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A comment on America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufacturing Back. Parent comment

Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by epolanski on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @11:35AM (#43706762)
> We just don't want to employ people

I don't think it's a matter of willingness, but simple global geo economics.

There's places where producing A, whatever A is, is economically more efficient for countless reasons (energy prices, logistics, talent, bureaucracy, cost of labor, etc).

That's not gonna change with whatever investment you want or tariff you put.

But the thing I find more absurd, of all, is that I'd expect HN users to be aware that USA has thrived in the sector economy while offloading things that made more sense to be done elsewhere.

I'd expect HN users to understand that the very positive trade balances like Japan's, Italy's or Germany's run are meaningless and don't make your country richer.

Yet I'm surrounded by users ideologically rushing into some delusional autarchic dystopia of fixing american manufacturing for the sake of it.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by almosthere on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @12:00PM (#43707022)
Cost of labor is the issue: china is enslaving people to work.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by DiggyJohnson on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @12:11PM (#43707139)
Doesn't that feel like a massive overstatement? They have worse working conditions for sure. "Enslavement" is absurd if we are speaking about the macro level.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by jofla_net on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @01:08PM (#43707799)
Those nets tho...
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by astrange on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @07:47PM (#43711559)
There's nothing unusual about suicide nets in a place with a lot of people. They're on the Golden Gate Bridge but that doesn't mean SF is a sweatshop.

(The suicide rate at Foxconn is lower than average for China.)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by jofla_net on Wednesday April 23, 2025 @11:02AM (#43773007)
Crossing the bridge is hard work.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by martin_a on Thursday April 17, 2025 @10:15AM (#43717188)
Overstatement? China is going fully facist on the Uyghurs for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_Chin...
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by SlightlyLeftPad on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @12:04PM (#43707081)
Source?
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Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by Kirby64 on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @12:19PM (#43707224)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_internment_camps

Literally forced labor camps. Of course, the PRC denies these allegations, but it certainly seems like there's some forced labor due to the numerous reports across many years of a variety of forced labor operations from these camps.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by makeitshine on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @08:11PM (#43711707)
The US has forced prison labor. We can talk about how bad the Chinese government is, but their economy is not built on forced labor anymore than the US is built on prison labor.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by Kirby64 on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @09:16PM (#43712099)
I also think any form of forced work in the US prison system is pretty awful, but don’t try to equivocate Chinese “reeducation” camps with regular prison. Not anywhere close to the same thing.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by ta20240528 on Thursday April 17, 2025 @05:57AM (#43714778)
Have you asked any of the inmates at the Angola "working farm" in Louisiana?

Apparently 63% are serving life terms, 27% more than 20 years.

Doesn't seem worse than China's attempt to iron out a seditious, violent sub-culture that was actually detonating bombs amongst civilians? Most seem to have closed, so the maximum term < 10 years.

Neither are good ideas IMHO - but one way worse than the other? Come now.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by Kirby64 on Thursday April 17, 2025 @01:53PM (#43720166)
> Neither are good ideas IMHO - but one way worse than the other? Come now.

Inmates in any prison in the US ostensibly have gone through due process and were convicted of their crimes. You can argue about whether the US justice system is truly fair, but it's (at least in historic years) certainly more fair than rounding up large portions of a specific ethnic minority for 'reeducation'.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by ta20240528 on Friday April 18, 2025 @06:28AM (#43726681)
I would argue that in the 21st century being convicted of a crime does not make your labour essentially free to the state for the rest of your life.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by SlightlyLeftPad on Friday April 18, 2025 @12:02PM (#43729320)
Exactly, a notion of free prison labor incentivizes discrimination and as we see it that is often how it plays out in reality.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by Clubber on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @12:19PM (#43707225)
Simple google search, first result:

https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/country-studie...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by SlightlyLeftPad on Saturday April 19, 2025 @05:55PM (#43739784)
This doesn’t entirely prove that China is much worse off than the US here, since we appear to be comparing. It’s pretty clear that US has a lot of room for improvement at 3.3/thousand people compared to China’s 4.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by runako on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @12:23PM (#43707279)
The US specifically outlawed slavery except among prisoners. The US also operates prison labor at very low rates.

I'm not sure this is a meaningful point of differentiation.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by anon6362 on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @11:57PM (#43712980)
US corporations benefit today from slave labor by people housed in for-profit prisons where there are incentives to over-prosecute brown and poor people. These include, but aren't limited to:

- Aramark

- Avis

- IBM

- JCPenney

- Kmart

- McDonald's

- Nintendo

- Sprint

- Starbucks

- Verizon

- Walmart

- Wendy's

- Whole Foods/Amazon

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by AnthonyMouse on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @12:39PM (#43707480)
The other side of this coin is cost of living. If housing costs more in the US, so does everything else. If everything costs more, people have to be paid more in order to make a living, and that makes the US less competitive in the global labor market.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by pjmlp on Saturday April 19, 2025 @09:10AM (#43736160)
Seems pretty much like gig economy works in US.
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Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by NoTeslaThrow on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @12:29PM (#43707355)
> I don't think it's a matter of willingness, but simple global geo economics.

I don't see a difference. If we want local industry, we must address the global geo economics.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by epolanski on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @05:28PM (#43710586)
Nobody really wants a "local" industry as much as consumers want cheap prices and companies want global reach.

US manufacturing accomplishes higher prices and US only reach.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:America Underestimates the Difficulty of Bringing Manufac... by waynesonfire on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @08:46PM (#43711906)
That's a narrow perspective. The "benefits" that are granted to a country have a cost and these costs need to be reconciled with on the international stage. This is achieved through tariffs otherwise the playing field isn't fair.
[ Parent | on HN ]