USA is already effectively priced out of manufacturing due to high labor costs. Doing things with the "correct choices" simply makes the impossible even more so.

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rini17 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Central/Eastern European here. Our labor costs are comparable or even lower than China today. And the manufacturing is still struggling. So it's not only that.

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kardianos 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That, and you have to ensure your energy costs (power) are low and you have a secure source of raw materials. I'm not an expert, but from what I've heard, the economic region over there has been doing a poor job on both those fronts. Furthermore, you have to talk about regulation vs safety. The EU has regulation. Maybe too much.

There are also network effects. Your plant that is energy intensive is closing? Now other manufactures must increase their cost as transportation is increased and local contracts harder to get. Your chemical plant, which has operated within good bounds for a decade can't get a permit to expand, or is protested? Your intake products now either go up in price or become unable to attain them at all.

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kspacewalk2 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In Central/Eastern Europe, the problem is increasingly one of demographics. You can sometimes find somewhat cheap labour due to shitty (geo)politics, stagnant economies and poorly trained workers, but big-picture-like, the age of labour abundance is over. These economies have nowhere to go but down, down, down, starved of talent due to the twin cancers of bad demographics and emigration. Some countries are better, some worse, but the overall trend is the same all over the region. Going gentle into that good night.

(China's predicament is not much better, with the added wrinkle that there's absolutely nothing whatsoever they can do about bad demographics due to their size, whereas Central/Eastern Europe can import people once we collectively get over ourselves and let go of uppity xenophobia).

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joe_mamba an hour ago | parent | next [-]

>the age of labour abundance is over.

There IS labour over abundance. Unemployment in most EU countries is at record highs. And it shows no sign of slowing down.

The problem is it's mostly white collar labor overabundance. And those college educated people aren't gonna want to make sneakers in sweatshops.

	▲	kspacewalk2 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The number of kids born in 2025 in Uzbekistan (population 38 million) is about the same as the number of kids born in 2025 in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia and Poland, combined (total population 131 million). The age of labour abundance IS OVER, we're witnessing its very last days in EE. Unemployment may remain due to terrible politics and economic mismanagement. There's not going to be any point even having sweatshops or factories in this region soon. Why bother? If it's anything low or medium-skill and low or medium-capital intense, just open up shop in... Well, why not Uzbekistan? And if double-landlocked isn't your thing, there's dozens of other options.

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baybal2 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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vablings an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is false, patently incorrect. With a good manufacturing line workers are not priced out by "cheap labor" they are priced out by almost zero cost labor, Robots are basically a rounding error compared to human's wages.

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kardianos 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I live in Texas, which is still part of the USA, and we manufacture a great deal.

I have a friend who works as an environmental engineer at a chem plant. They work hard to keep things safe and clean, and rigorously monitor their output.

I'm sure we could do even more if we weren't competing in meany areas against legal jurisdictions which DON'T care about such things. We aren't "priced out". We are regulated out and out competed by jurisdiction which have many fewer labor laws and much more lax environmental monitoring. If we are out-competed on product, then we deserve to loose, which is where libertarians and free-trade have a point. But if we are out-competed on keeping people and the environment reasonably safe? That's when we enact trade barriers.

That is how you actually keep the environment and people safe.

	▲	bilbo0s 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		This is what I don't understand? We do manufacture things. Just not in California. So why does it even matter if California bans manufacturing dangerous things? Who cares? Just manufacture it in some other state. As a bonus, you don't have to pay those high California taxes. In what world is this a problem?

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parineum an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's actually not labor costs at all.

The difference between the USA and, for example, China, in manufacturing is the difficulty of getting a new factory built.

If you have a product designed and ready for production, it will take you years to build a factory in the USA. All the while you'll be losing money managing the build, paying your employees and, most importantly, letting your competitors get a head start.

Likewise, if you build that factory in China, it'll be up and running in less than a year and you can start making your R&D money back, get to market before your competitors and not bleed money keeping your companies doors open.

The labor costs are easily offset by removing the logistics of moving the product.

Tesla Gigafactories are a pretty good example of this. The first two took ~3 years to build in Nevada and New York. The third, in Shanghai, took 10 months.

	▲	_DeadFred_ 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		'Company learns from mistakes, third time it does something it does it better, quicker'

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HardCodedBias 35 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

You sure it is about labor prices? These are highly capital intensive businesses.

You may want to ask your LLM to do very detailed research.