Jackson, TN      Air compressors
  Hempstead, MD    Drill and saw components
  Charlotte, NC    Cordless drills, screwdrivers
  Greenfield, IN   Grinder, recip saws, hammer drills

There is no hope. America can’t even agree on giving community college to poor kids, let alone training a generation of toolmakers, electronic engineers, programmers, and every other profession involved in making things out of atoms more complex than a handtool or a radiator. This country is dying and wildly unstable politically.

So like Applied Materials, Lam Research, and KLA Tencor? The global leaders in semiconductor machinery are predominantly American, with honorable mentions for the Japanese (Tokyo Electron, Dainippon Screen) and Dutch (ASML, ASMI).

Most of the equipment is made stateside, e.g. Applied Materials manufacturing is in Austin.

> America can’t even agree on giving community college to poor kids, let alone training a generation of toolmakers, electronic engineers, programmers, and every other profession involved in making things out of atoms more complex than a handtool or a radiator.

The "America is doomed!" rhetoric is older than the hills and, while we are in decline as the global hegemon, economically we are still as vibrant as ever. Last year KLA Tencor opened a second headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan... not in China.

The first statement is an extraordinary claim for which extraordinary proof is required (especially as a direct response to a post explaining how the opposite is true).

Working on factory production lines does not require a bachelor's degree. Germany isn't assembling cheap power tools either. One reason is that labor costs are too high, and requiring low skill jobs have a college degree does the opposite of helping that.

> let alone training a generation of toolmakers, electronic engineers, programmers, and every other profession involved in making things out of atoms more complex than a handtool or a radiator.

This isn't true. USA has some of the best EEs and programmers in the world.

> This country is dying and wildly unstable politically.

You mean like how Standard's US factories makes automotive parts? https://youtu.be/JhqaaYNgCO4

I don't see how that's relavent even if we set aside nuances and just agree for the sake of this topic to say that whatever your view on how relations with China should or shouldn't be is the right one.

edit: oh my bad it's not a straw man, you did create a link in your first comment it was just so tenuous I'd forgotten it.

> Because the folks who would ordinarily be advocating for free community college don’t want kids to go to school to learn those things.

So it's the fault of the left wing for not being left wing enough?

It’s the fault of the left wing for abandoning its traditional working class base to advance the interests of its elite donor class, which increasingly benefits from globalism.

Societies have groups with conflicting interests, and political parties represent those groups. Right wing groups will exist, and should exist, to represent the interests of businesses and upper classes. That’s not a problem. It’s a problem when left wing groups are co-opted by ideologies that causes them to turn on the working class people they are supposed to represent.

No, they're not.

Vox: https://www.vox.com/2019/7/3/20681384/trump-trade-agenda-rac...

I didn’t say everyone who supports free community college also thinks rebuilding the industrial base and trade wars with China are white supremacy. But there are enough people who do to divide the coalition and render it ineffectual.

On my side of the argument, I have the President of the United States of America, and one of his first executive actions:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/management/made-in-america/

This is not a good hill to die on. Everybody thinks made-in-America is a good thing. Republicans like it. Democrats like it. Liberals like it, conservatives like it.

1. Western companies moves production of components to China. 2. Chinese companies becomes good enough to produce their own products. 3. Western companies starts rebranding Chinese products. 4. Chinese companies buy western companies. 5. Chinese companies open factories in western countries.

Manufacturing isn't industry in itself and the growth of industry is orders of magnitude more in China. Most people just have no idea how supply chains work or how many R&D centers are opening up elsewhere. Many western countries are no longer great industrial economies but still far from real knowledge economies. Western countries don't really have the infrastructure, housing or education necessary and increasingly not alternative ways of competing either like creativity, influence or equality.

There is a documentary called "American Factory". It isn't the best but it is something.

Every so often I like to link this:

Tektronix: "The Spirit of Tek"

https://vintagetek.org/opb-oregon-experience-the-spirit-of-t...

The video can be found when one looks around some.

Tek, under the leadership of Howard Vollum, literally built the whole region around it up. People could walk in off the streets and end up designing products, in sales, even doing a startup that Tek would help to fund.

I am a product of that culture, and learned a freaking ton from that place and the people who were in and around it.

When Howard Died, the private equity game chopped it all up and it's a shadow of what it once was.

Investments in the local people, partnering with schools, other manufacturers, all add up.

Streaming version: https://watch.opb.org/video/oregon-experience-the-spirit-of-...

Why do non-Western elites send their kids to Western countries for university educations?

> increasingly not alternative ways of competing either like creativity, influence or equality.

Which non-Western countries are competing on creativity?

So that they can plug themselves and their kids into massive, powerful, prosperous, global alumni networks.

