Comment by charlie90
8 days ago
>They pay like crap.
Then raise the wages. Yes that means products get more expensive, but so be it. The economy will find a new equilibrium. White collar workers will see their purchasing power decrease, but factory workers will see it increase.
>No American sees their kid growing up and thinks, "I hope my child will one day work long hours at a factory."
Maybe its just me, but I think theres something seriously wrong with society if people have existential dread over the thought of having to produce the things they consume. If the production of it is so unethical, it shouldn't be consumed at all.
> Then raise the wages.
The same people proposing bringing back all these factories also want to lower wages.
The dread isn't over production. It's about the conditions they face while producing them. Americans dream about having a small farm and doing their own woodworking and blacksmithing or doing so with a small community. They don't dream about working on a factory line and being fired if they miss a day due to being sick. But at the same time, if someone else says they don't want this, they call them lazy and say the kids don't want to work these days.
It's an odd paradox.
And high skilled manufacturing still exists in America. That work is often paid decently and people are fine with working those jobs. The problem is tariffs being made to bring back low skilled manufacturing, and the desire to make the standards of employment lower in the US so that it's feasible.
> Americans dream about having a small farm and doing their own woodworking and blacksmithing or doing so with a small community. They don't dream about working on a factory line and being fired if they miss a day due to being sick.
They dream about being treated better than that, but this is a big cultural gap. There are a lot of Americans who do, genuinely, dream about working somewhat hard factory jobs. They feel proud and fulfilled that they work in the steel mill just like their dad and grandpa and great-grandpappy, and they want to make sure their son will have the same opportunity.
F-Them... I want a future of Star Trek replicators that can molecular print most of the stuff I want. Heavy engineering seems to still need at least some high energy refinement though. (Or at the very least, replicators with different composition.)
The tariffs are high, but not 1,000% or whatever. If the alternative is "build new factories in the US, substantially raise wages and benefits for employees to encourage them to leave service positions for these roles, and then spend time training them" then the furniture from Vietnam with a 50% tariff is still going to be cheaper.
the good production worker's wages came from the unions. the GOP is fervently anti-union (with the exception of the police union maybe). they also oppose minium wages. there is no reason to think they'd support wage raises.
> Then raise the wages.
Then no one will be able to afford the products the plant is going to build.
They were able to in the 50s/60s/70s. So why not now?
Everyone in the United States was much more well off in the 50s/60s/70s as they had just won a huge war that left most of their competitors factories completely destroyed. There's no economic boom today.
The triumph of conservative ideology has broken the unions. No individual factory worker has the leverage to negotiate a better compensation package against the professional management team at Gap or Deere.
The 80s was a period of explicitly designing for this condition; it's just taken a while for the ramifications to be acute. Although it's been obvious for decades that we were headed here.
You mean back when rich people paid serious taxes?
Wealth inequality. Increases in productivity are going to the top, not the worker. It's also why social security is going broke. It could be funded if you remove the cap. Removing the cap wouldn't be necessary if there weren't such a wealth inequality problem.
The ultra wealthy are hoarding wealth then telling the rest of us we can't afford things we've afforded for over 50 years.
> "They were able to in the 50s/60s/70s. So why not now?"
Because the 50s/60s/70s was the post-World War II economic boom for the US. Unless you're volunteering to endure World War III so that the next generation can enjoy that kind of boom, that is not going to happen again.
The line must go up.
Because there was a shift to shareholder capitalism. Everything is done to increase shareholder value.
It's a vicious cycle. But at the end of the day it's the _company_ that has to entice workers.
The _company_ also has to stay competitive to make money.
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