That may be true for highly labor intensive roles but a fully automated operation is _more_ profitable when the few jobs that are required are staffed by trained personnel.

Doesn't the first and last one cancel each other out?

If you want better wages (relative to the location the employees are) and also lower prices of goods, then you can't have production in the US

I dunno, I think it’s actually Pick three:

  - extreme corporate profits
  - better wages
  - US jobs
  - lower prices

You can’t optimize both for extreme shareholder returns and extreme wealth at the top and also pay first world good wages/living standards and have lower prices. Unfortunately, in this race, shareholder returns is often still the last thing compromised on, it seems.

That's not actually pick three. It's that if you have uncompetitive markets (and therefore high rents/inefficiency), you end up with worse wages, loss of US jobs and high prices. Because then the price companies can charge is no longer tied to their labor cost, so they can cut labor costs without lowering prices.

This is clearly what's happened and needs fixing, but even after that, you still have a trade off between high-paying US jobs and low consumer prices.

But the answer to that one isn't as obvious because it isn't linear. In a competitive market, competition with labor in other countries might cause you to get paid $1000/year less, but lower your cost of living by $2000/year.

> can’t optimize both for extreme shareholder returns and extreme wealth at the top and also pay first world good wages/living standards and have lower prices

Ignoring new entrants, sure. In a competitive market, shareholder returns entice new entrants. Flatten those and you lose that edge.

For many markets, the competition caveat is missing: this is something we can improve with policy. But pushing down profits for labor's sake is a false economy; it leaves the industry less resilient in a global context. Put another way, a solid repeatable business plan is finding a market leader suppressing shareholder returns and exploiting what they're missing from a separate jurisdiction.

I understand that, but if better wages lead to increase costs, it should be a zero sum game in the grand scheme of things. But, at least, you are not dependent on China for making stuff.

Lower price of the product I presume.

If you try to argue that the well-being of capitalists and the well-being of regular people/workers are one and the same you run into contradictions very quickly.

The main class of capitalists in the US is regular people with 401k accounts. (After that is small business owners, who I agree are evil but most people like.)

Ye cast the stone at Taylor Swift, yet do not comprehend that the average musician is Brad with his dusty nylon guitar in the attic? (Egg on my face.)

In the US, every worker with a 401(k) is also a capitalist.

How irrelevant. And uncreative (both of you.)

They aren’t “job creators”.

What other systems are better at promoting regular peoples' well-being?

Difficulty: answer without referring to lightly-populated and culturally-homogeneous Nordic petrostates.

> Difficulty: answer without referring to lightly-populated and culturally-homogeneous Nordic petrostates.

… All of which are also running under capitalism.

better wages, us jobs. easy.

And don't replace your iPhone every year, because now it costs 50% more.

Of course, walking back on the race to the bottom will be difficult. So I don't know how it plays out in the real world.

So you think Apple will be fine with their sales falling down, because they moved production to US?

No, I said it won't play out like that given the race to the bottom. My comment was from an idealistic pov, because the parent comment gave me the opportunity to choose two, and those are the two I would choose if I was king :)

> don't replace your iPhone every year, because now it costs 50% more

This flattens down the experience curve [1], meaning the technological edge advances slower. That, in turn, exposes the entire industry to more-agile competition. This is the recipe for undermining competition behind a protectionist wall: cut costs to beat bigger competition with movement and then scale.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects