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That's pure speculation, but quite possible. Corruption is nothing new in Washington. The real question is whether people support bringing auto manufacturing b

That's pure speculation, but quite possible. Corruption is nothing new in Washington. The real question is whether people support bringing auto manufacturing back to America. As always, people who like the policy/candidate/official will overlook the corruption, while people who dislike the policy/candidate/official complain about it. The people who demanded evidence about Biden will accept speculation about Trump, just as the people who speculated about Biden will demand evidence about Trump. With that in mind, I'm curious, what's everyone's stance on American manufacturing? Do you agree with Steve Jobs that "Those jobs aren't coming back"?

mmooss 1y ago
Murder is nothing new in my city - people have been doing it for centuries. Warfare, famine, epidemics are nothing new in most parts of the world.
- leereeves 1y ago
  > Murder is nothing new in my city Murder is an interesting example, because like corruption, people overlook it when "their side" does it. Governments employ soldiers to do it on demand. Gang members and mafiosos use it as a tool. Sometimes people even celebrate it, such as equating body count with success in war. The problem in politics is that everyone seems to choose a side, then apply that same kind of double standard. Rules for thee and not for me, as it were. Edit: but of course, "war is the continuation of politics by other means." So it makes sense that the behavior would be similar. > Warfare is entirely different. Not so much. A lot of people are already talking about civil war. If political differences escalate to that point, how many will mourn the loss of lives from "the other side"?
  - mmooss 1y ago
    > Murder is an interesting example, because like corruption, people overlook it when "their side" does it. No they don't. If someone I know committed murder, like almost everyone - organized crime members are very few in the population - I would absolutely not overlook it. What an absurd argument. Warfare is entirely different.
    - protocolture 1y ago
      You literally say "No i would never support murder under any conditions" and then you identified the condition, warfare, under which you support it.
      - mmooss 1y ago
        You're hunting for internal contradiction rather than addressing the serious issues. > You literally say "No i would never support murder under any conditions" I do?
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - vlovich123 1y ago
        Right and > If someone I know committed murder, like almost everyone - organized crime members are very few in the population - I would absolutely not overlook it. What an absurd argument. Fails to define murder and focused on organized crime vs what if it was your best friend, wife, close relative etc. it’s easy to claim how you’ll react in an abstract scenario but revealed preferences often show something happening very different in reality than what people claim about theoretical situations publicly. Oh and as if it wouldn’t matter who the victim was. What if it was someone bullying your child viciously for months on end? What if they claim it was an accident and now you have to pick which story sounds more plausible? And does “not overlook it” mean they cut ties with that person, turn them in, visit vengeance upon them?
        mmooss 1y ago
        You're just throwing crap at the wall hoping something will stick. It has nothing to do with me. The idea that people support murder in those cases is pretty crazy. You are living in an Internet unreality.
        pawelmurias 1y ago
        In the us there is often a disagreement if something was self defense or murder.
  - EricDeb 1y ago
    As someone more on the left I would condemn and hope any politician of any party who engages in corruption is held accountable.
Aurornis 1y ago
> Corruption is nothing new in Washington. This is not business as usual, no matter how much this administration tries to pretend it is. Regardless, that wouldn’t make it okay. It’s weird to claim that it’s normal. > The real question is… No, that’s a separate question. Not the “real” question. The current tariff drama is widely regarded to be temporary because it’s so economically damaging that Trump’s successor (of any party) will remove it, if Congress doesn’t get there first. This isn’t bringing manufacturing back to America, it’s making America a toxic and unpredictable place to do business.
- leereeves 1y ago
  > This is not business as usual, no matter how much this administration tries to pretend it is. Rules that favor a politically connected company over others is absolutely business as usual. It's the foundation of the multi-billion dollar lobbying industry.
  - galangalalgol 1y ago
    Letting the politically connected company buy a presidential advertisement on the Whitehouse lawn is unusual, so is letting it exfiltrate nlrb data when facing cases from the nlrb. But most importantly it isn't usual to not bother hiding the corruption. That normalizes it which is even more damaging. This corruption makes the worst corruption in the history of the nation look like a traffic violation.
    - somenameforme 1y ago
      The problem is that people have become so divided that the smallest of offenses by 'the other side' is blown up into the most egregious act since the birth of man, and the worst of offenses 'by our side' is turned into the smallest of issues, a technicality, perhaps not even especially real. This is why you might think that isn't usual to not bother hiding the corruption, because I assure you most on "the other side" would rather disagree with you. Consider that a President gave banks who were failing, exclusively due to their own greed and reckless investing, hundreds of billions of dollars in an unprecedented scale bailout, and would then go on to go give 30 minute "chats" to these companies after leaving office for $400k a pop, making himself tens of millions of dollars out of it. I'm trying to avoid more contemporary issues precisely because of my first paragraph. But I will say that overt corruption and weaponization of various institutions was perceived, by many, as exceptionally widespread in the previous administration. That's largely why November turned out the way it did, and similarly why many were so surprised by it. People increasingly live in two different realities and the hyper-polarization of media is heavily contributing to this.
