It's not in China, Germany, Japan, or South Korea. They still have a huge manufcaturing presence. Samsung builds its products in South Korea. Everything has to get manufactured somewhere and, in my view, the US has made a mistake by outsourcing this capacity more than other countries.

As I said elsewhere in the thread, chip manufacturing is a special category as well, and Intel has the only US-based fabrication that is competitive with the state of the art.

It should be as important to protect that capacity as other industrial sectors, like Boeing.

Yeah, China is a manufacturing powerhouse. But the world system has moved beyond that. The US can't compete on price.

Germany and Japan have stagnant economies. South Korea and the US grow at similar rates but the US has a massive base to grow on.

America's economy grows at 2.9% every year. The largest in the world and it's still growing at this rate.

I take this trade every single time. It's why Americans are so wealthy in general.

Are you talking about the same americans that required huge bailouts from the government the second the economy stopped because 4 out of 5 live paycheck to paycheck?

That's right. The same Americans who are nonetheless more wealthy in the median than most people in Europe or anywhere else outside North America.

Outsourcing your safety net to the government is the classic move of a well-functioning society.

If you are living on credit in what sense are you wealthier?

> Outsourcing your safety net to the government is the classic move of a well-functioning society.

Are you watching the same news as the rest of us? where is this well-functioning society you speak of?

>Are you talking about the same americans that required huge bailouts from the government the second the economy stopped because 4 out of 5 live paycheck to paycheck?

Yeah, it's their fault for not expecting and being prepared for the government banning the majority of commerce.

If 4/5 Americans cannot stay afloat 1 month on their own then yes, it is a big problem. If someone gets into an accident, or has a medical issue, or suddenly loses their job, it puts them into the same position.

I think we should arrive for a society where it's citizens can earn enough on their own to at least have a small safety net.

It is a problem but it raises a question: Are 4 / 5 Americans unable to stay afloat because they are underpaid or because they expand their expenses to fit their income?

We talk about a race to the bottom irt. companies but it might be wise to apply the same thinking to society at large as well.

Companies have been criticized(rightly imho) over their lack of reserves to handle the corona virus and shutdown. The defense of the companies is that by keeping cash on hand instead of spending it, they are at a competitive disadvantage.

This holds true for individuals as well, abet in a more abstract manner. If you are young and trying to attract a mate, wearing old/unfashionable clothes is detrimental. In some circles, what car you drive and it's age is important.

This thinking also extends to non-tangible things as well. What TV shows do you watch? Subscription to cable or even streaming is expensive but it is something we often feel we have to have, not only for our entertainment but also to be connected culturally with our peer group.

These pressures and factors are not new, the phrase "Keeping up with the Joneses" came from a comic in 1913. It has been argued that social media is making these pressures even greater, as people share(and reward the sharing of) the positive aspects of lives but leave out the negative aspects. This creates a sort of perverse view of the world where you see people taking vacations, going out to eat and buying new gadgets where it all runs together and does not show the effort, hardships and sacrifices made to obtain those things.

If we as a society do not value having savings then why should we expect anyone to save? Especially is the reward for doing so is not visible?

> Samsung builds its products in South Korea

Actually no, they build phones in Vietnam and India. They just avoid China.

Samsung's bread and butter, components (eg, dram and displays) business are still made in South Korea. The company also recently announced that they are investing $100B over next 10 years in their foundry business, which is likely to be all in South Korea.

My Samsung phone says Made in Korea on the back. I assume that means it was assembled there and mostly uses Chinese components on the inside like everyone else. It is almost impossible to avoid China if you are in the manufacturing business.

I highly doubt your Samsung phone contains many Chinese parts. The camera, screen, chip come from Japan, SK, and Taiwan. Maybe the speakers were made in China.

I recently read this review https://phenomenalworld.org/reviews/trade-wars book sounds quite good as a sober explanation without the blinders of neoliberalism or industrial romanticism.

https://phenomenalworld.org/interviews/trade-wars-are-class-... interview is nice too.

And it would be even more massive if we actually made anything. In fact if it weren't shrinking by volume it might be growing faster than those other sectors considering how much of the economy is "consumer" driven.

