Innovation happens on the factory floor. Pretty soon the countries we outsourced to will come up with better designs too. The U.S. thesis for outsourcing is that the manufacturing countries are filled with braindead automatons who can't compete with our "Designed in California". That may have been true in the 20th century when the U.S. brain drained all the top talent, but now other nations are in a position to pay their engineers more than U.S. companies. The "Designed in California" cope can only last so long.
People that reach for this kind of decisions occasionally seem to still have a colonialism point of view, like "they will do as told and we still stay in control", except that isn't how things work and eventually they stand on their own feet and are able to even outperform their "masters".
Oh man, the amount of Dutch "we're going to build a knowledge economy" news articles I've seen in the last decade that barely hide their colonial mindset is staggering, and the implied assumption that "we" are smarter than "them" is so blatantly racist that I'd almost feel offended if I didn't know that they'll reap what they sow with that attitude soon enough.
And yes it stinks of "we'll live with the hard part of telling other people what to do".
You clearly haven't dealt with German managers at their companies operating in Eastern Europe ;)
Jokes aside, "behaving badly abroad while showing their best behavior at home" is basically yet another proud colonial tradition, isn't it?
I wish this didn't ring so true. It is so prevalent that for those who were raised locally and who went through said university schooling it is still painfully easy to distinguish from which student union in which city these guys originate based on how they treat each other, even when they graduated decades ago. Which ironically means that they are guilty of the kind of primitive tribalistic nonsense that they project onto other cultures.
... actually, now that I wrote that out, I guess that could partially explain a few things as well.
(and I'm well aware that this is not a problem unique to the Netherlands, but it still sucks)
I was working for a major Dutch electronics company and it was interesting to watch how whenever colleagues from their US/German brach would come visit the Dutch managers would treat them like equals and invite them to drinks and dinners but whenever colleagues from their Czech/China/Singapore branch would visit, the Dutch managers would politely pretend they don't exist.
As an Eastern European immigrant, I can think of worse things you can be called in the West than Maestro!. You have no idea how good you have it.
No Problem with that ;)
It's not necessary colonialist as such, merely takes the past history as implications of future patterns. The so called colonialist powers were ahead in the game from 1700's up to the middle of the 20th century.
Colonialism coincided with the rise of industrialization and science. The so called "colonized" nations did not have the chance to utilize these and rise up to their full human potential.
I think a good historical example is that of Japan. Japan was effectively a medieval state in 1850 when the Perry expedition forced it to the modern era [0]. And 50 years later they beat a major world power in a technological military engagement in the Battle of Tsushima [1] against Russia! Gaining 500 years of advancements in technology in 50 years really amazing. But it really just reflects that we are all human, and all successes are due standing in the shoulder of past giants. And late comers to the game still have those same shoulder to stand on.
I suppose, then, half a century - or, two generations - is a good rule of thumb on how long it takes for a sovereign power to play catchup and to leapfrog to current "state of the art" just as long as it has a functioning state.
There are fascinating artifacts from the period following Japan's opening up to foreign trade, reminiscent of European science in the Renaissance era - with an Asian twist.
I'd like to point out though, that there was a steady "leak" of technology, or rather cultural exchange with the West, through the Dutch since the 17th century.
Japan–Netherlands relations - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan%E2%80%93Netherlands_rela...
---
To return to the "leap-frogging to the modern era" - it seems that developing nations are all in the process of doing this. I recall reading how many African countries "skipped over" the building of traditional telephone infrastructure, and went staight to mobile.
That also supports your argument that it only takes a couple generations for a country to catch up to modern standard of technology.
But to surpass it, and become the leading edge, probably requires a bigger cultural change - to have an academic and business environment that fosters innovation. In that aspect, I think the U.S. has a lead in the world, and will continue to keep that competitive advantage for a while.
It suggests that cultural (and perhaps social and psychological) change is harder to achieve than the knowledge transfer of technology.
In a way, Japanese was ahead of Europe, using mass produced firearms in warfare earlier than Europe did.
