

Ask HN: Where is the discourse re: overseas manufacturing? - famfam

Sorry, this question is specific to the US, but I didn't want to bloat the title any more...<p>It's clear to me that the American economy is not going to recover until we have widespread job creation. I think that there are some real opportunities to kill two birds with one stone re: job creation and energy independence, but I don't want to talk about that.<p>I want to talk about some toys from my childhood. My parents recently pulled down several Fisher Price trucks from the attic for my 2 year old son to play with. I examined every single toy and they were entirely made in the US. (Interestingly, at the time, Fisher Price was a division of Quaker Oats, apparently...) They were dated 1978. How much things have changed in just 30 years...<p>If you're a parent you know you'd be hard pressed to find any plastic truck toys that are made in the US today. Even if you're not a parent, I'm sure you've seen that almost NOTHING is made in the US. There are the occasional exceptions, like some light bulbs I bought at home depot recently, but for the most part, it seems clear that we're not in the business of manufacturing anymore.<p>My question to HN is -- why? And why is this not talked about at a political level? Why don't any candidates appear to be running on a platform of bringing jobs back to the US? It's an issue that's dripping in perfectly bow-tied patriotic emotions. Why does no one seem to care?<p>People seem to make some kind of hand-wavey argument about increased costs, but those costs seemed acceptable in 1978, at a time when there was certainly a stronger union presence and more worker's rights! I don't really buy it.<p>It's not just an issue of creating manufacturing jobs, it's an issue of sustaining all the second order small businesses that support a manufacturing base - I can't even think of them all - from the small restaurants that service workers, up to construction and maintenance of facilities, transportation, training, B2B sales, etc etc.<p>Is this an issue where no company wants to be the first to have to mark up due to US manufacturing costs? (But if a few did, they might all start doing it?)<p>It might be time for a little culture jamming to get his ball rolling. Get Miley Cyrus to stop shopping at WalMart. Start trying to shame companies into bringing jobs back to the US.<p>I'd love to hear HN's thoughts on this because I expect that I'm being a bit naive.
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hga
" _But if a few did, they might all start doing it?_ "

But if a few don't do it, they slaughter the rest.

Note that toys are a _particularly_ bad example after
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Product_Safety_Improve...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Product_Safety_Improvement_Act)

WRT to 1978, that was while Deng Xiaoping was still engineering his
rehabilitation and before "socialism with Chinese characteristics" got going
(I think; the timing on the latter was not clear after a few minutes with
Wikipedia).

One of the reasons it hadn't happened before is well described in this
essential book, " _The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller
and the World Economy Bigger_ " [http://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-
Smaller-Economy...](http://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller-
Economy/dp/0691123241/)

Now the bottom line is that it would take major government intervention, e.g.
tariffs and probably industrial policy, which is a "cure" that's almost
certainly worse than the disease (e.g.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice_theory>). It is argued by many
that this and not slavery was the _primary_ cause of the US Civil War.

It would probably be better to work at chipping away at many of the things
that made manufacturing _labor_ so expensive in the US (in terms of real value
or products US manufacturing is doing OK and still exceeds the PRC although
the latter might change soon). Some things are stark raving mad like the
previously mentioned law that's trashing toys. Some things would appear to be
luxuries we can ill afford, either now or in the long run.

E.g. just how strongly do you believe in the
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model> for all toxins? It's
been the law of the land since 1958:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaney_clause> and this is why today's root
beer in the US sucks. If this book doesn't gain any traction upon reading it:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skeptical_Environmentalist> you'd perhaps
better find another cause.

Don't expect change any time soon, e.g. see the above link to public choice
theory and note that "a recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a
depression is when you lose yours". The country at large didn't care that much
when manufacturing labor was squeezed into construction and now it's only so
concerned that those men are not out of work due to the real estate bubble
popping (especially notice the unemployment rates broken down by gender).

------
jleyank
People, not surprisingly, choose immediate over delayed gratification. Faced
with lower prices today vs. eroded tax base at some point in the future...
Pretty simple choice, which is why Wal-Mart is as big as it is. And if you ask
people to pay for a nebulous benefits that might go to others, they won't pay.

It's also why medium-end stereo stores died, why most computers are plastic
pieces of crap and I can't get a belt that doesn't delaminate in a few months.

