Making Central America rich solves the immigration issue that has caused much political divisiveness.
Of course many Americans will likely head south for a better deal:
https://nypost.com/2022/07/28/mexico-city-residents-angered-...
The US was never a bluetooth headphone manufacturing powerhouse. We make other stuff, and we should continue to make the high value goods we are specialized in, not consumer trinkets for low wages. Value added in manufacturing is far more important, and building headphones doesn't do that. Leave that to some other place.
I suspect that you have been listening to too much news entertainment. The US manufacturing industry is as big as it's ever been in terms of real output (not jobs). There has more than a trillion dollars in expansion since the pre-covid peak in manufacturing. The US is #2 in the world for gross manufacturing output, and in the top 10 for value add.
Because:
>> high volume low price manufacturing
Is not possible in the US or EU.
The Foxconn fiasco in Wisconsin was a grift on many, many levels - but the labor part of it was never taken care of even before that whole thing blew up.
The reality is, if you were to manufacture something like AirPods (let alone an iPhone) in the US, you would be not only doubling or tripling your labor costs, you’d be getting shittier labor for your money. Not to mention the additional expenses and tariffs of having to recenter all of the material imports and parts into the US from other parts of the world.
I’m all for paying better wages throughout the world, even at the expense of profit margin or raised device prices. It’s a lot harder to justify paying more for lesser-quality labor and to upend logistics because of some false idea that “made in America” means anything.
> It’s a lot harder to justify paying more for lesser-quality labor and to upend logistics because of some false idea that “made in America” means anything.
Well it kind of does right? It's a geostrategic concern where certain components or products need to be made in safe harbors. Instability is bad for business, and the fact that we are discussing this proves the point. Made in America doesn't necessarily have to mean the rah-rah Eagles soaring kind of thing, it can also mean actual national security concerns relative to geopolitical and strategic realities that necesitate hire costs that outweigh other benefits.
Ok, but we have tried. A number of times. And it has failed. Ironically, foreign car companies probably do the best job with doing manufacturing plants in the US right now. But many of the experiments to bring manufacturing back to the US, especially with electronics, have failed. See also the Foxconn disaster in Wisconsin that cost billions but never got off the ground. And the attempts by Apple, Motorola and others to make products here. And the flat-out education crisis that has prevented more chip fabs from even being built stateside.
I’m not saying don’t try. But we have tried. And it has failed. Abs the quality of labor is more expensive and worse and I don’t blame any company for looking elsewhere.
> it can also mean actual national security concerns relative to geopolitical and strategic realities that necesitate hire costs that outweigh other benefits.
Ok, but “assembled in America” wouldn’t solve this. Almost every single part — the semiconductor, the memory, the screens, the screws, the plastic or aluminum housings, the batteries, the battery controllers, are made in China or Vietnam or Taiwan. Using minerals sourced from Africa or South America or whatever. So unless you can move the entire supply chain to this region (and we do not have the labor, skilled or unskilled to do any of that), a supply chain that has been carefully and meticulously setup for maximum tax benefits for all parties involved, what benefit is achieved of having a person in America assemble a phone with an SoC and RAM and an SSD that was still made in Asia? If there is a national security concern, that concern will exist whether the product is assembled in Texas or in Shenzhen. If there is going to be a back door, it’ll come in anyway.
Even the solution of building for fabs here (which we should do and should have started investing in at least a decade ago) is difficult because we don’t have the labor figures to staff this fabs. And those fabs are largely skilled jobs. TSMC and others are offering insane amounts of money to college grads to move to Asia to work in the fabs. Intel is way behind on building new fabs and part of that is labor-related. And although Intel is based in the US, it doesn’t make the chips that run in 99% of the world’s electronics.