However, after 17th century gun industry declined in Japan, and Japanese gun manufacturing was way behind europe in the beginning of 19th century [0].
But they really picked up the pace after that! Japanese Arisaka bolt-action rifles were the cheap-and-plentiful firearm used in many countries up to ww2. I have one Type-38 from 1905 or so and it sure is still very nice.[1]
Japan-Portugal History - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan%E2%80%93Portugal_relatio...
Right, I'm connecting the dots, picturing the historical context..
That reminds me how Japanese children are taught in basic school about 黒船, "black ships", as representing first contact with the West.
Black Ships - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Ships
This was part of the Age of Discovery, as the Portuguese (chronologically) led the discovery of Africa, Asia, the Americas..
The two countries I know the most about are my own (Australia), and the US. And I definitely see a lot of differences in corporate culture (willingness to take risk, thirst for innovation, etc) between the two countries, differences which generally come out in the US's favour.
I remember Elon Musk saying that "the United States is the greatest country that's ever existed on earth". The US has lots of quite serious problems and in saying that Musk is choosing to ignore all those problems. (And at least some of the problems the US has are caused by distinctive aspects of US culture). But, look at SpaceX – probably in no other country on earth could SpaceX exist.
Certainly I don't think anything like SpaceX could exist in Australia. Of course, the US has the advantage of 13 times more people. But, if you could imagine a country with the same population as the US but the same culture as Australia, I don't think anything like SpaceX could exist in that hypothetical country either.
If Musk's dreams come true, SpaceX could turn out to be the most important company in human history thus far. (Of course, maybe his dreams won't come true – but I hope they do – I would love to live to see the day that humanity becomes a multi-planetary species.)
They are basically the same and it is a result of different attitudes of capital providers. In Australia, you have more conservative financial institutions and no venture capitalists -> so companies must take less risk.
Related to risk is also innovation. If you can take more risks, you are more willing to purchase product and services, that are not quite ready, but can help you move you further even as they are. If you cannot take risks, you will purchase only products and services, that have already proven their usefulness at other companies. Thus crippling the ability to innovate around you.
Australia consistently has R&D spending below the OECD average (as percent of GDP). The Australian government could easily fix this, either by increasing public sector R&D funding, or increasing tax concessions for private R&D funding, or both. But they don’t, because it isn’t a political priority.
(And doesn’t culture have a great role to play in determining what is seen as a political priority, and what isn’t?)
Australia's failures in space aren't the fault of other countries, they are the fault of Australia. Australia's National Space Program (1986-1996) failed primarily due to chronic underfunding. That's not the fault of the US. And then Australia went over 20 years without any dedicated space agency – not the fault of the US either. And now Australia finally has one, it has a puny budget of approximately AU$10 million (around US$7 million) a year. If Australia was to spend as much on the Australian Space Agency (as a percentage of GDP) as the US spends on NASA, its budget would be over $1 billion a year. But it's not. Is that the fault of the US? If Australia decided to spend $1 billion a year on its space agency, I think NASA (and the US government more broadly) would be quite pleased. Australia could make some substantial contributions to one or more NASA programs.
In the 1970s, Australia was an associate member of ELDO, one of the predecessor agencies of the European Space Agency. The ESA was happy to offer Australia a similar membership status in ESA, but Australia declined. Canada went ahead and remains a formal “cooperating state” of ESA to this day. The offer is still open - the ESA has said so publicly [1] - but Australia isn't interested in taking up the same status as Canada, primarily because it would require Australia to contribute financially to ESA projects (i.e. spend money on space, something Australia doesn't want to do). (I've heard the claim that the US pressured Australia not to become an associate ESA member, but I've never heard any actual evidence to support that claim; and did they pressure Canada not to have their current “cooperating” status?)
[1] https://thewest.com.au/news/australia/europeans-offer-space-...
I'm actually surprised you're asking this, because this phenomenon is fairly well known, but anyway. TSR2, Black Arrow and Concorde (with France of course) are a few examples from the UK, and the Avro Arrow is an example from Canada. It does require capitulation from weak or compromised leaders in the producing nation. Take France as a counter example of a country that refused to capitulate to US demands e.g. military aircraft, rockets.
