
Bible Lobbyist: We Can't Print Bibles in America Anymore - chmaynard
https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/bible-lobbyist-we-cant-print-bibles
======
sp332
Have you considered that the lobbyist is _gasp_ not being 100% straightforward
about why bibles are printed in China? I mean personally, I wouldn't base my
worldview and my view of American manufacturing on a statement by a guy
arguing for a tax exemption.

~~~
jerf
I don't think the author is hiding that they are citing anecdotes to
illuminate a greater truth that has nothing to do with the Bible specifically.

Probably a sort of flamebait title for a site like HN though, to say nothing
of being a bit flamebaity once you get to the underlying point too. But under
_that_ , if we can manage to find it, there's a topic worth discussing.

~~~
sp332
Well I agree. It looks like the author had a point to make and didn't care at
all whether the evidence he presented actually led to that point or not.

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radley
The more interesting twist is that China is editing the bibles they print:

> _the Chinese government is cracking down on the 60 million Christians inside
> China, with party plans of “retranslating and annotating” the Bible to
> establish a “correct understanding” of the text._

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/china-
christia...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/china-christians-
religious-persecution-translation-bible)

~~~
jhart99
Hah. I am reminded of a particular conversation I had when I was working in
China. Our admin informed us around Christmas/New Years that we had to
register with the police for "religious celebration" if anyone wanted to have
a Christmas party. We were like, "we can't even have food and drinks/gift
giving? It isn't like any of us were religious." Yep no parties that might be
even superficially religious. We ended up having regular night out instead.

While I was there it was noted that any version of the Quran which was not in
Chinese was banned and needed to be turned into the authorities because only
the official Chinese translation was permitted.

------
sosuke
If you take the time to read the entire article the bibles are only part of
the argument.

> _Bibles and prom dresses don’t matter so much, but a few months ago, the
> head of acquisitions for the Air Force, William Roper, noted that the U.S.
> had to depend on only two prime contractor makers of fighter jets, down from
> 13 in the 1950s_

Additionally the ending letter was very interesting as well.

~~~
est31
[https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a475971.pdf](https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a475971.pdf)

    
    
        Massive consolidation within the defense industry began after the end of the Cold War.
        According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), the majority of the mergers occurred
        between 1990 and 1998.
        [...]
        In  1993, then Deputy Secretary of Defense William Perry held a meeting with defense
        industry leadership to inform them of drastic reductions in future defense expenditures
        and to encourage them to consolidate. That  meeting earned the sobriquet "the Last Supper."
        [...]
        The DoD had a policy that paid restructuring costs to consolidating companies, which
        allowed government and the company to share in the savings realized to the government.
        The policy gained congressional and public scrutiny because it seemed to reward contractors
        for undergoing large-scale downsizing or streamlining of the workforce in the name of
        cost savings (GAO, April 1996, 3). This procedure earned the stigmatizing label
        "payoffs for layoffs" from the media. 
    

That consolidation was their own doing.

~~~
sosuke
Very interesting! Do you think the person quoted in the article knew they were
being disingenuous?

~~~
est31
He doesn't have to support the policy choices of his predecessors. Actually,
the policy that led to those consolidations was ended in 1998:

    
    
        In 1998, DoD unexpectedly reversed the pro-consolidation policy
        and urged the Department of Justice (DOJ) to reject theproposed
        merger of Lockheed Martin and Northrop and the proposed General
        Dynamics acquisition of Newport News Shipbuilding.
    

[https://www.dau.edu/library/arj/ARJ/arq2001/Deutch.pdf](https://www.dau.edu/library/arj/ARJ/arq2001/Deutch.pdf)

------
defertoreptar
Ok so you can't make bibles in USA. That doesn't mean you _have_ to make
bibles in China, though. There are other countries that have cheap labor who
aren't the target of tariffs.

------
Zenst
Really gets down to cheap labour competitive(or anti-competitive perhaps)
advantage that make production of some products cheaper and any local offering
unable to compete.

