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Comment by norikki | Hacker News Reader

We just export all this pollution to China. Instead of a good unionized manufacturing job with a pension paying $25/hr, the average American now scrapes by makes minimum wage working odd hours at a Starbucks with no benefits. We need massive tariffs on dirty Chinese imports so clean Made in America products can compete. Otherwise we're just subsidizing the destruction of the environment in third world countries and making income inequality in the US worse by making working class Americans poorer.

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The problem with a tariff on Chinese imports is: who do you think pays the tariff? The Chinese manufacturer? The importer? American distributers? No, it's the American consumers who will have to pay for it. How does that help American manufacturers to compete? They still have much higher costs than their Chinese competitors, so they'll be outmatched on R&D, marketing, variety, etc.

Besides, the American consumers probably can't afford the higher prices anyway, so rather than helping American manufacturers, tariffs will just collapse the market when consumers stop buying the products, or they go to underground sources.

To level the playing field, we can't do it on the market-price side. We have to do it on the manufacturing-cost side. The US has all of these regulations that protect the environment and protect workers, but the costs have been borne by each manufacturer separately. I think that's led to a great deal of redundancy and inefficiency, which has raised the cost of these protections beyond what most manufacturers could bear. We need to move to a system where these costs are shared by all Americans, and by all who buy American products, in a more efficient manner. That should reduce labor costs, hopefully enough so that the benefits of local manufacturing outweight the still-higher labor cost to provide an American-level standard of living.

> No, it's the American consumers who will have to pay for it.

The theory (right or wrong is debatable) is that some percentage of consumers will use this price increase to let their decision to buy domestic be influenced.

That would assume that the number of people buying domestic wouldn't just shrink in proportion to the tariff, because they can't afford goods anymore.

And also perhaps in addition, because their company cannot pay them anymore because of the cost of goods.

A tariff on Chinese imports would be a direct hit to growth. It’s not going to force companies to manufacture here. It’s only going to hold the US back. It’s like saying we’d better off closing all of borders. The US produces lots, but it would hardly get by in isolation. Not to mention that waning from the national stage bequeathes power to the next in line.

> They still have much higher costs than their Chinese competitors, so they'll be outmatched on R&D, marketing, variety, etc.

That's incorrect. It's essentially as expensive at this point to manufacture in China as it is in the US, for everything except the most basic of labor-intensive manufacturing (particularly in industries where China's lax environmental and labor protection rules are beneficial). Which is why China's manufacturing industry is barely growing. Companies that would have chosen China as an obvious, easy solution for decades, are now choosing Vietnam, Mexico, Pakistan, et al. It's enough that it has robbed China of nearly all manufacturing expansion.

2015: "U.S. Manufacturing costs are almost as low as China’s"

http://fortune.com/2015/06/26/fracking-manufacturing-costs/

2016: "These days, China's labor costs are only 4% cheaper than those in the U.S. when productivity is factored in, according to Oxford Economics."

http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/17/news/economy/china-cheap-lab...

Okay, if US manufacturing is so cheap, are companies starting factories in the US? If yes, what's the problem?

If not, maybe there are other costs associated too? Or the "supply chain" simply works best if placed in China?

Or, as we've suspected already, it's just political posturing? And the good old lack of political will to spend on retraining coal miners and others?

Substitue "China" for any other country where manufacturing is cheap and my argument stands. You've highlighted another problem with the tariff idea: if it targets one country, manufacturing will shift to another cheap country rather than coming back to the US, and the tariffs would have to apply to more and more of them until we've been completely isolated in a global trade war.

That sounds a lot like the federal sugar program - it was designed to restrict the imports of much cheaper sugar from other countries to help American sugar companies from going out of business. The artificially high domestic prices just end up moving candy companies out of the country - because it's hard for them to compete on price with candy companies that can buy cheaper sugar outside of the US.

Meanwhile, the federal gov buys about $300 million in excess sugar every time prices drop below a certain level due to other regulations. It's a strange system.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/31/us/american-candy-makers-p...

> the average American now scrapes by makes minimum wage working odd hours at a Starbucks with no benefits

The average American has adequate health benefits [1] and makes around $25/hr [2,3].

> We just export all this pollution to China.

We sure do.

> Instead of a good unionized manufacturing job

But I question the assertion that without China we would still have strong unionized manufacturing labor. In fact, globalization was just one component of an ultimately successful, century-long coordinated attack on unionized labor.

[1] About 100 million Americans have no or inadequate healthcare, which is of course inexcusable but still means the "average" American does have healthcare. And this being the USA, that healthcare is likely tied to employment.

[2] https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/01/18/how-does-y...

[3] There are problems with [2], but computing (Mean Household Income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United... )/2 earners/52/40 = $17/hour as a very conservative lower bound.

