5 ms·

This might be true, but the rust belt is called that for a reason. I also wonder what's the share of non-disposable products in US and other Western countries

This might be true, but the rust belt is called that for a reason. I also wonder what's the share of non-disposable products in US and other Western countries manufacturing.

mlyle 2y ago
> This might be true, but the rust belt is called that for a reason. > > as the actual manufacturing has moved towards higher value items and greater degrees of automation. US manufacturing has moved away from things like primary metals, which the steel belt had focused on, and towards things further up the value chain. https://www.nist.gov/sites/default/files/styles/2800_x_2800_limit/public/images/2023/11/15/Figure%202-10.png?itok=8TeNHa-I https://www.nist.gov/sites/default/files/styles/2800_x_2800_... Manufacturing fell from 25% of GDP in 1947 to 12% in 2015... but real GDP increased by 10x. So, the value of manufacturing output went up by ~4x over that span. https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/april/-/media/project/frbstl/stlouisfed/blog/2017/april/blogimage_manunomgdpshare_041117.jpg https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/april/-/media... What really went away were the jobs.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  Just further evidence of the accelerating returns to capital. It just makes less and less sense for America to be engaged in highly wealth-distributive (i.e. labor intensive) activities, more sense for it to engage in capital-intensive ones which, by definition, accrue further benefit to the owners of that capital. Yikes!
  - starspangled 2y ago
    But industry cries out for more immigration to suppress wages because they don't have enough workers (or at least, not enough leverage in the labor market as they would like), so I'm not sure if that tracks.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - weweersdfsd 2y ago
      They will keep crying that, no matter the actual labor market situation. My country has low wages, high unemployment, and yet businesses similarly cry for more immigration, as they always want to find the most desperate worker who accepts the lowest wage possible. That's the reality of modern capitalism.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - eru 2y ago
        Have you considered that those foreigners are humans, too? Or do you believe in out-of-sight-is-out-of-mind?
        weweersdfsd 2y ago
        Of course they are humans like everybody else. But I do not support mass migration as a tool for bringing the wages further down and exploiting workers. I think the rich should be taxed much more, and that money used to reduce poverty & improve education globally. It's not migration itself that is the problem, but the fact many migrants are in a position where they can be exploited more easily than native workers. In ideal world businesses would have to pay a fair livable wage, no matter where they build factories, or receive migrants from.
        eru 2y ago
        Mass migration would bring their wages _up_, not down. That's why they would migrate. > It's not migration itself that is the problem, but the fact many migrants are in a position where they can be exploited more easily than native workers. Well, if you let people migrate easily and legally, they wouldn't be easier to exploit than native workers.
- Shog9 2y ago
  The jobs, and in many cases the expertise held by the people working those jobs. I think this was the angle epistasis was coming from: not just that chips are physically being formed within the boundaries of the US, but that citizens are involved, being trained and garnering the practical experience that comes with being intimately involved. So, so much of this sort of experience has been lost over the past few decades, and the fallout is palpable: how many discussions have played out right here surrounding the challenges of manufacturing anything, even trivial bits of plastic, at scale without spending years traveling across the world, dealing with language and cultural mismatches, ensuing mistakes and quality issues? We're in a weird place now, wrt manufacturing skill - there are still plenty of individual crafters, folks who can make one-off or small runs of high-quality goods... For a pretty high cost per/ea. But scaling is troublesome; to hit that economy of scale requires a lot more people with maybe journeyman-level skill, folks who cut their teeth in a large operation and are looking to specialize - and those large operations aren't here.

This might be true, but the rust belt is called that for a reason. I also wonder what's the share of non-disposable products in US and other Western countries manufacturing.

mlyle 2y ago

> This might be true, but the rust belt is called that for a reason. > > as the actual manufacturing has moved towards higher value items and greater degrees of automation. US manufacturing has moved away from things like primary metals, which the steel belt had focused on, and towards things further up the value chain. https://www.nist.gov/sites/default/files/styles/2800_x_2800_limit/public/images/2023/11/15/Figure%202-10.png?itok=8TeNHa-I https://www.nist.gov/sites/default/files/styles/2800_x_2800_... Manufacturing fell from 25% of GDP in 1947 to 12% in 2015... but real GDP increased by 10x. So, the value of manufacturing output went up by ~4x over that span. https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/april/-/media/project/frbstl/stlouisfed/blog/2017/april/blogimage_manunomgdpshare_041117.jpg https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/april/-/media... What really went away were the jobs.

llamaimperative 2y ago
Just further evidence of the accelerating returns to capital. It just makes less and less sense for America to be engaged in highly wealth-distributive (i.e. labor intensive) activities, more sense for it to engage in capital-intensive ones which, by definition, accrue further benefit to the owners of that capital. Yikes!
- starspangled 2y ago
  But industry cries out for more immigration to suppress wages because they don't have enough workers (or at least, not enough leverage in the labor market as they would like), so I'm not sure if that tracks.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - weweersdfsd 2y ago
    They will keep crying that, no matter the actual labor market situation. My country has low wages, high unemployment, and yet businesses similarly cry for more immigration, as they always want to find the most desperate worker who accepts the lowest wage possible. That's the reality of modern capitalism.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - eru 2y ago
      Have you considered that those foreigners are humans, too? Or do you believe in out-of-sight-is-out-of-mind?
      - weweersdfsd 2y ago
        Of course they are humans like everybody else. But I do not support mass migration as a tool for bringing the wages further down and exploiting workers. I think the rich should be taxed much more, and that money used to reduce poverty & improve education globally. It's not migration itself that is the problem, but the fact many migrants are in a position where they can be exploited more easily than native workers. In ideal world businesses would have to pay a fair livable wage, no matter where they build factories, or receive migrants from.
        eru 2y ago
        Mass migration would bring their wages _up_, not down. That's why they would migrate. > It's not migration itself that is the problem, but the fact many migrants are in a position where they can be exploited more easily than native workers. Well, if you let people migrate easily and legally, they wouldn't be easier to exploit than native workers.
Shog9 2y ago
The jobs, and in many cases the expertise held by the people working those jobs. I think this was the angle epistasis was coming from: not just that chips are physically being formed within the boundaries of the US, but that citizens are involved, being trained and garnering the practical experience that comes with being intimately involved. So, so much of this sort of experience has been lost over the past few decades, and the fallout is palpable: how many discussions have played out right here surrounding the challenges of manufacturing anything, even trivial bits of plastic, at scale without spending years traveling across the world, dealing with language and cultural mismatches, ensuing mistakes and quality issues? We're in a weird place now, wrt manufacturing skill - there are still plenty of individual crafters, folks who can make one-off or small runs of high-quality goods... For a pretty high cost per/ea. But scaling is troublesome; to hit that economy of scale requires a lot more people with maybe journeyman-level skill, folks who cut their teeth in a large operation and are looking to specialize - and those large operations aren't here.