Concorde was always pushing the envelope in terms of technology and economics. I think a big part of why it ultimately failed, was that improvements in the luxuriousness of business class and first class made it more attractive for many people to spend less money on getting there slower in luxury than spending more to get there quicker but in Concorde's far less luxurious conditions. Add to that the small addressable market (due to the high price point and limited number of aircraft), the post-9/11 aviation downturn, the Air France Flight 4590 accident, the very high maintenance costs, the fact that it was only ever used by two airlines (whose Concorde operations were only profitable because the British and French governments had written off the lion's share of development costs), and Concorde's ageing technology. (The British and French governments were not willing to pay for Concorde 2.0, and the airlines could never afford to pay for the 1.0 version themselves anyway.)
In the case of TSR-2, the UK government cancelled it because they believed the US F-111 was cheaper. They chose to prioritise cost over the interests of their domestic aircraft industry. That may have been a foolishly shortsighted decision, but ultimately fault for it lies with the UK not the US.
> It does require capitulation from weak or compromised leaders in the producing nation. Take France as a counter example of a country that refused to capitulate
My original point was about how differences in culture can potentially lead to differences in economic outcomes. I think differences in culture could also play a role in whether a country's leaders are "weak".
This! And more generally, innovation is more likely to come from people who are having to deal with messy reality. (See, e.g., the protocols for treating COVID-19 that have been figured out in emergency departments and ICUs all over the world.)
You can be anti-illegal-immigration (which is effectively being anti open borders) without being a xenophobe that is wholly “anti-immigration”.
They worked Cotton on this bill which would reduce legal immigration.
Here's a quick selection of related articles. Apologies that some of these may be paywalled. Also this was just from random googling, so I haven't fully vetted these links for accuracy/bias.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/07/14/1005133/h1b-visa...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/06/politics/international-colleg...
https://www.wired.com/story/h-1b-visa-rejections-spike-under...
(2018) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/21/us-immigrati...
(2017) https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/top-10-2017-issue-1-...
(edited for formatting)
Even if you think US border policy should be less strict/militarized, that isn't relevant to this discussion, as the number of undocumented migrants working in state-of-the-art chip design is approximately zero, and that's not because of their legal status, it is because skilled labor (which is obviously what is required for chip design/fab) is very capable of getting a visa to live in the US under the current (and previous) administrations.
In fact, the current administration has said repeatedly and explicitly that they do not want to curb legal immigration, only undocumented/illegal migration.
A cursory reading of the headline might suggest this was to prevent spreading of the virus, but the president explicitly said that it was to protect american workers from immigrants competing for jobs
There was also the case a few weeks ago where the government told students on visas that they need to leave the country if their school switches to all online courses in light of the virus[1] which is not only anti immigrant but explicitly reversing the brain drain as was mentioned earlier in the thread. They did reverse that decision but only after major colleges started a joining in a major lawsuit.
There was also the whole "Muslim ban" limiting legal migration.
Oh and ICE deported an Iranian student despite being given a court order not to, so they're also explicitly breaking the law in order to deport people[2]
In both words and actions this administration has been against legal immigration even if it's at less of a degree than illegal immigration.
[1]https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
[2]https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/01/21/iranian-northeastern-cb...
Referencing actions taken in these unprecedented circumstances as if they are the norm is incredibly disingenuous.
They continually snipe at legal immigration and make it harder for people to legally immigrate when they get the chance. A claim was made that they were pro legal immigration. Here's the counter proof
I don't particularly miss the day of colonialism, however I just don't see innovation happening on the floor at a chip fab.
People engineer the cleanroom, the litho, the straining, the insulator layer, all sorts of things individually. Every part of a fab can be reengineered towards making a better, more consistent processor with better yields.
So Wall Street was serving here as a template too?
But jest aside, if success isn't measured by long time goals we should have expected these results.
