[HN Gopher] They tried Made in the USA - it was too expensive fo...
___________________________________________________________________
They tried Made in the USA - it was too expensive for their
customers
Author : petethomas
Score : 162 points
Date : 2025-07-02 10:51 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| franktankbank wrote:
| I don't think the American small business owners are interested
| in making bullshit. What you need to do is fully destroy the
| middle class until you've got an air gapped lower class bent to
| your will building human doggy beds.
| helpfulContrib wrote:
| Some destruction is necessary for all creation, but generally
| its a bad idea to destroy the middle class instead of shoring
| it up.
|
| >making bullshit
|
| Make things that empower people and give them the ability to be
| class-fluid. That's what the world really needs, after all.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Make things that empower people and give them the ability
| to be class-fluid. That's what the world really needs, after
| all.
|
| The problem is: by the way you were raised, you have become
| deeply brainwashed into the social norms of your class for
| decades. Becoming class-fluid means getting free of this
| whole brainwashing, and then get a brainwashing for your
| destination social class. This also implies that you have to
| give up all your friends (if you keep them, they will back-
| brainwash you into your old habits; additionally, by the
| reprogramming these old friends will be unable to get on with
| you anymore because you have become a "different person" for
| them).
|
| Thus, I believe only very few people want that.
| RonSkufca wrote:
| Wow! You just articulated a feeling I have had but could
| not put my finger on it until I read that. I grew up in a
| blue-collar Midwest US city that was decimated by the loss
| of domestic manufacturing. I went to college and got a CS
| degree and went on to enjoy 2+ decades of the tech boom and
| was paid well for it. Thus, allowing me and my family move
| into a different class i.e. white collar, educated,
| entrepreneurial, class-fluid. But now at middle age I don't
| recognize any of my friends from the "old" neighborhood as
| I have changed so much, we don't really know each other
| anymore. Our views on many things are so different we might
| as well be strangers. But due to being raised in that blue-
| collar environment my thoughts and ideas sometimes don't
| mesh with the new class of people I find myself socializing
| with now. Which leaves me in some kind of limbo. I don't
| fit in with the people from my past, but I don't fit in
| with the people of my present.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Or people making doggy beds and going home to a 3000sq.ft home
| on a 1/2 acre with a stay at home mom and 3 kids.
|
| We just need to accept that everyone with a dog will need to
| purchase an $800 bed for their dog. Or since that is obviously
| untenable, charge billionaires $8 million to buy a bed for
| their dog.
|
| At this point you might be unsure if this is sarcasm or not.
| Which is pretty telling about the state of things.
| v5v3 wrote:
| Trying to make all your products domestically may be the wrong
| approach for many. Instead make specific lines domestically.
|
| There are lots of companies who standard ranges are made in
| China, but they also have a Made in America/other for their
| premium range.
|
| That way customers who are less price sensitive can choose to pay
| more. And those who can't still buy regardless.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Subsidize capability upkeep - as in if you need it, you still
| have trained machinists, specialists and retoolable machinery
| in storage, to copy and buildup a capability at scale.
| XorNot wrote:
| The question is why do this though? This is basically a
| defense economics argument. If there's no adversarial
| conflict, then who cares where something is made?
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > If there's no adversarial conflict, then who cares where
| something is made?
|
| I think you just answered your question by yourself without
| realizing: the signs are that an adversarial conflict might
| come up - so be prepared for it.
| XorNot wrote:
| That's presuming that such a conflict would be fought as
| the sort of industrial war that WW1 and WW2 were. But
| there's little evidence that's the case: the lead times
| on modern weapons systems are enormous, and the
| _attrition rate_ of hardware is enormous too (i.e.
| consider that the Javelin can put a tank out of action
| permanently).
|
| It is an unproven criteria that it is reasonable or
| possible to expect to produce the munitions and equipment
| for a conflict _during the conflict_ if it 's the sort of
| near-peer thing people usually cite for this - i.e.
| rather you go to war with what you have, and you're
| unlikely to rebuild that advantage in time if you don't
| win then.
|
| Which is the point: localizing a bunch of industries on
| that basis may not make any sense, compared to simply
| stockpiling from the cheapest accreditable sources.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| A tsunami once wiped out the entire world's production
| capacity for spinning hard drives. Efficiency is always the
| enemy of robustness, and war is only one kind of disaster.
| And the way the world is going, adversarial conflict seems
| to be the new normal.
| franktankbank wrote:
| I can't believe you mentioned the tsunami. It came right
| after the offshoring happened for unnamed company my
| father worked for, I'll never forget it, it couldn't have
| been worse timing. All the investment _POOF_.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| If the latest review of the "end of history" shows one
| thing- there is always adversarial minds at work. The whole
| "free world" mindset has collapsed in on itself the moment
| the us withdrew into isolationism. The world out there, is
| run by the old landempires gobbling up neighbors again. No
| progress has been made and to defend against barbaric
| adversaries, one must keep dependency on them low.
|
| There always is a bill - and business is helping the
| enemies of liberty to prepare. They are not interested in
| peaceful coexistence, quite contrary, the conflict is a
| carrying pillar to upkeep societal/tribal structural
| integrity. And war & peace is a defector game- only one
| needs to defect to put the others in the same position as
| the defector. So "business as usual" with non-free block
| aligned nations- will always be long-term collusion with
| the enemy.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| IIRC some companies have tried this. The problem is that the
| stuff made in China is as good, sometimes better, than the
| stuff that's made in America but costs 4x more. So, revealed
| preferences shocker: Nobody buys the so-called "Premium" line.
| You need a better reason to charge more money.
| v5v3 wrote:
| Many do succeed - All-Clad for example make their stuff in
| USA and China. I own the American made frying pan of theirs,
| as do many.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Just an anecdote but as someone who has gone out of their way
| to buy American as much as I possibly can for many years I've
| found that to be true either never or so rarely I can't
| remember. Quality of American products has not been an issue
| whatsoever, usually quite the opposite.
| wqaatwt wrote:
| It's more about the price than quality. When you can make
| products that are just as good (outside of some niche
| areas) in China/etc. for a proportion of the cost there is
| very little reason not to do that unless you have no
| competition.
|
| There are some premium brands that can (partially) pull it
| off like KitchenAid but that's an exception.
| user3939382 wrote:
| My perspective is that consumers have come to feel that
| price is far more important than quality whereas I feel
| exactly the opposite. I take pride in the things I make
| for a living and I prefer to be surrounded by products of
| a similar ethos. I buy products to solve a problem and I
| want the problem optimally solved. In the cases when the
| quality is a toss up I don't mind paying a premium to
| support our domestic economy.
| bluGill wrote:
| My perspective is price is not an indication of quality
| and often I cannot figure out what is quality - reviews
| are garbage. China makes some junk and some good stuff.
| pydry wrote:
| The "Made in America" range is probably mostly made in China
| too, but with just enough assembly to be able to declare that
| it isn't, sold with a higher profit to collect the consumer
| surplus from less price sensitive customers.
| franktankbank wrote:
| True, I saw a bunch of fiber optic components assembled in
| America that bypassed tariffs (2016-2017 era) where obviously
| the hard part had been done somewhere overseas. Wasn't even
| about the Made in America branding.
| jajko wrote:
| Same for ie Switzerland. You have these Victorinox and
| Wengen knives which are proper tourist souvenirs (on top of
| being fine little knives). Most of them is done in
| neighboring countries, and only final assembly is done in
| the country to pass "Made in Switzerland".
|
| Fine products but shady behavior to say the least.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Perhaps some people lie, but the "Made in America"
| designation is specifically regulated by the FTC
| (https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/complying-
| ma...), and unlike similar regulations in other countries it
| doesn't permit these kind of final assembly shenanigans. The
| entire thing has to be made end-to-end in the US with
| negligible foreign input. One specific example they list is a
| lamp with an imported base; even though the base is neither a
| functional component nor a large amount of the cost, the
| manufacturer may not claim that the lamp as a whole is
| American-made.
|
| I've actually seen arguments that this is so strong it loops
| back around to discouraging American manufacturing. Is there
| any "Made in America" loving consumer who wouldn't be happy
| to buy that lamp?
| zahlman wrote:
| > Is there any "Made in America" loving consumer who
| wouldn't be happy to buy that lamp?
|
| Perhaps they need to have everyone agree on labeling that
| fairly describes the product but is still flattering enough
| to motivate consumer decisions.
| aeonik wrote:
| SmarterEveryday is trying this right now too.
|
| He details all the challenges, and it's a pretty good watch.
|
| The grill brush they made is a bit on the expensive side, but I
| bought one.
|
| https://youtu.be/3ZTGwcHQfLY?si=TP1ez9tIEkpEu1Xf
| numbsafari wrote:
| How does it compare to a wet rag with tongs?
| pirates wrote:
| One of the main issues they raise is that the bristles on
| common brushes can be left behind and are difficult to pick
| out of food, so the wet rag probably exceeds expectations in
| that way.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Grill brush bristles in your food are the "they went on a
| vacation and brought back flesh eating bacteria" of the
| culinary world. The fear-mongering greatly exceeds the
| danger.
|
| Edit: There are approximately 130 ER visits per year[1] on
| account of grill brushes. Mowing your lawn (something else
| people do on about the same frequency in the summer) is far
| more likely get you, as are god knows how many other
| things.
|
| [1] https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/ama-press-
| releases/ama...
| Moto7451 wrote:
| Even the plastic ones leave bristles behind and aren't
| much fun to chew on.
| heeton wrote:
| Risk / reward tradeoff. There are other options that are
| as good, as cheap, as easy.
|
| Why pick one with a significant, unpredictable, often
| unknown flaw. Where if it happens you end up needing
| major surgery?
| Apreche wrote:
| It may be rare, but it happened to a friend of mine while
| we were eating at a restaurant.
| kelipso wrote:
| That's definitely enough numbers to change to a different
| bristle. Basically no effort to change a bristle. If you
| had to free climb a mountain to get a new bristle, then I
| would understand.
|
| And think of the number of people who found a metal
| bristle in their mouth and didn't go to the ER. It has to
| be many many multiples of the number of ER visits.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >That's definitely enough numbers to change to a
| different bristle.
|
| Ah, yes, magical plastic molecules. Exactly what I want
| between fire and my food.
|
| I'm just about the last person to give a crap about
| microplastics but cooking temperatures and long weird
| hydrocarbon molecules are where I draw the line.
|
| >And think of the number of people who found a metal
| bristle in their mouth and didn't go to the ER. It has to
| be many many multiples of the number of ER visits.
|
| This is true for just about everything.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Lawn mowing seems like one of the more dangerous things
| that a typical person does. It's the snow shoveling of
| the summer.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| It's several orders of magnitude more likely to land you
| in the ER. I chose it because like grilling, it's done
| "about weekly" in the summer and most people don't think
| much of it.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Given how simple it is to avoid that issue, I will. I can
| reduce my chance of ingesting a bristle from "minuscule"
| to "zero" with no downsides. So why not?
| beeforpork wrote:
| Since I read about bristles in food after cleaning the
| grill, I've always been checking for remnants after
| brushing. I never found any. And I wonder: how are those
| remnants supposed to get into your food? They are metal, so
| don't they just fall down into the grill, if any break off?
| Maybe glued into old fat and other gunk? But you want that
| gone, too, right? Also, don't you use a rag to clean off
| other dirt, and wouldn't that make sure that bristles are
| gone?
|
| Is this a myth or actually a problem? Some commenters do
| call it fear-mongering here, so what is it?
|
| I also think I never read anything about this except in US
| media, so does this not happen in other countries?
| Different brushes? Different cleaning habits?
| misterhill wrote:
| A bristle can get stuck to some gunk that isn't
| successfully removed and be in parallel to a bar roughly
| underneath it. There's no real reason to take risks of
| excessive hygiene given that hospital admissions occur
| and simple tools are going to give you a functionally
| equivalent meal.
| rpdillon wrote:
| Good discussion from 2016, I think it was Canadian
| surgeons that made the recommendation and there's at
| least a couple of comments where people have talked about
| real-world experiences with bristles.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12409425
| Balgair wrote:
| Or scrunched up tin foil at ~$2 / 100 ft.
|
| Look, I love Destin, watch all his stuff recommend it all the
| time.
|
| But I'm never going to buy this product, it's just too
| expensive for what it does compared to the alternatives.
|
| And I know he knows that. He's clearly at least 'not stupid'.
|
| So something isn't squaring with this.
| ben_w wrote:
| > So something isn't squaring with this.
|
| Lots of smart people get hooked onto extremely specific
| solutions that aren't even improvements.
|
| I saw it in software development with many things (VIPER
| and SwiftUI both reduce development velocity compared to
| MVC and old-school Interface Builder); I've seen it with
| Musk trying to do tunnels even when roads would be cheaper
| and safer; there's also (infamously) Juicero; and in the UK
| in the 80s there was the Sinclair C5.
|
| That said, is this really an example of that?
|
| Myself, I barely use my electric barbecue, so I don't know
| the best way to clean things (it's not yet become dirty
| enough to bother cleaning). But I have seen the brushes
| he's complaining about, and I have not previously
| considered using tinfoil, so it's not a completely crazy
| idea that people might want a better brush.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I use an oven cleaner, spray it on, leave it for half an
| hour or overnight, and stuff just comes off when you wave
| a cleaning cloth at it. Highly noxious though, probably
| responsible for insect collapse etc.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Some people care about how reasonable a price seems even if
| they can easily afford something, because it's important to
| them to feel like they're getting a good deal or at least
| not getting taken advantage of. They're happy to accept
| some level of inconvenience or discomfort if the savings
| are big enough, even if they don't particularly need the
| money
|
| Some people care more about getting exactly the right
| thing, even if the value proposition is weaker. They'll pay
| significantly more for apparently trivial differences,
| because they don't want to buy something they're not happy
| with; they're spending money anyway and why put up with
| something they don't want if they can afford something they
| do want?
|
| Neither of these people are strictly unreasonable.
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| It's an interesting video, on the other hand it's also 80$ a
| piece. And I'm pretty sure they do not recoup R&D with those
| prices on reasonable compensation rates...
| Lu2025 wrote:
| Corporate R&D is a tax write off per section 174.
| dgb23 wrote:
| What immediately sprung out to me is that Amazon isn't held
| accountable for selling goods that directly violate patent
| laws, which should protect small business and reward
| innovation.
|
| The current US administration claims to be concerned about
| domestic manufacturing and so on, but hasn't even mentioned
| this issue at all.
| AmVess wrote:
| I was going to manufacture a line of useful products here in
| the USA, but decided against it. I'd release the product,
| then a month later counterfeits would be on Amazon for 10% of
| the price.
|
| As a small operation, there are 0 affordable resources at my
| disposal to fight IP theft.
| bluGill wrote:
| Right, as a small operation patents are rarely worth your
| bother. You might eventually win in court with a patent,
| but by then your company is bankrupt. Just make the thing,
| and hope that you can develop a good name and reputation
| for quality that keeps you afloat, even if you only are 1%
| of the market, that can be a lot of money. Avoid selling on
| Amazon where you are more likely to be noticed by cloners,
| at least until you already have a business.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I thought Walmart was infamous for making a house brand of
| competitor products.
| burningChrome wrote:
| You're probably thinking about Target and their Up and Up
| label where they do that. They also place all of their
| knockoffs right next to the product they are imitating.
| nottorp wrote:
| The US textile industry was built on ignoring UK patents
| though :)
| warkdarrior wrote:
| So one past illegal activity allows future illegal
| activities?
| permo-w wrote:
| precedent is a real thing, de jure and de facto
| MangoToupe wrote:
| No, but it does make people crying about competition very
| difficult to sympathize with.
| loudmax wrote:
| The 19th century US cotton industry was built on far worse
| crimes than patent infringement.
| sudobash1 wrote:
| Indeed, but patent infringement too. Although the Cotton
| Gin was patented, Eli Whitney famously was unable to
| enjoy those protections. Imitations sprung up all around.
| kubectl_h wrote:
| Similarly: though William Jarvis wasn't the first American
| to import Merino sheep, he was the most successful because
| he was able to utilize an ongoing war in Spain to
| circumvent around the Merino export ban in the early 1800s
| and get a ton of them over here, too. He was even a
| diplomat to Spain and probably knew better, but did it
| anyway.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _What immediately sprung out to me is that Amazon isn 't
| held accountable for selling goods that directly violate
| patent laws, which should protect small business and reward
| innovation._
|
| (IANAL) This may fall under a DCMA-like concept where sites
| are not responsible for 'user content'. The 'user' in
| question is the vendor and their 'profile' of sellable items
| is the content. Similar to how eBay is not (?) responsible
| for the items put up for sale.
|
| (Not saying this is (morally) right, just describing the
| situation. I would really like to see some accountability as
| well.)