protocolture 1y ago
American labor is low quality and high cost. China is no longer a guarantee of cheap and terrible like it used to be. If america wants to make shit again they need to compete on cost terms and quality terms. Honestly the biggest issue I have seen with US companies trying to manufacture goods is that they tend to only target US customers. Especially at the low end. There must be some quirk with US postage where it is cheaper to buy foreign goods than it is to purchase outgoing postage. I keep trying to buy local self pub (as in proper self pub, not just Amazon POD) books from americans and the half that actually permit foreigners to buy their books have actively stopped permitting their promotions to be accessed by foreigners. I used to try to buy hobby stuff (militaria etc) from americans via eBay and 90+% of them would explicitly tell ROW to get bent in the listing. And etsy postage from yankistan? Forget about it. Kickstarter postage from the USA? Often as much as the product.
- HWR_14 1y ago
  > some quirk with US postage where it is cheaper to buy foreign goods than it is to purchase outgoing postage. International rates (or the system that runs it) were decided a long time ago. The international postal system was set up so that all developing countries (which still includes China) are subsidized by developed countries.
- epicureanideal 1y ago
  > American labor is low quality and high cost. That is the opposite of my experience with software engineers, and my observation of the work ethic of most Americans in a variety of professions makes me think the opposite is true in pretty much every industry. I think "American labor is low quality and high cost" is one of those things people think must be true about some other industry besides the ones they've seen, kind of like they think the news is inaccurate when it reports things they know to be false, but accurate when it reports on other subjects.
  - watwut 1y ago
    Working a lot of hours and high quality are two orthogonal categories. Frequently at odds. That being said, topic here is low paid manufacturing where people dont want to work. Not high paid seeked positions. You can't compare them.
etchalon 1y ago
The real question isn't whether people support bringing auto manufacturing back to America. It's already in America. Only 50% of sold cars are imported. So the question is whether these tariffs will increase the number of cars manufactured in this country, and whether that increase is an acceptable trade-off for making the cars sold more expensive.
bruce511 1y ago
American Manufacturing never left. Total goods manufactured in the US peaked in 2018 and 2019. It dropped during covid but has returned to those levels now. Of course manufacturing jobs left. Replaced by automation. A much smaller number of people are making things. Americans have moved on to Services jobs (many of which are poorly paid) and Knowledge Worker jobs (many of which are highly paid.) Even industries that are traditionally thought of as solid blue collar (Boeing, Ford etc) are producing more, but with way fewer people. Fundamentally of course, automation is cheaper, and more consistent than human labour. Naturally the US does not make everything. Nowhere does. Some industries resist automation. Construction and some agriculture crops spring to mind. The high cost of US labor makes these attractive to foreign labor. Mexico for example produces 80% of produce that is cultivated or picked by hand. Incidentally foreign labor doesn't have to be executed in foreign lands - the primary industries for undocumented (and hence cheap) labor in the US are agriculture, construction, child care and so on. Things that cannot be automated. (On the agriculture front, the major outputs are crops that can be automated, thing wheat, corn, chickens, pigs etc. The major imports are things that are more labor intensive to harvest, like vegetables and flowers. ) So no, factory jobs are not coming back. Because they were replaced with robots, not foreigners. You may see local production increase though as more robots come online.
- leereeves 1y ago
  > ...replaced by automation. A much smaller number of people are making things. Some manufacturing was replaced by automation, but most of it was not. The jobs still exist, just not in the US. Worldwide, a much larger number of people are making things. In China, manufacturing jobs account for 29% of total employment, according to UN data reported by Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/manufacturing-share-of-total-employment https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/manufacturing-share-of-to... I had to use that source because China is hiding data now and the original source at the UN no longer lists any data for China. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-economy-data-youth-unemployment-deflation-recession-beijing-xi-jinping-2023-8?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-economy-data-youth-une... Nonetheless, the UN still reports that many countries have more manufacturing jobs (relative to total employment) than the US. China, if 29% is correct, has the most, but almost all European nations also have more than the US. https://w3.unece.org/sdg/en/Indicator?id=166 https://w3.unece.org/sdg/en/Indicator?id=166

mmooss 1y ago

Murder is nothing new in my city - people have been doing it for centuries. Warfare, famine, epidemics are nothing new in most parts of the world.

