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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>The US already lost the DRAM industry, the disk industry, the display panel industry, most of the small component industry, and the consumer electronics industry. In ten years, the US won't be able to make electronics in volume.

That's how old empires fall and get replaced by new - and this while everybody in the old remains complacent...

Most of this is out of greed - the corporations got bigger margins if they outsourced production. And the public could short term buy more for less - to the detriment of the local working class, and ultimately, the middle class. And domestic stuff like rent, health, education, etc, would remain expensive.

First you lose the factory jobs, then the factories, then the readily available infrastructure to build one soon as you need it, then the investments to new technology, and ultimately, even the know-how (and meanwhile, lots of patents also go elsewhere, to your subcontractors).

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That's the story the left tells to create outrage to get votes; it provides an illusory sense of control and redress.

"Corporations" are profit-seeking for the entire lifetime; there isn't a point where the making-money comes to the fore and ruins everything.

Automation explains almost all loss of manufacturing jobs. America today manufactures more than it ever has, with very few jobs needed. A car factory today requires a few hundred people, rather than many thousands.

As for why temporary monopoly companies become less innovative, the answer there is somewhat obvious: because innovation isn't the best profit-making strategy. But that's fine: hence the breakdown of temporary monopolies via competition.

Then there's the question of "why china" is where genuine competition comes from, and that's largely due to economies of scale and large pools of talent. The labour costs are secondary for the capacity to automate and integrate supply lines.

America is a massive country with low density, poor infrastructure and limited talent base for relevant skills. The latter is a choice of its citizens to educate themselves in a particular way. The former is the choice of its citizens to vote for particular government programmes: low-density sprawl, and tax-cuts.

If you want to "bring manufacturing back" (whatever that means) you need significant tax raises to build and subsidise significant amounts of infrastructure and subsidise education and training in the relevant skills.

Of course, that isn't as satisfying for a voting for a rable-rouser.

> If you want to "bring manufacturing back" (whatever that means) you need significant tax raises to build and subsidise significant amounts of infrastructure and subsidise education and training in the relevant skills.

IMHO large investments in infrastructure and education are the playbook China has followed for the last 40 years to become the world's biggest factory.

In China's case, they didn't fund it by raising taxes on an already-wealthy populace, but rather by going "lol, workers' rights?" and forcing an entire generation (or two) work 12 hours a day for 6 days a week (996) making pennies per hour. [1]

The PPP of Chinese citizens has gone from ~$1000/year in 1990 to ~$17,000/year today. [2] That's a 17 fold increase, compared to just ~2.7 for the US over the same period. [3] I highly doubt any employee in a country like the US, UK, or Germany is going to accept a 996-style work schedule (in fact it would be illegal in many, if not all, of these jurisdictions) and especially not for the current PPP of a Chinese citizen.

> Automation explains almost all loss of manufacturing jobs.

This is also applying to China now. You can't have labour costs increase 17x over 30 years and not consider automation to reduce your costs. However, since China has historically been the destination of outsourced manufacturing, they have built up supply chains that the US used to have back when the US did "manufacturing."

Why would a profit-driven corporation spend money to bring the supply chain back to the US when there is no economic reason to do so? To me, this is a very large issue, separate from "infrastructure" that the US government has yet to seriously discuss. Raising taxes is a politically toxic move in many political systems, and it's incredibly unlikely a corporate entity would voluntarily choose to forego profit to help an OECD country re-develop its lost supply chains.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

[2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...

[3] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...

> forcing an entire generation (or two) work

Err... no. 996 is a recent culture of work in Chinese IT.

The reason subsitance-living agricultural workers moved to cities and factories is the same reason they have always done so in history: farming is dangerous, risky toil.

A wage is highly stabilising, and highly attractive. You do not need to "force" people from farms into factories.

> Why would a profit-driven corporation spend money to bring the supply chain back to the US when there is no economic reason to do so?

The US can engage in the same state-funded programme of infrastructure investment, skills subsidy, and massive sector-targeted tax cuts. That it chooses not to is the explanation of why the US isn't competing successfully. NOT "996".

Its just scape-goating to blame "the despicable Chinese!" when at the same time you're doing nothing to compete with them.

>That's the story the left tells to create outrage to get votes; it provides an illusory sense of control and redress.

The left? That's just reality, not a left/right thing. I think it's now common sense in both the left and right. Heck, Trump (which one would call right) admitted more or less the same (that globalization lost America jobs and sending things to China was a bad idea).

>"Corporations" are profit-seeking for the entire lifetime; there isn't a point where the making-money comes to the fore and ruins everything.

That corporations are profit-seeking for the entire lifetime is neither here, nor there. You can be profit seeking and selling good products and fostering a healthy community, or you can be profit-seeking and fucking customers and polluting and so on.

So, there might not be a "a point where the making-money comes to the fore and ruins everything" but there's absolutely a case that how a corporation goes about making-money can ruin everything.

Which also means there a point in time, where corporations were let (culturally, legally, etc) to run wild with money-making to the detriment of other things (society, externalities, etc).

>America is a massive country with low density, poor infrastructure and limited talent base for relevant skills.

China is an even more massive country and didn't have an educated workforce (tons of farmers etc) before it began investing on building one. As for the population density, that's a red herring - China got workers brought over from the countryside to work in big cities, and America can do the same.

Insofar as trump repeats the same tropes, he's being quite leftwing. Protectionism and mercantilism are typically leftwing positions as they are contrary to free markets.

> before it began investing on building one.

That is my point. Americans chose not to do that. A loss of manufacturing didnt "happen to america" like some crime. American society chose to be educated differently, chose to spend and raise taxes differently, and presently, continues to choose to do so.

The "blame china and outsourcing" narrative is just misdirected scape-goating. Trump's repetition of it is a pretty strong signal of its mumbo-jumbo narcissim.

China has invested in its infrastructure to an incomparable degree. The US has not, does not, and will not. It is your fault.

I don't think Trump is repeating the same tropes because he is leftwing. He just straight-out clueless, and finds a target, any target, for his attacks. China is a great target, whether the attack is right or not, it doesn't matter to him, as long as his supporters lap it up.

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