Manufacturing Jobs Are Overrated

[Matt Collins]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIotyiaylik

[Swordsmyth]

Garbage.

[acptulsa]

Garbage.

What is? That video? As a whole, or in part?

Or were you referring to this insulting, one word, humorless low-value post?

[ClaytonB]

Garbage.

McMaken understands and rejects the fake "outsourcing" of jobs for political purposes. McMaken is not reciting R-Establishment talking-points where, by some "market magic", it's always cheaper to "do it overseas". The only reason that it's cheaper to make things in China and ship them 10,000 miles around the world to then be purchased en masse in the US, is because of the absurd regulations on US labor that have driven the cost of paying someone to clean a toilet at McDonald's to around $40/hour, all told (remember, the total cost of employment is usually 2-2.5x the actual wage-rate). So, rather than monkeying with tariffs and politicizing "manufacturing jobs", the correct solution is to address the root cause of these problems, which is the oppressive and unlawful regulation of the labor market in the US, as well as the politicization of manufacturing jobs and similar jobs. Stop doing those things, and all the other problems will solve themselves overnight, by the real magic of the market.

[Swordsmyth]

McMaken understands and rejects the fake "outsourcing" of jobs for political purposes. McMaken is not reciting R-Establishment talking-points where, by some "market magic", it's always cheaper to "do it overseas". The only reason that it's cheaper to make things in China and ship them 10,000 miles around the world to then be purchased en masse in the US, is because of the absurd regulations on US labor that have driven the cost of paying someone to clean a toilet at McDonald's to around $40/hour, all told (remember, the total cost of employment is usually 2-2.5x the actual wage-rate). So, rather than monkeying with tariffs and politicizing "manufacturing jobs", the correct solution is to address the root cause of these problems, which is the oppressive and unlawful regulation of the labor market in the US, as well as the politicization of manufacturing jobs and similar jobs. Stop doing those things, and all the other problems will solve themselves overnight, by the real magic of the market.

Do all that, and tariffs.
And don't denigrate manufacturing jobs, they are the foundation of any economy and of national independence, that's why the globalists made them target #1.

[acptulsa]

Do all that, and tariffs.

Anybody: Let's do the thing that actually solves the problem, instead of the thing that won't, and could cause other problems too.

Swordy:



Some people can't get enough problem -> reaction -> "solution" worse than the problem.

[Swordsmyth]

Anybody: Let's do the thing that actually solves the problem, instead of the thing that won't, and could cause other problems too.

Swordy:



Some people can't get enough problem -> reaction -> "solution" worse than the problem.

Only both will solve the problem, Mexico is just across the southern border, and there are many other places to offshore jobs to.
Tariffs were never the problem, nor are they what the globalists want or rare trying to manipulate us into.

It's not "Why can't we have both", it's "Only both will solve the problem".

[acptulsa]

Only both will solve the problem...

I don't believe you. In any case, you have no way to know that. Truth is, we've competed without tariffs, but have never competed with asinine, onerous labor regulations. So one of these things seems to be the deciding factor -- and the other obviously isn't necessary.

[Swordsmyth]

I don't believe you. In any case, you have no way to know that. Truth is, we've competed without tariffs, but have never competed with asinine, onerous labor regulations. So one of these things seems to be the deciding factor -- and the other obviously isn't necessary.

No, the economy was being hollowed out without tariffs, it was just slow enough that people didn't notice until the regulations and taxes were heaped on the top.
The gold started flowing out of the US in the post WWII era because we went for Free Trade, that led to the fully fiat dollar which has only survived and slowed the collapse of the economy because we were the World Reserve currency and that necessitated a world spanning empire to ensure Free Trade and maintain Dominant Reserve status.

Free trade is responsible most of the worst things in the world today.

[acptulsa]

The gold started flowing out of the US in the post WWII era because we went for Free Trade...

We conquered and established an empire, and began cashing in on its resources. And you call that "free trade".

Cute.

[Swordsmyth]

We conquered and established an empire, and began cashing in on its resources. And you call that "free trade".

Cute.

Bunk.

The US didn't "cash in" on anything, it paid out the nose to rebuild and support everyone else.
Only the Globalists "cashed in" and they did it through Free Trade hollowing out America.

