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(01-14-2017, 11:46 AM)David Horn Wrote: (01-12-2017, 09:16 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: (01-12-2017, 01:08 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: (01-11-2017, 08:48 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Out of curiosity, what policy changes do you think caused the labor market shifts in around 2000?
Politicians set policy. Politicians cannot stop some economic realities.
Capitalism is much more effective in creating opportunity where there are shortages. If multitudes want something new and expensive (like cars in the early part of the 20th century; wristwatches, refrigerators, radios, phonographs, televisions, personal computers, and video-game players at various times, then there are opportunities for capitalists. Once markets are saturated, the high prices and opportunities for both capitalists and manufacturing workers are gone. The economy then goes to replacement which makes a manufactured object a commodity instead of a big-ticket item.
I was asking because 2000 was around when there was a steep decline in manufacturing employment in the US, compensated by a rise in health care and certain other categories. The graph looked like what might result from a policy change, rather than economic changes, which are more continuous.
I agree with you that traditional manufacturing is not the future. I think the future is in services, and ideally our economic policies should promote the transition to services.
The first indication of discontinuity was the unlinking of productivity and median income gains. That happened ~1973 and the new trend lines continued up to the present.
Agreed. As I demonstrated in the 2016 election thread, the most likely cause of that discontinuity was uncapping of immigration so the owners could import as much labor as they needed without increasing wages. Incidentally this is more than a decade too early to reflect any Chinese inflluence on the situation.
The 2000 discontinuity is specifically in manufacturing, and is in number of jobs in that sector, not just wages. It's a different discontinuity.
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45% tariff? On as typical import purchased at retail, about half the cost (as on anything else) is in merchandising or profit, so a 45% tariff is effectively about a 22.5% excise tax.
Thus the headphones that I just bought for $30 plus sales tax would cost about $37 plus tax.
As tariffs are about to be imposed, people would go on a mad rush to buy stuff before it gets priced out of reach. Then would come a consumer crash.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
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Quote:For people with sensitive skin and glasses, yes.
Are you claiming that you are incapable of wearing anything other than pure cotton dress shirts (gently moistened with the sweat of Asian children) under pain of some sort of skin condition? How do glasses enter the picture?
Quote:You contradict yourself. Some industries, such as certain types of clothing manufacture, are dependent on sweatshop style labor, because there's no technology capable of substituting for the labor. If you want those factories here, you're advocating reestablishment of sweatshops in America.
I am skeptical of this claim. A lot of textile work is already beginning to move back to places like England and the United States to shorten product cycles and supply chains, and the presence of American manufacturers of those goods which require a high labor component (operating under what I would assume are normal federal regulations on wages and work conditions) imply that sweatshops are not a necessary precondition of the same. Why the emphasis on textiles, btw?
Quote:I agree that separating process management from process execution is questionable, and for industries where the intellectual input is primarily in process management rather than product design, the entire firm is often better located in on geographic area. That doesn't mean the entire value chain has to be in one geographic area; the fact that gold is mined in Russia and South Africa doesn't mean that electronics manufacture, which involves gold plated contacts, has to all be located in Russia and South Africa.
Agreed on all counts. Although, given the wealth of natural resources available in the US and, if need be, Canada/Mexico/Caribbean (Jamaica, for instance, has an abundance of aluminum deposits), I don't think we would need to be as dependent on exports to pay for resource imports as Japan or Germany.
Quote:The best practices from the Germans and Japanese include focusing on highly automatable parts of the manufacturing industry where much of the work is knowledge worker work rather than repetitive assembly work. They are okay with importing dress shirts while they are exporting automobiles. If we are going to have the manufacturing success that they do, we're going to have to be okay with that too.
Still no objection. I would note that both of those fine countries practice industrial policy to an extent that has not been seen in the US in decades. I would also like to re-emphasize that my point is less to claw back every possible industry, including garments and toy assembly, as it is to end a situation where even high-end goods like cars and electronics get immediately outsourced to factories in Shenzhen and Guadalajara which benefit from government support and more favorable regulatory environments (which is not to say that I advocate harmonizing our regulations with them, only noting that environmental and labor protections are not free, and engaging in trade with countries that do not have the same standards places an unfair burden on companies trying to compete).