Part of me thinks that if engineering was offering better careers, we would have flying cars now. But I also see it as a market and if engineers aren’t paid that much, it is probably because there isn’t a supply shortage. For software developers, there is a supply shortage (as every company is becoming a software company) and it translates into higher wages.
> I was thinking something along those lines, we've had an entire generation of smart people go into finance and create financial innovation that led to 2008 (amongst other, potentially positive, things).
Both seem a little low; I'd expect a mid-level in London to be >£75k (~$100k). Less sure on the US salary; maybe >$155k? Neither include equity, but I imagine they scale pretty similarly.
So a London dev at Google is looking at a loss of $70k per year compared to their SV colleague.
London isn't cheap. It may not be NYC or Bay Area levels, but you can't really escape it by commuting in. You're going to be competing with everybody else trying to do that and knocking £5-6k off your post-tax income, so I don't think it really comes out as "cheaper" to try that. I was estimating needing ~£1000 per month as basic living costs (rent + public transport, but not food) in shared accommodation when I was looking to move there (in the end I didn't, but not because of anything I've said here).
Edit: Fix bad maths in comparison
Traditional engineer roles pay far less, think £40k in London.
Still may take a while and one may well live a fulfilling career in meantime, just saying it's far from a sure bet. Capital is not terribly sentimental.
That hasn't lead to the UK being a leader in railway construction or shipbuilding - despite the vested interests.
I would say that UK junior and mid engineer roles are in general worse-paid than in the USA, but senior roles are competitive. Getting a big salary straight out of uni is not something I've seen over here but you hear about it in California.
If you're in London you have the benefit of a pretty thriving tech scene. If you want to look further afield then Bristol, Manchester, and Edinburgh seem to have a lot going on as well, and lower living costs.
Which, to me, would be a very good thing, so I wish them the best of luck. Many large companies that exist because of an earlier lead (established decades ago) and high barriers to entry would benefit from hard competition. My 2c.
No. Please write 1 country.
I live in Romania and I have a close friend who works locally for a big US software company that everyone on this website has heard of and he's about to purchase an apartment in one of the poshest areas of Bucharest (think one block away from Central Park, NYC), the money for doing that having been earned from that US company. No way he'd be able to do that in SV or in NYC itself were he to be employed directly in the States (unless he was a star engineer or something).
He won't probably be able to buy himself a Porsche or any other 100,000+ euros car for that matter, but those are mostly one-off gimmicks that pale when you compare them with the cost of living + healthcare (even in Romania, if you have decent money you can now get pretty decent healthcare).
I know people who live on a couple hundred bucks a month in Shanghai and I've had satisfying meals for $2 there. I think if companies were paying anywhere near half of what Apple, etc paid in California, people driven solely by money (emphasis here) would get by better in Shanghai.
Right now, America's draw is living in America. People will take cuts to their actual earnings to live somewhere desirable. Whether America can hold onto that appeal in the coming decades is the big question. Money might not be enough to draw people in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28no...
This understates how rich the US is. By household final consumption the only place richer is Hong Kong and the US has substantially smaller households. It’s an almost $10K drop to third place Switzerland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_household...
What draws people to the US isn’t a small difference in money, it’s a lot of money. $100,000 a year would be great money for an individual contributor here, $200,000 for a new grad is where Google starts in the SFBA. There is a cost of living difference but it just doesn’t come anywhere close to wiping out the huge difference in compensation.
The US is said to have very high salaries in PPP terms. But at the same time, I read about extreme costs every so often. "3.2 km of tunnel […cost…] $4.45 billion. A 1.5-mile (2.4 km), $6 billion second phase […] is in planning". And about things that don't seem to coexist well with affluence, like large parts of the population being unable to go without a single month's income, or car loans at more than 100% of the purchase price and with repayment plans longer than the car's average lifetime.
Something won't fit tigether here, mentally.
People who can’t save and borrow on bad terms exist everywhere. The US is different from Germany, but those people exist there too. The US is not different enough for a special explanation to be needed.