I’m not saying there aren’t potential security problems. I’m saying that those will exist regardless of where stuff is assembled and that globally, being able to upend the whole state of supply chain and logistics away from Asia and into another geographic area is something that would take a decade on the low-end and the parts of the world that would be well-equipped to take on that sort of load (Vietnam, India, some parts of Central and South America), have their own major geopolitical struggles.
It’s a difficult problem to solve and we should absolutely be less reliant on one region for all of our manufacturing, but we need to acknowledge this isn’t a problem that can be solved quickly or that frankly, the US is well-positioned to solve at all.
The latter part of your statement is very poorly understood by most people on HN and generally the US. Having toured overseas factories that make goods my company contract manufactures... there is no way American workers at 3x the wages could possibly compete in terms of productivity. You're absolutely right, and while I somewhat believed this to be plausible before I visited, after actually seeing how products were made over there in "skilled labor" factories, it's truly insane.
Nobody in the US makes SMD parts anymore. It's all higher up in the value chain. But those parts, even if they're commodities, still need to be made. India is going for it which is why Apple is diversifying there instead of the US.
Fastest way to end ESG posturing I suppose. Although ESG concerns don’t typically include “made in America”. It’s not clear to me how that’s be an ESG thing.
while doers do, haters hate. It is complex.
Next economic crisis here we come.
That's like saying computers are going to destroy a lot of jobs and cause an economic crisis, when in reality the opposite happened
I agree with you that automation doesn’t necessarily lead to a loss of jobs. It can create opportunities for whole new skills and job types.
The struggle has been, especially in the US, that we haven’t then properly prepared or skilled people to do the new wave of jobs that can’t be automated.
I always think of this article [1] from January 2017:
> When the German engineering company Siemens Energy opened a gas turbine production plant in Charlotte, N.C., some 10,000 people showed up at a job fair for 800 positions. But fewer than 15 percent of the applicants were able to pass a reading, writing and math screening test geared toward a ninth-grade education.
So out of 10,000 applicants, less than 1500 were even qualified to interview for a job, of which they only had 800 positions. That’s a problem but the solution isn’t to shun automation.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/education/edlife/factory-...
Automation tended to kill blue collar jobs, and if you don't have job even cheap is expensive.
The next wave of automation will kill the higher value jobs too.
It wasn't necessary. You're conflating necessary with desirable.
The gap between the two is an increased profit margin, which is desirable for most corporations.
Further, the CCP is becoming both dramatically more hostile to business in general and more dangerous as a foe to liberal, democratic nations (including Taiwan most prominently), while simultaneously the financial cost of operating in China has continued to climb by the year (which is a trend that is unlikely to significantly reverse). The China discount for offshoring isn't nearly what it was 15-20 years ago.
The disaster that Russia is causing in Europe is a small hint of what China might cause in Asia in the coming decades. Russia's perceived capabilities weren't nearly what the West thought they were; China's military capabilities are more likely to exceed our expectations (in recent history China has more commonly followed the path of hide your strength and bide your time, as opposed to Russia's vacuous boasting), and it's backed up by a gigantic economy with manufacturing that Russia could only dream of.
#2 Most drugs can just as easily be produced domestically by pharmaceutical companies.
#3 Of the drugs that can't be produced domestically, the Mexican cartels are just middlemen that can be cut out entirely. There's no reason drugs from Colombia need to transit Mexico.
#4 If you're worried about Colombian cartels - see points #1 and #2.
We already went through this with alcohol and organized crime.
You don't see a lot of illegal speakeasies and moonshine stills around, do you?
You might want to reread his post or take reading comprehension lessons.
I think coffee/tobacco is probably a good example of what can be achieved with legalizing drugs. It might be the path to it is a bit slow as there's a transition, but I don't see why other drugs couldn't end up similarly to coffee.
Heck, you could argue it for everything even. Why do fruits and vegetables farms don't feel like going the illegal production route?
I’ve never illegally bought drugs but I know people that have. I would not be comfortable doing it, but plenty of people are. Drugs, especially legal ones, are expensive.
