Comment by Suppafly
11 days ago
>That's trivially false given we're the second-largest manufacturer in the world.
Sure, but we don't manufacture the things that are typically made in 3rd world countries and the lead time to build that infrastructure is years, and generally would result in us moving down the tech tree ladder from being a consumer economy to a manufacturing economy with all of the negatives associated with that.
This attitude that manufacturing is moving down the tech tree ladder completely misunderstands manufacturing. IME the entire notion was invented by elitist economists and embraced by CEOs looking to justify sending manufacturing overseas for short term profiteering. Regular people bought in because of the promise of cheaper gizmos.
It’s the sort of attitude that infected Boeing and resulted in taking them from the peak of aviation to an embarrassment. Because they don’t know how to lubricate doors or tighten screws.
Building things is hard, and requires significant technology and skills among a lot of people. A service based economy inherently looses that technology and skill.
Tim Cook interviewed and said China isn’t the low cost labor anymore it once was. China has become the place that knows how to manufacture things, especially electronics.
And is that quoted fact in absolute terms or per capita / as percent of GDP? That makes a big difference as to how we should interpret it.