Quote:Agreed. As I demonstrated in the 2016 election thread, the most likely cause of that discontinuity was uncapping of immigration so the owners could import as much labor as they needed without increasing wages. Incidentally this is more than a decade too early to reflect any Chinese inflluence on the situation.
Agreed, as well as the massive entry of women into the labor market starting in the same time period.
Quote:The 2000 discontinuity is specifically in manufacturing, and is in number of jobs in that sector, not just wages. It's a different discontinuity.
Agreed, again. Did you have a chance to look at the link I posted in support of my claim concerning the impact of specifically Chinese competition at that time? If so, any comments?
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01-15-2017, 04:06 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-15-2017, 04:10 PM by SomeGuy.)
An interesting follow-up to Amazon supposedly causing the death of retail stores. Shades of Sears-Roebuck, which also started as a virtual store.
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(01-14-2017, 02:30 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Quote:For people with sensitive skin and glasses, yes.
Are you claiming that you are incapable of wearing anything other than pure cotton dress shirts (gently moistened with the sweat of Asian children) under pain of some sort of skin condition? How do glasses enter the picture?
I'm capable of it, but I get skin irritation and mild rashes with cotton/poly. Wearing a pullover shirt with glasses on risks breaking the glasses frames; taking the glasses off risks losing them for people with sufficiently bad eyesight. And the fact that third world laborers can improve their standard of living by making twice as much as they did before is a bonus.
Really I shouldn't have to justify myself on this, though; it should be enough that I prefer them. The purpose of a good economic policy should be to raise everyone's standard of living, not to drag it down to the lowest common denominator.
Quote:Quote:You contradict yourself. Some industries, such as certain types of clothing manufacture, are dependent on sweatshop style labor, because there's no technology capable of substituting for the labor. If you want those factories here, you're advocating reestablishment of sweatshops in America.
I am skeptical of this claim. A lot of textile work is already beginning to move back to places like England and the United States to shorten product cycles and supply chains, and the presence of American manufacturers of those goods which require a high labor component (operating under what I would assume are normal federal regulations on wages and work conditions) imply that sweatshops are not a necessary precondition of the same. Why the emphasis on textiles, btw?
Woven clothing - as opposed to knits - are a good example of a product that can't presently be produced in a highly automatable way, and are thus unsuitable to manufacture in the US. I didn't know you were a millenial when we started this conversation, though; perhaps I should have been concentrating on whether you really wanted to be paying $2000 for your smartphone.
Quote:Quote:I agree that separating process management from process execution is questionable, and for industries where the intellectual input is primarily in process management rather than product design, the entire firm is often better located in on geographic area. That doesn't mean the entire value chain has to be in one geographic area; the fact that gold is mined in Russia and South Africa doesn't mean that electronics manufacture, which involves gold plated contacts, has to all be located in Russia and South Africa.
Agreed on all counts. Although, given the wealth of natural resources available in the US and, if need be, Canada/Mexico/Caribbean (Jamaica, for instance, has an abundance of aluminum deposits), I don't think we would need to be as dependent on exports to pay for resource imports as Japan or Germany.
Yes, and the US also has a bigger domestic market; a better comparison might be to the EU as a whole, rather than just to Germany.
Quote:Quote:The best practices from the Germans and Japanese include focusing on highly automatable parts of the manufacturing industry where much of the work is knowledge worker work rather than repetitive assembly work. They are okay with importing dress shirts while they are exporting automobiles. If we are going to have the manufacturing success that they do, we're going to have to be okay with that too.
Still no objection. I would note that both of those fine countries practice industrial policy to an extent that has not been seen in the US in decades. I would also like to re-emphasize that my point is less to claw back every possible industry, including garments and toy assembly, as it is to end a situation where even high-end goods like cars and electronics get immediately outsourced to factories in Shenzhen and Guadalajara which benefit from government support and more favorable regulatory environments (which is not to say that I advocate harmonizing our regulations with them, only noting that environmental and labor protections are not free, and engaging in trade with countries that do not have the same standards places an unfair burden on companies trying to compete).
Then perhaps you shouldn't be arguing on the dress shirt issue.
Perhaps we should be arguing about smartphones, though. Those have extremely dispersed supply chains; I question whether it's realistic to bring them back onshore. The components are also much lower weight per dollar than knit cotton, for example, so proximity matters less.
