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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

Exactly this. North San Jose (the 237 triangle) used to have PCB, chip, chassis, component, etc., manufacturers in proximity to each other. Consider: Sun used to make and assemble their "workstations" over in the East Bay not far from the 237 triangle. As the late '90s approached much of that local manufacturing was off-shored to the Foxconns and Flextronics, etc. as well as overseas foundries.

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As a consequence of all of that concentrated manufacturing, Silicon Valley is now a cluster of EPA superfund sites. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Superfund_sites_in_Cal...

Check out the SuperFund sites in the original Silicon Valleys of NJ & Boston.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Superfun...

Lorentz Barrel and Drum was particularly reckless. That lot is across the street from the Solar For America Ice complex (formerly Sharks Ice) on 10th.

And when it all went over there it made room for Google and Facebook. Today it's hard for a startup to find space in downtown PA because of Palantir.

What's a "problem" for the rest of the U.S. is creative destruction here. I worry we may have learned the wrong lessons because of current politics and inequalities. And it's worth remembering that automation is going to result in that manufacturing resulting in less jobs. What's going to happen when people expect the jobs to come back but then they don't?

I know this has all been said, but I'm not sure everyone's connected all the dots.

>it's worth remembering that automation is going to result in that manufacturing resulting in less jobs. What's going to happen when people expect the jobs to come back but then they don't?

/u/Brightball posted this on HN and I felt it was a good response to your concern.

"One of the big perks to manufacturing is that it draws the entire supply chain around it naturally. Even if the manufacturing job itself isn't as abundant, the peripheral jobs that comes with it from shipping materials, producing materials, distribution, sales agreements, logistics, building construction and maintenance...they all provide benefits."

Ya, I don't think most people think past the surface of this issue, but than, most people don't think at all.

On a side note, unemployment rates are at a low, so we relly don't need to worry too much. If you look at the charts: https://www.google.ca/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&... you see that it really was all due to the recession. Now that the economy has recovered, jobs are back.

All the talk of outsourcing, automation, and all that doesn't seem to show in numbers. Even full time employment is up: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/full-time-empl...

I wish our society valued data driven decisions a little more. Successful businesses do it all the time, why not politics?

Because you get elected by stirring emotion in voters.

Exactly, there may well be a lot more manufacture and assembly here in the US, but that's to support US deliveries with lower-cost shipments of final products. And most of that is automated, which is what allows US mfg to compete with overseas.

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