Depending on which "US" you mean. If you mean regular US senior developer salaries (around $150k) then they're achievable, on a contract basis, in pretty much all major centers in Europe (London, Paris, Munich, Zurich, Amsterdam etc.). If you mean the $500k FAANG salaries, then I've yet to see an equivalent in Europe.
If you're getting a "millionaire" salary in India or China does it matter that's not equal to a US salary in dollars?
For the individual company the difference will be small, for the US as a whole it's a big difference.
Source: I'm a Googler in Zürich. Current total comp is at $320K after 3 years at L5.
I completely agree that overall salaries are lower in Germany even adjusted for cost of living but the insane price levels in SV compared to most parts of Germany skew that even more.
The situation is more severe in the UK where central London has similar cost of living as NYC or SV but salaries at a quarter of SV levels outside of finance.
German salaries are really attractive for Europe.
UK is also much better and the timezone is ~same. I've mostly worked with US, UK, CA, IR (subsidiary of US).
An easier way is to focus your skills and specialize in, say, scalability/search-engine/low-level/ml. There will be less jobs, (compared to js), but you will have more leverage.
Don't they teach this in business school? It just seems incredibly obvious to anyone with an engineering background.
*Note that business school teaches other options, strategies, tools, etc. as well, it's not like everyone is trained from day one to pump and dump.
Source: went to business school.
Edit: I probably didn't phrase that well - how would this happen, is it a nudge and a wink thing to the board, or the board is clueless and the CEO / execs just decide etc?
Public shareholders have absolutely no loyalty to any company they extract wealth from, and they can move their capital elsewhere in seconds. And CxO/execs are typically awarded bonuses on share price movements.
So any action that moves the needle on the share price is a good thing. If this has bad long-term consequences, CxO/execs can always try to bail if they see incoming. They don't always succeed, but they have a fair chance. Employees are more likely to be left without lifeboats in the sinking ship.
What happens if we move all the profits and manufacturing capacity to markets Western investors are locked out of?
John Sterman used to say something very similar going back to at least the 2000 and the trend has only accelerated since then.
At the time I remember him giving lectures on System Dynamics models to demonstrate the effects.
Having recently seen this first hand, i.e. great developers being shuffled around and questionable business decisions carried out without a strong engineering buy in, it sucks.
why is this the responsibility of the engineer (presumably, with no real equity in the company)?
You can see this in Silicon Valley as well with the number of startups that are absolutely worthless but have exorbitant valuations because because they came up with a metric that everyone fell for.
Ironically enough, the test equipment division (what I would call the actual successors of the company) have been through 2 restructurings (HP->Agilent->Keysight). Almost as though having cutting-edge engineering & R&D will have the side-effect of making good products. Shame that costs money though.
I personally don't know anyone in the hobbyist electronics space that owns any Keysight gear, my only exposure has been in university labs. Bit of a shame, really.
https://doc.xdevs.com/doc/HP_Agilent_Keysight/HP%203458A%20C...
certainly not the employees!
That's what happened.
In the 1980s or so gadfly (relative to IEEE) Irwin Feerst was sounding a fairly lone warning for US engineers: Outsource packaging, then you will outsource fab. Outsource fab, then you will outsource process engineering. Outsource those, then you will outsource design. ...
https://www.eenewsanalog.com/news/stem-shortage-real-not-rea...
It's actually the perfect small/medium business endeavor in developing countries because of the labor cost arbitrage and economic opportunity. But a typical college educated American entrepreneur will not find it appealing, compared to starting a tech business or running a services business.
A Taiwanese silicon engineer salary, even the top band is probably only higher than the entry level of a web developer in SF.
Something is definitely wrong
I suspect that the falling rate of interest is the primary cause.
The falling interest rate on house loans makes houses increasingly expensive, as potential home owners can afford more expensive houses (given the same income) the less they have to pay in interest. The same principle ought to apply to companies who buy factories for manufacturing, with the primary difference being that housing cannot be outsourced while manufacturing can.
