Trump continous effort to bring manufacturing back to US will have very bad worldwide effects.

[panamaican]

Let's not lose sight of the quality of life / standard of living that resulted from that. Like I said, we are "competing" against populations that exploit a willingness to mistreat and be treated badly (by Western standards).

What is the axis of competition here? Which nation wants to race to the bottom harder on standard of living? How does this avoid either wrecking the environment or devolving into a de facto caste system?

You also did not address the pollution issue.

I hate the quality of life arguments with a passion (no offense to you intended). Especially when people turn around and blame others for an entitlement mentality.

Since when were any of us entitled to a specific quality of life/standard of living? We've become that person who thinks that because he wants a BMW, his boss should give him a raise. Then when he has the BMW, he wants a Ferrari and goes in and asks for a raise so that he can buy it. Not because he's added Ferrari money to the bottom line but because he feels entitled to drive one and the company needs to provide the money to make it true.

So, I'll ask - why are we entitled to a specific standard of living that American corporations must provide?

 

[dza76wutang]

That's a vacuum cleaner add from 1953, that means the vacuum cleaner would cost US$632.5 today.

Do you see yourself paying US$632.5 dollars for a vacuum cleaner?

Do you see 60 years of technological advancement failing to lower the cost of production or introducing competition to lower price?

 

[Seano]

Why does it always seem the rest of the world will collapse if we try to improve our economy in the states? Why aren't we allowed to get a better deal?

 

[Rod1]

depends on the american -- if i was low end, 50k and under with no stock options in apple, then yeah, i'd be pissed.

If you were up end with options and also get to benefit from said cuts, your tune may be different.

If i was looking to work a job assembling iphones -- id be happy that apple is looking to return some manufacturing back to the US.

Considering that they had to put nets due to suicide at these factories i would certainly not be looking forward to working at them.

 

[genecop]

As the American economy improves and strengthens, we will eventually be able to help our friends throughout the world. The process will not be without victims, but all progress is..

 

[Rod1]

Do you see 60 years of technological advancement failing to lower the cost of production or introducing competition to lower price?

Do you? since apparently automation doesnt exists and all manufacturing job losses can be attributed to outsourcing not factory efficiency.

 

[JudoThrowFiasco]

Considering that they had to put nets due to suicide at these factories i would certainly not be looking forward to working at them.

considering some people are wrapping their lips around revolvers because they may not be able to find jobs --who knows?

Can it be worse than working at walmart??

Guess some americans will see.

Im originally from the area Blackberries were designed, and manufactured -- the people who worked at their assembly plant were pretty happy. Anecdotal but applicable.

 

[Rod1]

considering some people are wrapping their lips around revolvers because they may not be able to find jobs --who knows?

Can it be worse than working at walmart??

Guess some americans will see.

Im originally from the area Blackberries were designed, and manufactured -- the people who worked at their assembly plant were pretty happy. Anecdotal but applicable.

Yes, they are far worse than working at walmart, im not kidding.

Walmart at least you see people passing by and can talk to co-workers, it stimulates your brain.

Factory work is for the urban poor, doing menial, repetitive work while some slavemaster is poking at you the moment you falter, working at a factory is basically an slave for hire.

Sure there are a few factories that pay well, and the slavemasters (those that proverbially crack the whips at the factories) earn a decent living, but seriously i have never someone said "I love my job" who works at a factory.

Except the cookie factory (not kidding there is a huge cookie factory in my town).

That being said i would assume that the high tech factories do pay better wages and they tend to have happy workers, but these hire just a tiny percentage of the population that they dont really matter when talking about the macro level.

 

[JDragon]

Some of the stuff Trump is throwing out there he (and his advisors) clearly has not thought through. Take the example of BMW. He threatened BMW to slap a 35% tax on the cars they import to the US if they decide to build cars in Mexico.

The thing is this...

BMW sold 369k cars in the US in 2016.
BMW produced 413k cars in the US in 2016. In fact, it's the biggest factory they have at all.

Now these are not necessarily the same cars - BMW is exporting 70% of the cars produced there and is in fact the largest auto exporter in the US.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Depending on the exact currency values, it's actually quite likely that BMW is reducing the US trade deficit.