One way to deal with the mean of a data set not being a good descriptor of the data is to avoid calling it an average.

Median personal income in the US is $31,000:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

Half of the people represented there make that much or less.

The "median" here samples 16-year-olds in high school, retired people, stay-at-home parents, voluntarily part-time workers, and many others who we would expect to have little or no income.

Among full-time workers, as reported by the BLS, median income was about $45,000.

> voluntarily part-time

How many of them really are voluntarily part-time v. settling for a part-time job because they can't find a decent full-time job?

I agree with your point overall, but I can't help but point out that Starbucks offers its employees some decent benefits https://www.glassdoor.ca/Benefits/Starbucks-US-Benefits-EI_I...

Some pollution, sure, but not all. One of the top causes of pollution and global warming is from meat production.And it's cheaper for multi-national companies from China to import pork from the US rather than slaughter them at home: https://qz.com/433750/the-world-eats-cheap-bacon-at-the-expe...

"It begs questions about the quality of life the world’s richest nation will tolerate for its poorer citizens, questions that have been thrown into sharp relief by the recent entry into North Carolina of China’s—indeed the world’s—largest pork processor, WH Group. Drawn by the low cost of production there, WH Group finds it cheaper to raise pigs in North Carolina and export them to tables back home than to raise the animals in China. "

People at Starbucks don't make minimum wage, and they have good benefits.

And yes, free trade tends to make countries more equal in terms of wealth, but it tends to make wealth inequality greater within countries. Personally I'd like to see the introduction of small across-the-board tariffs on imports even with the recognition long term growth will be lower.

Those Pensions and Wages were not sustainable. The Average American is not working at Star Bucks parttime.

Even if things are made in America and cleanly they'll be made by machines, not meat. And crushed under not only 'Clean' regulations but Safety and other Quality standards that will drive prices of goods up. Not everyone will be able to secure these new Manufacturing jobs you want. So how will your person still stuck at Starbucks be able to afford them?

> Those Pensions and Wages were not sustainable.

Why were the wages not sustainable?

Because the US had around 55% of all global manufacturing circa 1970 (with 130 million fewer people), due to its temporary quasi economic monopoly status after WW2 as the last highly developed industrial economy left standing.

That's why real US wages, stand-alone, have barely climbed in 40 years. Consider for a moment just how extremely high those wages were in ~1970, that it took decades for other high development nations to catch up.

That and the fact that healthcare costs over that time have soared in the US, so a big part of US compensation increases since 1970, have gone to employee health insurance costs (commonly anywhere from 10% to 30% of a person's compensation if you're near or above the median).

> Those Pensions and Wages were not sustainable.

Bullshit. Utter bullshit. Productivity has continued to rise since the 1970s and yet wages are pretty much flat. That is: People are producing more value for their employers than ever before, but aren't being paid accordingly.

These wages are only "not sustainable" if you think corporations are entitled to cut costs, squeeze employees, and slash benefits all in the name of squeaking out ever increasing returns for shareholders or to pad out their own exorbinant executive salaries.

If anything's not sustainable it's current executive pay levels.

>(...) if you think corporations are entitled to cut costs, squeeze employees, and slash benefits all in the name of squeaking out ever increasing returns for shareholders or to pad out their own exorbinant executive salaries.

That's literally the reason most corporations exist, so yes they are entitled to do exactly that, to whatever degree the law and market allows.

The reason corporations exist is to protect investors, not make them rich. A "limited liability corporation" made it advantageous for people to take more risks than they usually would by giving them a guarantee they wouldn't lose everything they own if the venture failed. That isn't possible in a partnership or sole-proprietorship. In those if your idea tanks, you go down with the ship.

The type of thinking you're espousing is the sort that bubbled to the surface in the 1980s where profit drove all decisions. No longer was there concern for the welfare of workers, for the long-term survival of the company, or anything, absolutely anything at all, other than making shareholders happy.

Companies never succeed by simply making profits. They succeed by making good products. Then they're acquired by hedge funds that squeeze them for every ounce of profit they're good for and sell the remaining husk for pennies on the dollar.

Cut the pay of the few Executives and divide it among all the other 100's of employees. Will that bring the employees wages up to the right levels?

It's not necessarily the People but the machines/equipment they operate that are generating the 'more value' you speak of. The employees do not pay for this equipment and its maintenance. The Company does.

While it used to take 3 men 30 minutes to make a batch of ingredients with shovels and wheelbarrows, it now takes 1 Operator 30 seconds to push a button on an automated transfer system and watch it work. That one Operator is now producing 'more value' than his 3 predecessors. The lone Operator can now make 10 more batches a shift than 3 could before. Should he be paid accordingly for pushing a button versus the hard labor of 3 men?

