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How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

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689 points taubek | 5 comments | 09 Apr 25 12:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.733s | source
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rayiner ◴[09 Apr 25 14:52 UTC] No.43632822[source]▶
Americans need to get over their view of “Asia” as being about making shoes. When I was working in engineering in the early aughts, we mocked the Chinese as being able only to copy American technology. Today, China is competitive with or ahead of America in key technology areas, including nuclear power, AI, EVs, and batteries.

We need to anticipate a future where China is equal to America on a per capita basis, but four times bigger. Is that a world where “Designed by Apple in California, Made in China” still makes sense? What will be America’s competitive edge in that scenario?

What seems most likely to me in the future is that the US will find itself in the same position the UK is in now. Dominating finance and services won’t mean anything when both the IP and the physical products are being produced somewhere else.

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pjc50 ◴[09 Apr 25 16:29 UTC] No.43633979[source]▶
> US will find itself in the same position the UK is in now

The thing is .. there's a point here, but it's not at all tied in with physical products. People are obsessed with one side of the ledger while refusing to see the other. Most of the stuff the UK is struggling with (transport, healthcare, energy) are "state capacity" issues. Things where the state is unavoidably involved and having better, more decisive leadership and not getting bogged down in consultations, would make a big difference.

The UK stepped on its own rake because it was obsessed with tiny, already vanished industries like fishing. Fishing is less profitable for the whole UK than Warhammer. It's not actually where we want to be. While real UK manufacture successes (cars, aircraft, satellites, generators, all sorts of high-tech stuff) get completely ignored. Or bogged down in extra export red tape thanks to Brexit.

To improve reality, we have to start from reality, not whatever vision of the past propaganda "news" channels are blathering about.

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wahern ◴[09 Apr 25 17:31 UTC] No.43634841[source]▶
> Fishing is less profitable for the whole UK than Warhammer.

There are 3x as many fishermen in the UK than employees of Games Workshop, and much more again if you count the number of related fishery jobs.

At the end of the day, politicians and voters alike respond more to employment than nominal monetary figures. A broader employment base is generally better for social and political stability than explicit wealth redistribution (e.g. tax + entitlements). The latter is what economic theory tends to emphasize--i.e. equivocate incomes based on state wealth redistribution schemes--but such economic theory is how we got Trump, Brexit, and a host of other ills. Economics hasn't figured out, yet, how to price the constituent inputs that produce political and economic stability. GDP, Gini, per capita income, employment rate, etc metrics are gross approximations that work well until they don't (though they're still better than rhetoric and handwaving). But to be fair, social and political theorists haven't solved that problem, either; at least, not with a rigorous quantification model.

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1. matt-p ◴[09 Apr 25 18:08 UTC] No.43635311[source]▶
Sorry, but I don't think this is the reason. There were vastly more people in financial services calling for us NOT to have brexit than fishermen asking for it, even in number of people. I honestly don't think this was a numbers of people affected vs "% of GDP" affected issue. Not at all.

What good did it do for us? At the time everyone was running around rubbishing and laughing at the "outrageous" claims of 10% GDP loss, and where are we now?

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2. ben_w ◴[09 Apr 25 19:59 UTC] No.43637097[source]▶
> What good did it do for us? At the time everyone was running around rubbishing and laughing at the "outrageous" claims of 10% GDP loss, and where are we now?

Impossible to say, as it was swamped by the pandemic. My guess as to the fatalities due to Brexit is also untestable as a result.

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3. matt-p ◴[09 Apr 25 21:05 UTC] No.43637990[source]▶
true, impossible to come up with a scientific answer, but you could compare with european countries who also went through a similar covid response and start to see a bit of a trend leap out.

For what it's worth I'm not sure if the number is actually 10%, but I'd hazard that it's more than 5/6.

4. mattmanser ◴[10 Apr 25 09:06 UTC] No.43642110[source]▶
It's not actually about the fishermen, it's about the whole rural communities.

Just like farming, it's everyone living out there. How the fishers and farmers are being treated is how those communities at large feel like they're being treated. And they always feel like they're being shafted, even though that's just progress and other industries got shafted much worse in the past.

So for every 1 fisherman, there are 20 other votes. And they all generally vote conservative, those are blue strongholds (blue over here is conservative, red labour).

For every 1 Games Workshop employee, there's no other votes. Even spouses will be fairly uninvested in how the government is treating toy exports.

But on the other part of your comment, there's been no 10% GDP loss. Note, I voted remain, and would vote to rejoin in a heartbeat.

But we're roughly at the same position today in the world as we were in 2016, compared to other countries. Sitting about 6/7th in the world. Everyone's suffered since covid, everyone's struggling with growth. There's been no big drop in GDP. So it was actually scaremongering. It feels like there's a conspiracy of economists who lie, heavily influence markets, but their lies don't match reality. It's ideological propaganda for free-market capitalism, rather than fact.

5. pjc50 ◴[10 Apr 25 09:27 UTC] No.43642233[source]▶
There's tons of people in email jobs who are just clamouring to get up at 6am and gut fish! /s

Something not really addressed in all of this is that a lot of the people whinging about British jobs and so on, especially in high-Brexit areas, are actually themselves retirees.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36619342 "Of the 30 areas with the most elderly people, 27 voted leave".

Now, they're often living in economically depressed areas. I've seen Blackpool and Lowestoft (the sad little marker of the UK's easterly point, right next to a gas terminal). But you can't give them their jobs back, because they're not working any more. It's nostalgia.

I'm going to keep hammering the question of "why should people move from lucrative, comfortable email jobs to harder, less lucrative factory jobs, or, god help them, fishing?"

The UK is actually at ""full employment"" (NAIRU): https://obr.uk/box/the-equilibrium-unemployment-rate/ - that is, economists believe it cannot go lower without causing inflation, as shortages mean you can't hire people without having to offer more wages to poach them from other jobs.

(Another conundrum: people want higher wages without higher prices. How are you going to do the arithmetic on that?)