I do think we made a mistake when we somehow allowed CPU chip manufacture slip overseas for them.
Quote:Quote:Agreed. As I demonstrated in the 2016 election thread, the most likely cause of that discontinuity was uncapping of immigration so the owners could import as much labor as they needed without increasing wages. Incidentally this is more than a decade too early to reflect any Chinese influence on the situation.
Agreed, as well as the massive entry of women into the labor market starting in the same time period.
Quote:The 2000 discontinuity is specifically in manufacturing, and is in number of jobs in that sector, not just wages. It's a different discontinuity.
Agreed, again. Did you have a chance to look at the link I posted in support of my claim concerning the impact of specifically Chinese competition at that time? If so, any comments?
I skimmed it. It didn't seem to add anything to what we were already discussing and didn't seem to address the 2000 discontinuity.
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Quote:I'm capable of it, but I get skin irritation and mild rashes with cotton/poly. Wearing a pullover shirt with glasses on risks breaking the glasses frames; taking the glasses off risks losing them for people with sufficiently bad eyesight.
Fair enough, was curious what the issue was.
Quote:And the fact that third world laborers can improve their standard of living by making twice as much as they did before is a bonus.
On the surface admirable, but does your sympathies extend to the first-world laborers displaced by the same? These sorts of price pressures are just as likely to pull us down to their level as raise them to ours (or, more accurately, make them meet in the middle somewhere). The resource base and waste sinks on which industrial civilization depends are not infinite, and cannot sustain standards of living on a European level, much less an American one. And the experience of the past 40 years suggests that the good-paying jobs we were supposedly giving these things up for never really materialized in sufficient numbers.
Quote:Really I shouldn't have to justify myself on this, though; it should be enough that I prefer them. The purpose of a good economic policy should be to raise everyone's standard of living, not to drag it down to the lowest common denominator.
Like I said, I am not committed to total autarky. If we made a good-faith effort to maximize our own industrial production, particularly the high-value stuff, then I'd be happy to see a certain amount of goods, uneconomic to produce here, manufactured in Guatemala or something. The only further point I'd like to add to this issue before I drop it is that the point of good economy policy by the American government is to maximize the standards of Americans as a whole, and not to optimize the global economy or your or my condition specifically. Of course you might argue that that is exactly what it is doing, which is something reasonable people can disagree over, but the present conditions of trade may be doing much more to create that "lowest common denominator" you mentioned above.
Quote:Woven clothing - as opposed to knits - are a good example of a product that can't presently be produced in a highly automatable way, and are thus unsuitable to manufacture in the US. I didn't know you were a millenial when we started this conversation, though; perhaps I should have been concentrating on whether you really wanted to be paying $2000 for your smartphone.
I AM a millennial, and a programmer (well, data analyst/programmer) to boot, but otherwise you are woefully off-base. I don't own a smartphone, I gave mine up some time ago, and estimates for manufacturing an Iphone in the States, for instance, would only add about $100 to the price.
Quote:Yes, and the US also has a bigger domestic market; a better comparison might be to the EU as a whole, rather than just to Germany.
Agreed, and it doesn't have the same legal, language, and other barriers as the EU does, despite the best efforts of earnest Eurocrats.
Quote:Then perhaps you shouldn't be arguing on the dress shirt issue.
As you may or may not have noticed, I LIKE arguing. It's really what I'm here for. So, not committed to the dress shirt issue per se, but I still find your arguments about the basic infeasibility of dress shirt manufacture in the US without turning it into something out of Charles Dickens questionable and worthy of contesting.
Quote:Perhaps we should be arguing about smartphones, though. Those have extremely dispersed supply chains; I question whether it's realistic to bring them back onshore. The components are also much lower weight per dollar than knit cotton, for example, so proximity matters less.
Referenced above, and apparently Apple has made some noises about reshoring production since the election. Coincidence? Dunno, not a higherup at Apple or Foxconn.
If it makes you happier, here's an alternate price estimate, that ends up around your $2000 mark. I can post more, but most of them seem to cluster closer to the MIT one than to that one. It would also be worthwhile to consider the multiplier effects from those wages and investments being located in the US as well, coupled with changes in the demand from the price. But that's possibly outside the scope of this sort of discussion.
