Comment by lenerdenator
12 days ago
The people in the areas where things used to be made certainly have more free time, but they don't have disposable income.
Unless we're just here to repeat canards from the 1990s given by financiers which explained why it was good to shut down the main employers for entire towns.
US unemployment rate floats along at about 4%, and is kept from going any lower to prevent inflation.
There are localized problems - and it's all very similar to the post-Thatcher UK - but you cannot be serious in imagining that employment would magically return to the exact spots it left. In fact that's one of the sub-problems OP talks about: so you want a US Shenzen. Where are you going to put it?
(UK equivalent: we're discussing keeping Scunthorpe blast furnaces open, so that we can have a "secure" supply of "domestic" steel .. made entirely from imported ingredients. Because the mines the plant was built to refine are empty)
It's odd how little factories moving from union areas to red states gets mentioned in this context.
Areas gutted, jobs lost and some lesser number of jobs with less benefits and pay created elsewhere.
So many political ideas seem to only be allowed to be discussed if you can add a garnish of racism or xenophobia to them.
You don't hear people complaining about that because the states that are the net losers of those jobs are full of people who think factories are dirty and unsightly and pay garbage wages, etc, etc, hence why they're fine with their politicians implementing the policies that are driving them out in the first place. Sure, the blue collar people know what's up but they're outnumbered by the white collar economy handily enough that it never becomes a leading political gripe you hear about from these states.
Whereas when states that aren't behaving that way lose jobs, factories and industries to Mexico or China they're all "hey WTF" over it because they actually cared and didn't want that economic activity driven off.
Boeing started a plant in SC: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/10/boeing-open...
Then later moved all 787 production there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24544139 https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/09/09/44441906/the-dea...
While the main articles seemed to have a good riddance tone, the HN comment section seemed to be more restricted in that view.
>It's hard to believe that the current Boeing leadership will turn things around with even less focus on quality and talented workers. Feels like they should be moving back towards engineering driven approaches.