Quote:There were never any significant number of first world laborers displaced by these third world laborers. Prior to manufacture in the developing world, these products were luxury products or nonexistent. The reason polyester and polyester blend clothes were in fashion in the 1970s wasn't because people actually liked polyester; it was because they couldn't afford 100% cotton and wool. Be glad you didn't have to live through that.
Are we still talking only about dress shirts, or products in general? 'Cause if its the latter, there are a lot of people who would beg to differ. Furniture, textiles, televisions, cars, semiconductors, other consumer electronics... We've been letting industries slip through our fingers for years, and we have the abandoned factories to prove it.
If we're still talking about dress shirts... I'm not sure why.
Quote:The things that did go overseas were things like auto manufacture. A lot of that has come back, albeit under Japanese ownership. The jobs didn't come back as much because of automation.
We're still well below peak production, and mooted further shifts in production to Mexico (possibly put on hold now) would likely make that figure fall once more.
And those Japanese plants in the South DO actually employ a fair number of workers. And the Japanese didn't build them solely out of market considerations, but as a response to political pressure from none other than Saint Reagan and his government.
And that's not the only industry we've let haemorrhage overseas.
Quote:The biggest problem, though, is that jobs which used to be "good jobs" no longer are. Back in the 1970s, for example, slaughterhouse workers made $25/hour in today's dollars; now they make half that. There hasn't been any outsourcing there; the wage decline is all attributable to substitution of immigrant and illegal immigrant labor for US born labor.
Agreed, and that was another issue that went on my original post on the original subject of this thread.
Quote:I agree that the policy should be to maximize the standard of living of Americans as a whole. That's one of the reasons why I think it's great to offshore labor intensive manufacture to places where wages are a fraction of ours: we get to have all sorts of nice things that we couldn't otherwise have.
Victorian Britain, 18th century Holland, even increasingly Hong Kong today all made the same arguments. Uncompetitive labor, a financialized economy, domestic disinvestment due to higher financial returns overseas, and eventual stagnation are the results. The tradeoff you're talking about isn't cost-less, and there is no guarantee that newer, shinier, better paying jobs will be there to replace the ones lost. Lower prices don't help if your income sinks more.
Quote:Technology Review estimates are hardly MIT estimates; it's the target audience that's MIT - alums that MIT hopes will donate - not the people writing the magazine. That said, they do make the typical MIT mistake of ignoring business realities. If you increase the $200 worth of component and assembly cost, the other $600 of the price does not stay constant - it increases too, due to inventory costs and requirements for increased margin due to decreased sales. The $2000 estimate is thus more realistic, though smartphones might just disappear from the market entirely. Then we can all go back to Motorola flip phones, which could probably still be made in the US for $800.
Oh yes, we can make airplanes, we can make tanks, we can make reactors, but unless it's for the military we can never make any sort of consumer goods ever again.
Quote:So do you have a phone at all? When I replaced my 15 year old phone recently, there didn't appear to be any nonsmartphone options.
I traded min in for a flip phone a few months ago, and I save about $80 a month ($20 vs $100). I just went in and asked, and they came out with two different models and let me pick one.
Quote:You could always argue that the singularity will solve the automation issue for dress shirt manufacture.
Sure, and it would also solve Dave's complaints about them damn robots taking all the jobs! After all, we will all be ones with our machines, right?
Quote:Apparently unlike you, I'm not here to argue; I'm here to learn. For me, the argument is just a way to make sure I only learn stuff that survives careful scrutiny and is likely to be true. The idea that there was a policy change in 2000 that affected things suddenly was new to me and thus a potential learning experience; the general loss of manufacturing is something I'm familiar with and not worth rehashing for me. Sorry.
As you say, arguing is how you put what you learn (or already know) to the test. It is also enormously entertaining. Well, am sorry I didn't provide you with the result you were hoping for. Best of luck with Cruz 2020.