They aren't, that's the point. Countries like China, Japan and South Korea are very good at pulling everyone in the same direction by following rules, having hierarchies, exchanging favors, working long hours, handing out punishments and whatnot. Far better than any western country could because we aren't at that point in time (and maybe Japan isn't now either). What they end up lacking is things like creativity. The problem is that western countries are also increasingly lacking opportunities to exercise creativity. There is few ways these days to in good faith drop out of school and crash on someones couch to do something else you rather want. Which has to some extent been the foundation of new industries.

Elites. We have the best education for elites. Not for everyone, which is a large part of the problem.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_...

Even among high schools and prep schools the nation-wide US average might be mediocre in public schools but when it comes to the higher-end private schools the US is still easily #1

https://www.prepreview.com/ranking/world/high-school-ranking...

That's a whole different conversation.

As I see it, Asian economies like India, China, Japan, South Korea offer a reasonable competition to Western economies today.

1. Samsung is a very viable competitor to Apple in hand held + wearables creative space.

2. Indian fin-tech solutions IMO today are some of the best in the world. All I need is a phone to shop for things (from buying a car to paying for parking) and have not used a credit/debit card for a year now (I live in India). Same in Indian edu-tech space. A lot of kids have quit school and are learning at home. Full time. I have not seen this happen anywhere before.

3. Toyota's are way more reliable than BMW's, Audi's and Ford's.

4. TSMC vs Intel is another good example.

I foresee a lot of innovation happening in Asia right now to go global in this and next decade.

Perhaps there is no such thing as a "knowledge" economy. At least not in a mass sense. Maybe instead the design knowledge which will drive automation is derivable from only a fraction of the population. That is only a small fraction of the population is capable or necessary for producing this knowledge. Perhpas the Utopia in which every child achieves a doctorate in engineering, medicine, etc was just a fantasy.

Perhaps the people who most perpetrated this story were motivated to. Because they were either complicit in the dismantling of the West's lower middle class economy or perhaps because they were apologists of untrestrained "free markets" and they needed a way to square their dogma without seeming cruel.

Perhaps the consequences of globalization minus the dogmatic fantasy of "everyone will be educated into being einstein" left the nagging uncomfortable suspicion that growth had its limits and someday we would have to admit that the only answer to making sure an equitable portion of wealth made its way into everyone's pockets wasn't an endless growth, every mom blasting their womb with Bach, an STM on every crib nerdocracy but instead gasp dare I say it? Redistribution!?

This is the key difference between the two ideologies. One side believes equity should be distributed equally regardless of achievement, the other believes equity distribution is directly correlated to productive measures of success.

"From those with the greatest ability, to those with the greatest need."

I'm not sure this is true. I think a lot of people including economics professors like to consider themselves fairly humanistic. And I think the idea of a mass of people permanently living near or below poverty bothers them.

And I think they take it somewhat for granted that their favorite economic theory has in our recent past effectively provided a middle class standard of living for many people. But when we start talking about dismantling the mechanisms which have created the large middle class and how it could decrease quality of life and increase poverty, they don't offer an honest assessment based on the fundamentals of their theory. That would be to say, "well yes such changes may induce pverty here."

Instead there is kind of a shrug. We'll become a service economy, nevermind making a comparison of the quality of the new service jobs against those being transplanted.

Or we'll become a knowledge economy, the great brain of global capital. Again never really contending with the question of whether that is even possible.

This allows them in my opinion to advocate politicies which harm people whilst shrugging off any guilt because instinctively they know to willfully empoverish people is wrong. It is this dishonesty that bothers me.

My gripe is not with those advocating against redistribution. Though my personal politics are for a mass ownership of property in some regard. My gripe is with people who have setup what might be a fiction (maybe it could be real too) as the answer to making choices which create suffering. And then for that image to have become a dogma we all expected to accept without questioning its basis in reality.

I'm willing to accept that I could be wrong. But I come from a working class background. I've known a lot of working class people over the years and the idea that most or even many of them are going to pivot into IT or what have you is just nonsense. The vast majority have pivoted into low paid service work without much social insurance of any kind.

And then you can export that Made in USA thing to Mexico or Canada and probably other places duty free.

> A majority of STIHL products sold in America are made in America of U.S. and foreign materials.

--https://www.stihlusa.com/stihl-made-in-america/

not buying it, sorry.

In my current company we make sunglasses a non-polarized pair of sunglasses will say made in USA and a polarized pair will say assembled in the USA because the polarized wafers are not domestically made. In both cases the boxes, stickers, and logos are non domestic but aren't counted because they "aren't essential". In my previous company anything that had electronics from overseas had to be "assembled" but electronics from NAFTA areas were "usa made"

In reality it doesn't make much sense to ever have a BOM 100% USA made as that fully negates the benefits of trade but we should have policies that still encourage companies that chose to conduct business here. When consumers are turned off by "assembled in" it drives business out of the country.