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Which is funny because he could drive a stake through Bezos'
| heart with some sweet FTC rule making.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| As far as I can tell, consumers have never benefited from
| patents, and they seem blatantly anti-competitive. Perhaps if
| only "small business" (whatever that actually denotes) were
| allowed to hold them it _might_ make sense, but we all know
| that 's not even remotely how patents are wielded today.
|
| Personally I strongly prefer knockoffs. Same quality, but
| cheaper.
| tootie wrote:
| I watched this and my cynical takeaway was he was trying to
| make an appeal to emotion. Why buy from China when we can
| support the good people of Alabama? Their elected senator just
| called me a rat. Why should I support Alabama over China? They
| both seem like foreign adversaries to me. At least China is
| making a sincere effort to reduce their carbon emissions.
| glasss wrote:
| I thought it was a good video, but similarly I had an issue
| with how he discussed the loss of the skilled trades and
| professions in the US. He did a good job highlighting that
| these jobs are rare, don't pay well and are important, but he
| made it seem like we all just accidentally stopped investing
| in local manufacturing, or that we just let those skills
| erode. Leaders at these manufacturing companies moved things
| over seas, laid off the skilled workers, busted up unions,
| and overall sold off this skill set in order to sell cheaper
| products and make more money for themselves.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Why buy from China when we can support the good people of
| Alabama? Their elected senator just called me a rat. Why
| should I support Alabama over China?_
|
| He _just happens_ to be in Alabama, but the principle applies
| to someone in Massachusetts or Hawaii as well.
| davidee wrote:
| Same. Got one as a gift for someone.
|
| There was a book making the rounds recently that also details
| some of the discussion around skills being the thing the west
| exported: https://appleinchina.com/
|
| The author readily admits in a podcast that while Apple plays a
| big part in the story it's a clickbait title because no one
| would buy a book titled something along the lines of "supply
| chains and China."
|
| Decent (if superficial) interview here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAj9zB4vaZc
| jmchuster wrote:
| The interview he does on the Odd Lots podcast is a lot more
| in-depth, and I found it a great listen:
|
| https://open.spotify.com/episode/5gJazFZZaZ0OGKf516XpeO
| jjice wrote:
| I was about to link the same thing - excellent video. It was
| very insightful and a bit scary to see just how hard it was to
| get seemingly simple manufacturing done in the US now.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _si=TP1ez9tIEkpEu1Xf_
|
| PSA: the _si_ parameter, along with _pp_ , are for tracking
| purposes. Consider trimming them when doing a copy-paste if
| possible.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >$100 overall cost to make the beds in China
|
| >faux fur lining for the cover, which would still need to be
| imported from China--adding another $100 per unit.
|
| How is the cost of a part the same as the whole product?
| zdragnar wrote:
| Volume of the material and volume of the demand for the
| material, probably.
|
| The foam for the beds is extremely compact when vacuum sealed,
| and is used in tons of other products.
|
| The standard fabric cover is also probably produced in massive
| quantities for other products, and also folds down to be quite
| compact.
|
| Faux fur is basically only used in blankets, pillow and toy
| linings, and depending on how dense the "fur" is, may add quite
| a bit more volume (a bigger problem if shipped to the US from a
| separate supplier than the foam).
|
| With that said, $100 does seem rather steep for the cover. I'm
| assuming they had to use a specialty version to make it more
| rugged than the cheaper stuff used for other products to be pet
| friendly.
| ForestCritter wrote:
| Faux fur retail costs 20-45 dollars a yard and requires a
| multithread overlock machine. Liner fabric costs 1-4 dollars
| a yard and requires less skill and a plain (single stitch)
| machine. Obviously they will be paying wholesale prices but
| the cost difference remains. The real difference in the costs
| between China and the US is the labour. Americans want cheap
| prices at the store but a living wage at their job. China is
| the capital of slave labour and Americans are supporting it
| with their wallets.
| adammarples wrote:
| Because of these new tariffs.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I'm guessing most people these days don't remember when
| everything moved to China to begin with. People blamed it on
| globalization but the trend existed long before that because
| Americans didn't produce a quality product. "Made in the USA"
| became synonymous with poor quality and high prices after the
| corporate mavens of the 1980's hollowed out manufacturing for
| quality along with the factory workers pension plans. It's not
| like America didn't do it to itself - globalization just allowed
| specialization to set in and efficiency to dominate. Chinese
| manufacturing struck a middle ground between very high quality in
| Germany and Japan and very low quality in America then scaled it
| up and out to ensure a total vertical integration. For segments
| of the supply chain that were inefficient the state assumed the
| losses to ensure an ever increasing capture of the end to end
| ability to produce in an entirely integrated regional
| manufacturing center. I think instead of getting our panties in a
| wad and wishing for the 1950's to return - which weren't that
| great to begin with despite our rose colored glasses - we need to
| lean into our strengths and specialized role. The question though
| of what are people to do who are "displaced" by globalization,
| automation, and now AI has never been answered and leaves us
| where we are today. I don't have the answer either. But it's
| become more destabilizing than I imagined as I saw things
| unfolding.
| franktankbank wrote:
| What are our strengths/specializations in your opinion?
|
| My main concern as a millennial, who rightly put didn't witness
| this transformation, is that by continuing down a path of fewer
| and fewer specializations we get pinched off completely.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Let's see.. higher ed, which Trump is trying to eliminate.
| franktankbank wrote:
| Come on Paul. I hope that's not the one and only. Without
| raw experience how useful is the higher ed?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It changed my life but my son decided to go the blue-
| collar route and I love him just the same.
|
| In terms of foreign trade, _higher-ed is one of our
| greatest exports._ Many other nations would like to knock
| us off the top, none could come close until Trump scored
| an own goal.
| franktankbank wrote:
| Yea I've got kids I've got to think about here, quite a
| few. I get very heated trying to understand the whole
| global aspect. All I see in the US is a vast resource
| getting stomped upon. I wish your boy the best and any
| others. Trump as I see him is a wrecking ball, I'm not
| sure where it ends up.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I'm proud that Vera Rubin discovered evidence for dark
| matter at my Uni. I'm proud that Douglas Osheroff
| discovered Superfluid Helium 3. I'm proud that Gerald
| Salton invented full text search and that Ivan Sutherland
| invented 3-d graphics rendering as used in video games.
|
| I'm even more proud that our ag school is helping farmers
| in New York and the rest of the world make money and feed
| a growing population that expects to eat better (however
| they define "better") in a challenging climate. That our
| vet school trains vets and farriers. That our ROTC trains
| officers for all of our armed services. I don't see a
| contradiction that I'm also proud that Catholic priest
| and activist Daniel Berrigan against the Vietnam war
| escaped the FBI in the same building where those officers
| train.
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| I know these tribal feelings but I also felt... a wider
| sense of gratitude when at Leiden I saw enshrined Onnes'
| equipment for discovering superconductivity, or that
| otherwise insignificant suburban streets were named after
| Snell, Leeuwenhoek, Huyghens, Rembrandt, .. and other
| people I ought to have learnt about
|
| There's something to be said for the way pioneers of the
| hand and mind are remembered as political operators or
| donors are..
|
| Sure bureaucrats set those up but the exceptionality
| pointed at there felt _inclusive_
|
| People can feel whatever they want about the achievements
| at their own institutions, .. it just feels purer when
| the institution is just a backdrop for these universal
| achievements .. plus I can go into any Leidse bakery and
| introduce myself as a scientist without bracing for
| sideeye (doesn't happen even on HN!)
|
| That's not pride, that's just a sense of belonging
|
| Why I chose this example. Somehow the Calvinist
| ressentiment "let no man be greater than I", which is
| equally present in NL as in the anglo heart/hinterlands..
| makes a singular exception for intellectual achievements
| (as opposed to some purely emotional ones, like some
| particularly potent puns)
|
| Don't know if villages in China will remember their
| current & future groundbreakers :)
|
| There's hope: DeepSeek's hometown put up laudatory red
| banners for him.. nonironically.. is that like confetti
| for Apollo 11?
|
| I think not. In the latter case, there's a serious case
| to be made that NASA deserved the confetti more.. that's
| how ressentiment "works"
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| Think you'll have to be more specific.
|
| In _liberal arts_ nobody comes close, but the "value" of
| that is largely explained by "networking" (network
| effects if we're to be charitable :)
|
| In theoretical research, gap is rapidly closing.
|
| In hard sciences research, I only see clear supremacy in
| capital intensive areas. Guess that's where the footguns
| were aimed at.
|
| The classroom teaching is a mixed bag
| PaulHoule wrote:
| People I know from South Asia complain bitterly about the
| quality of education they get but _they get it._
|
| Funny though I used to be proud of the Chinese language
| collection at my Uni which is one of the greatest outside
| (any) China and I still am but once I got really
| interested in the Chinese language it hit me that it's
| like 1% of what they have at Beijing University.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The institution that created all the people who told us
| that globalization would make us all richer and the world
| freer when it seems to have done the opposite on a timeline
| just barely longer than the careers of those people while
| that industry goes on to severely lighten the pockets of
| every subsequent generation?
|
| From where I'm sitting it looks like the bully finally made
| his way around to picking on someone who had it coming.
| danaris wrote:
| Just because all the people who touted globalization went
| to college doesn't mean that college was the reason for
| it. That's ridiculously surface-level thinking.
|
| Higher education _also_ gave us all the people who told
| us that was a _bad_ idea, with graphs, and sources, and
| evidence.
|
| Higher education _also_ gave us all the people who did
| the research that created the technologies we 're using
| today.
|
| Higher education _also_ gave us all the doctors, lawyers,
| engineers, rocket scientists, brain surgeons, and
| literally every other highly skilled worker we have.
|
| Higher education is absolutely vital to _any_ functioning
| modern society.
|
| From where _I 'm_ sitting it looks like you've got a chip
| on your shoulder against higher education, and are
| attempting to reduce the entire sector--which is
| incredibly diverse--to a single genuinely bad viewpoint
| that you don't even provide any evidence higher education
| produced (as opposed to simply "a few ideologically
| motivated people who _received_ higher education produced
| ").
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Every time a civil war erupts in the middle east there's
| some warmongers screeching "but what about the
| <ethnic/religious minority in the relevant country>, we
| ought to care about them" as a pretext for getting
| involved.
|
| You are engaging in the exact same. The primary reason
| academic labs churn out technological advancement for
| Microsoft, Exxon, etc, etc, is because the tax code makes
| it preferential to do that rather than run the same thing
| in-house.
|
| Also, I would like to note the slight of hand you just
| pulled between education and academia. There is no
| problem with doctors and lawyers getting their training.
| But that is absolutely distinct from professional
| academia. Those people are the customers. They are in and
| out.
|
| The institutions themselves are absolutely corrupt. It is
| very comparable to the catholic church scooping up all
| the wealth in europe in the 13-1500s and justifying it by
| embedding themselves in mundane parts of society and then
| screeching "but without us who will do the thing" as if
| that justified everything else they were up to. (Though
| to be fair, academia is not the only institution subject
| to such criticism these days).
| verdverm wrote:
| > the people who told us that globalization would make us
| all richer .......
|
| Your comment is exactly the kind of thinking these people
| want you to use. They want you to doubt every institution
| and have some anecdote about why it is the right way to
| think, when in reality it is the doing of a few elites,
| not institutions that are largely made up of people like
| you an mean. They want culture war between us instead of
| class warfare against them.
|
| Perhaps one day people will start paying attention to the
| wealth inequality gap and realize what is going on... but
| increasinly unlikely if you demonize and undermine
| academia
| danaris wrote:
| I'm sorry, *what*?
|
| Saying "the entire institution of higher education is not
| collectively responsible for this specific bad economic
| policy choice" is somehow equivalent to saying "we should
| go kill hundreds of thousands of people to protect the
| poor Kurds/Palestinians/Israelis/etc"??
|
| No; even leaving aside your apparent (and wild)
| misconception that "academia" is a unified, monolithic
| body akin to the medieval Catholic Church, unless you're
| willing to dial down your rhetoric to something less
| self-indulgently overdramatic and engage with actual
| reality in a vaguely reasonable manner, I don't think
| there's much point in continuing this discussion.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Music, movies, microcode and high speed pizza delivery.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Don't forget spaceflight. The US (well, SpaceX) dominates
| in both manned and unmanned cost to orbit and time to
| orbit.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You say movies while a sibling comment mentioned media.
| However, more and more movies are not shot in the USA.
| Productions have been moving out of Hollywood for a really
| long time, and some of it is in other states, but more and
| more are leaving the US altogether. This is why Trump shot
| off that late night tweet/truth about placing tariffs on
| movies made outside the US. The only thing the US still has
| on movies is the mystique of Hollywood. The ability to
| shoot a film is not unique to the US at all
| shawn_w wrote:
| It's a quote from Snow Crash.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| Fortunately, there are still plenty: financial services /
| capital markets, tech, biotech / pharma, media /
| entertainment, e-commerce, higher ed.
|
| Obviously, there are lots of players in those categories, but
| the U.S. is at or near top of the pack there. We just happen
| to be optimizing for the wrong thing right now.
|
| I heard a columnist say, incredulously, "China wants our
| financial services industry, and we want their manufacturing
| industry"
| franktankbank wrote:
| > China wants our financial services industry, and we want
| their manufacturing industry
|
| Which one is easier to nab?
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| Tbh I have no idea... financial services, I'm guessing
| from the way the question was asked?
| franktankbank wrote:
| No I'm asking also. I guess financial services is based
| primarily on trust/enforcement. Industry is based on
| toxic backbreaking labor and deep knowhow. Maybe I'm
| missing something about financial services, maybe its our
| ruthless military backing? I don't know man.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| Well I don't know much about manufacturing tbh, but for
| China to take a chunk of our financial services industry
| would be very difficult.
|
| The dollar is still the world's reserve currency by a
| long way, American capital markets are still the world's
| largest and safest, and investors do not like capricious
| governments that don't always adhere to established
| practices and rule of law (see: Ant Financial). Investors
| don't want to put money in a place where saying the wrong
| thing or associating with the wrong person could
| negatively impact your ability to transact in that
| country (also see: Russia c. 1990).
|
| So I would assume it would take decades for China to
| maneuver the world away from American financial services.
| matwood wrote:
| > Investors don't want to put money in a place where
| saying the wrong thing or associating with the wrong
| person could negatively impact your ability to transact
| in that country
|
| I don't think people understand how fortunate the US is
| to be reasonably uncorrupt/have a solid rule of law, have
| the world reserve currency, and for the most part be
| where any company in the world would prefer to be
| incorporated. That type of branding is impossible to put
| a value on.
|
| Unfortunately the US is currently speed running to remove
| these advantages. Luckily it takes time for large money
| outflows to occur, and hopefully US law can hold in the
| meantime.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| You've articulated one of my biggest, cash-under-the-
| mattress, doomsday fears: that if the US continues this
| path of removing those corruption / rule-of-law
| guardrails, there is a lot at stake for us to lose.
|
| Maybe I'm just paranoid, and I know it doesn't happen
| overnight, but my goodness... that keeps me up at night.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Precious metals under the mattress is probably a better
| idea than cash against these risks.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| Or maybe this is one of those where the crypto guys can
| finally say to me, "I told you so" :)
| fragmede wrote:
| GLD has been bringing in decent returns.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I'd guess that they're both hard, in different ways. But
| financial services... you need the whole rule-based legal
| climate for that. That's going to be _hard_ to import
| into China. (See Esophagus4 's reply for more.)
| skeezyboy wrote:
| >is that by continuing down a path of fewer and fewer
| specializations we get pinched off completely. you exist on
| americas economic downslope, sadly. an ever declining
| standard of living in a post manufacturing economy. china and
| everyone after can just copy your progress and basically be
| America in its boom days
| like_any_other wrote:
| > What are our strengths/specializations in your opinion?
|
| Not static. The parent post reminds us that "Made in USA"
| meant low quality. But so did "Made in China". These things
| change, but if the national-level policy is "let the market
| figure it out" (the polar opposite of China's approach), they
| don't change for the better.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| And before that, "Made in Japan" meant cheap junk, even
| within my lifetime.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, it seems to start out that way.
