36 ms·

Manufacturing in particular... it's very easy for folks to say we should bring those jobs back to the US but people are often shocked when confronted with the p

by afavour 10mo ago

Manufacturing in particular... it's very easy for folks to say we should bring those jobs back to the US but people are often shocked when confronted with the prices of items manufactured in the US. I don't say that to dismiss the thought but it would be a lot more difficult for folks to swallow than they think it would be.

2OEH8eoCRo0 10mo ago
That's why I don't like to blame corporations for outsourcing. The consumers outsource every time they select for cost.
- miltonlost 10mo ago
  That's why I do blame corporations for outsourcing. The companies outsource every time they select for more profit for their owners and not for sharing among the workers.
  - giardini 10mo ago
    And if corporate officers don't select for more profit then their stock goes down, shareholders become unhappy, officers could lose their jobs and the corporation could even fail b/c they have competitors and their competitors will likely select for more profit. Its called "capitalism".
- afavour 10mo ago
  I'm not aware of that many times where I've had a choice. I could get a nice, expensive dress shirt made in the US but for general clothing it's extremely difficult to buy domestic. Frankly, a lot of the corporations are still to blame because they're the ones actively concentrating wealth at the top. If I had more disposable income I'd buy more made in the US products but my budget simply doesn't allow it.
  - bluGill 10mo ago
    Clothing is one of the hardest things to automate production of. We have had the "women at a sewing machine" since about 1850. Bring that 1850 women to 2026 with the latest computerized sewing machine and she would be equally productive as she was back then in an hour, and even after working that machine for a decade would not be much faster than she was. We can do a few fancy stitches today that she would have had to do by hand with the machine - but mostly we do them less know even though the machines are faster.
    - ffsm8 10mo ago
      Nonsense, it's just cheaper to pay someone without any rights 50c/h then to automate it If that industry was still in the area, they'd be automating the shit outta it. It's just not worth it right now considering there are always literal wage slaves in some place they can ship in for their sweatshops Also, even locally produced premium clothing uses materials sourced from literal slave labour. There is no consumer decision anywhere, because the immorally sourced materials are just too cheap... And if you're willing to pay a premium for your morals, someone in the middle will just take it and fulfill the order with the cheap stuff.
      - inetknght 10mo ago
        > If that industry was still in the area, they'd be automating the shit outta it. ... and the jobs that were provided go poof again.
        ffsm8 10mo ago
        Not all of them, even automated industry is generally good at the macro level
      - bluGill 10mo ago
        They have been trying. Clothing is hard to automate. It needs to stretch and flex which is a problem for machines. We need many different sizes which makes things harder
- rootusrootus 10mo ago
  It would be a virtuous cycle, though, right? If we had the right incentives for keeping manufacturing here, then sure, prices would be somewhat higher [0], but so would income for the very people who would be buying. [0] But how much higher, really? On a mass production line, what is the actual contribution of wages to the cost to produce?
  - zdragnar 10mo ago
    That's not a virtuous cycle, that's inflation. Assuming the local versus offshore good is a perfect substitute, that means that the value has not changed. Paying more for the local good means your money is worth less, as it buys less value. Your question on the production line doesn't account for all of the precursors also being local, plus the local energy rates, local taxes, local rents, and so on. Everything tends to be more expensive, otherwise the cost of managing offshore production wouldn't be worth the effort. Total isolation only works when there's still room to grow by way of some underutilized resource- cheap labor, land, or something extractable from the environment like wood or minerals.
    - rootusrootus 10mo ago
      > That's not a virtuous cycle, that's inflation. From purely a price perspective, sure. But there are other advantages to maintaining production capacity within our own country. Plus, doesn't offshoring effectively push the whole world towards a common cost-of-living/income ratio? Great if you're labor in a struggling country, bad if you are labor in the richest country in the world.
- smallmancontrov 10mo ago
  Pretending to not understand how game theory works is a choice -- more of a choice than customers have. Companies are also constrained to do labor arbitrage once the rules allow it, but they were the ones who lobbied the rules into place and they were the ones to profit from the rules, so they have far more culpability here.
mothballed 10mo ago
The jobs also generally suck. I've worked a wide array of blue collar jobs and manufacturing I always found some of the worst, even worse than stuff like general labor building houses or working on fishing trawlers in the Bering sea because at least that stuff wasn't nearly as rote. You stand at a machine doing the same fucking thing over and over. Do one thing wrong, your finger gets chopped up -- you think that sounds easy but wait until you're up all night taking care of a screaming infant and then have to come in so your family doesn't starve, then you make a simple mistake and now part of your body is gone. Often a overnight shift. I would find myself waking up at 2,3 am moving my arms but completely unconscious. Sometimes I would catch myself before I stick my hand into something that would break it apart. One place I was working, about half the people were missing fingers. I don't know why on earth you would want to bring back people getting burned alive in steel mills or their fingers chopped up when a stamping machine has all its safeties break because maintenance didn't maintain them right. Why we would trade away our comparative advantage in things like designing widgets and instead do the awful work making them is beyond me unless you are so desperate it's your only option.
- potato3732842 10mo ago
  Because in a lot of people's minds having ~1/1000 of your coworkers killed for every decade you work at the factory still sucks less than taking orders from some algorithm crafted in a downtown office by someone who wants to exploit you at best and hates you and your way of life at worst.
  - mothballed 10mo ago
    In the factory you get both. With essentially zero chance to change the algorithm. When my father worked in the factory he found a way to manufacture the product faster and cheaper and just as safely, and rearranged the factory to do so. He was punished by management for altering the algorithm and also ostracized by fellow workers because they perceived it as reducing the demand for jobs.
    - potato3732842 10mo ago
themaninthedark 10mo ago
Theoretically wages should rise due to the increased demand in labor. In practice, not sure. But it's not like the prices dropped drastically when mfg. was outsourced, the companies pocketed a most of the savings as profit.
- spankalee 10mo ago
  Prices absolutely _did_ drop dramatically for many, many things that are manufactured overseas. Goods from from clothes to electronics are vastly cheaper.
  - Teever 10mo ago
    How much is that due to genuine innovation in manufacturing and automation vs cheaper labour and a lack of environmental and human rights regulations?
    - almosthere 10mo ago
      For clothing, for the most part is an Indian woman that is moving the cloth on a sewing machine still. We have not LLM'd making clothes yet. Nike and a few other companies are working on 3d printing shoes, but it's not comparable to hand made yet. For the most part, the price of a shirt made in India vs USA is the cost of labor. The Indian woman will work for $3 per hour which is a decent wage for that area (don't fact check me, it's just a guess here). She can probably make 5 shirts an hour. A woman in the United States will make $16 per hour and still make just 5 shirts (or less - more rules in the US about breaks, and probably streaming Netflix too) Now the company that sells the shirt at Walmart for $10 will have a profit margin of probably $5 per shirt from the Indian labor, and $1 from the US labor. Technically after the industry is built out more we may be able to squeeze more shirts per hour if we start doing technical innovations (for example we make a machine that pre-sews 5 of the seams because of innovation. This is something that won't happen if the center of gravity is in India, but may happen in the US. (Actually today that may happen in India as tech is taking on its own thing there now).

