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Would IMO need significantly more tariffs to effect significant shifts (and, even more importantly, some certainty that those tariffs are going to stick for the
by myrmidon 2y ago
Would IMO need significantly more tariffs to effect significant shifts (and, even more importantly, some certainty that those tariffs are going to stick for the next decades, which is hard to provide).
Chinese mean manufacturing wage is ~$25k/year (purchasing parity adjusted, $15k unadjusted, for an average 49h/week of work). If you want domestic products to be competitive, you basically need the difference paid by consumers/taxpayers in tariffs or subsidies.
I don't think current tariff level is going to move lots of manufacturing jobs into the US (and I would personally argue that most Americans don't even want those jobs as they are currently). Instead, I'd expect a slow shift towards countries with favorable local wage/tariff combination (India, Vietnam, etc.).
- markus_zhang 2y agoOne thing we can do is to lower the cost of housing and other big bills. If we have universal basic income in the form of housing, food and clothing for everyone, a lot of people might just won't need to move into privately held properties (i.e. renting from private landlords).
- myrmidon 2y agoEven if you had free housing/food/etc-- how many somewhat qualified people in the US are willing to work for 6-10$/hour? And those additional social services would need a big budget, which the current government is never gonna grant.