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| Reposted because
|
| 1)you might have been too young to have read it (1992)
|
| 2)outsourcing and trade balance was in the full quote
|
| > _When it gets down to it -- talking trade balances here --
| once we 've brain-drained all our technology into other
| countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars
| in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling
| them here -- once our edge in natural resources has been made
| irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can
| ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel --
| once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical
| inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of
| what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity
| -- y'know what? There's only four things we do better than
| anyone else:
|
| music
|
| movies
|
| microcode (software)
|
| high-speed pizza delivery_
|
| --Snow Crash,1992
| franktankbank wrote:
| Sorry, I'm not sure the relevance of a fiction from 30+
| years ago. I know I sound like a dick but seriously why
| should I care about it?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| You don't have to care about the _book_. The point of a
| quote is the _quote_.
|
| Why should you care about a quote from _any_ time period?
| Because it expresses something well.
|
| Why should you care about an older quote? Because it
| expresses something well enough to have endured.
| franktankbank wrote:
| It's a quote from a fiction of a bygone era though.
|
| You think China can't write microcode?
|
| You think only USA has big breasted women and men with
| chiseled abs? None of this makes any sense.
|
| High speed pizza had to be tongue in cheek as written.
| Maybe you missed the point and it was all written tongue
| in cheek because who truly cares about those things if
| you don't have all your other bases covered?
|
| Maybe I missed the point. Are we already pinched off?
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| You're no dick just not fully aware of the situation :)
|
| As of today China hasn't totally, or indeed really,
| caught up in the first 3. (Think about why). You might
| argue the Eurozone is up there in music but then you
| remember TikTok isn't quite YouTube.
|
| High speed pizza delivery is the most hilarious because
| it's the only material domain that they won't make
| progress at (in the foreseeable future). They have better
| EVs better batteries and maybe better food (in general).
| Just not pizza because pizza is pizza, and drones still
| lag behind the fastest nuclear bike when it comes to
| shipping frozen pizza from Shanghai to your doorstep (is
| there even a market for frozen pizza in Hong Kong?)
|
| (I'm glad he didn't mention games at all because it would
| have been the obvious one in 1992, but wrong 2025)
| franktankbank wrote:
| Ha thanks, I'll think about it. It's not immediately
| obvious though... My grandfather was one of the first
| "missionaries" to China in the 50s, wonder if that has
| anything to do with it.
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| Was he Pentecostal and a fiber-optic monopolist?
| franktankbank wrote:
| Lutheran actually.
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| Then there's no reason for you not to appreciate the book
| ;)
| jajko wrote:
| And that music part was by no small means helped with
| British exports over past 60 years
| lemoncookiechip wrote:
| >"Made in the USA" became synonymous with poor quality and high
| prices.
|
| This. It's like everyone collectively forgot. If that time
| period had the internet meme culture of today, "Made in the
| USA" would've become one the same way "Made in China" did.
|
| Capitalism wreaked havoc on quality goods, while prices
| skyrocketed. Then when given the chance, they all packed up
| shop of their own free will to create even cheaper goods while
| politicians did nothing to stop it, and in-fact incentivized
| it.
|
| Now we blame those countries for "taking away" manufacturing,
| when it was the greedy capitalistic US company CEOs,
| shareholders and US politicians who did it, while those
| countries simply capitalized on the opportunity and built
| themselves up.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The biggest push of "Made in the USA" that I remember was
| from Walmart back in the 80s. They were fighting the stigma
| of selling Chinese goods. So the cheap/poorly made products
| with that label was fitting. Eventually, even Wallyworld gave
| up on it and just leaned into the Chinese made products while
| they offered lower prices because they knew in the end
| customers only cared about price. The "Made in USA" became a
| meme back then with people joke the "Made in USA" labels were
| made in China.
|
| The point is, people say they don't like Chinese made goods
| with one side of their mouth while the other side is saying
| they don't really care at all as they continue shopping and
| purchasing these Chinese goods. Walmart and Amazon really
| laid the groundwork to the point that the SHEIN and Temus of
| the world happened. Consumers just don't care about any other
| than price
| OgsyedIE wrote:
| One of the biggest shocks to the competitiveness of American
| labor is cost disease. Because they share a currency with high
| value-add services clusters like the Bay Area their prices are
| dragged upwards by the productivity gains of unrelated sectors,
| in an analogous mechanism to gentrification.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| Not everybody has the capabilities that are necessary for the
| tech industry. So do your industrial production somewhere
| else in the USA where additionally the cost of living is low.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Cost disease isn't driven by a shared currency, but by a
| common labor market.
|
| When hyper-productive sectors, say, tech in the Bay Area,
| start paying top dollar, everyone else in the same talent
| pool eventually needs to follow suit.
|
| Even industries with stagnant labour productivity, like K-12
| education, have to hike their wages to attract and retain
| staff. They can't offset these higher costs with efficiency
| gains, and that's where the "disease" kicks in.
|
| If you think this is caused by a common currency, consider
| labour costs in developing countries which use the US dollar.
| Do those costs go up when labour productivity in the Bay Area
| goes up?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| You are both right.
|
| A valuable dollar kills exports and high paying sectors
| brain-drain lower paying ones.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Is this even _bad_ , though? High-margin, productive
| sectors paying high wages seems like a _good_ thing?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Well look at this US, we are in the end-game.
|
| The problem is the concentration of money and talent (the
| US trajectory is basically just software and finance now)
| leads to an inability to react to changing conditions and
| a deep dependence on foreign nations.
|
| If China did something wild and pulled the plug on all US
| exports, the great minds filled with years of software
| and finance would be pretty much useless for stabilizing
| the situation. You want a diversity of smart people in
| many industries.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| The changing conditions are self-imposed. If I shoot
| myself in the foot, I do not blame my limbs for lack of
| adaptation to changing conditions.
| amdsn wrote:
| >The changing conditions are self-imposed
|
| They are right now sure, but the scenario as quoted in
| the previous post could just as easily have risen from
| China's side as a response to some geopolitical drama and
| the US would have been just as unprepared for it as it
| was for the current self foot shooting. A strong
| manufacturing base is a national security asset and the
| US has mostly allowed it to rot out. Some niches have
| been propped up by defense spending like weapons design
| and manufacturing or military shipbuilding, but even
| those are downstream industries that need a general base
| to stand on that they no longer have and it shows.
| HK-NC wrote:
| How bad was the American stuff?? "Made in china" has always
| meant garbage in my country.
| bluGill wrote:
| All over the map. There were a lot of high quality brands
| that in the 1980s reduced quality trying to compete on price,
| and those earned a bad reputation over time. There are a lot
| of brands that remain the same high quality (or more likely
| better) that they had all along that are still going strong -
| however those brands do not try to compete on price and now
| are very expensive.
|
| Another thing foreign makers did was be more flexible to
| needs. Some great brands refused to reduce quality, but they
| were so focused on quality at low prices that they were not
| responsible to needs. They started making things in batches
| which reduced costs but if you want a different model you had
| to wait for that batch. If you have to order something a year
| in advance while Taiwan can get it to you in a couple months
| (including shipping via boat!) for some that mattered.
|
| Foreign manufactures often did innovate more as well.
| Sometimes features on the foreign product were enough better
| (for some definition of better) as to be important for your
| needs.
|
| Note that for every example above you can find a company in
| the US that has been doing exactly that "bad thing" and they
| have survived against foreign competition. Every product is
| different, with different needs. The real failure is always
| not recognizing correctly what is the correct path for you.
| Often there is more than one "correct path" mixed in with the
| bad, but you can only choose one. Sometimes a competitor
| choosing one path fills the niche of that path and if you
| choose the same both of you will fail.
| netfl0 wrote:
| I'm glad our country doesn't make plastic dog beds for adults.
| ikr678 wrote:
| Yeah this is a serious issue (loss of manufacturing capacity)
| but also,a lot of these products don't need to exist.
|
| Loss of cheap manufacturing resources may be a end of ZIRP-
| like event for consumer goods.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Landfill is not going to fill itself.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| There are countries besides USA and China. It was just terrible
| geopolitics decision for US to depend on 1 country for imports
| instead of keeping the power balance between countries of the
| world.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I have to assume it wasn't a concerted effort to depend mostly
| on China for imports. Companies are each making the best
| financial decision for themselves and China turned out to be
| the more competitive option most of the them.
| piker wrote:
| I've always understood China's currency manipulation to play
| an initial role in making it an attractive source of
| commodity products.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| Why can't a sovereign state control their fiscal policy?
| Who should decide what the value of the Renminbi should be
| if not the PBC?
| cma256 wrote:
| The same reason a sovereign state can't act unilaterally
| in any domain -- diplomacy. If your actions affect
| another (or even just inspire interest) then the other
| party may make decisions which affect your country.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Currency debasement is more monetary policy than fiscal
| policy I think. Either way I didn't read the GP comment
| as saying China _can 't_ do that, just that doing so is
| what gave them an edge long enough to gobble up a lot of
| our trade.
| hearsathought wrote:
| China was an attractive source for the same reason vietnam
| and india are today. Large, young, disciplined, literate
| and organized population with low wages and an accomodating
| political elite.
|
| All currencies are manipulated. It's a meaningless
| statement.
| piker wrote:
| Okay, those are good points, but I don't think the
| statement is meaningless. China, as I think most
| understand, deliberately pumped RMB into the market in a
| manner that made its resources available to foreign
| markets by trading a capital account deficit for a trade
| surplus. It's literally the first thing discussed in the
| RMB wikipedia page:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renminbi.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Right, that's the difference between a centralised economy
| and a free market. These thin-vieled calls for a centralised,
| planned economy (people of my generation had another word for
| it) are getting more common and in more places.
| harimau777 wrote:
| Advocating for a centralised economy isn't actually common
| on the left. Most people advocate for Nordic inspired
| democratic socialism or social democracy. A fair number
| advocate for various forms of anarchism (e.g. worker owned
| collectives).
|
| Advocates for a Soviet style centralised economy exist, but
| they aren't common.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Do you think all the people saying capitalism is the
| problem are advocating Nordic-style Social Democracy
| (with capitalism intact but regulated)? Is that why they
| keep quoting Marx?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The Marxist critique of capitalism (the specific real
| world system dominant in the deceloped West at the time
| Marx wrote) is quite popular among people whose end goal
| is not Leninist state capitalism.
|
| Marx himself, prescriptively, wasn't all to specific
| beyond the distant end-goal stateless system and the
| immediate next steps in contemporary states
| (particularly, in terms of a detailed agenda, Germany,
| but he made some commentary on some steps other places.)
| But even where he was, plenty of people that share his
| critique of capitalism either don't see his intermediate
| term prescriptions as realistic areas of concern for
| organizing current effort, or don't see them as
| mevessarily desirable at all.
| rmah wrote:
| Yet the left (democratic party) nominated a self-avowed
| socialist for the next NYC mayoral race. One who
| _literally_ talks about seizing the means of production
| and opening city-owned groceries that won 't have to pay
| rent. Let's see how it goes.
| Daishiman wrote:
| Like the existing state-owned liquor stores in many
| states?
| 15155 wrote:
| > Like the existing state-owned liquor stores in many
| states?
|
| State-owned liquor stores pay rent or own property.
|
| Grocery stores are a business with 5%-8% margins, how
| much more should they cede?
| _heimdall wrote:
| Are we to assume that because governments run liquor
| stores any other industry is fair game as well.
|
| The more simple question in my opinion is whether state
| run liquor stores are an overreach. The industry is
| already heavily regulated as it is, state stores sure
| seems like anticompetitive behavior.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| What we see is exactly what Uber and Lyft effectively did.
| China subsidized manufacturing at the cost of their citizens,
| but in doing so destroyed much of the competition, giving
| them a monopoly like position in industrial manufacturing
| cemented by a mastery of economies of scale, which can now be
| used to exert global power.
|
| Any country which did not abuse their citizens or subsidize
| their businesses became noncompetitive.
|
| And why _would_ you use old school taxis when uber /lyft were
| offering $5 rides in a 7x7mile area, and how could old taxi
| companies compete when they are forced to compete with people
| not bound by market forces?
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| "White House spokesperson Kush Desai said the Trump
| administration remains committed to reviving U.S.
| manufacturing"
|
| Irrelevant since the point is to grow US manufacturing, not
| manufacturing in "countries besides USA and China".
| donatj wrote:
| The problem has become less about cheap labor and more about
| general know how. China simply leads the world in manufacturing
| know how.
|
| https://youtu.be/L9f5SQQKr5o
| ForestCritter wrote:
| And slave labour. Nobody cares that their cheap products are
| the fruit of slave labour.
| a4isms wrote:
| Louis CK deserves credit for calling this out in a
| brilliant bit:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl-1jc1oDRk
|
| (Yes, this video is framed and has Italian subtitles, but
| all the others I found do weird things with panning and
| clipping to evade censorship filters, and I believe that
| his body language is an important part of the delivery.)
| bluGill wrote:
| While true, that know-how is misleading. There is a lot of
| know-how in the US - the US makes more than every before,
| which means the know-how is still here! It is just focused on
| the things we already make and do well on, so often you can't
| get at it.
| franktankbank wrote:
| > the US makes more than every before
|
| How true is this? Is this financial sleight-of-hand? We
| assemble the parts after the hard part was already done?
| bluGill wrote:
| There is a lot of automation. What used to be done by
| 2000 men (sexism intended) in 1950 is now done by 150
| people. Of course parts come from all over, and go to all
| over so it is really had to agree on a measure, but there
| is a lot done in the US.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| >There is a lot of know-how in the US
|
| As someone who works in US manufacturing, let me qualify
| that by saying "There is a lot of know-how in senior
| citizens in the US". I really cannot overstate how me, a
| guy in his late 30's, is consistently the youngest engineer
| by decades when doing site visits.
| farceSpherule wrote:
| This is because they are the largest thieves of intellectual
| property on the planet. They steal everything because they
| cannot do it themselves.
| convolvatron wrote:
| that _may_ have been true 20 years ago, but at this point
| they are driving
| farceSpherule wrote:
| I work in Incident Response. They are prolific.
| dgb23 wrote:
| Is it geopolitics that is at fault here or rather corporations?
|
| I think Coca Cola might be a counter example if we look at how
| they procure their sugar.
| werdnapk wrote:
| Isn't this how capitalism works? What the USA claims to be the
| best at?
| the__alchemist wrote:
| You have missed something: It's not feasible to compete with
| China on price and availability, compared to any other country.
| Challenge: Try designing something, and figuring out how to get
| the parts. Or, try to have a custom circuit board made. You
| will find the difficulty goes way up for countries that aren't
| China.
|
| If that isn't enough, imagine you are choosing Hard mode by
| sourcing non-China, and your competition chose Easy mode.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Custom PCBs can be gotten from Aisler, based in the
| Netherlands
| sokoloff wrote:
| I haven't quoted Aisler, but I did talk to three or four
| US-based PCB/PCBA houses for a hobby project I was working
| on that ended up selling around 100 units. The US houses
| were 20-50x JLC/PCBWay at prototype volume and 10-25x at
| low volume.
|
| Their proto assembly turn times were only a day better.
| Unless something has to be done in the US for some specific
| reason (export controls or contractual reasons), I don't
| see how to justify doing it on-shore.
| progbits wrote:
| I live in EU and like the idea, both as support for local
| economy and lower environment impact from shipping.
|
| I've tried aisler instead of jlc/pcbway twice and I regret
| both orders. For more money I got the boards later, of
| worse quality and with bad customer support experience when
| one of my orders was lost.