[acptulsa]

Zero cashing in on five continents. Not one thing purloined. Check.

Zero globalists living in the U.S. in 1946. Check.

Erasing all the shades of gray from your history books must be exhausting work.

[Swordsmyth]

Zero cashing in on five continents. Not one thing purloined. Check.

Zero globalists living in the U.S. in 1946. Check.

Erasing all the shades of gray from your history books must be exhausting work.

Globalist don't live anywhere, they are rootless cosmopolitans who change residence constantly and move their wealth around the globe just as constantly.
The US didn't improve its economy (it lost it) much less cash in on the empire or Free Trade, both of which have been huge drains.

You are the one denying history and preaching simplistic leftist fables about it.

[acptulsa]

Globalist don't live anywhere...

Rich as Croesus and homeless, sleeping in gutters.

Your fairy tales don't make much sense, dude.

[ClaytonB]

And don't denigrate manufacturing jobs...

Sure, but McMaken is not tearing down manufacturing jobs, he's explaining the political motives behind the over-rating of manufacturing jobs. The Democrats impose globalist policies, like outsourcing jobs, and then the Republicans justify it with all kinds of think-tank nonsense, such as making manufacturing jobs into some kind of "symbol of economic strength." Cars are another example of this. Foreign countries like to define themselves in terms of their capacity to make such-and-such brand of cars. "Germans can make <insert-German-car-brand> and that shows how good Germans are at engineering." Maybe that's a culturally suitable habit for Germans, Japanese or other countries, but it is not culturally suitable to Americans. I don't give a hoot about Ford or Chevy or any other American car brand. If they make cars people want to buy, may they be profitable and succeed wildly, under true American freedom. If they make garbage that nobody wants to buy, let them go bankrupt like all the other car-makers who disappeared a long time ago into the sands of history. Politicizing and collectivizing things like "manufacturing jobs" or "our car-making capacity" is how you end up with Marxism. As we currently have. The way out begins with intellectual honesty instead of just mirroring back the lies of "the other side" with other, opposite lies. That's how we got Marxism in America, in the first place. The R-Establishment will cut this $#@! out or the entire country is going to be burnt to the ground. That's not a threat, that's just cause-and-effect...

[Matt Collins]

Tariffs = tax and tax = theft.

[PAF]

Tariffs = tax and tax = theft.

Exactly.

That Tariff War “Contest” between Trump and Biden to see who “wins” causes consumers to lose.

[Anti Federalist]

Garbage.

It is garbage.

Part of the Small Hat Club's plan: convince you that producing and exporting high quality goods and machines and tools to make them from basic raw materials, is "overrated".

Henry Ford had these slimy $#@!s pegged for who they were 100 years ago.

[ClaytonB]

It is garbage.

Part of the Small Hat Club's plan: convince you that producing and exporting high quality goods and machines and tools to make them from basic raw materials, is "overrated".

Henry Ford had these slimy $#@!s pegged for who they were 100 years ago.

One word: kuzushi

Beware of oversimplifications, because that's how you end up in kuzushi. What is kuzushi? In Judo, it is the principle of the tipping-point... when you're leaning forward on your last toe, it takes only the smallest additional force to tip you head over heels. So, when an opponent lunges at you, the best course of action may be to simply allow them to lunge and help them along on their way to the ground with a snap-down or a pancake or whatever.

You are correct that the globalists are the architects of the current fake globalism. However, free markets are naturally promiscuous, both intra-nationally and internationally. The very globalists you despise are the ones who have created this pre-made "Us-Versus-Them" argument over international trade. Remember, they've done this a million times before -- "When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will." (Frederic Bastiat) The globalists are just as happy with either scenario: forced "free-trade" deals where Americans are forced at gunpoint to subsidize corrupt corporate overlords in foreign countries, OR the cessation of cross-border trade, leading directly to WW3.

The solution, which nobody seated at the table ever proposes (except Ron Paul/etc.), is FREEDOM, as in, 1776, stars-and-stripes, grandma-and-apple-pie FREEDOM. It's nobody's damn business in the government who American businessmen trade with, either at home or abroad. If you're tired of tyranny, then stop supporting tyranny in all its forms. Stop lunging for the yarmulke every time it is waved in your face. That's why they are able to snap you down every time, without fail. The current strategy of libertarians has been failing for 50+ years. Time to re-assess. Time to think a little more deeply than just gut-instinct "For" or "Against".

