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842 points putzdown | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.582s | source
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NoTeslaThrow ◴[] No.43706451[source]
We never stopped manufacturing, we just stopped employing people.

> We don’t have the infrastructure to manufacture

That's trivially false given we're the second-largest manufacturer in the world. We just don't want to employ people, hence why we can't make an iphone or refine raw materials.

The actual issue is that our business culture is antithetical to a healthy society. The idea of employing Americans is anti-business—there's no willingness to invest, or to train, or to support an employee seen as waste. Until business can find some sort of reason to care about the state of the country, this will continue.

Of course, the government could weigh in, could incentivize, could subsidize, could propagandize, etc, to encourage us to actually build domestic industries. But that would be a titantic course reversal that would take decades of cultural change.

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1. palmotea ◴[] No.43707504[source]
> The actual issue is that our business culture is antithetical to a healthy society. The idea of employing Americans is anti-business—there's no willingness to invest, or to train, or to support an employee seen as waste. Until business can find some sort of reason to care about the state of the country, this will continue.

I think you're exactly right there.

>> We don’t have the infrastructure to manufacture

> That's trivially false given we're the second-largest manufacturer in the world.

I want to quibble with that a little bit. I don't have the numbers, but relative position matters too. The US could be "second-largest manufacturer in the world" if it only manufactures Dixie cups, other countries manufacture nothing, and China manufactures everything else.

My understanding is Chinese output is so huge, that even if the US had maintained steady or modestly growing manufacturing output from the 70s or whatever, it would be dwarfed by China.

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2. habinero ◴[] No.43709705[source]
No, we're a very close second in terms of output, almost on par. [0]

The difference is China has something like 10x the number of workers in manufacturing and can efficiently take on smaller or custom work.

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[0] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/global-manufacturing-scor...