|
| Sorry but they simply are not anywhere close to the chinese
| options.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| You should probably let GreatScott know that so he stops
| getting sponsorships from them :P
| progbits wrote:
| Good for him to get the money. I skip all these with
| sponsorblock, can't trust them to give honest review.
| Nobody should either.
|
| On the other hand if I already know I want to use a
| product I search for it on youtube and if I find a video
| with coupon in the description from a channel I know (or
| least seems decent) I use it. Make the advertisers think
| it works and pay more, and I get a discount.
| all2 wrote:
| Or OshPark out of Oregon, USA. If you need kiting and
| assembly of the board there are plenty of board houses on
| the West Coast that will do it for you.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| OshPark is fine for bare PCB, but as you point out, they
| don't do assembly. What does it cost to get a prototype
| or small production run of a smallish, assembled PCB
| using OshPark + one of the West coast board houses?
|
| I want what you say to be true, but I'm suspicious,
| unless something has changed recently. My research
| indicates unless you're looking at 10k+ quantity, it will
| cost OOM more than Shenzhen. But, I'm not familiar with
| the specific services you mention.
| verdverm wrote:
| The thinking at the time was that China would turn into a
| democracy by liberalizing the economy.
| mathiaspoint wrote:
| Mexico has been cheaper for a while now. My understanding is
| that shipping from China was subsidized somehow and that's a
| big part of why it's still cheaper overall.
| k__ wrote:
| I think, the issue is about producing the same stuff people
| already buy overseas.
|
| Can you make a shirt for 10 cents in the USA? Probably, if you
| get innovative on automation and remove most human labour you
| might get there in a few years or a decade, but not tomorrow.
|
| If you can get creative with new solutions those products solve,
| you might get a foot into the door.
|
| What does the shirt solve for a customer? Could there be a
| (better) alternative that could be built in the USA?
|
| But yeah, you won't compete on price...
| soco wrote:
| Once you produce everything for 10c locally without human
| labor, those unemployed human laborers won't buy your 10c thing
| because they are unemployed. You need more to bring back the
| production: bring back the employment as well.
| bluGill wrote:
| There is plenty of employment in the US. What there isn't in
| the US is employees for someone wanting to pay less than
| $12/hour - and to get that low you need to find a small rural
| town in the middle of nowhere with nobody else paying, which
| in turn means you can only get at most 200 low wage employees
| in your factory, and you are risking someone else moving in
| offering more pay. Or you can go to China and pay much less
| (I don't know wages in China, but I'd guess under $5/hour),
| or some other poor country and you can pay $1/hour.
| kenmacd wrote:
| Are you arguing against the automation here? Because if so it
| seems we could bring back a lot of employment by simply
| getting rid of machines, but would we really be better off?
| Is it better for humans to spend their short lives working as
| telephone operator, knowing it an entirely pointless job?
|
| If you're not arguing against automation then I think we need
| to think about what happens when we expand your timeline a
| little. Are there really enough 'employment' jobs that can't
| be automated for billions of humans of different
| intelligence/physical abilities?
| superultra wrote:
| It's not just too expensive. We need to seriously ask ourselves
| do we want too, at all, even?
|
| My dad worked in a steel mill all his life so that me and my
| siblings didn't have to. We're he and the other guys at the plant
| proud of their work? Absolutely. Does nearly everyone wish their
| kids would do something else? Absolutely.
|
| Industrialism has ipso facto become the soup du jour for thr
| agrarian myth. The reality is that it's long, hard, relentless,
| menial labor. It's also terrible for just living in general. My
| dad basically turned the lights off on a steel plant. That was 20
| years ago and the land it was on will be unusable for even
| landfills for another 100 years. It was on a river and the river
| still smells like chemicals, and fish routinely die when passing
| through that area due to chemical runoff from the land.
|
| So, I'm sorry, why do we want that here (let alone anywhere)?
|
| I'm not saying that I don't complain about my work from home job
| or that there aren't negative effects but good luck weighing me
| getting carpal tunnel or taking anxiety meds to the stuff that
| industrial labor does to your body and our living environments.
| xienze wrote:
| > So, I'm sorry, why do we want that here (let alone anywhere)?
|
| To the second question, not everything in the modern world is
| going to be clean and green. If you want things like steel,
| plastic, computers, etc. there's gonna be some dirty
| manufacturing involved. No way around it.
|
| To the first, ideally every country wants some amount of self-
| sufficiency, or at the very least, some amount of redundancy.
| Remember how badly the world's pants got pulled down during
| Covid?
|
| And finally -- frankly, not everyone is capable of more than
| unskilled or semi-skilled labor. Supply-chain redundancy with a
| side-effect of employing people who might otherwise have very
| little in the way of employment prospects? That's a good thing!
| RickJWagner wrote:
| AI is going to reduce the number of white collar jobs
| available.
|
| Manufacturing may be a lot more important to future job
| seekers.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > The reality is that it's long, hard, relentless, menial
| labor.
|
| Which is perfectly fine to do for some time if the salary is
| great. Which it should be, considering the high productivity
| output from those kind of jobs.
|
| Steel mill workers of your dad's generation had a much higher
| living standard and much more money than service or office
| workers of today's young generation.
|
| Young people are supposed to work hard and build up their
| wealth so that they can change to a less taxing job when it's
| time to make a family. Not waste their time in academic
| institutions for 20 years and then work for a low salary.
| orsorna wrote:
| > had a much higher living standard and much more money than
| service or office workers
|
| I don't see how you could say this with a straight face. We
| know at this point that factory jobs inflict physical damage
| to the body, a priceless artifact that no wage could
| replenish. I find it difficult to address your last paragraph
| as it's just not based in reality. Anecdotally, many people I
| know who take an hourly wage at factories never shift
| elsewhere. There is no waiting, and often they will start
| their families younger than their salarymen equivalent, 30
| years ago or now. Perhaps they failed by your standards?
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Not unexpected that people would react strongly against any
| mention of physical labour on this forum - and immediately
| take a hostile attitude.
|
| I've done my fair share of these kind of jobs in my life
| and my body is great. You can do it for some years while
| you are young. Yes - if you do the same job your entire
| life you will destroy your body. Especially if you do not
| take care to listen to it and adapt how you work and how
| you exercise.
|
| Young people should work hard and be paid well, that's how
| a healthy economy functions. Not by having manufacturing
| based on foreign slave labour.
|
| Anecdotally, I know many people who started on the ground
| floor and then moved on to management or sales with
| experience. Or switched jobs and careers. People switch
| jobs all the time, staying at the same post for life is
| mostly a thing of the past.
| blendergeek wrote:
| One of my hopes is that we can use our environmental and safety
| regime to do the industrial stuff in a more humane manner.
| Outsourcing everything to "somewhere else" only moved the
| externalities to another country. But people still get hurt.
| superultra wrote:
| Totally agree but is more environmentally friendly and more
| humane part of the current political rhetoric?
|
| And absolutely outsourcing to somewhere else hurts somewhere
| else. But let's be realistic: the kind of drastic change that
| would require no one getting hurt is not in the American
| discourse.
| lazide wrote:
| Why was the steel mill producing a lot of chemical pollution?
|
| Steel makes a lot of mill scale and slag, but those are
| generally inert. It's a physically dirty process, but not a
| _chemically_ dirty one, unless I'm missing something?
|
| And certainly nothing I'm aware of there would make it
| unsuitable for even landfill.
| bluGill wrote:
| Steel is alloyed with a lot of things, some of them toxic
| (lead comes to mind). If any of that spills.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| A lot of steel is coated with grease or oil to avoid rusting.
| Just by nature of working with it you also need solvents to
| remove it. The degreasers of the past were magically powerful
| and environmentally catastrophic. Never mind all the
| oil/grease used.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I think some additives to the steel can be really poisonous?
| Chrome?
|
| I guess you get a lot of heavy metal slag?
| superultra wrote:
| I looked up the EPA report for the brownsite. It listed
| arsenic, barium, multiple chromium compounds,
| 2,4-dimethylphenol ethylbenzen lead, 4-methyl-2-pentanone,
| methlyene chloride, naphthalene, toluene, and xylene at
| hazardous levels. It also mentions steel, zinc, and nickel
| dust and fumes.
|
| I do know that I drove by the old site a few years ago, and
| you can see the outlines of not just the buildings but the
| machinery because the dirt is a different color, and there's
| either no or very little grass or just stubborn weeds growing
| in those areas.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| >We're he and the other guys at the plant proud of their work?
| Absolutely. Does nearly everyone wish their kids would do
| something else? Absolutely.
|
| Most office work is not terribly satisfying. It turns out that
| work is work. And while working in AC with a coffee maker is
| "better" than sweating it out over a crucible, the drudgery is
| the same.
|
| I spent some time with a large group of teenagers at a summer
| camp where the kids do a lot of the work, including activity
| scheduling and such. I worked in the cafeteria kitchen, which
| was hot, hard work. But the kids that were doing the
| administration kept coming over to offer to help: mop, sweep,
| serve food, whatever. I tried to take a mop bucket away from
| one of them, and she said "I've been staring at spreadsheets
| all day, I want to _do_ something. "
|
| It's not 1850 anymore; we don't have to have industry be
| dehumanizing quasi-slave labor. If we decide to, we can make
| things in America again without Triangle Shirtwaist-style
| horrors.
| superultra wrote:
| You're not wrong on most of your points - and I'm not denying
| the value of hard work. And I'm also well aware of the
| drudgery of office work.
|
| That said, have you worked in the kind of factory that will
| come back? I did a summer stint at my dad's steel mill as a
| 19 year old. I'm proud of that summer but that work took a
| lot of me. When other friends were out doing things, I was
| too exhausted to hang out. The money wasn't great either. And
| that's a microcosm of most of those older worker's lives.
| Many drank heavily. I'm not bemoaning them at all or their
| work.
|
| I'm just saying that the early 2000s wasn't the 1850s either.
|
| I don't deny there's a better life than office work but let's
| not gloss over the kind of hard - as in, really hard - labor
| that industrialization requires.
| fragmede wrote:
| Let's not gloss over the other part of it too though. Not
| everyone is smart enough to be a doctor or a lawyer, or
| even a nurse or a paralegal, and those people need jobs
| too. It shouldn't be backbreaking soul crushing work, but
| they do need jobs.
| rayiner wrote:
| As recently as the 1980s, 70% of domestic clothing was made in
| the U.S., including by brands like Gap and JC Penny. Did
| Americans have an impoverished standard of living in the 1980s?
| Is the cheap, disposable, foreign made "fast fashion" we have
| today better?
|
| https://www.kqed.org/lowdown/7939/madeinamerica
| soco wrote:
| Today it's also the desire of the customers, as pushed by
| social media, to follow a fashion changing almost every month.
| You didn't buy in the 80s stuff to be obsoleted in a few
| months. And because most of the people cannot afford every few
| months a new wardrobe made of (halfway) quality items, today's
| taste requires fast fashion garbage. So here we are, and we can
| get back to sanity only when we get rid of the influencer-led
| economy, good luck with that.
| protimewaster wrote:
| I'm amazed how much of the internet economy has turned out to
| be advertising. People complain about ads when they watch TV,
| but they'll go out of their way to spend hours watching ads
| on social media. And lots of kids dream about being an
| influencer, basically an advertiser, for their work.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| One reason why I have no interest in going to facebook
| anymore is that the vast majority of people's social media
| activity on there nowadays is advertising... something.
| People showing their latest purchases, vacations,
| experiences, etc, all basically showing something they
| spent money on.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| The desire of costumers is to go well beyond psychotic
| measures in order to save the tiniest amount of money on a
| purchase, rather than purchase domestic or locally produced
| for a bit more expensive. And that applies almost worldwide,
| not only to Americans.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Plenty of people would buy domestic goods if they were "a
| bit more expensive". I'd say 5% on a large ticket item or
| 15-20% on a small item would be "a bit".
|
| Rarely is "made in the USA" just a bit more expensive in my
| experience.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| For the very small ticket item you might even have to pay
| 100% more if you want to support your local community or
| your nation. Which should be fine, it's just a few
| dollars. For big ticket item 15-20% is acceptable. But
| people only think about their own purse.
| Lu2025 wrote:
| > the desire of the customers, as pushed by social media, to
| follow a fashion changing almost every month
|
| A lot of it is top down, pushed onto customers by the
| industry. It's very hard to find timeless classics these
| days, we are given trendy bits that change every year to
| speed up obsolescence so they purposely look kitschy.
| olalonde wrote:
| Yes and yes.
| tootie wrote:
| The textile industry in the US was synonymous with worker abuse
| and sweatshop conditions. The Triangle Shirtwaist fire is the
| canonical example. Heavily dependent on immigrant labor.
| lysace wrote:
| That fire was in 1911.
| rayiner wrote:
| Well into the 1990s, we made shirts and canned soup in
| Oregon, a place that had very few immigrants at the time. My
| wife's dad's family came here before the American revolution
| and he worked at a Heinz soup plant until NAFTA.
| dpcx wrote:
| If you watch [this Climate Town
| video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CkgCYPe68Q), then
| absolutely not, the disposable fast fashion we have today is
| not better. It's cheaper, but it's not higher quality, it
| requires trans-continental shipping, and it absolutely gets
| thrown away in ridiculous amounts.
|
| Overall, it's worse in just about every metric other than "I
| can get this fun shirt online at 2am for $6."
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| And helped spread microsplastics to every corner of the Earth
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Did Americans have an impoverished standard of living in the
| 1980s?
|
| Yes. Ask some of your older relatives who remember that time
| how often they got hand-me-downs or patched old clothes up and
| compare it to the wardrobe of an average income American today.
| pyth0 wrote:
| Could this be due to how low quality many clothes are
| nowadays and they are simply not lasting long enough to
| become hand-me-downs?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The fault is firmly with the consumer. People are addicted
| to cheap shit and consuming like crazy.
|
| We had cheap clothes 10 years ago, then Shein and their ilk
| showed up with even cheaper clothes, and people flocked to
| them in droves.
|
| And you can still buy good quality clothes, $120 shirts and
| $150 pants of good quality are readily available. But who
| wouldn't want to have 10 shirts and 5 pants instead?