[TheTexan]

Do all that, and tariffs.
And don't denigrate manufacturing jobs, they are the foundation of any economy and of national independence, that's why the globalists made them target #1.

To be precise, it's the manufacturing facilities itself, and not the jobs per se, that is the foundation of any economy.

All else being equal, a fully automated factory (to such extent as a thing can exist), is better than a factory full of workers producing the same level of output.

It's the means of production that creates wealth, any labor associated with it is simply a cost of doing business.

[fisharmor]

I'm sorry everyone...
Can someone explain to me when we stopped having a GDP which is 50% higher than the next largest in the world?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._GDP_(nominal)

Everyone is talking like the entire aft of the ship is underwater and the hull is about to crack in half.

So the US doesn't make cheap garbage that performs its task for two months and then gets thrown in a landfill.
So what?

Do any of you watch manufacturing tours of places in the US? They're all spotless and brightly lit and everything is all well organized.
Watch a video of Chinese manufacturing and you're going to see colorized film from 1905, where everyone is in the dark, nobody is wearing PPE, and there are metal chips everywhere.

I know this is coming from the wrong vector here but everyone needs to remember that the regulations are there for a reason and they're not all crap. The Chinese don't have any of them and they're still way behind despite outmanning us by four to one.

[TheTexan]

I'm sorry everyone...
Can someone explain to me when we stopped having a GDP which is 50% higher than the next largest in the world?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._GDP_(nominal)

GDP, you mean, Grossly Distorted Propaganda?

Everyone is talking like the entire aft of the ship is underwater and the hull is about to crack in half.

It's more like a submarine slowly sinking towards its crush depth.

So the US doesn't make cheap garbage that performs its task for two months and then gets thrown in a landfill.
So what?

It's more about the infrastructure than the products themselves. The same infrastructure that produces cheap garbage is the same infrastructure that produces components all across the supply chain for basically every product in existence.

If a country can't even manufacture "cheap garbage", then how the heck do you expect it to manufacture more complex goods? The answer is it can't, it can merely assemble things that were manufactured in China, and this is exactly what we see in American factories. Assembly. Not manufacturing.

Do any of you watch manufacturing tours of places in the US? They're all spotless and brightly lit and everything is all well organized.
Watch a video of Chinese manufacturing and you're going to see colorized film from 1905, where everyone is in the dark, nobody is wearing PPE, and there are metal chips everywhere.

I'm sure a lot (even most) of factories in China are still like that, but it's naive to think they haven't already made great strides towards modernizing their factories.

I know this is coming from the wrong vector here but everyone needs to remember that the regulations are there for a reason and they're not all crap. The Chinese don't have any of them and they're still way behind despite outmanning us by four to one.

Yay regulations!

[fisharmor]

Do all that, and tariffs.

Tariffs may not be the reason why we can't buy 50mpg automobiles here like the rest of the world can, but tariffs *are* the reason why the cars that are available here all cost waaaaaay more than the $10,000 the rest of the world has to spend.



And no, I'm not talking out of my ass. Here's one example of a Kia we literally can't get here: 24km/l is 56 miles per gallon, and 7.99 lakh (a lakh is 100000 rupees) is 9,514.49 USD.

As the video shows, you not only have zero idea what tariffs are even in play, but you have zero chance of being able to foresee the ways in which that tariff is going to alter the market.

[TheTexan]

Tariffs may not be the reason why we can't buy 50mpg automobiles here like the rest of the world can, but tariffs *are* the reason why the cars that are available here all cost waaaaaay more than the $10,000 the rest of the world has to spend.

If by "rest of the world", you mean India, then sure.

$#@! is always cheaper in India. Except Nikes for some reason.

And no, I'm not talking out of my ass. Here's one example of a Kia we literally can't get here: 24km/l is 56 miles per gallon, and 7.99 lakh (a lakh is 100000 rupees) is 9,514.49 USD.

As the video shows, you not only have zero idea what tariffs are even in play, but you have zero chance of being able to foresee the ways in which that tariff is going to alter the market.