I think the fact it's happening/has happened is 'bullshit' and that it's not 'right'. But the heavily automated jobs we have today aren't the same hard manual labor ones of the past. Large North American Manufacturers have to 'cut costs' to compete with offshore production, stay within strict Gov't Regulations, and survive(thus keeping jobs).

> Instead of a good unionized manufacturing job with a pension paying $25/hr, the average American now scrapes by makes minimum wage working odd hours at a Starbucks with no benefits.

That's blatantly false. The US has one of the highest median and median disposable income levels. The median US household income, at near $60,000 is also among the highest on the planet.

Median weekly earnings for a full-time job in the US, is about $860. Or over $40,000 per year. The number of major economies you can list that are at or near that level is very short: Australia, Switzerland, Norway, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium.

1% of US labor earns the minimum wage.

I object to exporting it to China because because it drifts over the Pacific back to the West Coast.

So what we got is the worst of both worlds, losing manufacturing jobs and getting the pollution resulting from a country that didn't care about the cost in pollution.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/world/asia/china-also-exp...

A fair amount, though not all, of that pollution does settle out or become oxidized over the intervening 8,000 miles or so. Though yes, measurable quantities do cross the Pacific.

Alternately, we form a trade agreement with a bunch of Pacific nations outside China and include worker protections in that.

But preferably not make copyright beyond 28 years part of it.

U.S. manufacturing makes more than it ever has. There are just fewer jobs because automation has replaced them.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-manufacturing-dead-outpu...

Factory people were once the heart of the labor movement. Now people on the city just can’t believe how ignorant folks in the country would vote for someone they hate so much.

As one of those living 'in a city' my disbelief stems from:

    * Someone that votes against their own interests, seemingly because they're willing to believe sound bites
      instead of hard facts. (Voting based on emotion rather than logic.)
    * That we refuse to reform political funding.
    * That corporations can have more rights/power than individuals.
    * That the only real problems the working class has with 'Obamacare' is that they don't understand it and hate the name.
      Though I imagine if they were offered a healthcare plan where they could see (nearly) any doctor in the area,
      not have to shop for healthcare, keep their healthcare from job to job,
      and didn't have to worry about medical bills showing up months later...
      Yeah, I think they'd like the /features/ of a single payer system.
    * That we aren't willing to have a real talk about tax reform
      (based on returning to a tax structure more like in the 1950s
      where the lower 90th percentile paid much less,
      and those earning the most paid /far/ more
      (in line with how many workers worth of income they were hoarding)).

Who do you believe is at fault for the things you point out?

Collectively we (the voters) all are. Too many have been easy targets. We've (as an aggregate) allowed our selves to be easily swayed and frothed in to frenzies instead of taking a solid moment to calmly and rationally reflect on the actual history of the decision makers we're electing.

Last election was, hopefully, a rock bottom. The actual choices offered were both really awful.

My biggest issue is that I don't actually see a path for getting out of this pit we're in. "Regulatory capture" has everyone involved in politics addicted to money like those addicted to pain pills and the illegal drugs they are forced to turn to after the legitimate prescriptions expire.

The USA /needs/ a real third, and fourth, and fifth party, and at least two of /those/ need to stay 'clean'.

As long as the two major parties are in collusion, offering two options only slightly different from each other, little progress is possible.

I also don't see a way out. A Trump style outsider win was I think the most unlikely event that could have possibly shown us another way, but he's turned out to be "a bit of a disappointment" to put it nicely.

Why are people who vote Republican singled out as dumb/misguided for voting against their own interests but others are not?

Warren Buffet believes tax rates should be higher. Is that not against his own interests? Very few people will call him out as dumb or misguided.

The post I was responding to was singling out the viewpoint those "in the city(ies)" have against those (not like them).

You may notice that said response does NOT in any way reflect an opinion based on my own self or those I feel fall in to the general category called out in the post I was responding to; positive or negative. I was merely answering the supposition asked and providing a hopefully helpful critical perspective that might be used for self reflection and improvement.

A different reply to my post asked 'who's at fault': which allowed me to expand my opinion and observations to include the general population within the US.

Please do not mis-interpret my meaning or take my words out of their intended limited context with baiting and inflammatory replies that are not designed for a productive and stimulating discussion.

Bad example: Buffet's interest is served if the disparity in taxation is resolved or at least mitigated. The Republican voters you're talking about don't understand, either out of ignorance or stupidity, that the people they vote for literally are acting opposite to the their interests.

> Is that not against his own interests?

The effects of higher tax rates on Buffet's quality of life are entirely negligible. In the words-ish of Bill Gates: once you're eating $30 hamburgers, the extra money doesn't really do much.

> Someone that votes against their own interests, seemingly because they're willing to believe sound bites instead of hard facts. (Voting based on emotion rather than logic.)

