Trying to create manufacturing industry in the USA

[video=youtube;40DdmHkM2io]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40DdmHkM2io[/video]

I thoght some important issues were discused in this interview. The company Bridgelux has managed to develop superior LED lighting technology, bringing back manufacturing jobs to America. I actually placed a special order for a high quality extra-bright LED light from China, which I surprisingly found out is made using LED chips manufactured at the Bridgelux factory in the USA!

All this has nothing to do with helping the environment, nor silly mandates forcing efficiency on everyone. It is about investment, offering local governments a way to save money, and in the process replace those unpleasant fluorescent office lights with better quality LED light.

Here we can see private enterprise in action. Bridgelux's success has had nothing to do with government efficiency legislation. Their chips are, for the most part, being used to replace fluorescent lights in work place settings and street lights, not making "energy efficient" replacement household bulbs (the particular type of LED bulb I ordered was extremely specialised, and not mass-marketed).

This is a high-technology industry, and has already created many good engineering jobs in the factory, and given added business to high-tech American semi-conductor material suppliers.

But will Bridgelux be able to keep production in the United States? You can see that this is a big concern of the CEO in the interview. The technology has rapidly developed, and there is a good chance that Chinese companies will just copy it in a few years, and steal all the production away, as has happened with so many other electronic technologies.

 

Who's gonna buy the US's particular brand of (*)(*)(*)(*)? China and India have far outpaced you, and they're actually starting to improve the quality of their stuff.

Methinks the US is destined to be a port town.

 

The fact that there is a case of China importing an electrical component from the USA to make a product is, to me, just amazing.
Albeit it is to make a product that is mostly exported back to the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. But still.

Normally it is the other way around. Even most of the little electronic components used in American fighter planes are cheap (and often unreliable low quality) parts made in China.

 

They weren't lost to trade, China, Mexico or whatever boogeyman you want to imagine. US manufacturing is producing more than it ever has, those jobs were lost to efficiency and technology and nothing else.

Should we also be lamenting about the loss of agricultural jobs from the early 20th century?

 

When there are not enough good options to replace them, yes perhaps

Farm work may have been a labor intensive occupation, without huge personal incomes. But it did allow plenty of personal independance and a degree of security that is lacking in most of today's jobs. There are many city dwellers that reminisce about owning a farm and working in the fresh open air amongst crops and the natural earth.

 

Not in L.A.

 

So you'd undo all the technology and efficiency gains that destroyed those jobs and made them much easier on the people that still do them? Not very nice of you.

There's land for sale, why aren't they buying it and living the green acres life? Oh that's right, because you just made this up,

 

Sounds like standard product life-cycle stuff! The US (and other developed nations) have a dynamic comparative advantage in new product requiring skilled labour. As a product becomes 'old' (typically after a period of intra-industry trade across similar countries), we'd expect the comparative advantage to shift to imitator countries. The secret? Innovate! A high tech industry that isn't innovating isn't much cop

 

Yes, but the USA gets the short end of the stick. There is much more money and jobs manufacturing the products that have already been newly established than there is having to continue to develop new technology every time production is quickly outsourced away.

 

So now innovation isn't the source of our greatest wealth?

I'm stimmied on how to address this... does first mover advantage mean nothing to you? Have you forgotten that US patent laws are 20 years long? Copyrights law? Being first, means A LOT.

 

Utter drivel. The product life cycle exists for all developed nations, informing us of the fluidity of comparative advantage.

 

I'm skeptical on whether or not jobs would be moved to America by forcing, for example, street lights to be 60% made in America. I am because you would need to make a tax in order to pay for those lights, and taxes hurt the economy even if spending taxed dollars helps it. You might succeed at moving one light manufacturer to America, but the increased taxes would be the "straw that broke the camels back" to another business in America.

A 60% made in America rule would give 40% of the taxed 100% American dollars to foreign businesses.

However, if you made it 100% it would create a net increase in businesses in America because when people spend money, a certain percent of it goes to foreign businesses (this works both ways, money comes back from other countries, but right now it's significantly less then what is lost to them). When you increase taxes in this way, an artificial expenditure is made in which 100% of the money goes to an American business.

This however would do little for the economy because you would have to take a large amount from people to get a significant amount of net businesses created in the US.

So basically the idea is trash binned for me. Still innovative though.

 

Yes, that's right. It used to be that America would reap the benefits of its innovation down the line. The real wealth came not from the invention itself, but rather mass producing it.

Take for example lasers in the 1980's. Lasers were invented in the USA, and as a result the world-wide production of lasers centered in California. These were the early gas tube lasers. After the USA signed a free trade agreement with China everything changed. When solid state diode lasers were later developed in the United States, production immediately shifted away to China.

 

Its all very well coming out with 'but we don't continue to benefit' stories about innovation, but it shows a mere innocence of how product lifecycles develop. There are some specific examples where the inventing country hasn't been the one that benefitted. The classic example, used by Chandler in his analysis into the advantages into managerial capitalism, is chemical dyes and German gain at British expense. However, that's ultimately merely a reference to entrepreneurial success or failure

 

An economy cannot continue to thrive on innovation alone. While technology may be the original foundation of our economies, the economy has much more to do with what is actually done with that technology. To become so reliant on continued new innovation for the health of a nation's economy is completely irresponsible, and rather absurd in my opinion.

A country should be able to maintain a thriving economy even if no new technologies are developed. There is something wrong if a country cannot do that.
I would also point out the biotechnology bubble in Ireland. Innovation is just not enough to sustain an economy. Development of new technology and creative industries is more of a small niche.

 

A meaningless comment. Innovation merely informs us how dynamic comparative advantage develops. A developed country that doesn't innovate? No such beast.

Your comments become increasingly insane

 

You should reexamine your own economic understanding. Does prosperity really require continued economic growth? If so, it only stands to reason that continued growth cannot go on forever, and your type of prosperity is not sustainable.

 

From an economic nationalist that peddles xenophobia? Stop wasting my time

The policies you support will certainly deliver recession as the staple diet. Rational folk hope for better

 

Surely you jest? Then why pray tell do we produce more than we ever have and why has the standard of living of everyone involved improved since your romantic past has crumbled?

 

Funny stuff. A probable bunch of USA citizens telling a Swede that he is crazy for making an attempt to preserve the USA manufacturing base. The USA is gone. Residual image, as stated in the movie "The Matrix". That is all that the USA is living on.

 

Consumers don't get the short end of the stick. They are better off for lower prices and can spend the money they save on new, innovative products produced by Americans.

 

The US is still the second largest producer of manufactured goods and manufacturing has continued to increase year after year except for 2009. If the US manufacturing output were a separate economy, it would be tied with Germany for GDP. The increase of productivity means that far fewer workers are need to produce the same amount, or more, of goods. Is that a bad thing?

 

Common anti-American statement.

 

We do not. We have just brought in many many more people from outside countries with lower standards of living, so there are more people.
And the price of land, and thus rent and housing, has shot up. We do not produce more, it is just everything is becoming more expensive.

 

Free speech. What, at the age of 18, have you done to help the USA? Please explain in detail and don't hold back because your mom is watching your post.