by afavour 10mo ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 10mo ago

That's why I don't like to blame corporations for outsourcing. The consumers outsource every time they select for cost.

miltonlost 10mo ago
That's why I do blame corporations for outsourcing. The companies outsource every time they select for more profit for their owners and not for sharing among the workers.
- giardini 10mo ago
  And if corporate officers don't select for more profit then their stock goes down, shareholders become unhappy, officers could lose their jobs and the corporation could even fail b/c they have competitors and their competitors will likely select for more profit. Its called "capitalism".
afavour 10mo ago
I'm not aware of that many times where I've had a choice. I could get a nice, expensive dress shirt made in the US but for general clothing it's extremely difficult to buy domestic. Frankly, a lot of the corporations are still to blame because they're the ones actively concentrating wealth at the top. If I had more disposable income I'd buy more made in the US products but my budget simply doesn't allow it.
- bluGill 10mo ago
  Clothing is one of the hardest things to automate production of. We have had the "women at a sewing machine" since about 1850. Bring that 1850 women to 2026 with the latest computerized sewing machine and she would be equally productive as she was back then in an hour, and even after working that machine for a decade would not be much faster than she was. We can do a few fancy stitches today that she would have had to do by hand with the machine - but mostly we do them less know even though the machines are faster.
  - ffsm8 10mo ago
    Nonsense, it's just cheaper to pay someone without any rights 50c/h then to automate it If that industry was still in the area, they'd be automating the shit outta it. It's just not worth it right now considering there are always literal wage slaves in some place they can ship in for their sweatshops Also, even locally produced premium clothing uses materials sourced from literal slave labour. There is no consumer decision anywhere, because the immorally sourced materials are just too cheap... And if you're willing to pay a premium for your morals, someone in the middle will just take it and fulfill the order with the cheap stuff.
    - inetknght 10mo ago
      > If that industry was still in the area, they'd be automating the shit outta it. ... and the jobs that were provided go poof again.
      - ffsm8 10mo ago
        Not all of them, even automated industry is generally good at the macro level
    - bluGill 10mo ago
      They have been trying. Clothing is hard to automate. It needs to stretch and flex which is a problem for machines. We need many different sizes which makes things harder
rootusrootus 10mo ago
It would be a virtuous cycle, though, right? If we had the right incentives for keeping manufacturing here, then sure, prices would be somewhat higher [0], but so would income for the very people who would be buying. [0] But how much higher, really? On a mass production line, what is the actual contribution of wages to the cost to produce?
- zdragnar 10mo ago
  That's not a virtuous cycle, that's inflation. Assuming the local versus offshore good is a perfect substitute, that means that the value has not changed. Paying more for the local good means your money is worth less, as it buys less value. Your question on the production line doesn't account for all of the precursors also being local, plus the local energy rates, local taxes, local rents, and so on. Everything tends to be more expensive, otherwise the cost of managing offshore production wouldn't be worth the effort. Total isolation only works when there's still room to grow by way of some underutilized resource- cheap labor, land, or something extractable from the environment like wood or minerals.
  - rootusrootus 10mo ago
    > That's not a virtuous cycle, that's inflation. From purely a price perspective, sure. But there are other advantages to maintaining production capacity within our own country. Plus, doesn't offshoring effectively push the whole world towards a common cost-of-living/income ratio? Great if you're labor in a struggling country, bad if you are labor in the richest country in the world.
smallmancontrov 10mo ago
Pretending to not understand how game theory works is a choice -- more of a choice than customers have. Companies are also constrained to do labor arbitrage once the rules allow it, but they were the ones who lobbied the rules into place and they were the ones to profit from the rules, so they have far more culpability here.