If you had a product and both identical, one made in America, other in China,
the later one costs half the price, both same quality. How many would pay the
extra for something made locally - is it gets down to exactly that and why
many local industry has died or shifted away.

Same thing is playing out with high street's and shopping malls with internet
shopping. How many of those internet consumers will be the first to moan that
they can't pop into a local shop any more as it has closed down.

Consumer loyalty is and always pretty much been price/quality over country
loyalty. Ironically brand loyalty holds more water than country of
manufacture. For me personally, the last time country of manufacture was a
thing was in the 70's/early 80's for electronic goods with Japan having as a
country the same level of brand loyalty that Apple has today.

But things change, robots are advancing and production line automation with
robots is always improving. You may well see manufacturing comming home,
albeit done by robots as that is the only way your going to see competitive
balance against cheap labour. Though, how many then will have that ethical
quandary about what happened to all that cheap labour that is no longer
needed. But then, price/quality always seem to be the main drivers and I'm not
seeing that change anytime soon. But I'd love to be wrong upon that.

------
zyang
Put your hand on this holy kindle and swear oath.

------
rjkennedy98
>I am skeptical of the Trump administration’s industrial policy approach. But
I respect the that important policymakers have noticed we have lost the
ability to make things.

As Julius Krein has written about extensively, this goes way beyond the
nostalgia of wanting to "make things" again. When we started offshoring, it
was under the assumption we would be moving UP the value chain to building
more complex and advanced technology, but the reality is we are moving down.
The 21st century "tech" job is an Uber driver. That is a terrible thing for
America, and I fear that people continue to underestimate how massive a
problem it is.

~~~
sp332
How does that jibe with the reality that manufacturing in the US continues to
grow?
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS)

~~~
banmeagaindan2
The Fed's information is outdated for an arcane reason. Susan Houseman figured
it out - listen to her interview on Econtalk.

[https://www.econtalk.org/susan-houseman-on-
manufacturing/](https://www.econtalk.org/susan-houseman-on-manufacturing/)

Almost all the growth in US manufacturing is in semiconductors.

This wasn't obvious because economists made an accounting mistake when
calculating trade flow. Everybody repeated the misinformation from the same
source and so everybody is wrong.

In my opinion this should have been headline news for weeks.

------
peter_l_downs
For a more in-depth analysis of the same problem, consider reading
[https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/america-needs-
an-...](https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/america-needs-an-
industrial-policy/) although be warned that it's a bit longer.

------
HenryKissinger
Tl;dr The United States literally doesn't have enough physical printers to
mass print Bibles (of the same quality as those produced by China, the world's
largest printer of Bibles) to satisfy the demand, and doing so would be
prohibitively expensive.

~~~
sailfast
FTFY: The lobbyist for bible printing companies says that they could not
compete on price if we stopped printing bibles in China, so they requested a
tariff exemption.

In the end, the lobbyist is trying to continue to keep a cheap source of
production so profit margins from sales are higher. If printed in the US,
their costs would be higher so they would not make as much per bible, and any
price increases to the consumer would be slower than their cost rise so they
kept demand relatively high. (Speculating, but typically consumers don’t like
rapid price spikes)

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NeoBasilisk
I feel like there's a good joke about an atheistic (and formerly Communist)
country producing Bibles for a more religious country as they beat them at
their own game of capitalism, but I'm too tired to fully form it at the
moment.

~~~
berbec
Has the definition of formerly changed? :)

~~~
TulliusCicero
No. While the PRC is still nominally communist, for the most part now they
just look state capitalist. It's hard to find much that's socialist/communist
in their economy these days.

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scarface74
_The people who buy and read the bible would potentially have to pay a much
higher price, perhaps higher than they could justify_

I don’t see the issue. Since evangelicals overwhelmingly support Trump, they
should be willing to pay the price for his trade war.

~~~
AWildC182
Welcome to the bottom where those who speak the truth live XD

