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Americans have been hurt for 50 years … yes manufacturing going overseas was a huge change and many administrations didn’t do enough to help affected workers. B

Americans have been hurt for 50 years … yes manufacturing going overseas was a huge change and many administrations didn’t do enough to help affected workers. Buuuuuut - placing tariffs on our allies that will likely lead to a recession makes no sense. Devaluing the dollar and subsidizing production in the US makes far more sense. But I’m not an economist or anything.

bibanez 2y ago
Devaluing the dollar makes paying national debt more expensive
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  No it makes it cheaper because the US is in a unique position of issuing debt in its own currency.
  - drivebyhooting 2y ago
    You can both be right. Old debt is cheaper to pay but new debt more expensive. And the government runs a deficit so new debt is always accruing.
    - insane_dreamer 2y ago
      New debt is only more expensive if you have to exchange something of value to obtain the USD to pay down the debt. But since the Fed can expand the money supply at will, it's essentially creating new USD out of thin air which can be used. (This is how the US has been able to sustain such a large debt without any real consequences.) What will happen though is that interest rates on T bills will rise, so yes, in that sense, it does eventually become "more expensive" to service new debt. But again it's in nominal dollar terms and so it's just a matter of issuing more dollars. The trick is to do this in a way that doesn't devalue the dollar thus triggering an inflationary cycle.
      - drivebyhooting 2y ago
        It’s an impossible trick. The chicks come home to roost. You can’t have an exponential forever.
threeseed 2y ago
> Americans have been hurt for 50 years No they haven't. They've benefitted from it. Because now most Americans don't slave away in unsafe factories 7 days/week for dollars an hour.
- refurb 2y ago
  How about steel mill jobs paying $35/hr? Saying Americans haven’t been hurt they’ve benefited applies to white collar workers only - no change to jobs and cheaper goods.
  - palmotea 2y ago
    >>> Americans have been hurt for 50 years >> No they haven't. They've benefitted from it. > Saying Americans haven’t been hurt they’ve benefited applies to white collar workers only - no change to jobs and cheaper goods. And that's a big reason why Trump won: white collar workers, like the GP, lecturing blue collar workers, while being ignorant of their actual situation.
    - ringeryless 2y ago
      And what Trump has been doing does not actually serve blue collar workers. Republican policies don't serve blue collar workers in general: anti union policies, for one. Republican policies serve billionaires and make no attempts to hide this, but they win blue collar votes from foolish people who believe culture war narratives matter. The culture war was invented to distract from class war waged by billionaires against the working class, hello.
      - palmotea 2y ago
        You've just repeated the Democratic party line, designed to cover their ass for their inaction and inattention. Democrats will lecture the blue collar working class to not believe their lying eyes and trust the Democrats, then lecture them on how they have to because Republicans are so much worse. It's a dumb strategy, and it isn't working anymore.
palmotea 2y ago
> Americans have been hurt for 50 years … yes manufacturing going overseas was a huge change and many administrations didn’t do enough to help affected workers. Buuuuuut - placing tariffs on our allies that will likely lead to a recession makes no sense. Yeah, some tariffs aren't a bad idea. But this plan? Just stupid, without any thought or strategy behind it. The tariffs should be used more strategically to reorganize supply chains, not these blanket tariffs of low cost and high cost places. And probably ratchet them up slowly, to give time for production to move, instead of a big bang of putting them up everywhere. So tariff China and Mexico, not Canada and Germany.
whereismyacc 2y ago
America got richer and outgrew the phase where tons of factory jobs made sense. It seems pretty clear to me that well-paying manufacturing job in developed countries were the product of a particular moment in time where poorer countries couldn't do it yet. Now they can. It was never going to last.
- CharlieDigital 2y ago
  I live in NJ and people often make a lot of noise every time there's a report of people moving out of NJ because of high taxes and high housing costs (yet NJ's overall population has increased). To me, it makes sense: NJ is a place where you live to make a high salary (proximity to NYC and Philadelphia) and raise a family (very good public school systems as a result of those high taxes). When you no longer have a need for those circumstances, you move. Likewise, the US is not a great place for certain types of manufacturing because the labor and raw material supply chain simply isn't there. Why not focus on the things that we are good at instead?
- 93po 2y ago
  It was never going to last if the US allowed for very low cost imports from those countries. This is literally one of the largest points of tariffs - protecting domestic manufacturing. We could have had high tariffs the whole time and offshoring would have been much less pronounced. I'm not saying that would have been a net positive, but to say it would never last is only true under certain circumstances.
  - whereismyacc 2y ago
    You were still going to lose export markets as international competition grew, and you were still going to shift to higher value-added service jobs as the economy developed.
BLKNSLVR 2y ago
> Americans have been hurt for 50 years Can you please explain a bit more about this 'hurt'? My understanding is that a significant majority of sources of US 'hurt' are internal and there has been ample opportunity to vote at least some of it away, but the votes keep going in the direction of making it worse. The worst thing about it is that the situation has essentially been perpetrated on the citizens of the US by those with power and influence for the simple human weakness of greed. Unfortunately they've got the power and resources to effectively do large scale "convincing".
SideQuark 2y ago
> yes manufacturing going overseas was a huge change and many administrations didn’t do enough to help affected workers Manufacturing didn’t go overseas - it got automated. The US is still the world’s 2nd largest manufacturer, the share of GDP going to manufacturing has been flat since 1950, and so on. What happened is automation made manufacturing need vastly fewer workers. Nothing is “being jobs back” from a fairy tale reason.