*I work as a product development engineer for consumer goods. My current role and previous company both had US MFG sites

Edit: here is a link to the requirements https://www.nist.gov/standardsgov/compliance-faqs-made-usa#4

Not sure which tools, other than some corded planers.

Milwaukee is TTI, which owns Home Depot's exclusive Ryobi and Ridgid brands, along with Empire (measuring devices), Hart (Ryobi but for Wal-Mart), and AEG (Ridgid but for Europe).

The other "big" one worth mentioning is Chervon, who own Flex, Skil (aside: their 12V stuff is surprisingly good!), and make Lowe's Kobalt tools.

The odd one out usually forgotten is Positec. They have a rather interesting history, and today make the Worx stuff...which honestly aren't bad tools.

I have since switched to all Milwaukee however. The battery tech smokes everyone else and the high prices are easily justified by quality and productivity.

The productivity, and subsequent quality of work, from the Fuel line are worth upgrading from down market stuff. If you do your own work (remodelling etc) there is no comparing to the bbq dad tools (or harbor freight).

The weed eater is stellar. The blower can be operated with two fingers (you can hold it with one finger). Damn thing tries to leave your hand though...lol

Smallest hammer drill, short work of any masonry (with decent bits). Done. Move on.

Circular saw lasts all day under heavy use (6 xc battery).

Impact driver...it is always out and ready. Used constantly. Driving tapcons, building decks, working on the truck, drywall. All effortless. Every screw and bolt driven perfectly without issue.

Literally an investment.

I'm honestly kind of glad, it means there's more better tools getting into people's hands now, but the color is an assault upon the eyes. I could've bought an R4560 probably two months before my 36-725T2, but I do woodworking because I like it, and I don't like "ORANGE!" being shouted at me every time I open the garage door.

Some have used Plastidip to blackout loud logos.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/RIDGID-10-in-Contractor-Table-Sa...

Stanley Black & Decker bought Craftsman several years back. Before the sale, Sears had contracted Stanley Black & Decker to make at least some of their Craftsman tools.

Craftsman = "V20"

Sears Craftsman = "20V"

Different incompatible brands, it's a bit deceptive.

https://toolguyd.com/craftsman-v20-sears-craftsman-20v-compa...

Note that article is four years old and there's a possibility related lawsuit since then.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/07/sears-is-sued-over-craftsman...

If you build something good, make it under your name and only your name.

Branding/rebranding/renaming smell like marketing gimmick and mean you are focused more on marketing trick than engineering.

They could have a Pro/home line of product for different segments and still keep honoring the brand.

SBD didn't invent DeWalt, they bought a company called DeWalt and expanded them to more tools.

I see so much effort spend on that kind of marketing (lying) and so little spend on improving the product, reducing the cost, increasing longevity, etc.

It’s everywhere, oven, fridge, tools, cars, etc.

At some point the confidence in the brand crumble and we just buy the cheapest chinese thing with a funny name.

IE: brand used to mean something

This is a result of decades of regulations and labour laws. Paying Americans 10x more to make similar quality tools is a terrible business decision. This cannot be fixed without government incentives/handouts (eg. Chips Act)

The individual business decision is sound, but the collective business decision is catastrophic. Not only does it create an economies of scale for adversaries instead of ourselves, but it gives them a lever to press to cause us pain. There is a national security disaster directly caused by the idea that paying Americans more is not a sound decision. Another country now has a say in what can be in our movies, and what our politicians, business persons, and celebrities can do or say. Add to this ambition, beligerance, and the prospect of war (a clear destroyer of value), and the picture gets even worse.

The answer is not handing out wads of cash to businesses like Intel that have failed to be productive by choosing business first (extract all the money possible) rather than values first (make the best products possible) practices, but to unburden our businesses with costs like healthcare and housing costs.

The minimum wage wouldn't have to be so high if there was cheap housing, good public transportation, abundant cheap healthy food, low debt policies, and government run health care. If you reduce the cost of living, you de facto reduce the cost of labor.

Housing policy that ensures limited supply and therefore high rents transfers wealth from laborers to owners, which is a transfer of money from businesses to landlords because the cost of rent is passed on to businesses in the form of wages.

Are you claiming that trade dependence between countries makes war between them more likely?

I am claiming that showing weakness by giving a powerful weapon (supply chain dependency) to an adversary invites them to see what they can get away with especially if they wish to conquer another country and you are their main blocker. Our supply chain dependency means China has a direct "cause pain" button they can push on America to cause political unrest or directly punish American involvement in China's "internal affairs." It is a tool they can use to try to make our elites present the Taiwan invasion, not as the conquering of a vibrant democracy, but as America's imperialist meddling in China's internal affairs. The supply chain can directly be used to extort our neutrality, just like Nord Stream was used to extort Germany's neutrality and corrupt Germany's elites. Is our defense posture better then that? Probably, but there is no denying Xi's China is getting more belligerent not less, which means they likely see the relative power shifts favoring them.

