smaller than foreign peanuts). ~5% of the population currently not getting the job done doesn't invalidate any part of my argument. It just means that 5% might be the last guys left in the dark ages if progress continues and the policy of offshoring doesn't reverse (either for political reasons or because we cracked the full automation code and labor costs no longer matter because we aren't using much labor to produce things. If that happens the dirty stuff will still be offshored but the calculus will be different for the foreign country).
  - nradov 3y ago
    Political instability means that manufacturing will never be significantly offshored to the Middle East. It doesn't matter how cheap the labor is if you're worried your factory is going to get blown up. For all the faults of the Chinese government, they have at least created a safe environment for manufacturers to operate.