And it gets much more complicated if you consider how it would work legally. When does an import actually get taxed? Does it also include car parts? If so, Trump screws over also American companies.

Car manufacturers would likely only assemble the car up to the point where it gets taxed and then import it to the US for final assembly. Consider that this is already being done for Russia: Cars get built, partially disassembled and then re-assembled in Russia.

 

[dza76wutang]

I hate the quality of life arguments with a passion. Especially when people turn around and blame others for an entitlement mentality.

Since when were any of us entitled to a specific quality of life/standard of living? We've become that person who thinks that because he wants a BMW, his boss should give him a raise. Then when he has the BMW, he wants a Ferrari and goes in and asks for a raise so that he can buy it. Not because he's added Ferrari money to the bottom line but because he feels entitled to drive one and the company needs to provide the money to make it true.

So, I'll ask - why are we entitled to a specific standard of living that American corporations must provide?

Surely you see the difference between work covering essentials and entitlement to a BMW, Ferrari, etc.

Collectively, as a society, we have bought into / established a system that basically establishes a floor on what life is going to be like. Why tolerate dropping our floor? I liken this to having a moral / ethical floor. Why do we prohibit bribes (at least at face value) and nepotism? Why not drop our moral / ethical floor too?

 

[Higus]

Never thought i'd see a lefty argument for companies to make more money with less american labour.

Actually, most of these major companies could make products in the US and they still would be profitable. Apple nets 400'000k a year per employee.

First, skipping the fact that the Apple example is particularly poor because you aren't looking at the government policies in China that allow a company like Foxconn to operate (which probably isn't included in your overhead count), or that Apple is on the cutting edge of creating technology to automate and globalized American labor, part of the problem is that people have not been good about recognizing that the issue isn't that globalist/automation technologies are ineffective at generating wealth, but rather that the mechanisms to beneficially distribute said wealth are either ineffective or underutilized.

 

[dza76wutang]

Correct. Telling Companies to knock it off. Not telling governments to knock it off, which is our current OP.

But telling companies to knock it off does not necessarily mean telling them to produce in the USA. It means they either produce responsibly, ethically, and fairly where they are at, produce in the USA, or produce however the fuck they want but sell the stuff somewhere else.

The best thing the US could do is hold US companies to US standards regardless of where they manufacture.

I agree, although I think the governments enable this behavior. Corporations are basically amoral profit generating machines with optimization engines running 24/7. You can't blame the child for eating the cookies left on the counter by the adult.

This reinforces the complexity of the situation and why I think the optimal approach is a combination of ideas from different schools on econ / etc.

 

[panamaican]

Surely you see the difference between work covering essentials and entitlement to a BMW, Ferrari, etc.

Collectively, as a society, we have bought into / established a system that basically establishes a floor on what life is going to be like. Why tolerate dropping our floor? I liken this to having a moral / ethical floor. Why do we prohibit bribes (at least at face value) and nepotism? Why not drop our moral / ethical floor too?

We don't have to drop our floor. But we can't turn around and complain that other countries don't have the same floor. Or that employers hire workers that require less to meet their floor.

That's the entitlement part of it. We can set our floor, we just can't expect everyone else to live by it.

The very theme ends up contradicting itself. We want to make money for a certain standard of living but we achieve that standard of living by buying products so cheap that they don't justify pay rates that support the standard.

 

[Rod1]

Surely you see the difference between work covering essentials and entitlement to a BMW, Ferrari, etc.

Collectively, as a society, we have bought into / established a system that basically establishes a floor on what life is going to be like. Why tolerate dropping our floor? I liken this to having a moral / ethical floor. Why do we prohibit bribes (at least at face value) and nepotism? Why not drop our moral / ethical floor too?

The only one that sets a proverbial floor is the individual who refuses to improve his marketeable skills. Why do we have a minimum wage but not a minimum level of skill?

 

[dza76wutang]

We don't have to drop our floor. But we can't turn around and complain that other countries don't have the same floor. Or that employers hire workers that require less to meet their floor.

