BLINDED EYES WITH BLINDED BRAINS

yep, the rich can only outsource so many jobs and import so many goods before it all collapses

 

That's one important factor, yes, but I suspect the bigger one is simply that low-quality jobs have filtered down to Central America*. Also, they have been doing so since a long, long time. And, of course, China.

We can do nothing about Central America's cost-competition. But about China Uncle Sam can raise import-taxation.

Of course, that is a double-sided blade - the Chinese can do that too!

Things are happening in China and they indicate that cost-of-production will rise in the future. Which means only that jobs that have shifted from the US to Central America and from Europe to North Africa will continue to do so in both cases ...

*I know that here in Europe there is a distinct dislike for working on a product-line. The younger kids today refrain from seeking jobs there.

 

My post was not in answer to a post of yours (it was answering @kazenatsu ) and YOU are not American are you?

As I say, I think automation will topple that edifice. Production will return home to save transport costs, but it wont be low paid workers in Europe or the states who are employed, it will be machines.
And more generally as each year passes we need less people to do the same amount of work. My own business is now employing humanised software to enable each employee to deal with twice the number of customers.
There's hardly a website left that doesn't have an AI chatbot.
As I say its outdated to think of automation in terms of making things.
https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001799.htm

 

Usually transport costs are insignificant compared to labor costs. For heavier bulky things like refrigerators, the American market outsources that to the more nearby country of Mexico. That seems to be the extent to which transportation costs can have an impact on place of production.

 

I was adding transport costs onto the idea that Chinese labour is getting more expensive. Either way intelligent machines cut both labour and transport costs.

 

I'm a Yank who gas lived in Europe a long time.

And thus I know well the benefits of a low-cost National Healthcare System as well as nearly-free government-provided Post-secondary Education.

 

Not enough to prevent American manufacturing having nearly liquidated its existence in the US. Only about 12% of all Yanks work in a manufacturing-plant*!

All the rest work in Services Industries.

As regards manufacturing cars, from here: Automotive Industry in Mexico

 

Oh, come off it. The Wealth of the rich remains far too great and it is due to a reduction in upper-income taxation that was first instrumented under Ronny-RayGun. The rates have come down even further since for the super-rich under various Replicant administrations:

And unless blind one understands from the above that upper-income tax-rates have diminished under various Replicant administrations ever since 1964. Who was PotUS in 1964 that got this historical ratcheting downwards started? JFK who wanted to "thank his father for handling the financing of his election" in the early 1960s.

The two further declines were instrumented by Replicant administrations ... !

 

Cool, we agree.

 

Historically yes, but the future is not going to be its return to the states. If a government taxed manufacturers into returning to the states the higher wages required in the states would push manufacturers into more automation.

 

Money = Speech. Restrict money and you restrict speech.

We get outspent all the time and win all the time.

Illustrating the mathematical wisdom that supports voting Republican.​

 

Yes, I am, and no apologies are offered. I'm not offended. (If you spend long enough time in discussion forums you get to see ALL SORTS of behaviour.)

I've lived in Europe for quite some time. It is far more advanced in terms of Social Politics than the US. (Of course, it had to pay-the-price of a sHitler to show them the way ...)

 

UNINHABITABLE

Agreed, but I do hope it stabilizes around that 12%. It is dangerous for any country to be totally dependent upon foreign-trade to supply key-products (or services).

One never knows what's gonna-happin in this crazy world of ours ...

I'm not sure how the Federal government could do that. To do so would mean - ipso facto - that the US would need to force American companies to bring-back jobs and those jobs would mean higher costs-of-product meaning diminished sales and therefore production.

It is nonetheless true that we need to keep certain "key manufacturing specializations" and I happen to think that motorized-vehicles is one of them. Namely to get out of polluting gas-based vehicles that are partially responsible for this Dangerous Climatic Change that is presently upon us.

Both in Europe and the US - meaning the northern hemisphere ...

PS: It wont happen for another hundred years, but if we continue to do nothing, this planet could become uninhabitable due to excessive population growth.

 

DREAMLAND

Agreed, but that is the challenge.

Nations have a way of fighting one another, and there is no reason why Uncle Sam should depend upon Free Trade to get ... uh, cars-and-trucks. Both of which are key to the proper functioning of the nation. (We-the-sheeple move around a lot!)

