This already happens with the non-outsourceable stuff that's more expensive (housing, medical, education, etc). So who TF cares if flat panel TVs or Phones cost more? Not me TBH.
This already happens with the non-outsourceable stuff that's more expensive (housing, medical, education, etc). So who TF cares if flat panel TVs or Phones cost more? Not me TBH.
So a fry cook can save a little and put together an entertainment center that would have been the envy of the neighborhood—almost unimaginably good—in 1992. So what? They're facing a hopeless financial situation on every other front. I guess it's nice the 65" 4K TV, Switch, and budget surround sound system can provide a distraction from everything else being ruinously expensive and getting worse every year, with seemingly no end in sight.
Onshoring doesn't seem to me like it will improve the domestic policies that make each of those unaffordable.
Lets compare a 1960s TV to a 2022 TV for example. In the 1950s you had the power electronics, the control circuitry for the tube, the tube, the audio circuitry, tuning, and possibly some control stuff (primitive OSD whether visible or not).
Now in 2022 you have the LCD panel which follows moore's law to an extent, a simple switch mode power supply to drive the TV(single chip solution also follows moore's law to an extent) and a single chip solution to handle audio, tuning, OSD and any special value add such as apps(also follows moore's law).
We should really exclude this category from the cost baskets as it is only serving to mislead.
I actually wasn't entirely fair—cotton and synthetic casual clothes are so cheap they're basically free, anything that can be made of absolutely terrible steel and stamped is cheap (really bad knives, terrible dining utensils that bend under ordinary use, that kind of thing), and so's any plastic shit without expensive IP/branding attached. I think that's all some mix of efficiency improvements (especially for the plastic shit—we put a lot less material in most plastic goods now, than we did in, say, the 1980s) and, maybe, some actually-beneficially effect of offshoring. Oh, and kitchen appliances guaranteed to break within two years because some nylon gear wears out and it can't be repaired for less than the cost of a new one. Those are cheap. Meanwhile, actually-good stuff is about as expensive as it ever was. Be rad if we could apply this alleged cost-savings effect of offshoring to, like, nice things that function well and last, but mysteriously it only seems to materialize in things that are also a level of quality so low that we didn't used to even have such a category. Or rapidly developing technology (consumer electronics). It's as if consumers aren't seeing the bulk of these supposed benefits from offshoring, and instead what price decreases/stability we do see are mostly from tech improvements and obvious quality decline....
I'd add that I think cost increases of onshoring are overblown. US-made goods in e.g. clothing often command a large premium, but that's because if you're going to use US labor instead of Vietnamese or wherever, you may as well also use better processes [EDIT: and better materials] to produce a higher-quality item, since you can't compete with poorly-made goods on price anyway (though, sure, some places try to cheat and turn out crap at US-premium prices while implying it's better than it is). For extremely price-sensitive goods like bottom-of-the-barrel T-shirts that wholesale at like $1, even a 10% increase in costs would mean you fold even if the absolute increase in costs of the article is pennies, so of course those aren't made in the US when there are other options.