That's the entitlement part of it. We can set our floor, we just can't expect everyone else to live by it.

That's fair, but does it not leave a swathe of our population to "twist in the wind" unable to compete because they aren't even allowed to play the same game? So as a society we set a floor then blame the worker for being unable to go under it?

Even if we equalized wages, and let our workers work for as low as possible, it'd still be cheaper to manufacture on a total cost basis if pollution and other regulations were in place in one area but not the other. Do we collectively want to make that trade too?

 

[SensaiRambo]

1.- Manufacturing output produces real wealth.

way to split a cunt hair...

1.- The vast majority of manufacturing jobs are shit jobs that will pay minimum wage if they go back to America, no different than working at walmart.

Lots of engineers make 100k a year with a few years experience, even not union auto workers do pretty well, minium 38$ hr..

"The Center for Automotive Research released a study of labor rates (including benefits) that put numbers to what the imports pay: Mercedes-Benz pays the most, at an average of $65 per hour, Volkswagen pays the least, at $38 per hour, and BMW is just a hair above that at $39 per hour. Among the Detroit competitors, Honda workers earn an average of $49 per hour, at Toyota it's $48 per hour, Nissan is $42 per hour, and Hyundai-Kia pays $41 per hour. The lower import wages are aided by their greater use of temporary workers compared to the domestics. Automotive News says the ten-dollar gap between those foreign camakers and the domestics turns out to about an extra $250 per car in labor, which adds up quickly when you're pumping out many millions of cars." http://www.autoblog.com/2015/03/29/foreign-domestic-automakers-wage-gap/

This might sound crazy but why couldnt we have a big three for cell phone manufacturing? If anyone in the world wants to buy a cell phone, they can pay a U.S. worker to assemble it.Even at 16$ hour, they would have hundreds of applicants per job.

 

[dza76wutang]

The only one that sets a proverbial floor is the individual who refuses to improve his marketeable skills. Why do we have a minimum wage but not a minimum level of skill?

Are we not just trading one artificiality for another?

We killed the market for one set of skills by allowing ourselves to be undercut by "competitors" who are willing to harm themselves to compete. If everything were controlled for: pollution, wages, regulation, etc., do you really think that swathe of "unmarketable" skills would not have a market?

The minimum wage argument is related but ultimately different, in my mind at least.

 

[Rod1]

Even if we equalized wages, and let our workers work for as low as possible, it'd still be cheaper to manufacture on a total cost basis if pollution and other regulations were in place in one area but not the other. Do we collectively want to make that trade too?

There are of course other costs that generates a comparative advantage in one place as opposed to the other.

But i quoted that to point out that isnt that already a big issue among the states of the union?

 

[cooks1]

I hate the quality of life arguments with a passion (no offense to you intended). Especially when people turn around and blame others for an entitlement mentality.

Since when were any of us entitled to a specific quality of life/standard of living? We've become that person who thinks that because he wants a BMW, his boss should give him a raise. Then when he has the BMW, he wants a Ferrari and goes in and asks for a raise so that he can buy it. Not because he's added Ferrari money to the bottom line but because he feels entitled to drive one and the company needs to provide the money to make it true.

So, I'll ask - why are we entitled to a specific standard of living that American corporations must provide?

Yeah, I think the standard of living concept has lost all sense of perspective.

When I was a kid, I lived in a upper middle class neighborhood. We had:

1 TV with 4-5 channels. Eventually cable came and took us to 26.
No cell phones. They had not yet been invented
No Computer in the house until about 1984 when I was in 9th grade. It could do fuck all.

I remember when we got an Intellivision in 1980 or so.

Kids flocked to the house from all over the neighborhood because it was so much better than shitty old Atari.

This was all anyone had. Homeless people today practically have more.

 

[dza76wutang]

There are of course other costs that generates a comparative advantage in one place as opposed to the other.

But i quoted that to point out that isnt that already a big issue among the states of the union?

I disagree with the thought process of lumping willingness to pollute as a comparative advantage. This is not plentiful resources versus scarce resources and using tariffs to equalize, this is something with all kinds of potential adverse outcomes.