The funny part about this is the fact if this was true, then I'm baffled they vote Republican considering the majority of the MSM is on the DNC payroll and has been for about a decade now.

The barely audible voice of the conservative right is heard mainly through Fox News and conservative talk radio. The rest of the distribution channels are all owned by Liberal slanted media.

I mean, MSNBC doesn't even hide the fact their a shill for the Democratic party anymore.

The US's high living standard is due to all the cheap crap it can import. You can't just slap super-high tariffs on China, because the manufacturing will just move elsewhere. You'd have to slap tariffs on almost all the high-population countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Such a hostile trade environment would rebound on the US, and it'd suffer more.

The problem isn't really that the manufacturing jobs have been given to the cheap countries, it's that the US is okay with the top quintile grabbing all the money for themselves (probably because 'freedom')

Yup. I tell people all the time, "See that pollution in Beijing. That's why the air in the USA is cleaner." As if their air doesn't become our air.

People are naive. They believe China is all about lower wages. It's mostly about the byproduct of the manufacturing. That is, pollution. At the risk of editorializing, even the pro-green "liberals" don't understand what it takes to make their new iPhone.

Apple fully understands what it takes to make their new iPhone. They're going out of their way to source conflict-free materials, to ensure that it's only made with recyclable components, and to eliminate as many unnecessary toxic components from the manufacturing process, like lead and mercury. Apple doesn't mind absorbing these extra costs especially because there's enough margin in their products they can afford to.

If you want to blame someone, don't blame Apple. Blame the lawnmower company that used to manufacture their products domestically but decided to out-source it to China for no reason other than slashing costs. They're the ones that keep putting the squeeze on their suppliers to trim costs, to use plastic parts instead of metal, to skimp on anything and everything they think they can get away with.

Where Apple is doing checks on their suppliers to make sure they're not employing child labour, that they're not endangering their employees with overly long work weeks, other companies are out there demanding they work harder, longer, and cheaper.

When China is no longer the cheapest shop in town they'll pack their bags and move on to the next place, and the next place, in their suicidal race to the bottom.

What's ironic here is that China is actually one of the biggest green energy proponents. They used coal to get their industrial base going, but solar and wind will be the big drivers behind the next push. While the US might have better environmental regulations, lately it's developed a severe allergy to "new things". Meanwhile China keeps deploying bigger and bigger solar installations: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/china-launches-lar...

I don't see China's embracing of green as ironic. They see the future. They understand where the need of the market it going. Most importantly, they understand oil's day is over. They'd rather shift to green than waste recources on wars for oil. China isn't stuck in the (at best) 20th century (in this regard).

No doubt China is interested in power and influence. They difference is they'd prefer to conquer economically rather than with military force. So far, that's working quite well for them.

I mean "ironic" in the sense that the country everyone likes to paint as the most reckless polluter and constant scourge in any and all departments of humanity is now the leading green proponent. Meanwhile the US, home of the EPA, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and a host of other things that simply don't exist in China, is now mutating into a monster that's looking for ways to use more coal, to blow up more mountains, to slash any and all regulations.

> They difference is they'd prefer to conquer economically rather than with military force.

This is what Japan did post World War II and for the most part it worked out pretty well. Not a shot fired, and yet culturally and economically they're right up there with every G8 country. Japanese televisions showing Japanese cartoons all across the world.

In constrast, Russia, a country that's larger, more populated, and in a unique position to bridge Asia and Europe, is an irrelevant backwater country. Nobody in their right mind would want to own a Russian television or watch Russian shows unless they're Russian in the first place. It's a shame because Russia could have turned into something amazing instead of the place it is today.

Sadly the United States seems to be heading in the Russia direction while China is heading in the Japan direction.

"It's a shame because Russia could have turned into something amazing instead of the place it is today."

Today? Yes. But also, what's your measurement for amazing? Based on the current state of the world, and the direction things are trending, I don't see any country that deserves the crown of amazing. What am I missing?

Things have gotten a bit sideways lately, it's true, but if you look at what some European countries are doing to prevent their post-industrial economies from collapsing into chaos, to shield against climate change, to become more self-sufficient in terms of food, it is pretty amazing.

What countries like China have done in the last twenty years is also amazing. I'm not saying it's without problems, or that this progress is always worthwhile, but you've got to admit the dramatic transformation from backwater third world country to major industrial power in the span of a single generation is pretty amazing.

There's other examples like that, but they're mostly historical, like Iceland clawing its way out of being an impoverished country entirely dependent on scraping out a meagre existence fishing to a vibrant part of Europe both culturally and economically.

Does Apple understand? Yes, they do. I would sure hope so. On the other hand, my original comment was about consumers. You know, they type of people who post memes touting Obama and the low price of gasoline. They clearly don't understand lower prices increases consumption. Increased consumption increases pollution (aka greenhouse gases). How is that green?

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