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Comment by gtirloni | Hacker News Reader

Let's say it works and we're in the future where the manufacturing has returned to the US and you have US citizens building iPhones in large-scale factories and they are earning minimum wage. But why? Why would a US citizen want to be snapping mobile phones together for 6-12 hours every day? Do you have faith the US has an edge in manufactoring automation and won't need these semi-slaves? Do you have faith the national manufacturing will ever reach the same prices on finished goods that the foreign manufacters were able to provide before the tariffs? I'm asking these questions sincerely as I don't see how this advances the US society in any way (unless you trust the US could have been doing a much better job than China and others in manufacturing consumer goods).

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> ...you have US citizens building iPhones in large-scale factories and they are earning minimum wage. But why? Why would a US citizen want to be snapping mobile phones together for 6-12 hours every day?

The observation was that the wage boost of a minimum wage can be undercut by importing cheap goods made with slave labor. Workers can't get hired, domestic manufacturers cannot afford to hire.

The point is not that snapping phones together is some aspirational career. The point is that a legally mandated wage floor is meaningless if domestic producers cannot hire at all because they are competing with goods made under conditions that would be illegal here.

If you support minimum wages and labor standards, you either accept trade barriers that enforce those standards at the border, or you accept offshoring as a structural feature that permanently shrinks the set of jobs available to low-skill workers. You cannot have both.

No one is arguing that people should be forced into factory work. The argument is that a living wage should be available to anyone willing to work, and that requires domestic production capacity. Whether those jobs are in manufacturing, logistics, or automated facilities is secondary. What matters is that the price system does not systematically reward labor exploitation abroad while penalizing it at home.

I'll respond with a question: why wouldn't you want a living wage available to anyone willing to work? One way to enable that might be to ramp up US manufacturing and production.

Definitely support a living wage available to anyone willing to work.

However, as evidenced by the current situation, the US economy doesn't support manufacturing all types of consumer goods that it demands.

I understand the pressure points you're arguing for but I don't think that the US society will be in a better place once those are enforced.

If everybody willing to work doesn't have access to a job that pays a living wage, isn't that a different issue? Maybe the government could have educational programs so everybody has access to getting the education needed for jobs that pay a living wage (those not offshored to China and others) but I guess that's too much socialism for the US.

I see little to no sign that a living wage isn’t available to anyone willing to work and lots of signs that there are plenty of people who simply don’t want to work. They want a handout, not a wage.

I don’t doubt that there are people who choose not to work, but that’s not really the claim being discussed.

"A living wage being available to anyone willing to work" is not about whether every individual takes a job. It’s about whether the labor market reliably offers full-time work that covers basic costs like housing, healthcare, and food. On that question, the data are mixed at best. Many full-time workers still rely on subsidies, and job availability varies sharply by region, skill level, health, and caregiving obligations.

Some people will always opt out of work. That has been true in every economic system. The harder question is whether the structure of the economy provides viable options for those who do want to work but lack leverage, credentials, or geographic mobility. Pointing to the former doesn’t really answer the latter.

> But why? Why would a US citizen want to be snapping mobile phones together for 6-12 hours every day?

I live in the US and don't support the tariffs but I'll give my best shot at answering.

The US is fairly poorly educated on the whole. In order for people to survive, there need to be an abundance of low skilled jobs. AI and automation is threatening to remove these jobs. What are the poorly educated going to do? Decades ago, someone could work in a factory for their whole life. Yes it was monotonous work but it would provide a living and allow someone to buy a house and life their life. I know because my grandparents came over from Europe after WWII and did this. They spoke poor English but could work in a factory and have a house and a car and live a good life. That's not the case anymore. With further automation and the pace of change increasing, it worries a lot of these types of people. If you have no education and your factory closes, there are not many other options for you.

The idea isn't to bring just one manufacturing plant for snapping phones together. It's to bring many, many plants back to provide these jobs for the poorly educated. So instead of just having one plant in your town, you have several. That means there will be competition for workers and wages will rise.

That's the idea anyway. Do I think it's possible to rollback to that time? No, I don't. But this is what people, mainly in rural areas, want to hear.

Part of the problem is that the US doesn't want to invest in education as a whole. Education would be a better long-term solution. Instead, this leads to the visa situation where the US needs to import a lot of technically skilled workers rather than developing them locally.

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