bibanez 2y ago

Devaluing the dollar makes paying national debt more expensive

insane_dreamer 2y ago
No it makes it cheaper because the US is in a unique position of issuing debt in its own currency.
- drivebyhooting 2y ago
  You can both be right. Old debt is cheaper to pay but new debt more expensive. And the government runs a deficit so new debt is always accruing.
  - insane_dreamer 2y ago
    New debt is only more expensive if you have to exchange something of value to obtain the USD to pay down the debt. But since the Fed can expand the money supply at will, it's essentially creating new USD out of thin air which can be used. (This is how the US has been able to sustain such a large debt without any real consequences.) What will happen though is that interest rates on T bills will rise, so yes, in that sense, it does eventually become "more expensive" to service new debt. But again it's in nominal dollar terms and so it's just a matter of issuing more dollars. The trick is to do this in a way that doesn't devalue the dollar thus triggering an inflationary cycle.
    - drivebyhooting 2y ago
      It’s an impossible trick. The chicks come home to roost. You can’t have an exponential forever.

threeseed 2y ago

> Americans have been hurt for 50 years No they haven't. They've benefitted from it. Because now most Americans don't slave away in unsafe factories 7 days/week for dollars an hour.

refurb 2y ago
How about steel mill jobs paying $35/hr? Saying Americans haven’t been hurt they’ve benefited applies to white collar workers only - no change to jobs and cheaper goods.
- palmotea 2y ago
  >>> Americans have been hurt for 50 years >> No they haven't. They've benefitted from it. > Saying Americans haven’t been hurt they’ve benefited applies to white collar workers only - no change to jobs and cheaper goods. And that's a big reason why Trump won: white collar workers, like the GP, lecturing blue collar workers, while being ignorant of their actual situation.
  - ringeryless 2y ago
    And what Trump has been doing does not actually serve blue collar workers. Republican policies don't serve blue collar workers in general: anti union policies, for one. Republican policies serve billionaires and make no attempts to hide this, but they win blue collar votes from foolish people who believe culture war narratives matter. The culture war was invented to distract from class war waged by billionaires against the working class, hello.
    - palmotea 2y ago
      You've just repeated the Democratic party line, designed to cover their ass for their inaction and inattention. Democrats will lecture the blue collar working class to not believe their lying eyes and trust the Democrats, then lecture them on how they have to because Republicans are so much worse. It's a dumb strategy, and it isn't working anymore.

palmotea 2y ago

> Americans have been hurt for 50 years … yes manufacturing going overseas was a huge change and many administrations didn’t do enough to help affected workers. Buuuuuut - placing tariffs on our allies that will likely lead to a recession makes no sense. Yeah, some tariffs aren't a bad idea. But this plan? Just stupid, without any thought or strategy behind it. The tariffs should be used more strategically to reorganize supply chains, not these blanket tariffs of low cost and high cost places. And probably ratchet them up slowly, to give time for production to move, instead of a big bang of putting them up everywhere. So tariff China and Mexico, not Canada and Germany.

whereismyacc 2y ago

America got richer and outgrew the phase where tons of factory jobs made sense. It seems pretty clear to me that well-paying manufacturing job in developed countries were the product of a particular moment in time where poorer countries couldn't do it yet. Now they can. It was never going to last.

CharlieDigital 2y ago
I live in NJ and people often make a lot of noise every time there's a report of people moving out of NJ because of high taxes and high housing costs (yet NJ's overall population has increased). To me, it makes sense: NJ is a place where you live to make a high salary (proximity to NYC and Philadelphia) and raise a family (very good public school systems as a result of those high taxes). When you no longer have a need for those circumstances, you move. Likewise, the US is not a great place for certain types of manufacturing because the labor and raw material supply chain simply isn't there. Why not focus on the things that we are good at instead?
93po 2y ago
It was never going to last if the US allowed for very low cost imports from those countries. This is literally one of the largest points of tariffs - protecting domestic manufacturing. We could have had high tariffs the whole time and offshoring would have been much less pronounced. I'm not saying that would have been a net positive, but to say it would never last is only true under certain circumstances.
- whereismyacc 2y ago
  You were still going to lose export markets as international competition grew, and you were still going to shift to higher value-added service jobs as the economy developed.

BLKNSLVR 2y ago

> Americans have been hurt for 50 years Can you please explain a bit more about this 'hurt'? My understanding is that a significant majority of sources of US 'hurt' are internal and there has been ample opportunity to vote at least some of it away, but the votes keep going in the direction of making it worse. The worst thing about it is that the situation has essentially been perpetrated on the citizens of the US by those with power and influence for the simple human weakness of greed. Unfortunately they've got the power and resources to effectively do large scale "convincing".

SideQuark 2y ago

> yes manufacturing going overseas was a huge change and many administrations didn’t do enough to help affected workers Manufacturing didn’t go overseas - it got automated. The US is still the world’s 2nd largest manufacturer, the share of GDP going to manufacturing has been flat since 1950, and so on. What happened is automation made manufacturing need vastly fewer workers. Nothing is “being jobs back” from a fairy tale reason.