Quote:I do think we made a mistake when we somehow allowed CPU chip manufacture slip overseas for them.
Hey, man, that's "free trade", isn't it? At least we still have American lawyers and doctors, amirite? 
Quote:I skimmed it. It didn't seem to add anything to what we were already discussing and didn't seem to address the 2000 discontinuity.
You should look a little closer. It showed the absence of a productivity surge and the expansion of manufacturing imports during that time, bolstering my thesis. I'd love to have a discussion about it if you'd like to dispute it, but I'm gonna need a little bit more than "skim" if so. 
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(01-16-2017, 12:33 AM)SomeGuy Wrote: Quote:And the fact that third world laborers can improve their standard of living by making twice as much as they did before is a bonus.
On the surface admirable, but does your sympathies extend to the first-world laborers displaced by the same? These sorts of price pressures are just as likely to pull us down to their level as raise them to ours (or, more accurately, make them meet in the middle somewhere). The resource base and waste sinks on which industrial civilization depends are not infinite, and cannot sustain standards of living on a European level, much less an American one. And the experience of the past 40 years suggests that the good-paying jobs we were supposedly giving these things up for never really materialized in sufficient numbers.
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.
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.
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.
Quote:Quote:Really I shouldn't have to justify myself on this, though; it should be enough that I prefer them. The purpose of a good economic policy should be to raise everyone's standard of living, not to drag it down to the lowest common denominator.
Like I said, I am not committed to total autarky. If we made a good-faith effort to maximize our own industrial production, particularly the high-value stuff, then I'd be happy to see a certain amount of goods, uneconomic to produce here, manufactured in Guatemala or something. The only further point I'd like to add to this issue before I drop it is that the point of good economy policy by the American government is to maximize the standards of Americans as a whole, and not to optimize the global economy or your or my condition specifically. Of course you might argue that that is exactly what it is doing, which is something reasonable people can disagree over, but the present conditions of trade may be doing much more to create that "lowest common denominator" you mentioned above.
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.
Quote:Quote:Woven clothing - as opposed to knits - are a good example of a product that can't presently be produced in a highly automatable way, and are thus unsuitable to manufacture in the US. I didn't know you were a millenial when we started this conversation, though; perhaps I should have been concentrating on whether you really wanted to be paying $2000 for your smartphone.
I AM a millennial, and a programmer (well, data analyst/programmer) to boot, but otherwise you are woefully off-base. I don't own a smartphone, I gave mine up some time ago, and estimates for manufacturing an Iphone in the States, for instance, would only add about $100 to the price.
...
Quote:Perhaps we should be arguing about smartphones, though. Those have extremely dispersed supply chains; I question whether it's realistic to bring them back onshore. The components are also much lower weight per dollar than knit cotton, for example, so proximity matters less.
Referenced above, and apparently Apple has made some noises about reshoring production since the election. Coincidence? Dunno, not a higherup at Apple or Foxconn.
If it makes you happier, here's an alternate price estimate, that ends up around your $2000 mark. I can post more, but most of them seem to cluster closer to the MIT one than to that one. It would also be worthwhile to consider the multiplier effects from those wages and investments being located in the US as well, coupled with changes in the demand from the price. But that's possibly outside the scope of this sort of discussion.
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.
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.
Quote:Quote:Then perhaps you shouldn't be arguing on the dress shirt issue.
As you may or may not have noticed, I LIKE arguing. It's really what I'm here for. So, not committed to the dress shirt issue per se, but I still find your arguments about the basic infeasibility of dress shirt manufacture in the US without turning it into something out of Charles Dickens questionable and worthy of contesting.
You could always argue that the singularity will solve the automation issue for dress shirt manufacture.
Quote:Quote:I do think we made a mistake when we somehow allowed CPU chip manufacture slip overseas for them.
Hey, man, that's "free trade", isn't it? At least we still have American lawyers and doctors, amirite?
Quote:I skimmed it. It didn't seem to add anything to what we were already discussing and didn't seem to address the 2000 discontinuity.
You should look a little closer. It showed the absence of a productivity surge and the expansion of manufacturing imports during that time, bolstering my thesis. I'd love to have a discussion about it if you'd like to dispute it, but I'm gonna need a little bit more than "skim" if so.
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.