This hypothesis could be substantiated by looking at the degree to which countries with a long term falling interest rate outsource to countries with a long term stable or rising interest rate, and vice versa.
Foxconn's million+ workers do theoretically have a union, but only since 2007, and with actually elected leaders only since 2013. At that time they still faced the issue that most workers didn't know they were meant to elect a union representative at all and the union committee leaders were all managers. What little workers rights exist come mostly due to pressure from Apple and American unions.
And of course, as China is getting richer and the workers are starting to slowly come to resemble western workforces, companies are relocating to Vietnam.
Web developer in US can work freely in HoL area if they want to relocate.
Do companies have any excuse now regarding using taxation as an excuse to move manufacturing outside the US ?
Since, thanks to Trump, US tax rate is now almost equal to European, then you pay almost no additional tax for bringing your profits back to US.
The only remaining issue is additional accounting required, meaning you have to hire accountants both in EU and in States.
Also, if, as a majority shareholder you appoint yourself as the CEO and pay yourself a salary, it is tax deductible for your company, so money that goes to your salary is taxed only once.
When I hear "double taxation" in the US I usually think first of self-employed people sometimes having to pay both income and payroll tax compared to an otherwise employed person only paying income tax.
Then maybe I think about places like Missouri where after you take your post-tax income and buy a car with sales tax on the purchase, you pay yearly for that car as a personal property tax (which does not include your license plate, or inspection, or the city sticker some local places require).
https://hbr.org/2012/07/a-better-way-to-tax-us-businesses
Under its current system the United States taxes the worldwide income of its citizens, including corporations. Foreign income is taxed by the source country and then taxed again by the U.S. upon repatriation
Because there are credits against the double taxation, if US tax rates = the tax rate in that jurisdiction then it cancels out. But many places have different rates and then the double taxation kicks in again - they get taxed on their income once abroad, and again if they bring the money back to the USA, so they don't do it. Changing the rates is a band-aid: most countries don't do this kind of double taxation to begin with.
They would if they could, but they don't have ICBMs or aircraft carrier fleet to support their claims.
Not if you are Apple
The jobs never will though, nor do we actually want them to. This is why we need UBI.
Seriously, why would we want, in the future, to pay people to smack metal with a hammer? Let's get the jobs elsewhere ASAP, unless you can tell me with a straight face the future will involve more humans in the manufacture of goods -- in which case we should be getting a head start. Nobody will say that though because it's crazy.
Trying to add humans back to the manufacturing process, who don't need to be there, amounts to a regressive make-work project we're engaging in, intentionally adding inefficiency, instead of actually changing society and positioning ourselves for the inescapable future of humanity. In my opinion, America is squandering a huge lead by glamorizing crap jobs nobody actually needs to do, let alone wants. Like coal mining.
What's next, a return to whale oil?
Automation takes time to develop and can leave you inflexible depending on the task even with the wide variety of programmable robotics. Some products may not have profit margins, expected sales or complexity high enough where automation is worth investing in. You don't want to be in a situation where you need 300,000 of something in 3 weeks and the only way to get them is from a country that isn't an ally or refuses to trade with you.
Humans can easily do some things immediately and machines can easily do other things immediately. The more universally applicable a machine is, the more expensive it may be and possibly even priced against the highest value tasks it can do.
Universal Basic Income has many problems that aren't solved and there are many potential negative side effects, so it's premature to promote it confidently.
And capital! The human beings who spend their time developing new technology need to be fed, which requires consuming someone’s savings.
Whether automation makes sense always depends on its benefit versus the cost of development. E.g. if we spend money on feeding 100 engineers for 10 years while they develop a technology that increases the efficiency of producing something by X% is it worth it?
We always need to make this calculation because the amount of savings is finite, so we have an interest in spending it in a way that creates the most gain.
It's even worse: The more universally applicable a machine is, the more expensive its outputs are, because it is less efficient. Have you seen an aluminum can lid stamping machine? [1] It can only produce one thing, but that thing is incredibly cheap on account of the machine producing tens of thousands of items per hour.