mothballed 10mo ago

The jobs also generally suck. I've worked a wide array of blue collar jobs and manufacturing I always found some of the worst, even worse than stuff like general labor building houses or working on fishing trawlers in the Bering sea because at least that stuff wasn't nearly as rote. You stand at a machine doing the same fucking thing over and over. Do one thing wrong, your finger gets chopped up -- you think that sounds easy but wait until you're up all night taking care of a screaming infant and then have to come in so your family doesn't starve, then you make a simple mistake and now part of your body is gone. Often a overnight shift. I would find myself waking up at 2,3 am moving my arms but completely unconscious. Sometimes I would catch myself before I stick my hand into something that would break it apart. One place I was working, about half the people were missing fingers. I don't know why on earth you would want to bring back people getting burned alive in steel mills or their fingers chopped up when a stamping machine has all its safeties break because maintenance didn't maintain them right. Why we would trade away our comparative advantage in things like designing widgets and instead do the awful work making them is beyond me unless you are so desperate it's your only option.

potato3732842 10mo ago
Because in a lot of people's minds having ~1/1000 of your coworkers killed for every decade you work at the factory still sucks less than taking orders from some algorithm crafted in a downtown office by someone who wants to exploit you at best and hates you and your way of life at worst.
- mothballed 10mo ago
  In the factory you get both. With essentially zero chance to change the algorithm. When my father worked in the factory he found a way to manufacture the product faster and cheaper and just as safely, and rearranged the factory to do so. He was punished by management for altering the algorithm and also ostracized by fellow workers because they perceived it as reducing the demand for jobs.
  - potato3732842 10mo ago

themaninthedark 10mo ago

Theoretically wages should rise due to the increased demand in labor. In practice, not sure. But it's not like the prices dropped drastically when mfg. was outsourced, the companies pocketed a most of the savings as profit.

spankalee 10mo ago
Prices absolutely _did_ drop dramatically for many, many things that are manufactured overseas. Goods from from clothes to electronics are vastly cheaper.
- Teever 10mo ago
  How much is that due to genuine innovation in manufacturing and automation vs cheaper labour and a lack of environmental and human rights regulations?
  - almosthere 10mo ago
    For clothing, for the most part is an Indian woman that is moving the cloth on a sewing machine still. We have not LLM'd making clothes yet. Nike and a few other companies are working on 3d printing shoes, but it's not comparable to hand made yet. For the most part, the price of a shirt made in India vs USA is the cost of labor. The Indian woman will work for $3 per hour which is a decent wage for that area (don't fact check me, it's just a guess here). She can probably make 5 shirts an hour. A woman in the United States will make $16 per hour and still make just 5 shirts (or less - more rules in the US about breaks, and probably streaming Netflix too) Now the company that sells the shirt at Walmart for $10 will have a profit margin of probably $5 per shirt from the Indian labor, and $1 from the US labor. Technically after the industry is built out more we may be able to squeeze more shirts per hour if we start doing technical innovations (for example we make a machine that pre-sews 5 of the seams because of innovation. This is something that won't happen if the center of gravity is in India, but may happen in the US. (Actually today that may happen in India as tech is taking on its own thing there now).