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So applying this to China and the USA - the USA has a median household income of ~$80k, and China, in terms of purchasing power parity, has a median household i

So applying this to China and the USA - the USA has a median household income of ~$80k, and China, in terms of purchasing power parity, has a median household income of $32k. China has a workforce of ~775M people vs 163M people in the USA. The USA has ~7M unemployed people. For the USA to stop importing goods from China, we would need to 1) stop consuming those goods altogether (even if they're intermediate goods that go into things we do manufacture), or 2) employ US workers to make those goods instead of whatever they're currently doing (either employed or unemployed). Employed Americans largely earn a lot more than employed chinese people, and there just aren't very many unemployed Americans. Based on the value of imports to the US from China vs Chinese GDP($440B vs $17.8T), we import about 2.5% of their output, or the equivalent of ~20M people's output if we naively scale. I don't think there is any way around the fact that significantly reducing imports from other countries means we significantly reduce our consumption in absolute terms (i.e. we have a poorer standard of living), just out of spite for other countries.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago
> the equivalent of ~20M people's output if we naively scale Or about 12% of the US labor force. Meanwhile the 12th percentile US income is ~$22,000, i.e. less than the $32k median in China, and half of the jobs there are above that median. Obviously these numbers are all useless napkin math and none of it really works like that, but the premise isn't inherently absurd. If China is subsidizing manufacturing in order to capture manufacturing jobs and those jobs pay more than what many in the lowest quartile of the US are currently making, there are people who could be made better off by having those jobs back, and they'd still only be paid about what we're currently paying to China. And this before considering the general arguments about advantages to proximity of manufacturing, e.g. being able to talk to the people in the factory in your timezone in your language assists in product development so the location of the factory has an easier time developing new products. Which allows not just the manufacturing jobs but the whole rest of the company to be there, instead of those jobs starting to get eroded going forward.
- SideQuark 1y ago
  The US manufactures more than ever, and the % of GDP in manufacturing has been flat for 70+ years now. The jobs didn’t leave, so they’re never coming back. They got automated. Just like we need vastly less farmers than in 1900 to farm more than ever, we need vastly manufacturing jobs to manufacture more than ever.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    Automation increases production efficiency. Jevon's paradox says this will generally increase consumption, and in fact it has, so US consumption has gone up but production is flat. The difference comes from increasing imports from manufacturing in China. If the US manufactured the additional stuff instead of importing it, it would have more manufacturing jobs than it does now.
    - aj7 1y ago
      At what wages? Come on, man. Do you know what the average wage is in China on an iPhone assembly line? The pressures on workers?
      - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
        This is why the US needs automation. You don't want jobs assembling iPhones by hand, you want jobs building and maintaining factory automation equipment. But this is the trend globally anyway because a) it's becoming increasingly possible and b) the wages in countries like China have been increasing, so there is less "cheap labor" available in the alternative. But if you have an automated factory that requires trained workers making middle class money instead of a sweatshop, then why would the US want it in China instead of at home?
      - SideQuark 1y ago
        Decent paying manufacturing jobs are never returning; they’re automated out now. It’s like wishing all of America would return to farming jobs, which once employed the majority of people. Then farming got automated such that now only a few percent of workers produce vastly more than those ancient hordes. That’s where manufacturing went, and the rest of the world is as surely automating out those jobs too.
supportengineer 1y ago
It should be easy to reduce our consumption, the average American is consuming an enormous amount of useless junk.

AnthonyMouse 1y ago

> the equivalent of ~20M people's output if we naively scale Or about 12% of the US labor force. Meanwhile the 12th percentile US income is ~$22,000, i.e. less than the $32k median in China, and half of the jobs there are above that median. Obviously these numbers are all useless napkin math and none of it really works like that, but the premise isn't inherently absurd. If China is subsidizing manufacturing in order to capture manufacturing jobs and those jobs pay more than what many in the lowest quartile of the US are currently making, there are people who could be made better off by having those jobs back, and they'd still only be paid about what we're currently paying to China. And this before considering the general arguments about advantages to proximity of manufacturing, e.g. being able to talk to the people in the factory in your timezone in your language assists in product development so the location of the factory has an easier time developing new products. Which allows not just the manufacturing jobs but the whole rest of the company to be there, instead of those jobs starting to get eroded going forward.

SideQuark 1y ago
The US manufactures more than ever, and the % of GDP in manufacturing has been flat for 70+ years now. The jobs didn’t leave, so they’re never coming back. They got automated. Just like we need vastly less farmers than in 1900 to farm more than ever, we need vastly manufacturing jobs to manufacture more than ever.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  Automation increases production efficiency. Jevon's paradox says this will generally increase consumption, and in fact it has, so US consumption has gone up but production is flat. The difference comes from increasing imports from manufacturing in China. If the US manufactured the additional stuff instead of importing it, it would have more manufacturing jobs than it does now.
  - aj7 1y ago
    At what wages? Come on, man. Do you know what the average wage is in China on an iPhone assembly line? The pressures on workers?
    - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
      This is why the US needs automation. You don't want jobs assembling iPhones by hand, you want jobs building and maintaining factory automation equipment. But this is the trend globally anyway because a) it's becoming increasingly possible and b) the wages in countries like China have been increasing, so there is less "cheap labor" available in the alternative. But if you have an automated factory that requires trained workers making middle class money instead of a sweatshop, then why would the US want it in China instead of at home?
    - SideQuark 1y ago
      Decent paying manufacturing jobs are never returning; they’re automated out now. It’s like wishing all of America would return to farming jobs, which once employed the majority of people. Then farming got automated such that now only a few percent of workers produce vastly more than those ancient hordes. That’s where manufacturing went, and the rest of the world is as surely automating out those jobs too.

supportengineer 1y ago

It should be easy to reduce our consumption, the average American is consuming an enormous amount of useless junk.