[1] That's probably not its official name...
EDIT- I'd add that this isn't just about China or moving manufacturing to the cheapest location. Let's say I need a specialty injection molded part with tough requirements for med device. The best shop might be in the US, or maybe Germany, or maybe Mexicali. Automation isn't going to change that.
Yes automation solves it.
That might be true for HN (folks who prefer working at a desk) but that is NOT true for a vast majority of people.
I have both friends and family who love to work on the factory floor/shop - it is more varied and interesting for them. More interaction, more visible output of labour and they don't need to join a Gym as they get enough physical movement in their daily job. They despise the idea of sitting at a desk the whole day.
I think it's more so people who never worked a physical job and imagine those to be just the worst.
Even Walmart is looking at replacing all their cashiers with robots. [1] Do you think assembly workers are immune for some reason? We need to skate to where the puck is going to be, not where its was 30 years ago.
I find the idea of my comment coming from a "pampered, privileged tech worker" perspective interesting, as I'm offering a part of my pay so that the folks doing the mundane, back-breaking work inefficiently, today, could be paid to stay home and look after their families or pursue self-actualization.
[1] https://bgr.com/2020/06/17/walmart-self-checkout-no-cashiers...
It's already been done, except replace the "robot" meme with "industrial engineering" reality. instead of iRobot it's the machine that welds cars or makes pringles. It was done 30+ years ago. This world is distinct from the robot replacement headline clickbait we've been reading our whole lives.
>Even Walmart is looking at replacing all their cashiers with robots.
The technology for this has existed for 20+ years but it's always being "explored", that should tell you something. That's a distraction though. We're talking about chip fab, then you started talking about assembly line workers (which has zero meaning - can you think of a single assembly function that hasn't been automated 20 years ago?). Factory work today is skilled work, industrial engineering hasn't stood still.
>I'm offering a part of my pay so that the folks doing the mundane, back-breaking work inefficiently, today, could be paid to stay home and look after their families or pursue self-actualization.
you're getting ripped off. Modern factory jobs are pretty good. Self Actualization is a meme.
Manual jobs will be getting automated, and countries relying on manufacturing will be hit by that process the hardest.
Like in Factorio - first you're resources bound, than you are labor bound, and finally you're design-bound.
Modern economy is design-bound. USA being de-industrialized developed economy offers good quality of life and opportunity for intellectual workers, and attracts a lot of talent. Most HN readers is Americans, so they love to complain about USA, but "grass is always greener on the other side". As much as there are messed up things in USA, there's also plenty of things that are working really well.
The main problem is the gap between people who benefit from the post-industrial economy, and those who do not. I also don't see a better way out of it than just some well-designed form of UBI. And considering all the COVID stimulus, the USG is already paving the way...
We've started to see this return already, with Foxconn and TSMC setting up factories in the US (with no people in them of course -- because why would they put people in them?).
Manufacturing companies use a lot of capital for their factories. Shut down the factory and outsource to China, and you have the same sales with a lot less capital, so the stock goes up. Great success.
Maybe repeat by having your suppliers do more and more of the engineering. At a certain point, you are just a brand, with no actual engineering capability.
You can't compete with the people who actually know how to make the things. Then you die. See Hewlett Packard.
The US taxing companies on global income at high rates also has an effect. Say you have 50% of your sales outside the US. You pay taxes in the country where you sell the product. Then you have profits overseas. If you bring that cash back to the US, you pay the difference between the corporate rate in country X and the US, which can be a lot, say 15%. Might as well take that money and use it to pay for manufacturing at e.g. Foxconn. So it's 15% better to invest in manufacturing capacity outside the US.
The poor health care system in the US drives up costs as well, twice what it is in other industrialized countries for worse outcome. Same for cost of housing because zoning laws won't allow building. Google was allowed to build offices in Mountain View but not residential property for the employees to live in. So everyone has to commute from somewhere else, and cost of rent is driven by how much misery you can handle.
Failures in government policy make US workers much more expensive without creating any more value or improving the quality of life for the employees.