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Where can I find good quality (by this I mean durable)
| shirts for $120 and pants for $150? I've examined
| clothing in that price range and it's virtually just as
| bad as $20 fast fashion: synthetic fibers mixed with
| cotton, poor stitching, loose weave on the fabric, etc.
|
| If you have brand names for polo shirts, jeans, and
| chinos that are _durable_ and long lasting, please share
| them because I can't find them. I have yet to place a
| test order at Bill's Khakis, I should do that.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| So far (only six months in), Normal Brand
| (https://thenormalbrand.com/) has been good to me. Seems
| better quality, nothing I have is synthetics, well
| stitched.
| terribleperson wrote:
| Can you really get $120 shirts and $150 pants of good
| quality? J. Crew and Brooks Brothers and the like have
| gone downhill.
| Lu2025 wrote:
| This is correct. On average I go through a pair of jeans
| and a pair of hiking pants a year. 30 years ago I wore my
| dad's jeans quite a bit as a teenager, I remember even
| passing a driving test in them.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Perhaps, but if clothes are cheap, income is disposable and
| fashion is fast, why bother?
|
| Other than jeans, shoes, socks and underwear, I haven't
| worn through or grown out of anything in forever, nothing
| to pass on really.
|
| That said, the textile collection and resale industry is
| huge; stuff gets sorted, parts go to secondhand shops and
| charity, part gets baled up and exported, parts get
| recycled, etc. Same with electronics, it ends up in low-
| wage countries in Africa and south-Asia where there's
| thousands of people processing it.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| That's not impoverished; it's just not wasteful. Half my
| kids' clothes are from Once Upon A Child, and most of my
| younger one's are hand-me-downs from the older one. For that
| matter, I'm wearing 20 year old gym shorts right now.
| fn-mote wrote:
| What? It's the 80s not the 50s. Hand me downs might have been
| a cultural thing, but "average" people weren't wearing them
| out of necessity.
|
| I think you're conflating a culture that did not see
| everything as disposable with a lack of wealth.
|
| The hard stats since I looked them up:
|
| Median income increases by 1/3 in inflation adjusted ("real")
| dollars from late 80s until 2020. The country is definitely
| more wealthy.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/mepainusa672n
| dfxm12 wrote:
| This is not evidence for what you are saying. Handing down
| stuff, including clothes doesn't equate to poverty, sometimes
| the opposite. Better clothes also last longer. Check out the
| Sam Vimes theory of socioeconomic unfairness. To take this a
| little literally, for much of my young adulthood, I wore my
| dad's old snow boots, not because I was poor, but because
| they were too well made, even at an old age, not to use.
|
| Choosing to buy more, cheaper, clothes is as much an example
| of consumerism, as anything else.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > Did Americans have an impoverished standard of living in the
| 1980s?
|
| Absolutely not.
|
| What we have today is the ability to buy/own tons more "stuff",
| much of which is cheap junk. That does _not_ translate into
| better quality of life.
| burningChrome wrote:
| > Did Americans have an impoverished standard of living in the
| 1980s (compared to now)?
|
| Nope.
|
| I had plenty of hand me downs, but the majority of stuff I
| owned lasted for years and years, and I beat TF out of my
| clothes; so getting three or four years out of a pair of jeans
| was an achievement. I remember being constantly upset with my
| parents because when I would ask to get something new, they
| would tell me I had to wear out the stuff I already had first.
|
| So at the time, paying more for a pair of Levi's or Nike's were
| worth it because they were built to last for years, not months
| like they are now. I was in college during the late 90's and
| even then I had three pairs of shoes that lasted my entire 4
| years in college.
|
| Back then stuff was durable and was meant to last for years.
| The "fast fashion" and "disposable fashion" trends essentially
| ended monopolies that brands had because kids weren't wearing
| stuff for more than a few months before discarding it or having
| it fall apart so they can wear the latest thing.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Yes, if you forced 2025 americans to live like americans did in
| the 1980s there would be mass riots. Quality of life has gone
| up signicantly in many ways.
| tptacek wrote:
| This is an answerable question: the median American household
| allocates 2-3% less of its household income to clothing in 2025
| than it did in the 1980s. That's about $2000, for the median
| household.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Right now, there's nearly a 100% chance any "Made in USA" brand
| is a grift, by direct members of the grifting party. I'm for the
| idea, done correctly. I'm completely against it in it's current
| form. They're taking your money rubes. If you want the real
| thing, you're going to have to help fix the country instead of
| falling for basic scams, in all areas of life.
| glimshe wrote:
| One has to wonder how the United States survived before the rise
| of Asian manufacturing... As recently as the 1980s we had full
| computers made in the US.
|
| We can get it back, at least the more interesting parts of it. If
| this movement was being sponsored by another political party, as
| it used to be the case, we would see a complete inversion of the
| journalists defending and criticizing it.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| The thing about the current movement that draws criticism, I
| believe, is the wildly unrealistic expectations. The party in
| question has treated bringing back manufacturing, even that
| which is skilled and requires large quantities of highly
| specialized machinery and supply chains and trained workers to
| supply it, as if it's something you can flip on like a light
| switch.
|
| If you factor in building factories, building supply chains,
| training workers, and regaining lost institutional/tribal
| knowledge, you're looking at a monstrously expensive endeavor
| that's going to take a long time. Probably at least a decade
| end-to-end, shorter in some fields and longer than others. No
| level of tariffs or overconfident statements on social media
| can change this reality.
|
| And as a cherry on top, companies are supposed to set this all
| back up without help from the government, despite it being so
| expensive and time consuming to do so, and despite Chinese
| manufacturing having benefited immensely from its government
| pouring vast sums into bolstering its manufacturing
| capabilities to reach its present position. What corporate
| leadership is going to see any of that as reasonable or
| remotely a good deal? They're more likely to play up
| investments they'd already planned to make during the previous
| administration and wait for another dice roll come next
| election.
|
| TLDR it can happen, but not on a short timeline and not without
| government incentives to smooth over the massive costs of bring
| it back.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| If you look at the income curve of household income over the
| last 100 years, you will see that the curve went from clumped
| around $60k to flattened and rolled out extending up to
| hundreds of thousands.
|
| Put simply, back in the day everyone earned pretty similar pay.
| Nowadays pay is much more spread out and lots more families
| make way more money than they would have 40 years ago. The
| market really loves these high earning households (not
| billionairs, I mean $100k+) and naturally gravitates towards
| catering to them. The $60k households get left out.
| GlibMonkeyDeath wrote:
| So, if retailers are resisting raising prices, who will pay the
| increased costs? Domestically sourced goods can be no more than
| 55% more expensive (otherwise the imported goods would be
| cheaper), but we can be sure that locally sourced goods will be
| priced as close to the full 55% as possible (and as the article
| points out, some locally manufactured items are probably never
| going to be less than the overseas cost, even including the
| tariff tax.)
|
| Now take a look at Walmart's margins
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/profit....
| Their gross margin is ~25%, with a net around 2%. Even if Walmart
| decides to eat the tariff cost out of patriotic duty, anywhere
| near a ~50% hit to supply chain costs would put them out of
| business. Heck, even a few percent would require a huge business
| restructuring, if it were even possible.
|
| So prices are going to be higher - it's a given. In the short-
| medium term, the tariff tax is simply a large regressive transfer
| of tax obligation onto consumers.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I think Walmart is too big to fail at this point. If the gold
| standard for brick and mortar 'low prices' needs some
| restructuring, then it's time for the house of straw economy to
| finally see the big bad wolf and go running for the hills.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Walmart will just raise prices and their customers will eat
| the increased prices through reduced purchasing power or
| going without, while complaining but doing nothing else
| (because they have no leverage to do otherwise).
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-price-increases-
| item... | https://archive.today/4Kcqf
| macartain wrote:
| or those same customers may elect the next, even-more-
| extreme, ill-informed idiotic wingnut that comes along with
| a pat theory about bringing industry back on-shore in 4
| years by tossing out foreigners/applying ludicrous
| tariffs/whatever... increased prices affect politics -
| which affects everything.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Probably, not much you can do with people who have a vote
| but nothing else. All you can do is migrate to more
| functional governance systems. Let them eat vibes, the
| evidence is robust that mental models are rigid and even
| in the face of overwhelming evidence, people can be
| bought into belief systems that cannot be updated based
| on facts, data, and evidence.
| macartain wrote:
| fair!
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Textile manufacturing is the absolute bottom of the barrel. The
| town I grew up in (Manchester, NH) had the largest textile plant
| at the beginning of WWI but it was out of business by 1933. The
| industry moved first to the American South and by the time they'd
| paid the loans of the factories it moved again overseas.
| bluGill wrote:
| Textiles are something that we cannot automate with current
| technology. We know how to automate plastics and metals. You
| can buy off the shelf injection molding machines (3d printers
| too, but they are rarely used in production). You can buy off
| the shelf machines to cut and form metals. Even things like
| steel mills are automated with custom equipment. But sewing two
| pieces of cloth together is beyond current automation, and thus
| there is a lot of manual labor.
|
| In the US (and Europe) manual labor is expensive, so to make
| something you need a lot of automation. Once it is automated
| the next step is enough volume to pay for the automation (which
| needs expensive engineers).
|
| Of course maybe this will change. Basic textiles were one of
| the first things we automated 300+ years ago, but we are only
| able to go from a bunch of cotton to a bolt of fabric today. As
| I write this making a shirt (or dog bed as this story) seems
| beyond what we can automate. Maybe a little investment will fix
| that, maybe not. I'm not an automation engineer so I can't tell
| you how solvable the problems are.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Robots that can fold towels are an active research area
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/10/22/1130552239/robot-folding-
| laun...
| cratermoon wrote:
| towel folding doesn't seem like a step towards automating
| clothing, any more than building a tall ladder is a step
| towards ladders tall enough to reach the moon. Anyway
| https://ruthtillman.com/post/all-clothing-is-handmade/
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I think at the root textiles just don't go where you want
| them to go the way, say, a rigid object or a fluid does.
| ben_w wrote:
| Getting computer vision and physics models to correctly
| handle fabric is _the_ hard part of automating what 's
| left in textiles.
|
| Everything else is ultimately just inclined planes and a
| power rod pulling on levers, which is the stuff that was
| solved with the Jacquard machine and a whole industry of
| competing models of sewing machine before we even had
| electricity let alone electric servos.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Robots that can fold _anything_ might be useful in an
| industrial cleaning or textile manufacturing setting, but
| it would compete with humans who can do that in seconds.
| For towels, there 's specialized machines (and have been
| for years): https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=to
| wel+folding+m...
| tpm wrote:
| > Of course maybe this will change.
|
| It's possibly already changing? 3D-knitting (of shoe uppers
| is what I have noticed) can make some sewing redundant. How
| far that can be taken remains to be seen.
|
| ah there are already sweaters made using this technology it
| seems: https://www.oliver-charles.com/pages/3d-knitting
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| It's wild to me how this movement wants to bring back all of
| the lowest paid, least value add, lowest skill jobs back but is
| totally ok with shipping highly paid, highest value add,
| highest skill jobs off to India. I understand that it's all a
| grift, the marks only care about the former jobs, and those
| jobs are never actually coming back, but still.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Textile manufacturing is basically just a derivative of
| electricity and labor costs. There isn't much more too it, and
| per sq meter, it's extremely cheap to ship product around the
| world.
|
| Textile mills in Bangladesh are able to pay $0.025 US cents per
| kwh, and factory laborers can be employed for about $150 a
| month. From their main port to the US west coast, when sent by
| container ship, costs about $0.10 per sq m. There is no
| universe where anyone else can compete. It's not within
| America's comparative advantage anymore.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| I don't really seen any benefit from buying American. The entire
| point of being capitalist is to let the market solve these
| issues, and the market has. I don't have any more loyalty to
| Americans than to any other people on earth, and I think that
| impulse is rather odd.
| bluGill wrote:
| I do see benefit from not buying from China. China is making
| geopolitical moves that I do not like and suspect will result
| in war in the future. They are making moving to take Taiwan.
| They are clearly supporting Russia against Ukraine.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| Well, that's your prerogative. I don't like the way most
| states behave (very much including our own warmongering
| state), but I'll be damned if this alters where I buy basic
| goods and services.
|
| If America wanted my money, it wouldn't behave in such a
| blatantly hypocritical manner. Either we're a free-market
| society or we're going to take care of each other. We've
| prioritized crying over business owners for decades while
| letting people go homeless. Fuck those businesses; where were
| they when the homeless needed advocacy? They chose to spend
| their time trying to complain about society rather than
| contributing to it.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I feel like you're misdiagnosing the problem. One of the
| key ways in which we've been prioritizing business owners
| for decades is uncritically accepting their arguments for
| free trade.
| lawn wrote:
| I, as a Swede, also see the same reasons for not buying
| American.
| quacked wrote:
| The market has not decided on anything; to employ Americans,
| you have to pay huge amounts of extra taxes and provide all
| sorts of legally mandated protections, and to operate an
| American business, you have to follow all sorts of operational
| and environmental laws that foreigners don't have to follow.
| Yet they're allowed to sell their goods in the same venues as
| Americans.
|
| If there are two ice cream vendors at the park, and the park
| charges one ice cream vendor a $350/day license and the other
| one doesn't have to license itself at all, has the "market"
| decided that the unlicensed business is superior?
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > If there are two ice cream vendors at the park, and the
| park charges one ice cream vendor a $350/day license and the
| other one doesn't have to license itself at all, has the
| "market" decided that the unlicensed business is superior?
|
| I don't know about "superior", but they're certainly going to
| sell more ice cream.
| tstrimple wrote:
| It has nothing to do with how much ice cream they sell. You
| cannot determine who would sell more ice cream based on who
| pays a license fee and who doesn't. What you can say is
| that the profits from the licensed vendor will be lower
| because of higher operating costs if they sell the same
| amount.
| kenmacd wrote:
| > has the "market" decided that the unlicensed business is
| superior?
|
| I think recently we've decided it does? Look at Uber versus
| licensed taxis, Airbnb versus licensed and inspect B&Bs, and
| many more.
|
| I get what you're saying though, and if there was the will
| for it then the unlicensed business would be fined such that
| it would pay more in fines than the cost of a license. It
| just seems to be going the opposite way.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| A better example would be one ice cream vendor uses ethically
| sourced milk and pays all it's workers a solid living wage
| with benefits, effectively functioning as an extra $350/day
| expense. The other vendor uses minimum wage labor and factory
| farm milk.
|
| >has the "market" decided that the [unethical] business is
| superior
|
| Yes, because anyone half paying attention on the ground
| instead of scrolling self-righteous internet content all day
| knows that price is actually king above all else.
|
| $18 ethical ice cream cones taste great, but not as great as
| $4 ice cream cones.
|
| To ground this in reality, look at the insane rise of Shein
| for clothes.
| quacked wrote:
| I don't disagree with anything you're saying. I think we're
| making the same point, namely that if one business operates
| American-style and the other business operates third-world
| style, the third-world style business will win on price
| every time, making it incredibly, prohibitively difficult
| to operate "American-style" at scale.
|
| America itself operated "third-world style" for centuries.
| glasss wrote:
| I like supporting my local community - so I guess I don't have
| much loyalty to a company in Arkansas but I do have loyalty to
| a company down the street or a town over.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I get that this is an example, but I'd like to see other
| examples. An expensive niche dog bed, niche beverage, etc doesn't
| seem very representative of the economy. If it is, that's
| concerning.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I guess a counterview here:
|
| These are the sorts of things small companies can actually make
| and be successful making.
|
| Are they representative of the economy as a whole? Maybe not -
| the majority of that spend is going to go towards housing
| (~35%), transportation (~17%), basic food (~13%), and (somewhat
| surprisingly) insurance/pensions (~12.5%). Those are all
| incredibly competitive.
|
| High barrier to entry, legally challenging (lots of
| bureaucratic red tape and hoops), already dominated by large
| companies with economy of scale in their favor.
|
| So that essentially leaves niche, high margin, products as the
| ONLY products a small company can competitively make.
|
| So it you want to be a small company selling a physical item...
| this is the market you tend to play within. You make an
| expensive niche/luxury product with a limited appeal but higher
| margins.
|
| We already get plenty of news about how the large corporations
| say they are going to respond (prices will go up).
| bluGill wrote:
| And on the third hand, those are things that you cannot buy
| off the shelf machines to automate. Sewing is an active area
| of research, but it still needs as much labor as in 1930.
| Beverage packing is automated but a lot of it is custom
| machines so you need a lot of up front money. (though it
| appears their limits were containers - al is made in the US
| so I'm surprised they cannot order the alloy they need).
| giantg2 wrote:
| It's probably material cost and not the actual
| manufacturing. The aluminum smelting industry in the US has
| been in decline (and for other metals too). It was also
| only 4 cents per can, a 1% increase in end unit price. But
| how it it affecting the products that can be made with off
| the shelf machines? How about in sectors other than
| consumer discretionary, like consumer staples?