It is not the trade that I view as making war more likely, but the hard to replace dependency, namely Nord stream and the tech hardware supply chain.

Having the other side dependant on you in trade does give you a massive advantage.

Depends on the relative symmetry of trade—balanced, deficit or surplus—combined with other factors, of course.

This puzzle revolves around power. Power is the ability to execute force or inflict pleasure or pain. A CEO is clearly capable of painful force against their unskilled labor. A CEO can make it so someone has a harder time housing themselves, getting medical care, or feeding their children. But what power does unskilled labor have over their CEOs? Virtually none individually. So we see this reality reflected directly in wages. Unskilled labor gets paid the minimum because they have no power, and CEO's get incredible wages because they have the power to demand them.

This "agreement" is not mutual consent, but fundamentally exploitation. It's even more so exploitation when labor is sent to these poor countries.

Unions are the answer to the puzzle of "how does an unskilled laborer exercise power/prevent themselves from being exploited." Through collective action a union can cause the CEO pain and put a check on their otherwise unchecked power. In this way individuals are no longer powerless but have earned a seat at the negotiating table.

China did exactly this. They became exploited, nurtured dependence on the exploitation, and now use manufacturing's dependence on China as well as state level collective bargaining as a cudgul to execute their imperialist will on countries like Taiwan.

If you do not have the ability to commit great violence you are not peaceful, you are harmless. If you do not have the ability to execute power, you do not make agreements, you follow commands.

I personally don't understand how unions are not seen as American as the 2nd amendment. Unions are as important to preventing capitalist exploitation as guns are to preventing colonial/fascist exploitation.

Unionization has brought about some very beneficial improvements in working conditions and worker benefits and rights. But unions that get too big and powerful are often just as bad in different ways. They tend to make pay increases and promotions based solely on seniority instead of any measure of actual skill or work ethic, demand adherence to finicky rules about exactly who is allowed to do what work when, lose interest in representing individual workers when they don't fit the mold exactly, be just fine with driving business into bankruptcy or non-competitiveness with international competition, and generally foster an adversarial relationship between workers and management.

In the list, just about every bad union behavior corresponds to an equally bad or worse corporate behavior. Bad behavior correlates with unchecked power.

The nature of workers and management is adversarial. Working for a company is trading your stress/time for money. The company tells you it's bad to share your wage because that creates upwards pressure on wages, while they go behind your back to ADP and buy your wage history[1] so they can pay you less than you're worth/what they budgeted to create downward pressure. That sure seems adversarial to me.

I do agree that international non competitiveness is a worry, but that's also an argument in favor of letting big un-regulatable monopolies run wild (the counter argument being that monopolies kill/acquire innovation). I suspect parents who work at sweat shops tend to raise more poorly educated mentally worse off children, which then hurts the next generation of engineers/innovaters and society as a whole.

I think I would be most worried about agents (corporate or nation state) agitating small disagreements into big ones or directly compromising and harming industry via agents emplaced in union leadership.

[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29834753

Honestly I wouldn’t want to work at a company (of any size) where the CEO was only worth 10x what the lowest paid janitor makes.

I actually value the work a janitor does more than some of my colleagues, in terms of cleaning vs. creating messes.

Having 10 skilled people and 100 robots do what 1000 people would otherwise do isn't some defeat, it's fantastic. Productivity is what makes people rich in the long term.

Automation is far from unpaid. At very least it expects you to give it food (electricity, gasoline, etc.), shelter, and healthcare (repairs and maintenance). Generally the same things that humans expect from you.

Automation is significant not because it is unpaid, but because it can often do much more work for the same amount of pay.

The problem with automation is it is very hard to make it, but once it is made you can use it cheap. So you need to make many parts before it is worth it. 30 years ago it's was cheaper to pay a skilled lathe operator to turn a drawing into a single part, but if you needed 1000 it was worth writing CNC code to automate it. Today the state of CAM is such that many drawings can be turned into parts CNC directly, but assembly of those parts into a tool is often still manual unless they sell a lot of parts. (I don't know what Milwaukee is doing, but I expect cordless drills are assembled automatically, but their cordless bandsaw which is much less in demand is manual)

It's mostly just a big initial capital investment it seems.

It’s too late to tear down the current reality because there is no political will to build a new one. Perhaps giving away the long term professional knowledge core of the US to foreign countries so that capitalists could become richer and laborers could have cheaper goods will be what historians point to as the root cause of the decline of the American empire.

Mercantilism and protectionism were never a good idea.