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Comment by brightball | Hacker News Reader

I get that statistics can be manipulated but...

https://www.ismworld.org/supply-management-news-and-reports/...

> Economic activity in the manufacturing sector expanded in July for the seventh consecutive month, say the nation’s supply executives in the latest ISM® Manufacturing PMI® Report.

> The report was issued today by Susan Spence, MBA, Chair of the Institute for Supply Management® (ISM®) Manufacturing Business Survey Committee.

> “The Manufacturing PMI® registered 55.6 percent in July, 2.3 percentage points above the June figure and the highest reading since May 2022 (55.9 percent). The overall economy continued in expansion for the 21st month in a row.

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PMI is a sentiment survey of 400 manufacturing executives. Vibes only.

Are you saying PMI is a survey of 400 manufacturing executives about the status of manufacturing, and you don't think it carries meaningful signal about the status of manufacturing? I wonder what you think _would_ carry meaningful signal, if you're not satisfied by asking the people that are doing said manufacturing?

Hard numbers. Like output, or investment made. Like number of cars, tons of steel, etc. Things that actually reflect reality

Executives aren't exactly the ones doing all the manufacturing. If you want to look at employment in manufacturing, the most you can say is that's it's stabilized after the first year of this administration: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1XUKx

ironic given top comment on this thread is pure vibes. interesting you chose to repond with this "vibes" comment to this instead.

While the top comment is pretty vibey, it's not presenting itself as firm statistics.

Manufacturing has never really declined in US, not in absolute terms.

It's simply facing the same fate of agriculture: automation.

Politicians want to sell to people they can bring back manufacturing jobs, but it's not like in china they making cars or batteries or chips by hand. It's all automated everywhere.

Have you seen that SmarterEveryDay video about trying to make a grill brush in the US? That obviously would’ve been possible in the US 50 years ago but is borderline impossible today because every manufacturer laughs in your face and just says “make it in China, we can’t help you”

This is the most recent of those videos:

https://youtu.be/vS6HEes8daw

(edit: seriously? Who downvotes this. The preceeding comment mentions a video, I share the source, wtf. Don't shoot the messenger.)

Paid actors mostly.

  > it's not like china they making cars or batteries or chips by hand

That was true a while back but less so now. Chinese companies are moving to "dark factories", which can function autonomously without humans (hence no need for lighting).

https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtificialInteligence/comments/1jci...

I think you've misunderstood the sense of the comment you're quoting

They mean it is not the case that in China they make these things by hand.

> Manufacturing has never really declined in US, not in absolute terms.

Is a factory making 2GB RAM chips twice as productive as one making 1GB RAM sticks?

Because if manufacturing output is merely constant while chipmakers’ output has skyrocketed (on paper, as PCs went from 32MB RAM to 32GB over a few decades), other manufacturing output must have fallen a great deal.

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