leereeves 1y ago
> Murder is nothing new in my city Murder is an interesting example, because like corruption, people overlook it when "their side" does it. Governments employ soldiers to do it on demand. Gang members and mafiosos use it as a tool. Sometimes people even celebrate it, such as equating body count with success in war. The problem in politics is that everyone seems to choose a side, then apply that same kind of double standard. Rules for thee and not for me, as it were. Edit: but of course, "war is the continuation of politics by other means." So it makes sense that the behavior would be similar. > Warfare is entirely different. Not so much. A lot of people are already talking about civil war. If political differences escalate to that point, how many will mourn the loss of lives from "the other side"?
- mmooss 1y ago
  > Murder is an interesting example, because like corruption, people overlook it when "their side" does it. No they don't. If someone I know committed murder, like almost everyone - organized crime members are very few in the population - I would absolutely not overlook it. What an absurd argument. Warfare is entirely different.
  - protocolture 1y ago
    You literally say "No i would never support murder under any conditions" and then you identified the condition, warfare, under which you support it.
    - mmooss 1y ago
      You're hunting for internal contradiction rather than addressing the serious issues. > You literally say "No i would never support murder under any conditions" I do?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - vlovich123 1y ago
      Right and > If someone I know committed murder, like almost everyone - organized crime members are very few in the population - I would absolutely not overlook it. What an absurd argument. Fails to define murder and focused on organized crime vs what if it was your best friend, wife, close relative etc. it’s easy to claim how you’ll react in an abstract scenario but revealed preferences often show something happening very different in reality than what people claim about theoretical situations publicly. Oh and as if it wouldn’t matter who the victim was. What if it was someone bullying your child viciously for months on end? What if they claim it was an accident and now you have to pick which story sounds more plausible? And does “not overlook it” mean they cut ties with that person, turn them in, visit vengeance upon them?
      - mmooss 1y ago
        You're just throwing crap at the wall hoping something will stick. It has nothing to do with me. The idea that people support murder in those cases is pretty crazy. You are living in an Internet unreality.
        pawelmurias 1y ago
        In the us there is often a disagreement if something was self defense or murder.
- EricDeb 1y ago
  As someone more on the left I would condemn and hope any politician of any party who engages in corruption is held accountable.

Aurornis 1y ago

> Corruption is nothing new in Washington. This is not business as usual, no matter how much this administration tries to pretend it is. Regardless, that wouldn’t make it okay. It’s weird to claim that it’s normal. > The real question is… No, that’s a separate question. Not the “real” question. The current tariff drama is widely regarded to be temporary because it’s so economically damaging that Trump’s successor (of any party) will remove it, if Congress doesn’t get there first. This isn’t bringing manufacturing back to America, it’s making America a toxic and unpredictable place to do business.

leereeves 1y ago
> This is not business as usual, no matter how much this administration tries to pretend it is. Rules that favor a politically connected company over others is absolutely business as usual. It's the foundation of the multi-billion dollar lobbying industry.
- galangalalgol 1y ago
  Letting the politically connected company buy a presidential advertisement on the Whitehouse lawn is unusual, so is letting it exfiltrate nlrb data when facing cases from the nlrb. But most importantly it isn't usual to not bother hiding the corruption. That normalizes it which is even more damaging. This corruption makes the worst corruption in the history of the nation look like a traffic violation.
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    The problem is that people have become so divided that the smallest of offenses by 'the other side' is blown up into the most egregious act since the birth of man, and the worst of offenses 'by our side' is turned into the smallest of issues, a technicality, perhaps not even especially real. This is why you might think that isn't usual to not bother hiding the corruption, because I assure you most on "the other side" would rather disagree with you. Consider that a President gave banks who were failing, exclusively due to their own greed and reckless investing, hundreds of billions of dollars in an unprecedented scale bailout, and would then go on to go give 30 minute "chats" to these companies after leaving office for $400k a pop, making himself tens of millions of dollars out of it. I'm trying to avoid more contemporary issues precisely because of my first paragraph. But I will say that overt corruption and weaponization of various institutions was perceived, by many, as exceptionally widespread in the previous administration. That's largely why November turned out the way it did, and similarly why many were so surprised by it. People increasingly live in two different realities and the hyper-polarization of media is heavily contributing to this.