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Incidentally, in case you thought my comment about the singularity was serious, it's not. However, while we may not be getting flying cars, we might at least get supersonic planes back:
https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/12/boom-s...-airliner/
I'm not sure how much good that does for jobs, but if the technology trickles down to coach and not just business class, it would be a nice improvement to standard of living.
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(01-16-2017, 01:56 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: Incidentally, in case you thought my comment about the singularity was serious, it's not. However, while we may not be getting flying cars, we might at least get supersonic planes back:
https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/12/boom-s...-airliner/
I'm not sure how much good that does for jobs, but if the technology trickles down to coach and not just business class, it would be a nice improvement to standard of living.
Color me skeptical. Commercial aviation is not exactly a booming business these days, even after all of the consolidations, and fuel costs are both the major expense and directly connected to top speeds. Passenger capacity seems a little low, too, no?
I love reading techblogs, but there are so many pitfalls between lab/prototype/startup/actually viable business that I am always, as I said, skeptical.
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01-16-2017, 10:22 AM
(This post was last modified: 01-16-2017, 11:04 AM by SomeGuy.)
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. 
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Getting away from that for a second, here's an article detailing a policy that may be more to your liking.
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(01-16-2017, 09:56 AM)SomeGuy Wrote: (01-16-2017, 01:56 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: Incidentally, in case you thought my comment about the singularity was serious, it's not. However, while we may not be getting flying cars, we might at least get supersonic planes back:
https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/12/boom-s...-airliner/
I'm not sure how much good that does for jobs, but if the technology trickles down to coach and not just business class, it would be a nice improvement to standard of living.
Color me skeptical. Commercial aviation is not exactly a booming business these days, even after all of the consolidations, and fuel costs are both the major expense and directly connected to top speeds. Passenger capacity seems a little low, too, no?
I love reading techblogs, but there are so many pitfalls between lab/prototype/startup/actually viable business that I am always, as I said, skeptical.
I first saw it in a Guardian article where the spin was "this is how Branson is getting supersonic capability". I just chose the tech blog article to link because it has more detail about the technology. I hadn't been thinking about how the source being a tech blog would color the judgement of how likely it is to happen - sorry.
Branson has been trying to provide supersonic service for some time; he tried to buy the remaining Concordes from British Air when British Air stopped flying them when the internet bubble burst. That's why I view this as credible. This company is connected to his Space Ship One venture, which is less likely actually to offer paid service, but which has relevant technology.
The plane is sized to offer the same number of seats as a 747 business class. They are targeting a 30% improvement over Concorde fuel burn - one could hope 50 years improvement in technology might provide that - which would support pricing the same as Virgin's transatlantic business class. Capex would be higher, but I could see Branson paying extra at the beginning to get the technology off the ground.
If it goes into service and is a success, I could definitely see the technology improving to the point where all air travel becomes supersonic. Supersonic flight is not inherently less fuel efficient on a per mile basis, just on a per hour basis.
Of course, the crisis is going to intervene here at some point, which could cause a problem.
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01-16-2017, 01:13 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-16-2017, 01:14 PM by SomeGuy.)
Quote:I first saw it in a Guardian article where the spin was "this is how Branson is getting supersonic capability". I just chose the tech blog article to link because it has more detail about the technology. I hadn't been thinking about how the source being a tech blog would color the judgement of how likely it is to happen - sorry.
No worries, just pointing out the same thing you did with the MIT Technology Review thing.
Quote:Branson has been trying to provide supersonic service for some time; he tried to buy the remaining Concordes from British Air when British Air stopped flying them when the internet bubble burst. That's why I view this as credible. This company is connected to his Space Ship One venture, which is less likely actually to offer paid service, but which has relevant technology.
Don't get me wrong, I think all that stuff is cool, but I wonder what technology you'd think Space Ship One has that would translate into affordable supersonic commercial jets?
Quote:The plane is sized to offer the same number of seats as a 747 business class. They are targeting a 30% improvement over Concorde fuel burn - one could hope 50 years improvement in technology might provide that - which would support pricing the same as Virgin's transatlantic business class. Capex would be higher, but I could see Branson paying extra at the beginning to get the technology off the ground.