I have a sneaking suspicion that vehicle would also be in violation of at least 27,000 regulations as well. (Yay regulations!)

So even if you could import it without tariffs, you wouldn't be able to drive it.

[fisharmor]

If a country can't even manufacture "cheap garbage", then how the heck do you expect it to manufacture more complex goods? The answer is it can't, it can merely assemble things that were manufactured in China, and this is exactly what we see in American factories. Assembly. Not manufacturing.

I don't know what version of you I'm arguing with so I'll assume this was in good faith.

My response:
America literally can't manufacture cheap garbage, and you're arguing that this is a bad thing.

When Elon is setting up new factories in Texas to create starship components, nobody in his procurement process is going to say "hey I think we can save 15% by buying cheap Chinese $#@! here".
There's a club, and in that club is the US, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, and sorta Taiwan. I may have missed some bit players but China is not in that club and shows no signs of being in it, either.
If you have a mission critical component or tool you have to get, nobody in his right mind is going to the "outsource" places.

If you want to add headphones to your cellphone package that will likely get tossed in a drawer because everyone knows they're $#@!, you don't by American. Because we literally can't do that.

I fail to see the problem. If everyday people are putting freaking rockets into orbit in America, figuring out how to make a million pairs of flip-flops in a short period of time is in this case literally not rocket science.

[fisharmor]

I have a sneaking suspicion that vehicle would also be in violation of at least 27,000 regulations as well. (Yay regulations!)

Yes, it absolutely would, and I support getting rid of about 26,000 of them. And I support getting rid of the last 1000 too if we can figure out a way to encourage safe workplaces.
All I'm saying is there's a baby in our bathwater.

[acptulsa]

(Yay regulations!)

The ironic part is that those were sold to the public as back door protectionism. Supposedly that would make the largest car market by far unattractive to foreign carmakers.

Of course, what it was really designed to do it really did. It didn't hardly "protect" us from Volkswagens and Toyotas. It did protect us from Peugeots and Fiats. It also protected us from AMCs and nearly protected us from Chryslers and Jeeps forevermore. It wasn't about squeezing out foreign companies. It was about protecting big companies from small companies.

[TheTexan]

I don't know what version of you I'm arguing with so I'll assume this was in good faith.

My response:
America literally can't manufacture cheap garbage, and you're arguing that this is a bad thing.

When Elon is setting up new factories in Texas to create starship components, nobody in his procurement process is going to say "hey I think we can save 15% by buying cheap Chinese $#@! here".
There's a club, and in that club is the US, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, and sorta Taiwan. I may have missed some bit players but China is not in that club and shows no signs of being in it, either.
If you have a mission critical component or tool you have to get, nobody in his right mind is going to the "outsource" places.

I can't speak for Elon, but the US military certainly goes to the "outsource" places. To be fair, they aren't in their right mind, so in that regard you are correct.

https://www.americansecurityproject....upplies-china/

If you want to add headphones to your cellphone package that will likely get tossed in a drawer because everyone knows they're $#@!, you don't by American. Because we literally can't do that.

I fail to see the problem. If everyday people are putting freaking rockets into orbit in America, figuring out how to make a million pairs of flip-flops in a short period of time is in this case literally not rocket science.

If we were talking just flip-flops, sure. If we were in dire need of flip flops for some reason, I'm sure Elon could figure out a way to spin up a few factories to get us what we need in a reasonable amount of time. We're not talking about just flip flops though. We're talking about an entire industry. You can't just spin up an entire manufacturing industry at the wave of a hat.

If foreign supply chains were totally cut off tomorrow, rebuilding that infrastructure locally would be an endeavor that would be the most difficult thing this nation has done since (allegedly) sending a man to the moon, and it would certainly dwarf the costs of that program by a few orders of magnitude.

I would also note that this covers merely the national security aspect of this. There are economic benefits to manufacturing flip-flops here as well.

[ClaytonB]

I typed in "ronpaulforums.com" but somehow ended up at "karlmarxforums.com"... strange...

Let's do a little economics review, shall we?

- A labor market is not only comprised of workers competing for wages, but also for employers competing for the best employees. Top IT security incident-response consultants name their price, not the other way around. The idea that employers "set wages" is a holdover from the middle ages and hasn't been true in the West for centuries.