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm just saying, every single example is a consumer
| discretionary item. Maybe they could pick some examples from
| other sectors. We already know consumer discretionary
| spending is a weak sector and will get weaker with tariffs.
| mrweasel wrote:
| That's my thinking as well, these are items where if they
| cross a certain price point consumers can easily opt to
| just not get them. They aren't even really luxury items,
| they are unnecessary luxury items.
|
| A better example I've seen is machinery, like construction
| equipment. Some contractor on YouTube points out that a
| Chinese skid steer is every bit as capable as a US made,
| but that 25 - 33% of the price. If he had to buy US made
| equipment he wouldn't have a business.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes but they are bullshit products. Dog beds? A dog is happy
| with an old blanket. "Stress-reducing carbonated beverages"
| no comment. A $65 paper day planner?
|
| These are things that nobody needs. They are the poster
| children for mindless consumerism, feasible only because they
| are made in overseas sweatshops.
| strict9 wrote:
| It will always be like this until scale ramps up and costs come
| down as infrastructure ramps up. China's advantage is always
| communicated as cheap labor but it's also the ability to almost
| infinitely scale production lines in a short period of time.
| America has mostly lost the muscle memory and tooling to do this.
| And that ability to scale matters with materials costs.
|
| There are incentives that would benefit domestic producers and
| companies but those take time and don't make good soundbites for
| politicians.
|
| The blunt tariff sledgehammer that was dropped isn't going to do
| it. Small experiments like the one in the article will try and
| mostly fail. Meanwhile producers will find loopholes and
| workarounds to tariffs. And the margins and viability of domestic
| designers and businesses will continue to weaken.
|
| Consumers will increasingly eat the cost and lose the
| convenience.
| tantalor wrote:
| All high school students should be required to complete the
| Factorio tutorial before graduating.
| idrios wrote:
| Congressmen should be required to complete the Factorio
| tutorial before taking office
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Factorio is just a programming game with a manufacturing
| texture pack.
|
| What we want is wood shop and machine shop classes.
| tantalor wrote:
| Humbly and politely disagree.
|
| Factorio taught me about supply chains, manufacturing
| bottlenecks, and tooling dependencies. These concerns don't
| really crop up in day-to-day programming, but they reveal a
| lot about why we struggle manufacturing anything in USA
| anymore.
| rendaw wrote:
| Factorio is often described as a game for software
| developers (i.e. it feels like you're programming when
| you play). Are those really the critical skills that
| allowed China to grow in manufacturing so quickly?
|
| I'm not sure shop classes fill that need either...
| alnwlsn wrote:
| To be able to design any manufacturable item, you have to
| know that a wrench is used to tighten bolts, and a
| screwdriver must be able to reach the screw. There are
| people who don't. Some of them graduated engineering
| school with me.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Second this, I have stories...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| If it's about supply chains and the like, Eve Online
| might be a better fit, it's got the factor of time, deal-
| making, social interaction, theft, war, blockades,
| undercutting, etc in there as well.
|
| like, I can see a high school class set up their
| corporation, get mining set up, maybe own a station, get
| production running... but then a nullsec alliance is like
| haha fuck you and completely undercuts them, or the
| recurring player event where they block / destroy
| anything coming into or out of the main trade hub starts.
|
| Factorio is pretty predictable... or maybe I've played it
| too often so I know what to consider for the long term. I
| should get some mods or change some settings to create
| calamities like in the old Sim City.
| troyvit wrote:
| I think you're both right. If the wood shop class was a
| class in how to run a wood shop (not just in how to run a
| lathe) it would be the best of both worlds.
| korse wrote:
| Do you work in manufacturing?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| But we don't have a shortage of people who understand
| those things. You can learn them with a passive interest
| while hanging around with your laptop on the weekends. We
| have a shortage of people who understand how to actually
| make things in a non-copy/paste environment.
|
| There are so many ways that mother nature says "fuck you,
| fuck your work" that you never get contact with in
| virtual environments. In fact the whole point of virtual
| environments it to remove that brutality. We have a
| dramatic shortage of young people who are interested in
| learning how to wrangle with mother nature OS rather than
| computer OS.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| When I did IT in manufacturing, we outsourced most of the
| 'understand how to actually make things' tooling type
| people jobs. We didn't need them full time and could get
| way better experts via outsourcing than we could hire.
|
| What we needed were wage slaves paid low enough to make
| the economics work, even in our small town without many
| employers that was the tricky bit. Especially every year
| when health insurance premiums went up. You want to help
| American manufacturing, move healthcare costs off their
| back and to the government.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| We manufacture plenty of stuff in the good ol' USA, what
| we struggle with is manufacturing cheap things which
| require large labor input.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Maybe we should just skip directly to 3D printing? Wood
| shop probably isn't the place to start, but there is a
| starting point for kids somewhere.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| No, this doesn't solve the right problem.
|
| We bees to put injection molding machines in schools, CNC
| machines cutting the tooling, teach people how to make
| real things in real factories with realistic costs.
|
| This is the expertise that left these shores 20 years
| ago. Tooling manufacturing, automation, semiconductor
| etc.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| 3D is heavily used in China as well for small scale
| manufacturing and prototyping. It is a good place to
| start for middle or high school kids, and is pretty
| accessible and rather safe
| eastbound wrote:
| MythBusters-types of people can only exist in a country
| with garages and residential suburbs.
|
| I think what most changed music and mechanics was the
| transition from suburbia to flatsharing in the city
| centers.
| pdmccormick wrote:
| Not to mention intact families where parents had
| sufficient discretionary time (i.e. jobs that paid the
| bills with reasonable weekly hours) and a culture of
| prioritizing passing down knowledge to children and
| creating spaces in the home for them to pursue their
| individual interests and talents. People are not just
| atomized economic units.
| alnwlsn wrote:
| I'm afraid we have far more basic problems than that -
| illiteracy in their fingers. We have people who can't use
| a knife or scissors, let alone a power tool.
|
| 3D printing is an excellent introduction to just making
| an actual object in the real world. It's cheap and
| accessible, and has obvious design limitations to fall
| into and learn from. The step from 3D printing to full
| CNC is a lot less than the step from nothing to 3D
| printing.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The idea isn't to teach working with wood necessarily,
| the idea is to teach how to handle the myriad common
| problems that crop up when dealing with physical
| manufacturing.
|
| 3D printing would be good too, because on the surface
| it's just "model -> filament -> extruder -> built". But
| as anyone who has done 3D printing knows, it's constantly
| fighting 20 different parameters to try and coax your
| print to actually work out well. And even when you have
| it nailed down there are still 20 different things that
| can randomly sabotage it. And even with all that
| accounted for you still sometimes get off prints.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Not just that - the idea is to give students a taste of
| what it's like to make things with their hands. 3D
| printing is cool too, but it's much less hands-on.
| supportengineer wrote:
| As an 8th grader, we had multiple years of wood shop, but
| that was in the late 1980's.
| whoisyc wrote:
| In Factorio you throw iron ore in an electric furnace and it
| turns into iron plates. In reality you need coal or coke or
| charcoal to reduce iron to its metal form. Steelmaking is one
| of the largest single source of CO2 for a reason.
|
| This is just one example among many. The truth is every
| single facet of industrial production is incredibly complex
| and there does not exist a single video game that captures
| all the nuance. Period. Factorio abstracted away all the
| boring details of industrial production and that is why it is
| good entertainment. But it's still just entertainment. To
| think someone would become knowledge about industrial
| production because he played Factorio is like thinking
| someone is a good driver because he played Mario Kart.
| beefnugs wrote:
| Thats the most dangerous thing to turn kids into. They want
| them dumb and barely powered drill capable.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's more than that, we've simultaneously allowed for
| monopolization and rollup of wholesale markets. So in context
| of the story, the US manufacturer is in a squeeze play between
| supply cost escalations through the Trump tax regime, and the
| on the demand side with the big retailers like Kroger and
| Walmart.
|
| The "made in USA" stuff is bullshit, the policy people DNGAF.
| The people actually making stuff are screwed. This about about
| shifting taxation from income and capital gains to consumption.
| strict9 wrote:
| I agree with most of that.
|
| But companies have been incentivized to offshore production
| for decades. In many cases policy decisions have immensely
| rewarded them for doing so.
|
| The end result is those countries (mainly China) have grown
| into infinite scaling machines. It probably won't unwind any
| time soon.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| And in China retail/consumption is not nearly as
| consolidated/monopolistic as it is in the US.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Agree, especially with the BS of "Made in the USA". Consumers
| really don't care; they just want the most bang for their
| buck. Period.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I look for it and will pay a fair premium. "Assembled in
| USA" is hot garbage though.
| looofooo0 wrote:
| Turns out China buys Iranian oil, China makes cheap products
| out of this oil. China builds lots of new cheap coal plants,
| west fades theirs out but moves part of their production to
| China.. etc.
| ponector wrote:
| Use of coal in Chinese energy production is not growing,
| peaked in 2013 according to their stats. They are also
| building massive solar and nuclear capacity.
|
| But anyway, half of all global coal production is consumed in
| China. I hope they will manage to get rid of coal in the next
| 20 years.
| parineum wrote:
| > China's advantage is always communicated as cheap labor but
| it's also the ability to almost infinitely scale production
| lines in a short period of time. America has mostly lost the
| muscle memory and tooling to do this.
|
| ...
|
| >There are incentives that would benefit domestic producers and
| companies but those take time and don't make good soundbites
| for politicians.
|
| I heard a very compelling argument (at least to me), that the
| difference, as you say, isn't the labor. The labor cost
| difference is something like 5% in the China vs 8% in the US.
| The difference is ramp up time. If you have a product ready to
| be built, you can get it to market much faster manufacturing in
| China than the US.
|
| As an example, the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada took about 2
| years (June 2014-July 2015)[1]
|
| Tesla Gigafactory in China took 168 days to construct (January
| 2019-October 2019)[1]
|
| The cost of the factory construction, materials and labor,
| isn't the biggest loss when deciding where to build your
| factory. The biggest cost is the opportunity cost of not
| manufacturing your product for 15 months and the potential of
| losing any first to market advantage if you have competition.
|
| The time to get your product to market, especially if you're a
| new company with no income operating on investor money, the
| time spent trying to manufacture in the US can sink your
| company. The cost difference is much more manageable and,
| depending of the product, can often times be overcome by the
| price of shipping.
|
| [1] https://manufacturingdigital.com/digital-factory/timeline-
| te...
| danans wrote:
| > The labor cost difference is something like 5% in the China
| vs 8% in the US.
|
| Those percentages don't make sense to me. 5% and 8% of what?
| Final assembly? Labor costs are also built into all material
| costs in the supply chain.
| dmurray wrote:
| I don't know if you're wrong in general, but your dates for
| the factory construction show 9 months in China vs 13 months
| in the US, not the 5 months vs two years you claim.
| usui wrote:
| Based off the cited article, it was a typo and it's
| supposed to be "July 2016", not "July 2015".
| fragmede wrote:
| There's an attitude shift, too. US manufacturing is stuck in
| the past. If you want to build a widget, you want it
| finished, welded assembled and painted. you've got to do a
| bunch of work and take it to four different places before
| you're done. China's got a one stop shop attitude to get your
| widget made. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTjEVB5p2/
| nooron wrote:
| I think it is worth mentioning how much more cheap capital is
| available for manufacturing. Chinese state policy--- monetary,
| fiscal, and social--- pushes up the savings rate, enormously
| lowering consumption, while restricting the range of consumer
| financial products. That puts more savings in state banks and
| keeps interest rates low.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| This has come up at the expense of their own consumption
| however, and a reliance on exports instead. Thankfully China
| has been focusing on diversifying their export markets along
| with increasing internal consumption in the last decade.
| nooron wrote:
| Thank you for raising that point. I would love any
| recommendations you have to learn more about internal
| consumption shifts in the last decade.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| There are the obvious explicit government initiatives to
| boost consumption, but they've also made some strides in
| reducing goods and luxury taxes. An Apple iPhone used to
| be 20-40% more in China (it is technically imported
| because it is made in an SEZ), but they are only priced
| at slightly higher than the states now. Cars used to be a
| huge splurge but cheap EVs are affordable by anyone with
| an OK job now (although you might not be able to park it
| if you live in a big city). On my trip a couple of months
| ago, the malls were booming in a way that I didn't see in
| 2016 when I left China.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| China's biggest advantage wasn't just the ability to scale
| (which means available labor), but also having entire supply
| chains in relative proximity, tons of small manufacturers
| making all the little parts needed, all located in southern
| China.
| Animats wrote:
| That's a bit less true than it used to be. Shenzhen
| supposedly used to work that way. When some small factory ran
| out of capacitors in board assembly, they'd send a runner to
| Huaqiangbei for another reel. But now ordering has mostly
| moved online. There's less of a role for all those tiny
| stalls stocking components.
|
| That just cuts out a layer in the distribution chain. The
| part you want is probably manufactured not too far away.
|
| The US used to have manufacturing cities where you could get
| everything you needed in specific industries. There was the
| New York City garment district for clothes. Mary Quant,
| inventor of the miniskirt, writes in her autobiography,
| "Quant by Quant", about her first visit to New York with a
| native guide. She was getting things set up for manufacturing
| in days instead of the months it took in the UK.
|
| Detroit had cars, of course. Most of the auto parts suppliers
| were nearby. Now, the US auto industry is very spread out.
| "Trenton Makes, the World Takes" is still on a huge sign in
| Trenton, NJ., but it's more nostalgia then reality.
| Waterbury, Connecticut had watch manufacturers and other
| mechanical precision devices.
|
| Those centers of industry are mostly gone. Even Hollywood is
| in troublel
| kylebenzle wrote:
| This take and the article get it utterly wrong. The ONLY real
| headline is, "Americans have gotten so used to free money they
| can no longer even imagine producing anything and selling it at
| a reasonable price".
|
| I'm a small farmer and can sell my garlic all day for $1 a
| bulb. But it's A LOT of work. If I bump the price to $5 less
| people buy but that doesn't mean I get to give up and say, "oh
| well, can't produce in America I guess... "
|
| Lol, Americans :(
| taeric wrote:
| Cheap labor is the key in that scaling, though? Human labor is
| still far more flexible than anything else that we have. And a
| big part of that flexibility is how cheaply you can turn it
| off. There is a reason seasonal employment is a thing.
| leviathant wrote:
| I live in Philadelphia. We had a lot of manufacturing here,
| but most of that vacated the city center in the 1970s and
| 1980s. I recently was doing some research into urban renewal
| around my neighborhood, and found a paper about the city's
| efforts to address a concentrated population of perpetually
| drunk homeless men, mostly centered in my neighborhood,
| mostly squatting in abandoned buildings or living in
| flophouses. The city's approach was effectively to remove
| them and spread them out - and bulldoze the neighborhood to
| make way for a federally funded highway, now I-95. A lot of
| manufacturing businesses just called it quits - the owners
| had made their money on the backs of cheap labor and hadn't
| really set up any kind of succession plan, but could retire
| comfortably. Others moved, mostly out of the city, and by the
| 90s, that labor was moving overseas.
|
| And that's why I don't really foresee that kind of
| manufacturing coming back here. In order to survive the race-
| to-the-bottom pricing that the majority of Americans crave,
| you need a large labor force that will accept some form of
| sub-par living conditions. But if you can't earn a living
| wage, you can't afford to participate in the economy in a way
| that supports the manufacturing, and then you're back to
| those mid-century slums.
|
| I'm dramatically oversimplifying things, my main point here
| is, I didn't really put together how much of early 20th
| century American manufacturing relied on chronically drunk
| homeless men.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Were the drunk/hl folks the ones working in the factory?
| Doesn't sound practical.
| taeric wrote:
| The assertion is that during times of high work, you have
| far fewer of them drinking. Pair that with low cost
| worker tenements and you are able to scale up manual
| tasks much more rapidly than what you see in most US
| locations nowadays.
| dsr_ wrote:
| From the 1500s through 1930 or so, in any place you could
| see working men, you could see drunk ones.
|
| From 1930 through 1970, it was less common but just as
| tolerated.
|
| MADD did what Prohibition could not.
| fragmede wrote:
| selt driving cars ftw?
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > In order to survive the race-to-the-bottom pricing that
| the majority of Americans crave
|
| I do wonder if this is an inherent "craving" or just tied
| to the reality that Americans cannot really afford things
| anymore
|
| The middle class being eaten means that most people have
| much less discretionary spending, so every single purchase
| must be a bargain
| taeric wrote:
| It is less a craving and more just a general response to
| availability? It isn't that people have a craving to
| spend less on things. But, if something is readily
| available for less, why would you pay more? Indeed, would
| you expect people to pay more for your goods, if someone
| else has equivalent goods for cheaper? Why?