Capex would be substantially higher, and I don't think Branson would be able or willing to eat that indefinitely. Airplanes are already pretty optimized to maximize fuel efficiency, it's a major cost, and I don't think arbitrary improvements are in the cards. Even the addition of laminar flow control and blended-wing bodies wouldn't take you up more than 20% or so. You're still pushing an object through the air.
Quote:If it goes into service and is a success, I could definitely see the technology improving to the point where all air travel becomes supersonic.
That's a lotta "if"s.
Quote:Supersonic flight is not inherently less fuel efficient on a per mile basis, just on a per hour basis.
Yes, it is. Fuel use is largely a function drag, and drag is a function of speed. In addition, the drag coefficient increases significantly after about Mach 0.8, pushing up fuel consumption dramatically.
It's not that it is impossible to fly past the sound barrier, I just question whether it is possible to do so cheaply.
But what would I know?
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(01-14-2017, 11:39 AM)SomeGuy Wrote: I see that that was NOT your last post in this thread, welcome back!
Quote:The Ultimate was a great prototype product, but it was still just that. True numerical control didn't exist, because the control circuitry to utilize and implement it needed processing and control technology that didn't exist at the time. By the time PUMA came to be, at least working level solutions to those problems were available. PUMA was still a programmable tool, but a much more powerful one.
You mean the Unimate, which seemed to have gone past the prototype phase. Wasn't that phase supposed to have been in the '80s, according to you?
Quote:FWIW, true robots will have the ability to adapt to the needs of the job, and do it on the fly.
Thus spake the prophet?
Quote:NASA has already demonstrated some early versions with the explorers on Mars.
That is a very charitable description of the Mars rover program.
Quote:Self driving cars have similar challenges.
Including the first death! Am very curious how that industry actually evolves.
Most of this falls under you-said-I-said, so just one response.
Cutting to the chase, autonomy is the point where a robot emerges from a programmable device. We'll be there before full AI is achieved, and smart vehicles seem to be the technology of choice. I agree that death and injury are not going to disappear (they didn't when we started to drive ourselves and fly in airplanes either). The real questions, beyond the ones involving trust in the technology, are liability. Once that is settled, and the technology is "good enough", what ever that means, things will proceed quickly.
I may see it, but you definitely should. Stay healthy.
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(01-14-2017, 11:42 AM)SomeGuy Wrote: (01-14-2017, 11:34 AM)David Horn Wrote: ... The unresolved question is: how much productivity is needed to meet all the demands of the public, assuming the public is the entire world's population? That's the limit. We can't know the limit for sure, but we can see indications that the rate of gain is slowing. Still unresolved: is that a pause in the curve or the new trend?
Yeah, and I posted up a follow-link that seemed to suggest that it is a reasonable assumption. As for your questions, are we assuming demand is static (this goes back to something I was saying before about new wants)? As for your bit on productivity, you're going to have to untangle that for me a bit, Dave.
Productivity gains have been driven by better practices, much of that derived from the systems, industrial and process engineering that began in earnest during WWII. Refinements continue, but most are now tied to the other trend: technology enhancements. We're just stating to see what big data has to offer, so I'll demur on what impact that may have. The rest involves doing more faster using Moore's Law to improve the ability to do it. There are still things that have remained in the Sci-Fi realm, because the technology isn't there yet. At some point, the ability to produce exceeds any potential demand.
You do make a point about new products and services that emerge because they can. Do you think that most of them are really economic drivers rather than frills we can easily do without? The current fascination with artisanal everything is getting a bit tiresome. Will any future trend be better?
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(01-14-2017, 12:12 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: I am not saying that nothing should be done, just that we should work within a shorter time-frame. I have outlined some of the things that Trump ran on that I would like to see done. This is not to say that there aren't other (more "left"-y) things that I would also like to see done, but that will have to wait for a future administration. And, as I pointed out in the other thread (Donald Trump: America's Berlusconi), the victory of Donald Trump is an excellent opportunity for the Dems or whoever on the left to clear away the Clinton/DNC legacy and come up with something better.
Trump said a lot of things, many contradictory. His total lack of concern about AGW is a huge red flag. His economic platform isn't all that great either. Those are two of the three biggies on my list ... especially AGW which operates on its own schedule. His foreign policy, if it can be called that, is pretty scary too.
It's hard to be sanguine on any level.
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Quote: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.