- Workplace safety is a perk. All else equal (same pay, etc.), I will choose to work in safe conditions rather than unsafe conditions. Thus, companies can win the best employees at the low cost of simply offering safe working conditions. Ratings agencies can independently certify workplace safety without any need to involve the government.

- Government "regulation" can only make these issues worse, not better. All government regulation of the free market in labor (as in all other markets) falls into one of two categories: (1) useless or (2) harmful (to employers, employees, or both).

- American workers are more than capable of competing with foreign labor without harmful tariffs or regulations. The US has far and away the most collective man-hours of experience in practically every industry because we've been industrialized since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and have led all subsequent market revolutions and innovations since then. If you want the best-of-the-best in XYZ industry, with few exceptions, it's located here. That's still true despite the strangulating effect of harmful regulations, not because of them. No safety regulation ever made American industry the leader in its domain. In short, the podunk shortcuts and hacks employed by sub-par competitors overseas only go to guarantee that they will never be able to compete with American industry. Shortcuts (including safety shortcuts) are not a strength, they are a weakness.

"a GDP which is 50% higher than the next largest in the world?"

It used to be double or triple the next largest, and bigger than the EU combined. The closing of that gap is no issue to free-market capitalism, by the way. The more the merrier. Remember capitalism is positive-sum. We do remember that, right? Or we've all become zero-sum Marxists on RPF now??

What once made America a shining city on a hill is that we proved to the world that peace & prosperity come from freedom, not tyranny. Until 1776, the only model of safety was by tyranny. America proved that you can have safety and freedom and, in fact, that the "safety" of tyranny is just an illusion, and the exact opposite. This filled the tyrants of the world with red-faced fury -- America was showing them up for the frauds they are. And things continued that way until the first half of the 20th-century, when the nations of the world united together in global opposition to freedom. They now had a common enemy, and that common enemy is freedom, as it was once exemplified in America. They infiltrated our nation and set up the Military-Industrial Complex and formed the omnipotent welfare-warfare State in America. The country that was founded in 1789 died in 1947 when the permanent national-security State set up shop here. The country writhed in the pangs of death until 9/11 when she finally breathed her last. 1789-America has been stone-cold dead since the Patriot Act was passed. Obama and the Shadow Government were just the clean-up operation. Those advocating for perpetuation of tyranny on this forum and elsewhere are Marxist agents (witting or unwitting) searching for any remaining embers of 1776-freedom, no matter how faint they may be. Any IR signature of remaining freedom is liberally doused with buckets of Marxist ice-water in the form of advocating for bigger, more powerful and more permanent, redistributive welfare-warfare State.

Manufacturing regulation in all its forms is part of the poison that killed us. Spit it out, completely. The time for half-measures has gone. If Trump being shot, and Kamala's campaign posting blatantly fake AI images, while leading Trump in the polls cannot prove that point to you, then there is no hope for you. You are just another ice-cold corpse in the morgue of American Freedom, 1776-2001...

[ClaytonB]

It was about protecting big companies from small companies.

Exactly. Import tariffs are often sold as protecting domestic producers at the expense of foreign producers. The idea is supposed to be that the production that might have been done overseas is, instead, shifted here. In reality, all the cost of an import tariff is paid domestically, meaning, US citizens pay the cost of import tariffs in the form of higher prices than would otherwise have obtained. So, an import tariff is really a subsidy of the protected industry (particularly, the biggest players in that industry) paid by the nation-at-large.

In fact, import tariffs do no "harm" to foreign trade-partners except in a very narrow sense of any canceled orders and the potential losses from liquidation resulting from sudden reduction in demand in the affected industry. There may be some paper losses, as well, due to futures/etc. But again, those losses do not benefit domestic citizens in any way. They are potentially even insurable, so the idea that you can use tariffs to punish other countries is only true if those countries' political leaders also buy into the myth. Most do, and so that's the only reason it "works", but there's nothing in the actual dollars-and-cents that forces the market to yield to the "threat" of tariffs. It's all the same from the standpoint of the market, the numbers just go up or go down, just as with the weather.

But tariffs sure do cut down the number of domestic competitors in any given market.