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Can someone explain to me how the US can reshore manufacturing without dramatically lower their standard of living? Maybe they can subsidize some essential industries but I can’t see a path to do it for everything.

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tokioyoyo 14 days ago | parent | next [-]

I started believing that all these, are just side effects of Americans and their leadership not accepting the loss of their global leadership to China. They know they can’t pull a Plaza Accord like they did with Japan in the 80s to slow they down. Now hoping for some hail marys. In the worst case, a good chunk of people will be poorer, less women with jobs, which should result in a bump in birth rates.

No data points, but I like to entertain this.

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xuki 14 days ago | parent [-]

I believe whichever party attempts to do this will be voted out in 2 years. It's really really hard to get people to accept a lower standard of living. The only scenario I can think of is during wartime, but the US is pissing off all of their allies.

	▲	tokioyoyo 14 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Logical next move is to start the move. I’m just assuming that they will. I guess, the biggest problem is hoe vocal “the other side” is, compared to 10/20 years ago. Oh well, that’s what the citizens vited for, I guess.
	▲	gpderetta 14 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> The only scenario I can think of is during wartime well, it is not surprising then that war seems to be a realistic possibility at the moment. (doesn't matter with whom, we have always been at war with Eastasia).

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tossandthrow 14 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If we take out the money of the equation, it really is about what activities constitute good standard of living.

Is it better standard of living to be in a small apartment in the city working an office job or is it better standard of living being in a more rural area working manual jobs. (I honestly don't know, personally, I prefer to do thinking work)

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tonyedgecombe 14 days ago | parent [-]

Traditional manual work has disappeared and isn't coming back. I was watching our water company lay new pipe outside my house recently and there were no people wielding picks and shovels. There was a ton of technology involved though.

For rural employment to increase you would need to throw away all the technological progress from the last century. The country and economy would be unrecognisable from what it is now.

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tossandthrow 14 days ago | parent [-]

Same can be said about intellectual work.

The question is how post-industrialism wealth redistribution looks like, when work does not seem to be a good key.

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karpatic 14 days ago | parent | next [-]

For real. The US trades our services for other countries goods. What happens to our trade when our services become ubiquitous through AI.

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tonyedgecombe 14 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>Same can be said about intellectual work.

No it can't, not yet anyway.

	▲	tossandthrow 14 days ago \| parent [-]
		I would traditionally agree that not today, but actually, probably even today. But hey, changes take time!

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SethMurphy 14 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If the answer is the end of - I'll call it - "Consumerism", and the industries we choose to subsidize are those that are more essential to a community driven life (e.g. food, shelter, health, education, transportation, communication, etc ...), I think it is possible to lower the "Standard of Living" as reshaping what the term means, undoing years of advertisement based conditioning.

Americans may no longer have an unnecessarily large or luxurious automobile, or a screen in every room, but I would argue excess becoming the standard is the problem and a major cause of the imbalance.

The solution doesn't feel very democratic or free though, values that have been critical to the identity of the USA.

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lantry 14 days ago | parent [-]

Not to mention this is almost certainly not what will happen in the USA. Trump and the GOP have no interest in reducing wealth inequality, and the vision you have laid out would be immediately labeled "communism"

	▲	SethMurphy 13 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, my thoughts exactly too. Not an endorsement by the way.

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aleph_minus_one 14 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Can someone explain to me how the US can reshore manufacturing without dramatically lower their standard of living?

A (very) partial solution is to build the factories at places where the cost of living for the workers is low. This way, the workers can maintain a higher standard of living at a constant salary.

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disambiguation 14 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In the future, rich Chinese programmers will discuss the economics of their trade deficit with poor American factory workers :^)

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14 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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