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > someone else has equivalent goods for cheaper
|
| They are never actually equivalent goods though
|
| They are cheaper goods
| taeric wrote:
| Maybe? Clothing is a big counter to your claim here. As
| is anything that can be reliably machined.
|
| Yes, there is "cheap" clothing. No, the more expensive
| clothing isn't necessarily better. A bog standard t-shirt
| is a bog standard t-shirt. With a minimum of quality
| control, and anything on top of that is not adding to the
| utility of it.
|
| The machining revolution really hurts a lot of the idea
| that labor in is indicative of quality.
| fragmede wrote:
| Not necessarily, but it's total shit when you buy a
| t-shirt and it unravels after only wearing it a few
| times. That QC doesn't always happen is what's the
| problem, so buying the cheapest isn't wise.
| taeric wrote:
| I mean... sure? Has that been happening for you? I have
| had some shirts that didn't last as long as others.
| Oddly, I don't think they are the ones I paid the least
| for.
| CrimsonCape wrote:
| As a counterexample, some casual googling about cotton
| suggests that there is an ideal workflow which will
| result in superior cotton fibers before harvesting. Here
| is a quote from the conclusion section of the linked
| article:
|
| "Cotton fiber quality is shaped by a mix of genetics,
| growing conditions, and field management techniques.
| High-grade cotton relies on precise measurements of fiber
| length, strength, and micronaire, along with maintaining
| proper color and cleanliness throughout its growth. These
| elements play a key role in determining processing
| efficiency and market value across the supply chain."
|
| At the most basic, if one farmer harvests his cotton with
| no consideration of the above issues, whereas another
| farmer carefully studies, prepares, tests, etc based on
| the above considerations, wouldn't there be added value
| and added cost of production?
|
| I personally believe that in a past era, farmers
| intuitively learned these factors and competed with each
| other to make their best harvests, and the bog standard
| t-shirt got a quality buff as a fringe benefit.
|
| Whereas nowadays, the farmer has to drop quality for
| quantity to compete with digitally-connected markets.
|
| https://cottongins.org/blog/ultimate-guide-to-cotton-
| fiber-q...
| h2zizzle wrote:
| It's the second thing. Americans are proud to pay for
| things they can afford. They look down on people who
| aren't paying their "fair share." For example, music and
| movie piracy was never the domain of the average
| consumer; it's mostly been for broke young people and
| enthusiasts who don't like DRM and the limits it puts on
| use. And part of the reason for _that_ is that Spotify
| and Netflix et al. made it possible to continue consuming
| "respectably". If physical media were still the norm,
| piracy would be rampant, but not because Americans tend
| towards it naturally; bevause they would have been pushed
| toward it by the imperative consume wedded with the
| inability to pay.
|
| A lot of dumb "just so" tales in economics are willful
| miscategorization of desperation as choice.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > A lot of dumb "just so" tales in economics are willful
| miscategorization of desperation as choice
|
| This is a great way of describing it, I like it
|
| Incidentally, I'm starting a new business model to
| capture this market opportunity, I call it "DAAS",
| desperation as a service
|
| It's where people pay me their excess money and get
| nothing in return, increasing their desperation
| dmonitor wrote:
| If you adjusted your business model to make _other_
| people miserable, you can sell yourself as a marketing
| agency
| UncleEntity wrote:
| > It's where people pay me their excess money and get
| nothing in return, increasing their desperation
|
| Wait, isn't that called 'campaign finance'?
|
| The problem with competing with entrenched market
| interests is they can use their economic advantages to
| make the market impossible for newcomers to enter leading
| to _de facto_ monopolies.
| api wrote:
| Everything in economics is a paradox because everything is
| two sided, often with yourself on more than one side.
|
| Selling your labor? You want high wages, unions, worker
| protection laws, etc.
|
| Buying something? Now you want to cut wages and bust
| unions, at least if you tend to choose the cheaper item.
| downrightmike wrote:
| The anecdote that I heard was about GM, They'd have two
| guys doing two jobs on the same line, one of them would go
| off drinking for the day and the other guy just did both
| jobs half-assed, then they would switch the next day.
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| The Canadian movie Goin' Down the Road (1970), is related
| to this. It's fictional, but seemed to capture the less
| rosy aspects of that time.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| There are roughly half as many employed in manufacturing
| compared to 25 years ago. The declining trend started
| before this. At the same time American manufacturing output
| is at an all time high, measured in dollars. Wages are up.
| There are more jobs for things like mechanical engineers
| and millrights, fewer in packaging and assembly.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| It's not just cheap labor. It's labor that is abused, sometimes
| enslaved.
|
| It's also lack of environmental regulation adherence. China has
| environmental regulations but they don't always demand
| compliance. I read about companies paying for scrubbers to be
| installed in factories and when a team comes to take a tour,
| still with original filters and low run hours.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Labor is like 8% of the price of a car. That's not the
| difference between 25k and 65k.
|
| While China does have an advantage over northern states in
| labor prices it's not why it's so cheap.
| missedthecue wrote:
| That 8% is only if you include the labor costs of final
| assembly at the GM plant. But their inputs also were built
| by labor. GM buys turbochargers not out of thin air, but
| from Garrett Motion inc., in Plymouth Michigan, who also
| has sizeable labor costs. Repeat not just for
| turbochargers, but for the rest of GM's input supply line.
| If you include only their direct suppliers, the cost of a
| new car that goes to human wages is about 30-40%.
|
| Chinese turbocharger suppliers have lower labor costs and
| therefore BYD, Changan, Great Wall and others have more
| pricing power vs GM and Ford products.
| fragmede wrote:
| Is BYD using turbochargers in their electric cars?
| ponector wrote:
| Your comment would be funny if not only half of BYD
| vehicles are fully electric.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Yes, their song, tang, han, and shark models are all
| turbocharged.
|
| But my broader point is that their entire supply chain is
| comprised of lower labor cost inputs. Whether it be the
| EV batteries, the windshield, or the air valve in each of
| the four tires.
| Yeul wrote:
| Maybe Americans could build cars that people living in Asia
| actually want? Hint someone in Jakarta doesn't want a 40k
| pick-up truck.
|
| Tangentially related China is located in the region with
| largest economic growth. Power is shifting from Europe and
| North America.
| pphysch wrote:
| Counterpoint: cost of living is ridiculously cheaper in China
| vs. USA. Workers can be paid 3x less and still have a better
| QoL. It's a vastly more efficient economy in terms of human
| capital.
|
| Counterpoint: China is the undisputed leader in renewable
| energy technology, including battery storage. I don't think
| they are doing it purely for environmental reasons, but they
| are doing it.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I agree. A lot of modern trade for the US is built around
| arbitrage on purchasing power. If all else costs the same,
| and you have to decide whether to pay someone $2 per hour
| to do it or $20, $2 always wins unless shipping it over is
| more expensive than the difference, which almost always
| isn't.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Average salary in China has gone up quite a bit. It might
| be 1/3 but it's not $2.
|
| I had a friend move his factory to China because the
| packaging and other costs were so much cheaper. I wish
| I'd asked for a breakdown. He didn't factor in/expect
| wages to be much of a savings.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I just pulled a random number but what I intended to say
| is that as long as differences in purchasing power exist
| and the dollar is the stronger currency, trade will move
| to where your dollar has more purchasing power for labor,
| as long as moving the finished goods back to the US isn't
| prohibitively expensive.
| throw734785 wrote:
| That is rich from Americans, who exploit illegal immigrants
| for cheap labour!
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| Who said OP was american.
| ponector wrote:
| > It's labor that is abused, sometimes enslaved
|
| Sounds like average American gig worker.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| No. The "cheap labor" myth needs to die quickly.
|
| China's advantage is, and always will be, that the costs of
| labor in US are bloated by a huge amount of overhead for every
| working resident
|
| In 2023, the BLS reported that benefits alone accounted for
| about 31% of total compensation, with wages and salaries
| comprising the remaining 69%. [1] This 31% includes direct
| costs like health insurance, retirement contributions, and paid
| leave.
|
| Now in addition, consider employer-paid expenses that are not
| benefits or employee compensation: FICA, FUTA, SUID, SDI, FMLA,
| etc. That depends on your geography, but it can be up to 25-40%
| additional costs [2]
|
| The all-in cost is at least 35% or more in additional spend [3]
|
| In addition, none of the above capture indirect costs of
| compliance/overhead, with varied state and federal schemes.
|
| As you can see, we are at a range of ~35-50% of additional
| costs for each new hire
|
| Now, importantly, try to imagine the effect of this bloat at a
| national level: Every US business is effectively carrying
| deadweight of additional ~35-50% costs on its pricing decisions
| to its customers. Why? Because the bloat is embedded into every
| domestic input, like raw materials, services, utilities, you
| name it. This cost spike may impact a few foreign industries
| dependent on US inputs, but it certainly explodes over US
| shores, spiking prices of the inputs that most US producers
| depend for their final goods and services. Now think of what
| happens to domestic costs of doing business and operating a
| physical business in US.
|
| So when your cost of production have additional ~35-50%
| overhead because of all sort of market-distorting mechanisms,
| blaming china for "cheap labor" is a convenient scapegoat, when
| in reality the blame should be on US policy of making our jobs
| artificially expensive.... to fund the state bloat.
|
| [1] https://www.bluedotcorp.com/blog/2023-trend-the-rising-
| price...
|
| [2] https://www.sba.gov/blog/how-much-does-employee-cost-you
|
| [3] https://www.footholdamerica.com/blog/what-is-the-real-
| cost-o...
| cyanydeez wrote:
| gosh, if only someone would think of the small business
| owners.
| yaky wrote:
| Calling health insurance, retirement and paid leave "bloat"
| sounds like a satire of a 19th century factory/mine/sweatshop
| owner. Wow.
| fakedang wrote:
| The fact that these are not covered by your taxes is even
| more satirical. Instead they're paying for escapades in the
| Middle East.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| It is crazy that the current pro-capitalists are totally
| fine publicly saying they are psychopaths. But it's OK
| because money.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| The chinese eat the lunch of the working and neediest
| americans, who see their jobs being exported abroad,
| because of a huge, elite bureaucratic deadweight DC class
| that was paid to allow regulatory capture, while enjoying
| sucking US treasure that funded their benefits and
| retirement.
|
| Who's the psychopath ?
| fragmede wrote:
| Tim Cook. He invested $55 billion per year into China,
| dwarfing both the Marshal Plan and the CHIPS act.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/books/review/apple-in-
| chi...
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| OK. In that case lets not use "bloat", and instead just
| call it the biggest subsidy for the middle and upper
| classes, coming from the backs of the unemployed, lower
| class
|
| Guess who's uninsured? Its not the META employee with
| fertility benefits.
|
| Satire is whomever cannot see why Trump would be voted by
| the working class: whomever thinks the status quo was to
| the benefit of the lower, blue collar class... while the
| middle and upper class ride their (untouchable) govt
| benefits (SSN) to a secure retirement because the elite
| class has a secure bureaucratic job (while the lower
| classes struggle to find 1 part time job).
|
| Meanwhile, the chinese eat the lunch of the working class
| who see their jobs being exported abroad, because no
| employer wants to pay for subsidies/retirement/salaries of
| an elite bureaucratic deadweight class (that makes the
| rules for themselves, and forgets the neediest).
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Some of it is China's willingness to make big capital
| investments. My wife was shocked at the low price of beech
| mushrooms at Ren's Market and I found out these are grown in
| a huge factory in China where they are very proud that they
| only have to handle the mushrooms with a forklift. Contrast
| that to those white button _Agricus_ mushrooms each of which
| is cut out from the mycelium individually with a knife.
|
| The good news is that they're building one here
|
| https://finc-sh.com/tag/new/
|
| When you look at solar panels and lithium batteries their
| biggest advantage is that they invest in large scale heavily
| automated factories. For really labor intensive and low value
| things like those dog beds Chinese labor is already too
| expensive and production is going to places like Bangladesh.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| We have plenty of capital here. Far more than China.
|
| The problem is the capital cannot be put to good use here.
| Either because (1) there's too much uncertainty around
| project progress (think oil pipelines stuck for decades in
| permitting limbo), or (2) the ROI doesn't work when you pay
| insanely high bloated compliance costs of hiring US staff.
|
| Even our sky high productivity cannot overcome the large
| lard deadweight each of us has to carry, on behalf of the
| elite class
|
| I remember a time when every product sold around the world
| carried the "MADE IN USA" brand. It included random
| trinkets.
|
| That would come back quickly, if we all decided we had
| enough of antiwork laws, enough with all the deadweight,
| and focused on building instead of regulating.
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| Your job is not artificially expensive.
|
| In China it is naturally cheap, they have humongous super
| advanced vertical and horizontal supply chains at their
| doorstep.
|
| Need plentiful, cheap three phase electricity? - check. Need
| some obscure part at scale and immediately?- check. Need
| advanced engineering? - check. etc. etc.
|
| It's at the point where for many industries the risk/reward
| just do not make any sense at all (it'll just be loss making
| no matter how you spin it, government supports etc).
| specialist wrote:
| USA's workers directly fund our safety net (such as it is)
| and public health.
|
| Who pays for all that stuff in China?
| cyanydeez wrote:
| No. It won't ever go away till socialism is evenly distributed.
|
| You won't get made in the USA as unless you're determined to
| have subclasses of citizens.
| misterbishop wrote:
| This headline is a lie. It's not a matter of being "too expensive
| for customers", it's a matter of undesirable profit margin for
| the company.
| thotghig5896 wrote:
| Duh.
|
| All the economic dimwits (both on the left and right) who
| constantly harp that real wages have been falling, don't take
| into account the steep fall in prices of consumer goods due to
| offshoring.
|
| Ofc. this does mean that US becomes the world's "bitch"
| eventually following the economics of things, but the alternative
| is essentially becoming Soviet Union or Argentina.
| thotghig5896 wrote:
| I prefer option 1. the world's policeman being a public servant
| instead of the feudal warlord that we currently seem to have.
| selectodude wrote:
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
|
| Real wages haven't fallen at all. We're far wealthier in real
| terms now than ever before.
| zahlman wrote:
| People complaining about real wages are for the most part
| just out of date. Your data shows about a 0.9% growth
| compounded per year over the last 10 years - and a 0.17%
| growth compounded per year over the 35 years before that. The
| numbers were effectively stagnant for my entire childhood and
| adolescence. (I'm Canadian, but I imagine the picture has the
| same basic shape here.)
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Probably the most annoying thing about conversations on this
| topic is peoples ignorance or inability to acknowledge the
| insane availability of so much stuff are such low prices.
|
| A typical persons load out went from personal possessions that
| could fit in a microwave sized box to personal possessions that
| overflow the bedroom and living room of their apartment.
| zahlman wrote:
| > don't take into account the steep fall in prices of consumer
| goods due to offshoring.
|
| The definition of "real wages" takes this into account -
| because they are indexed by the consumer price index, which
| tracks the prices of consumer goods.
|
| Some goods have dramatically fallen in price (especially if one
| takes the so-called "hedonic adjustments" into consideration,
| i.e. attempts to price increasingly more powerful computers and
| visually impressive TV displays on a continuous spectrum over
| time). Others have dramatically risen. "Consumer goods" include
| things like food
| (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/consumer-goods.asp), and
| certainly cars have also been more expensive of late.
|
| The cost of, say, housing is also clearly not experiencing a
| "steep fall due to offshoring".
| hammock wrote:
| There is a mattress company called Tuft and Needle. They started
| right at the early beginning of the mattress-in-a-box trend, but
| offered a unique product. For the first six months of operation,
| they made a Japanese-inspired cotton mattress filled with wool
| batting and was made in the USA. Before I had a chance to order
| one though, they had already pivoted away from that unique
| product (that doesn't exist even today) and were dropshipping the
| same generic PU foam mattresses made in China as everyone else,
| with very little change to their website even. I was sad
| ArtemZ wrote:
| Have you looked at Avocado mattresses? They state they make
| them in California.
| hammock wrote:
| I have. Definitely one of the better options out there. I
| recently got a mygreenmattress which are latex and made in
| Chicago. Still would like a wool one.
|
| Everyone already knows this but the mattress industry is
| absurdly opaque and most reviews are fake
| justonceokay wrote:
| T&N has such a great product but it was one of those things
| that failed because the innovation/disruption had no market.
|
| I personally believe that the Japanese futon mat is the
| healthiest way to sleep, and after you get used to it even
| extra-firm mattresses are soupy and uncomfortable. Downside
| though is that it is very difficult to be comfortable on if you
| are significantly overweight, and it's a pretty hard sell for
| couples unless they are both bought into the idea beforehand.
|
| From my personal experience of sleeping on one for the last
| decade, not having a bed with a mattress on it is beyond the
| pale. I have a nice townhome that is well decorated. But when
| people see my bed, they assume I have a health issue, some kind
| of homelessness trauma, I'm a weeb (definitely not), or that
| I'm too poor to own a bed. They assume that they could never be
| comfortable on it, as a pillowy mattress on a high frame is
| associated in people's minds with high luxury, angels with
| harps, royalty, and sexual intrigue. Sleeping on a mat on the
| floor is associated with camping, homelessness, destitution,
| and failure.