The Japanese did that in return for being allowed to keep nontariff barriers that prevent US automakers from selling into Japanese markets to this day.
I don't have a problem with driving a hard bargain, by the way, and I think it's great if the deal favors the US, as long as "the US" includes both US manufacturers and US consumers. I just want the deals to be win-win and not lose-lose, and actual trade wars are lose-lose.
Quote: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.
Britain benefited from its empire until the world wars, in the process managing to avoid most of the negative fallout from one generational crisis (Civil War / Taiping Rebelliion). I'd say that worked pretty well. Unless you think Britain could othwerwise have rejected the Washington Naval Treaty and defeated the US along with Germany and Japan in WWII?
Quote: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.
It's been a good discussion. I've already emailed the Cruz folks to tell them not to run in 2020; it's pretty pointless to challenge a sitting president. 2024 maybe, if Trump does a good job and Pence decides not to run.
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(01-14-2017, 12:47 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: You contradict yourself. Some industries, such as certain types of clothing manufacture, are dependent on sweatshop style labor, because there's no technology capable of substituting for the labor. If you want those factories here, you're advocating reestablishment of sweatshops in America.
A year ago, I would have agreed with this. Now, some bright people built a smart sewing machine that sews by counting the threads in the fabric. Smart cutting already exists, so we may be on the brink of bespoke clothing for all, and all at a low-low price. Of course, like all industries employing smart machines, few workers will be needed.
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(01-14-2017, 12:59 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: (01-14-2017, 11:46 AM)David Horn Wrote: The first indication of discontinuity was the unlinking of productivity and median income gains. That happened ~1973 and the new trend lines continued up to the present.
Agreed. As I demonstrated in the 2016 election thread, the most likely cause of that discontinuity was uncapping of immigration so the owners could import as much labor as they needed without increasing wages. Incidentally this is more than a decade too early to reflect any Chinese inflluence on the situation.
The 2000 discontinuity is specifically in manufacturing, and is in number of jobs in that sector, not just wages. It's a different discontinuity.
I remember the trigger well: the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. One day things were banal, the next, we had gas lines and rapidly escalating gas prices. Employers got spooked, so hiring dried up, and forget about pay raises that matched price increases. That practice stopped cold right then, and never returned.
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01-16-2017, 02:35 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-16-2017, 02:47 PM by Mikebert.)
(01-10-2017, 01:38 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Mike,
From chapter 7 of On The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation:
Quote:It would undoubtedly be advantageous to the capitalists of England, and to the consumers in both countries, that under such circumstances, the wine and the cloth should both be made in Portugal, and therefore that the capital and labour of England employed in making cloth, should be removed to Portugal for that purpose. In that case, the relative value of these commodities would be regulated by the same principle, as if one were the produce of Yorkshire, and the other of London: and in every other case, if capital freely flowed towards those countries where it could be most profitably employed, there could be no difference in the rate of profit, and no other difference in the real or labour price of commodities, than the additional quantity of labour required to convey them to the various markets where they were to be sold.
7.19
Experience, however, shews, that the fancied or real insecurity of capital, when not under the immediate control of its owner, together with the natural disinclination which every man has to quit the country of his birth and connexions, and intrust himself with all his habits fixed, to a strange government and new laws, check the emigration of capital. These feelings, which I should be sorry to see weakened, induce most men of property to be satisfied with a low rate of profits in their own country, rather than seek a more advantageous employment for their wealth in foreign nations.
Clearly, these feelings no longer apply. The telecommunications industry, which made it unnecessary to actually leave the country permanently in order to communicate effectively with far flung holdings, the modern corporation, and the liberal regime (backed up by the US military) instituted after WWII and elaborated since have undermined those considerations, and created the present situation.
There are additional criticism of Ricardian advantage beyond the mobility (or lack thereof) of capital, including externalities, trade in assets and liabilities (whose production costs are effectively zero), factors of production (including laborers and their skills) not being perfectly mobile domestically, etc.
What you quoted was what I thought. Comparative advantage held in Ricardo's day because capitalists were leery of investing abroad for fear their property being confiscated by foreign governments (e.g. investment made in imperial Russia before 1917 or American oversea capital assets that were nationalized by socialist governments after WW II).
What I was asking about was the silly thing to which you referred.
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