I’ve never illegally bought fruit and I do not know anyone who has. I don’t know anyone who would be comfortable doing it. Legal fruit is not expensive.
Assuming we agree they aren't, why is that?
Or in other words, if we're saying it's because drugs are still too expensive and somehow illegal production can compete better on price, why is that?
Especially with weed, the process is so similar to any other commodity agricultural process.
> I would not be comfortable doing it, but plenty of people are
This seems transitory to me. If we take this separate to the price argument, I think it must be restricted to people that were already doing so prior to legal alternatives. Again, tossing the price factor out, I would suspect all new and future consumer would go to a legal source for purchase.
That said, the article talked about production, not wholesale. So it's not clear from the article that illegal sellers have risen, it's possible your street dealers have been impacted, but that legal vendors or byproduct makers are purchasing from the illegal supply chain still.
Cheap labor. Low threshold for consumers to pay a lot, potentially government subsidy.
Drugs have way higher testing requirements. In California cannabis has intense testing and labeling requirements. Fruit doesn’t seem to. Also taxes of course.
> would suspect all new and future consumer would go to a legal source for purchase.
Oh absolutely agree. I think there’s a cohort that would way the drugs but not be willing to engage in illegal activity.
Maintaining stores and supply chains and not a guy with a burner phone and a beat up Toyota driving to a parking lot probably raises costs too (compared to illegal drugs, not fruit obviously). Same at every step of supply chain. The costs are likely high for compliance etc.
This feels like people saying not to build a factory in the US because of Proud Boys, Antifa and MS13.
"New Research Confirms that Migration Rises as the Poorest Countries Get Richer"
"As GDP per capita rises, so do emigration rates. This relationship slows after roughly US$5,000, and reverses after roughly $10,000"
https://www.cgdev.org/article/new-research-confirms-migratio...
2. Article 46 of Indian constitution -> "The State shall promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people, and, in particular, of the Scheduled Castes and the Sche- duled Tribes, and shall protect them from social injustice and all forms of exploitation."
3. The constitution itself of India was written by Ambedkar who himself is a dalit.
We have seen no Western governments strongly criticize India for these oil purchases. The only criticisms have been from media outlets and mild criticisms when government officials are questioned by the media. But even those mild criticisms are usually caveated with something to the effect that this is not gonna affect relations with India.
The reason is simple. Western countries are privately thrilled with Indias arrangement. If India wasn’t buying Russian oil they would be buying it from the global market instead which would further push up oil prices and therefore inflation.
Even better, India is doing it at a massive discount ($35/barrel, I believe) which at current prices effectively translates to Russia selling oil to India at a loss.
Another interesting thing to note is that the $35/barrel discount India is getting, is functionally similar to the price cap idea that the European countries are trying to enact. In fact, I suspect it’s an even lower price than the cap they will settle on, and it remains to be seen if Europe can enact this price cap at all, something India has been doing successfully for the entirety of the war.
This says $20 discount https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-60783874
Don’t forget that it’s also far more expensive for Russia to send oil to India.
They don’t have oil pipelines to India. Their oil is being shipped to India, but their ports are all located on their Northern coast which means every round trip takes days and weeks longer than they used to when supplying the likes of Europe, which means they need more tankers to supply the same amount of oil to India than they would Europe.
I do not say that it makes India somehow right. But the scale of wrongs by Europe is so big that any benefits India is trying to get are minuscule .
Are India behaving any differently to European countries in trying to secure energy?
The EU is taking enormous harm upon itself by what it's doing in regards to the Ukraine / Russia war. It could stay out of the Ukraine conflict, it could have the pipelines all operating normally, it could be enjoying dramatically lower energy bills.
India is doing the exact opposite. They're intentionally avoiding harming themselves and are opportunistically buying cheap energy.