protocolture 1y ago

American labor is low quality and high cost. China is no longer a guarantee of cheap and terrible like it used to be. If america wants to make shit again they need to compete on cost terms and quality terms. Honestly the biggest issue I have seen with US companies trying to manufacture goods is that they tend to only target US customers. Especially at the low end. There must be some quirk with US postage where it is cheaper to buy foreign goods than it is to purchase outgoing postage. I keep trying to buy local self pub (as in proper self pub, not just Amazon POD) books from americans and the half that actually permit foreigners to buy their books have actively stopped permitting their promotions to be accessed by foreigners. I used to try to buy hobby stuff (militaria etc) from americans via eBay and 90+% of them would explicitly tell ROW to get bent in the listing. And etsy postage from yankistan? Forget about it. Kickstarter postage from the USA? Often as much as the product.

HWR_14 1y ago
> some quirk with US postage where it is cheaper to buy foreign goods than it is to purchase outgoing postage. International rates (or the system that runs it) were decided a long time ago. The international postal system was set up so that all developing countries (which still includes China) are subsidized by developed countries.
epicureanideal 1y ago
> American labor is low quality and high cost. That is the opposite of my experience with software engineers, and my observation of the work ethic of most Americans in a variety of professions makes me think the opposite is true in pretty much every industry. I think "American labor is low quality and high cost" is one of those things people think must be true about some other industry besides the ones they've seen, kind of like they think the news is inaccurate when it reports things they know to be false, but accurate when it reports on other subjects.
- watwut 1y ago
  Working a lot of hours and high quality are two orthogonal categories. Frequently at odds. That being said, topic here is low paid manufacturing where people dont want to work. Not high paid seeked positions. You can't compare them.

etchalon 1y ago

The real question isn't whether people support bringing auto manufacturing back to America. It's already in America. Only 50% of sold cars are imported. So the question is whether these tariffs will increase the number of cars manufactured in this country, and whether that increase is an acceptable trade-off for making the cars sold more expensive.

bruce511 1y ago

American Manufacturing never left. Total goods manufactured in the US peaked in 2018 and 2019. It dropped during covid but has returned to those levels now. Of course manufacturing jobs left. Replaced by automation. A much smaller number of people are making things. Americans have moved on to Services jobs (many of which are poorly paid) and Knowledge Worker jobs (many of which are highly paid.) Even industries that are traditionally thought of as solid blue collar (Boeing, Ford etc) are producing more, but with way fewer people. Fundamentally of course, automation is cheaper, and more consistent than human labour. Naturally the US does not make everything. Nowhere does. Some industries resist automation. Construction and some agriculture crops spring to mind. The high cost of US labor makes these attractive to foreign labor. Mexico for example produces 80% of produce that is cultivated or picked by hand. Incidentally foreign labor doesn't have to be executed in foreign lands - the primary industries for undocumented (and hence cheap) labor in the US are agriculture, construction, child care and so on. Things that cannot be automated. (On the agriculture front, the major outputs are crops that can be automated, thing wheat, corn, chickens, pigs etc. The major imports are things that are more labor intensive to harvest, like vegetables and flowers. ) So no, factory jobs are not coming back. Because they were replaced with robots, not foreigners. You may see local production increase though as more robots come online.

leereeves 1y ago
> ...replaced by automation. A much smaller number of people are making things. Some manufacturing was replaced by automation, but most of it was not. The jobs still exist, just not in the US. Worldwide, a much larger number of people are making things. In China, manufacturing jobs account for 29% of total employment, according to UN data reported by Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/manufacturing-share-of-total-employment https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/manufacturing-share-of-to... I had to use that source because China is hiding data now and the original source at the UN no longer lists any data for China. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-economy-data-youth-unemployment-deflation-recession-beijing-xi-jinping-2023-8?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-economy-data-youth-une... Nonetheless, the UN still reports that many countries have more manufacturing jobs (relative to total employment) than the US. China, if 29% is correct, has the most, but almost all European nations also have more than the US. https://w3.unece.org/sdg/en/Indicator?id=166 https://w3.unece.org/sdg/en/Indicator?id=166