|
| To each their own I guess
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| I think not only has manufacturing gone away, as well as the
| supply chain, but also choice. The moment you want something
| slightly different than what is sold in the typical big box
| stores, it's either non-existent, or costs a fortune.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| We bought one and it lasted almost exactly 10 years. When it
| came time to replace it, I was also sad to discover that it was
| a short-lived item and they moved on to something else. We
| ended up going with Sleep Number because that was the firmest
| mattress I could find delivered to me in a reasonable amount of
| time.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| AFAIK Nolah mattresses are made in Arizona
|
| https://nolahsleep.com/pages/about-us
| xyst wrote:
| Decades of private equity/vulture capital shipping overseas has
| allowed for other countries to overtake the USA.
|
| It all boils down to awful pseudoscience pushed by
| Reaganomics/trickle down economic theory. This pseudoscience has
| been used to write policy in this country which has only
| benefited the ultra wealthy.
| ajuc wrote:
| For any given thing produced abroad USA could produce it
| domestically. But you simply cannot produce ALL the things
| domestically.
|
| Population matters. There's not enough Americans, not even going
| into how many want to work a blue-collar job and how much you'd
| have to pay them.
| jayd16 wrote:
| It's so frustrating that policies to subsidized growth in a
| targeted way (paid for by our progressive tax system) are ignored
| and we're stuck with these wide impact regressive policies. As
| described they're poor policy, and as implemented they're simply
| a tool for shake downs.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| So, what I get from the article is that all US business is
| initiated by Shark Tank? LOL
| dardeaup wrote:
| In my opinion, the following are additional factors that are
| often overlooked when discussing the competitiveness of USA
| manufacturing: 1) OSHA - if you have more than
| 10 employees, you're subject to OSHA regulations. Do other
| countries have comparable regulations for keeping their workers
| safe and healthy? 2) Decline of shop classes -
| shop/industrial classes used to be widespread in high schools.
| Not as much these days. Why? 3) Litigious society - our
| society is quick to sue and the legal standard used in civil
| trials is "more likely than not". 4) Drug addictions -
| look at any job posting for manufacturing, labor, construction,
| etc. and you'll see mention about drug screening. 5) Fat,
| dumb, and happy society - we care more about Super Bowl Sunday,
| Hollywood, reality shows, etc. On average, we're lazy and care
| more about being entertained.
| telesilla wrote:
| >5) Fat, dumb, and happy society - we care more about Super
| Bowl Sunday, Hollywood, reality shows, etc. On average, we're
| lazy and care more about being entertained.
|
| Respectfully, people care about supporting their families,
| having health care coverage, paying off their student loans,
| having a safe job that they can get to easily and cheaply and
| have general good work conditions. The first 4 points may be
| true, but the 5th point is an unfair characterisation.
| delusional wrote:
| Ok, I'll bite. What would be some solutions to these supposed
| factors? What policy are you suggesting?
|
| I notice that these "additional factors" happen to align with
| right wing politics, which implies to me that you may be
| smuggeling something in along with these "additional factors" I
| should also consider.
|
| "Consider that working people may just be lazy drug addicts,
| and why do you care about their workplace safety?" Is not
| really something I want to consider.
| dardeaup wrote:
| You read more into my comments than you should have. I'll
| expand on my points: 1) OSHA - I'm
| delighted and proud that we have OSHA! OSHA regulations have
| saved lives and prevented serious accidents/sicknesses and
| continue to do so. Does Vietnam, China, India, etc. have
| comparable regulations? I don't know the answer to this
| question, but my guess is largely 'no'. There is a cost
| associated with OSHA compliance and it's worth it. Is it ok
| that a factory worker is killed or maimed in some other
| country for your low prices? 2) Decline of shop
| classes - I don't know why they're not as prevalent as they
| used to be. To be honest, a shop class of 2025 should not
| look the same as a shop class of 1970. In my opinion, a
| modern shop/industrial class would include robotics, 3D
| printing, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), etc. I
| honestly don't see how anyone would consider this to be a bad
| thing. 3) Litigious society - I'm not passing
| judgement, just calling it like I see it. Many lawsuits are
| deserved and many likely result in better processes and
| procedures. I don't have an axe to grind, just stating that
| the US probably has more lawsuits and judgements than most
| other countries. 4) Drug addictions - I don't think
| that drug addictions are good for anyone. I know that this is
| a very complicated topic. I'm just pointing out that it may
| be more difficult to hire manufacturing workers in the US who
| don't use illegal drugs than in other countries. 5)
| Fat, dumb, and happy society - I'm just calling it as I see
| it. A huge part is because as a country we don't eat healthy
| enough and get enough exercise. Look at the skyrocketing
| cases of diabetes. It's a huge problem. Dumb because it seems
| we continue watering down our schools to make it easier for
| kids to get through.
|
| If you read everything I wrote above, please tell me where
| I'm right-wing or left-wing. Of the 5 factors I listed, the
| only one that I would advocate for a policy change is (2). I
| would like to see broad funding for shop/industrial classes
| in high schools throughout the country. Again, these shops
| would not look like they did in 1970, although they would
| likely still have some of the same tools. However, they would
| also have modernized, high-tech ones like robotics, 3D
| printing, etc.
|
| Where am I so off-base? Where did I make value judgements
| (aside from fat, dumb, lazy one) about Americans? Am I
| promoting some right-wing agenda with my comments? I believe
| that these are honest points that should be discussed and
| debated.
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| I've been thinking about the decline of shop classes. It
| would be nice if schools just had more stuff; basic proper
| calipers and micrometers, 3D printers, vinyl cutting
| machines, fountain pens, Rubik's Cubes, etc.. Somehow the
| trend of cheap goods just didn't make it to the classroom
| for whatever reason.
| jjangkke wrote:
| People point to China's 'cheap labor' but this downplays why this
| is only possible under its political system and the tremendous
| human cost involved.
|
| Rather the framing shouldn't be whether its too expensive or
| cheap but why so many people are willing to arbitrage industrial
| scale abuse of human labor only possible under an authoritarian
| regime and then virtue signal about anything else.
|
| Even more puzzling to me is why nobody is making the connection
| between the dilution of US dollar value via exporting inflation
| that props up totalitarian regimes and its growing reliance on it
| to make things its people want to feel they are above others.
|
| They tried Made in the US but customers found it too morally
| expensive to care as to why making it outside the US is cheaper
| especially in China.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| > industrial scale abuse of human labor only possible under an
| authoritarian regime
|
| Taylorism definitely originated in the US, and the modern
| Amazon's worker-related practices (in the US) are direct
| descendants of it. So while democratic regime makes industrial-
| scale abuse of human labour harder, it absolutely doesn't
| preclude it.
| thaack wrote:
| My family runs a small plastic (injection molding) business in
| the USA. Second, soon to be third generation.
|
| The only reason it still exists is because the products made are
| too expensive to ship from a country with cheaper labor as they
| are pretty large and heavy. And it's quite a niche
| product/vertical.
|
| The biggest problem that the business faces on a day-to-day basis
| is employees. It's a very low skill manufacturing job. You pull
| parts out of the mold. The pay is good for a large midwestern
| MCOL city, plus full health benefits (employees don't pay a
| cent). It is downright impossible to find and retain reliable
| employees. The job sucks. I worked there when I was younger
| helping out and you do the same thing every minute for 8 hours a
| day in a hot and loud factory. It's not a career - just a job.
| I'm not sure how you fix that. The American appetite for a low
| skill manufacturing job is dead - I'm not sure it's a bad thing
| either.
|
| Even the high skill stuff has already been taken over by China,
| their process is far more efficient. When the business needs
| design/tool & die for a new plastic injection mold costs and
| speed associated with getting that mold designed and made in
| America are astronomical compared to the Chinese. The Chinese
| will get back to you with a design proof in 24 hours at a 1/4 of
| the cost.
| peterldowns wrote:
| > The American appetite for a low skill manufacturing job is
| dead - I'm not sure it's a bad thing either.
|
| It probably isn't a bad thing, as long as we continue to invest
| in automation and high-skill manufacturing. The Economist wrote
| about this recently: the fantasy of "low-skill factory jobs for
| all" is just that, a fantasy: https://archive.is/YoMs1
| thaack wrote:
| Fascinating article.
|
| They have toyed around with automation but the capital
| required to retrofit for such a small business would be
| intensive but is coming down.
|
| Interestingly the automation pieces that they have been
| testing (multi-axis robot arms) have only became cost
| effective since the Chinese robots entered the market. The
| Chinese have completely dropped the floor on automation
| tooling.
| farceSpherule wrote:
| The work on your line might "suck" but it is a good paying job
| with free benefits and requires no college degree, special
| trade school, or certification.
|
| There are plenty of poorly qualified, undereducated Americans
| who can fill these low skill jobs.
|
| There is nothing to fix. It is a job. It pays money. Not
| everyone has the ability to excel in a "career." They simply
| need a job.
|
| And, no one can compete with China. All companies operating in
| China, regardless of ownership (state-owned, private, or
| foreign-owned), are subject to the same political influence. If
| the government tells a company to do something, the company
| does it. China also manipulates its currency as a means to
| drive its predominantly export-oriented economy.
| thaack wrote:
| Then tell me where these poorly qualified, undereducated
| Americans who can fill these low skill jobs are?
|
| The business's biggest success with finding employees was
| getting in the good graces of the local probation officers
| who refer ex-cons to us, and that comes with its own set of
| problems.
|
| Other than paying a premium for temps at a temp agency that's
| been the only way as of the last 5-10 years to get employees
| in the door. Normal applications are crickets.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Raise the pay. I get that at a small scale that might not
| be possible, but if it isn't that just means they don't
| have a viable business, at least in their current location.
| fragmede wrote:
| I hear China's labor costs are lower. If your point is
| that Made in USA is maybe too expensive, we've gone full
| circle.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| More expensive than made in China, though with the moral
| price of supporting sweatshop factories. "Too expensive"
| is a value judgment. Maybe they could get their customers
| to accept a higher price, or find other customers who are
| less price-sensitive or will pay for something they can
| provide that China cannot.
| farceSpherule wrote:
| If you are paying people $7.25 an hour, then perhaps you
| deserve to go out of business.
|
| Line work in the conditions you describe should be paying
| $16 to $26 per hour, with an average of about $18 per hour.
| beloch wrote:
| Sounds like the employer has created its own problems.
|
| If an employee is doing an unpleasant, dead-end job with no
| prospect of advancement, they have to make a value judgment. If
| there's no prospect of advancement or any kind of wage growth
| (they're "low skill", so they'll be replaced if someone cheaper
| comes along), let alone security, then why stick around?
|
| If the working conditions (e.g. heat and noise) are unpleasant,
| they could be improved. A ramp into other positions could be
| built to make the "job" an entry point to a "career" (e.g.
| Costco moves people between many different low skill jobs and
| then recruits from that pool for management).
| thaack wrote:
| >If an employee is doing an unpleasant, dead-end job with no
| prospect of advancement, they have to make a value judgment.
| If there's no prospect of advancement or any kind of wage
| growth (they're "low skill", so they'll be replaced if
| someone cheaper comes along), let alone security, then why
| stick around?
|
| Exactly my point, and that's what they are doing.
|
| There is no prospect of advancement possible. It's a small
| operation with 15 or so total employees. Under normal
| circumstances I would agree on a much larger scale.
| bdcravens wrote:
| > because the products made are too expensive to ship from a
| country with cheaper labor
|
| This particular issue could be solved by producing in Mexico
| and trucking your product into the US.
| driverdan wrote:
| If you can't get employees you're not paying enough. What you
| think you should pay employees is irrelevant, the market
| defines what "good pay" is. If potential employees have better
| opportunities you won't be able to hire them unless you make
| your jobs more appealing than others.
| thaack wrote:
| You would think it would be that black and white, and under
| normal circumstances I would tend to agree, however pay is
| well above average for the location and skill especially when
| you factor in the benefit package.
|
| I really think it comes down to the fact that people have no
| interest in working in low skill manufacturing. The business
| loses people to Walmart etc. where they get lower pay and no
| benefits all the time. There is more variety of work and
| potential for advancement at a company like Walmart. Even at
| a larger scale low skill manufacturing plant advancement is
| sparse.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| The pay may be above average for that location, but it
| might still be too low. Back when I had just finished
| college, my cohort was also judging locations where they
| would apply to work based on things like the social scene
| or the climate, in addition to the usual considerations of
| the kind of work and pay they would be doing. There were
| plenty that turned down well-paying jobs that were in
| undesirable locations because they were also seeking to not
| only establish a career, but a life too.
|
| One of the guys I worked with at my first job was a few
| years older than me, and he had given up a much better
| paying job in one of the flyover states for a lower paying
| one in a higher COL area; His reasoning was that no amount
| of money could buy him the things he wanted out there, but
| he did admit that had the pay been significantly higher, he
| probably would have stuck it out for longer than he did,
| though again only to save up a bigger nest egg before he
| moved away from the area.
| ponector wrote:
| No, by paying high salary you are not going to retain smart
| people on dumb physically challenging job.
|
| And they say they can get employees, as pay is decent for low
| skilled job.
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| If you're having trouble retaining employees because they're
| bored of pulling parts out of a mold - have any of them
| considered having a crack at automating that specific bit of
| the job with say (and yes this is going to sound naive) a
| programmable robot?
|
| Could be something they try out of hours.
| slyall wrote:
| There will be versions of the machine that automate more of
| the process. But they will cost money and require maintenance
| too look after and adjust.
|
| I used to work a similar job[1] at a plastics factory. We had
| about 12 machines in the area I worked. Some machines
| automated remove stuff from the mold, some removing the
| excess, some putting though the leak tester. Each stage of
| automation was an additional thing that had to be configured
| and adjusted.
|
| Often we'd only make an item for a shift or two. At one point
| the company bought a new machine (the size of a 2 car garage)
| that automated some more bits. The machine took 18 months of
| adjusting before it worked reliably.
|
| [1] Blowmold, ranging from 750ml bottles, 5-20 litre jerry
| cans, sections of culvert pipe.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "They tried Made in the USA - it was too expensive for their
| customers"
|
| Did they (the companies profiled in the article) actually try it
|
| Or did they investigate the possibility of trying it
|
| Did customers have an oportunity to determine it was too
| expensive
|
| Or did these businesses make that determination themselves
|
| NB. I am not suggesting their determination was incorrect. I am
| only highlighting how the title refers to something that did not
| actually happen. A more accurate title might be something like
|
| They considered Made in the USA - they determined it would be too
| expensive for their customers
| 9awj35pja wrote:
| Some people are actually trying
|
| https://www.smartereveryday.com/smarterscrubber
| jopsen wrote:
| If the retailer they normally sell to say they want stock the
| product at the given price, then you don't get to try?
|
| If you could sell it for more using a different avenue, you
| probably should have done that before.
|
| Tariffs this way will kill a lot of small businesses.
| User23 wrote:
| It took decades to gut American consumer manufacturing. Anyone
| who thinks it can be brought back without pain is deluded. But
| nevertheless, it's worth that pain.
|
| As the Chinese are well aware, every time in history a great
| financial power and a great industrial power have come into
| conflict, the industrial power wins.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| You only get to pick one: labor laws or a manufacturing industry.
| mzs wrote:
| None of the three businesses reported actually even build one
| prototype in the US and the arithmetic doesn't work out for the
| last example but a lawsuit has been filed.
| poorcedural wrote:
| Right now, as for the last century, the USA manufactures identity
| and all the products that make you feel like YOU. It used to be
| Levis and Coca-Cola, now it is all the premier tech Hacker News
| places value FAANG+ (minus TikTok). If the USA continues
| inventing identity, those identities should be grounded in
| merchandise only made in the USA.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| It's interesting to me that there was already a manufacturing
| facility in the US that could readily make something as random as
| a memory foam dog bed on short notice, even if somewhat more
| expensively.
|
| I had though all such simple things had been completely
| outsourced to China or Vietnam or somewhere. That does imply if
| that if manufacturing economies of scale can be returned to the
| US, the price could become competitive, even for low value-added
| products like this.
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