Yes, they're behaving very differently. Which also doesn't mean it's not in India's self-interest to purchase cheap energy, given their economic context. One would be a fool to not grasp why they're doing it and that for their own well-being it may very well make sense; they're not part of Europe and they don't view themselves as being involved.
More importantly, India is buying oil at a heavily discounted price, which at current prices means Russia is likely selling at a loss. This is working so well that Europe is trying to emulate something similar with their price cap idea, which is functionally similar to what India is doing, except India’s discount probably means an even lower price for Russia and India has been doing this successfully for 200+ days while it’s not clear Europe’s price cap idea will ever get off the ground.
I completely understand them buying energy from wherever it’s cheapest. Industrialization of India decreases real poverty, and an increase in prices would hit them hard. Asking them to stop buying fuel is like asking a homeless person for food. And doesn’t the EU continue to purchase Russian gas?
So should we. Too often we help countries that then turn their backs on us because they “care about whats best for their people”. Arent we allowed to do the same? Why such a negative reaction when we even suggest the prospect of doing so.
Dalit are people from lower caste. Also, Indians have been actively engaged in removing the caste-based discrimination for decades now. It will take time. Do you know that at least 50% of all the jobs in the government sector are reserved from people in the lower caste? The same applied to college education as well. This percentage may be higher in some Indian states. Show me another country that has taken such drastic steps to correct historical wrongs.
Also, Andrew Jackson wasn’t a very nice guy, but he’d been dead for 28 years when the Civil War ended. Can’t really blame him for how things worked out at that point.
Here is Lincoln on his goal for the war:
>My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that
He saved the Union so he accomplished his goal for the war.
Rutherford B. Hayes was horrible too, since he was the one who pulled federal troops out of the South (who were there to protect non-white people's voting rights).
Honestly, the Southern states should never have been admitted back into the Union _as states_, but should rather have been annexed back as territories (with no federal representation). Abolitionists admitted those states back under the theory that blacks voting would result in progressive folks being elected.
But we're still paying the price of that foresight today. If the southern states were territories, Trump & Bush would never have won, the Congress would have been a highly-progressive for the past two decades, etc. Honestly, even today it might be an improvement if these southern states just formed their own country, but with a free-trade and currency-sharing treaty with the rest of the US.
2) there is an section in the 14th amendment which allows states’ electoral votes and their Congressional representation to be zeroed out if they don’t play nice (basically the same as territories)
The amendment says: “the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.”
Not zero out, but rather reduce.
Regardless, the conservative SCOTUS would never enforce this anyways.
The leaps and bounds of improvement in lives of lower caste people is one of the primary reason why casteism is not going away. Unlike racism, anyone can claim to be of any caste and there is literal riots happening to be classified as lower caste so that people can claim the benefit. As I said, I don't plan to start an argument here but you are lying and you should tell us why.
I don't see how you can complain about environmental impact when the average Apple user in the US probabaly has an order of magnitude higher impact on the environment than the average Indian.
This statement lacks nuance regarding the dynamics of the region. India has to negotiate with China, Pakistan, Russia, EU, US and others. India tries to balance the situation as best they know how, and each party doesn’t always get everything they want.
Recently India had China right on their doorstep/border and I expect it put a bit of strain on the India-Russia relations due to the ties between Russia and China. It looks like that situation has cooled down some, which is positive.
I’d prefer the US engage with India in a way that strengthens our shared values and our trading interests.
The caste system was a part of India but every Government since independence has made attempts and continues to make everything possible to make the lives of the historically lower castes better off.
Not to mention India was forced to become a USSR ally because the USA had sent their aircraft carrier in a India Pakistan war to support the Pakistan side. And then the USSR sent their aircraft carrier in India's defence.
India’s geopolitical focus was Pakistan. In that, Russia was a good ally. As that shifts towards Beijing, Moscow becomes one of the worst possible defence partners.
But I get what you mean, they have similar relationships with China and the US as well, they are a sovreim nation that do what they think is best for their people.