Go to the mall/shopping center, and try to find something made in the US that isn't a bulk chemical product, or something so low value in relation to its weight that its still made in the US (paper). If you go back ~30 years it was the complete opposite. If you found something manufactured overseas it was unusual. So in just a couple decades we went from pretty much 100% of consumer electronics, clothing, furniture, general home appliances, cookware, toys, etc made in the US to a tiny fraction. Even in areas where we still manufacture things, its rare that 100% of the products in a particular segment are produced here. Sure, you can buy American made tires, AC units, etc, but most of the volume isn't made here. But even in the case of AC units its frequently assembled of foreign made compressors/etc where the 4 bolts, two pipes and 4 wires that need to be connected (by $15/hour labor in basically warehouses) get more value add than the actual hi tech parts made in high capex factories. All for the purposes of computing "made in America".

> Go to the mall/shopping center, and try to find something made in the US that isn't a bulk chemical product

Please don't use anecdotes and personal experiences when discussing economics.

You lament about US not manufacturing low value added products. You can't have personal experience that would give you a good view.

You must use statistics and data to argue.

Fine, lets play that game.

Show me the statistic that say how many shoes/sandals/boots were sold in the US last year. Now show me what percentage of those shoes were made in the US of foreign components and what percentage of them were made beginning to end of US sourced components.

Many of these companies can't even keep their internal supply chain logistics in order enough to report what country something was actually manufactured in, much less reporting hard volume/etc numbers sufficiently to do anything but obfuscate.

Put another way, if the "economic" numbers weren't so cooked they might be a reasonable basis for argument, but time and time again when you dig into something you quickly hit a dead end because no one actually collects such detailed statistics across the entire economy. Sure you can tell me how many planes Boeing made in each of the past 30 years, but good luck as you move down the supply chain, or for less valueable goods like refrigerators.

If you look at the computer industry you frequently can't even tell how many units a company sold in the US because they want to obfuscate their declining volume. To be more specific, can you tell me how many zseries mainframes IBM sold each year for the last 10 years? The last couple times I looked at this, the closest you can get is "installed capacity" which is IBM multiplying the machines by their theoretical capacity which is measured using some proprietary IBM metric and doesn't even represent actual sales because they have "capacity on demand" which allows them to sell/install a machine with capacity X but only charge and provide the customer with a fraction of X. So, each generation of machines is some larger multiple of X, which allows them to sell fewer machines (and capacity), and claim more installed capacity.

You will get a more realistic view going to your local target, and standing in the sock isle counting what people are buying than you will get from the target sales numbers.

(socks are another one of those areas where its actually possible to buy US manufactured textiles if you look, because they are the kind of garment that is easily automated. Its likely even US cotton, but whether it was shipped overseas for processing first, good luck..)

China is not post-industrial and without their factories US businesses would have no products to sell. China can change its mind about cooperating or drastically raise prices any time they want. The US has put itself in a very precarious position by dumping all manufacturing. Manufacturing is what adds real value to an economy. Without something to sell it's turtles all the way down. OTOH US labor is not competitive and that is a very real problem. Americans have sort of become too rich for their own good. At some point every single person has to start their own business because being an employee will not pay enough to keep up with the cost of living.

> Manufacturing is what adds real value to an economy.

This is yet another misconception that only manufacturing is real.

Share of services as the value of manufactured products is also increasing. In developed countries it's usually 40-50%.

China produces low value added products. Producing what China does in the US would reduce value added in the US economy. The US would become poorer.

Manufacturing is the foundation upon which all tertiary and quaternary industries are ultimately built.

It is pretty clear that you are not using the same definition of value as the person you are responding to.

It's not great to be #2 when #1 is run on a commitment to oppose human rights.

It's "deindustrialization" when US has slid down from "#1 by far" to "#3".

Yes because the we don’t do things like blow up other countries to “bring democracy”. We also don’t have anywhere near the highest rate of incarceration in the industrial world. We aren’t the only democratic nation that still has capital punishment and we believe that health care should be a universal right.

Not to mention we would never have the federal government sending a police force into cities that don’t want them.

The US is not exactly a “light on a shining hill”.

Fascinating way to look for deindustrialization. In this method, if China had some kind of super-SARS that killed everyone, then the US would have reindustrialized!