It is already goodness that we are getting out of petrol-polluting vehicles! Bring on the electrics!

And perhaps we should find a way to convert car-roofs into electric-generators! Or, this question here:

Just dreaming ... !

 

A FACTUAL REVIEW OF WEALTH IN AMERICA

*Wealth is not ONLY something you work to obtain but also what you inherit.

*Wealth is distributed in a highly unequal fashion. The wealthiest 1% of families in the United States possess about 40% of all wealth and the bottom 90% of families holding less than one-quarter of all wealth.

*Wealth, like Income, in any economy cannot be constant. Wealth is obtained not only by Inheritance and Work Income but also Investment - all three of which are subjective to stark changes both positive and negative.

*The US has an upper-income distribution that is questionably fair&decent but also progresses moderately. Very high income is obtained mainly by principally three factors - having earned it, won it or inheritance.

*The country has had recently however a return to a 19th century circumstances whereby Wealth was obtained in hugely great proportions either by Risk Investment or Inheritance. Note that the US had no Income Tax in the 19th century. Inheritance allowed Wealth to be transferred in a familial manner. The modern U.S. estate tax was enacted on September 8, 1916 under section 201 of the Revenue Act (1916).

*"Who Rules America" by G.W. Domhoff here. Excerpt:

 

As I say I think local manufacturing will return alongside automation 3d printing etc.
At this point the advanced countries are in a strong position as anyone can make cars but not many can develop medicines, MRI scanners, proton beam generators ....
The balance is turning but we have time.

Exactly my point. Pulling mass production back to 1st world countries would force automation and not create jobs. It would create wealth, which is where my affordability taxation comes into play.
Of course its entirely possible that local automated manufacturing might well spread the wealth back out again.

Re cars charging while on the move via solar or induction. Its not practical as the charging input rates are miniscule compared to the usage.
However with modern batteries offering 300 plus miles per charge, we're pretty much there.

 

You'd be surprised.

The first anti-Covid drug did NOT come from the US and the dwarf-PotUS at the time refused any government action to produce one.

He nonetheless had himself and his wife get their shots on his last morning in the Oval Office ...

 

By the metric of cost per year of healthy life, the US medico-rentier system is clearly and by far the worst in the world.

 

What nonsense. The underlying problem is massive, systematic, institutionalized, and wholly gratuitous injustice. Automation helps relieve the problem of scarcity. We just legally entitle the privileged to take all the production for themselves and forcibly impose the resulting scarcity on others.

People don't need jobs because what automation can produce is easily enough to satisfy everyone's need. The problem is that the privileged just take it all. We do not have poverty because we cannot satisfy the need of the poor. We have poverty because we can never satisfy the greed of the rich. For the greedy, privileged, evil, parasitic rich, wealth is status, and status is one thing there can never be enough of to go around.

This was all explained over 140 years ago by Henry George in "Progress and Poverty." The Law of Rent implies that when production increases because of increased population, capital investment, education or technology, landowners just take it all, and often more. If you don't believe it, check the price of a vacant SFD building lot in almost any major city in the world.

No, there is a real way out: justice. You have merely never considered it.

If history teaches us anything, it is that the privileged prefer to perish in blood and flame, and to watch their children slaughtered before their eyes, rather than relinquish even the smallest portion of their unjust advantages.

 

That's virtually a Yogi Berra-ism: "Nobody goes there any more, it's too crowded."

 

Nonsense. Almost all very high incomes are obtained by privilege: legal entitlements to benefit from the abrogation of others' rights without making just compensation.

 

Yes, but like I tried to explain before, you're averaging together two very different subsets.

The value for money spent typically looks like a curve, with diminishing returns for more money spent. If you average together two points, the midpoint between them will be below the curve.

Since the US has higher rates of disparity in individual health spending, it is not directly comparable to other countries.

 

Then why is all the production taking place in China?

The fact that most production was outsourced suggests what you say may not be true.

 

That's easy: China doesn't force producers to subsidize landowners, banksters and IP monopolists as exorbitantly as the governments of capitalist countries do.

OTC, it proves that what I say is true: the geoist system China learned from HK is superior to capitalism.

 

Sorry to inform you of this, but most provinces in China have been engaging in mass land sell-offs and privitisations.
It's actually believed by many to be a huge problem, since it is resulting in unsustainable government expenditures and contributing to an economic bubble.