America: Still Full of Ideas, But Not Making Jobs | Hacker News Reader

America: Still Full of Ideas, But Not Making Jobs

economist.com

30 pointsgatsby15 comments

I am from Australia and have a comment here:

The article quotes that Obama "worries that the next breakthroughs in energy, transport and information technology will occur elsewhere".

The reality is that these people "elsewhere" would probably love to come to the US to carry out those breakthroughs, but they don't due to

1) The steep visa requirements, and 2) Even if they were granted access, then they know full well that they would be hit with patent lawsuits from large companies the second their work showed any promise.

I can't speak for the entire rest of the world but personally this is the reason I will not bring my startup to the US - it is simply safer and easier to keep the company out of the US and sell online to its citizens.

If anyone there really cared they would stop this software patent mess and hurry up with the startup visa.

Summary: Design it in the US, build it in China.

The difference between the space race back then and the current situation now is that "out innovating" China doesn't really lead to many jobs here in the US.

I worry that we will be missing out on the category of new design ideas that are developed while building something. Out of a factory full of people intimately familiar with making a widget, a few of those people should have some pretty good ideas for a better widget or a better way to make the widget. But these days, if the factory is in the US, there are almost no people in it.

That is exactly Andy Grove's recent argument as well - innovation comes not just from people with random ideas, but from the knowledge organizations develop as they make things. You can't outsource the latter and expect your innovation pipeline to remain as full.

Some of the highend, big-dollar audiophile tube stuff is now coming out of China... the tube factories moved to lower-wage areas (out of the USA) and to places like China. Someone capitalized on the combination of (easy available tubes) + (ability to be able to custom-assemble in small qty) + specialized design.

Exactly what I was going to say. US and many Western countries are idea machines, but they are all built in Asia.

As someone said, Japan takes something and makes it better, China takes something and makes it cheaper.

Does anyone know what exactly the price difference would be if companies actually bothered to build in the US instead of China? I know it would depend on what was being produced, but what is the real savings of making shoes and clothes abroad? American Apparel pays at least $10-12 per hour (not great, but better than pennies) and there are certainly many Americans who were making that and were laid off.

They won't be founding startups, but I'm sure many would love to learn the skills to work in a factory if it was even an option here anymore.

What do companies save by outsourcing to countries where they don't pay taxes, health care, benefits, vacation, and price per hour is dirt cheap? I heard 20% somewhere a while back. If an iPad cost 20% more would it still sell? Or a pair of Nike shoes? While it has been victim of some about of fraud, Product(RED) got people to pay a bit extra for something they would have bought anyway knowing that money was going to a good cause.

The middle class is under attack, but the bottom is really struggling and things are only going to get worse. Some people depend on being a cashier. If we can stabilize the bottom workers we can rebuild from there.

There are a lot of issues other than just wages in a lot of this manufacturing. I think environmental and other compliance costs are a major factor for a lot of manufacturing, and for many forms of electronics, being near your suppliers is a big deal -- and now china has reached a critical mass of subcontractors and suppliers, such that it's easier to build in china.

I actually have some hardware projects I want to build over the next decade, and I'd prefer to produce them in the US or UK if at all possible (they're security devices). Should be interesting seeing exactly what can be done. I believe if you can solve the subcontractor/parts problem, modern automation should make US production competitive, as long as your production process isn't terribly polluting or regulated (which I wouldn't want to be responsible for even if it happened in China). Some place like eastern WA or TN or something might be a great place to manufacture high value products again.

It's a real shame, great thinkers can no longer congragate inside a company, least their ideas are taken for little compansation and implemented across seas.

Great programmers are always breaking away from their 9-5 to create their own start-ups, but is this really the most efficent way?

Their is a shortage of skill trade people in the country. It might be time for some people to go down that career path.

I agree completely, as I know you are talking about electricians, plumbers and similar professions.

However, some of that stuff may have gone to china too, sort of. What do you do if your dishwasher breaks? Throw it out, buy a new one. (Unless you can fix it yourself!) TV? same thing.

There's also no such thing as a 'milk man' anymore either. I don't think it was always like that.

I think it might just be the result of automation having increased the efficiency of production techniques.

The ability to create an abundance of products cheaply could(has?) cause(d?) a net increase in relative poverty simply because fewer trades are considered skilled (middle class).

To pick a nit... In many communities there actually are people who deliver milk. For example: http://www.royalcrestdairy.com/ in Denver/Colorado Springs area.

Food and milk delivery is actually quite common in ND, SD, and MN. for example http://www.schwans.com

True on the manufacturing, but we do need the electricians, etc. because those jobs can't be done in an assembly plant or over the wire. Infrastructure and some people's quest to destroy the tradesman / craftsman are going to make things difficult.

With Exxon making $11bn in profit, no wonder no one is making jobs here. Just because "gas is $5/gal elsewhere" is no reason it should be here—because our economy runs on cheap gas. When gas gets costly so does food, and so does the feeble reenergizing of the economy.

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