> It’s reasonable to want to bring back american manufacturing.

Capitalism produces where it is convenient to do so.

And no politician can change it.

You can try to protect very few critical sectors, but not whole "manufacturing" which by the way keeps rising in US since ever.

What politicians want to sell is the "good old times of well paying manufacturing jobs".

Robots have long come for those.

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close04 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Capitalism is great as long as it works just for you. When others learn to play the game and even outrun you, it’s time to put the finger on the scales. Essence of the free market.

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epolanski 2 hours ago | parent [-]

There isn't much you can do about it, you can't have the cake and eat it too.

If you want to protect your whole "manufacturing", you also need to make peace with the idea that consumer and industrial prices will balloon.

You can only compete, choose your battles, but you can't live in a world that does not exist.

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smallmancontrov 2 hours ago | parent [-]

No, bringing the price of 50" 4k TVs down to $300 does not make up for lost jobs. That's an easy choice, which is why it was never presented to the American worker but rather foisted upon us by shareholders in pursuit of profit and a government content to look the other way.

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epolanski 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

1. For the n-th time: manufacturing jobs are being lost to automation. Globally, not just in America. This is true in Asia as well.

Manufacturing is facing the same fate of agriculture: machines and robots will keep displacing people. Nothing is going to stop it.

2. There is no such world where we'll choose to do things less efficiently to artificially save few jobs. And it's not about your TV being 100$ more expensive, it is about everything you touch and see being considerably more expensive, with a cascade effect on the businesses that need the equipment.

3. Average Joe in US is as much a shareholder as some imaginary person you have in mind. And a company's duty is towards shareholders first, workers second.

	▲	triceratops 41 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Everything you said is objectively true, except for one thing. > a company's duty is towards shareholders first, workers second. This is just like, an opinion, man. There's no reason a company has to be like that. It just benefits company management to act like it's an objective truth because their pay is stock-based.
	▲	anjel 36 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Good thing the birth rate is depressed then

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Hammershaft 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Advanced manufacturing requires cheap global inputs.

Before tariffs, unemployments was ~3.5% and real wages were rising, and part of why wages have been rising is because the cost of goods like TVs have been falling.

	▲	smallmancontrov 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Just because the dumbest president in American History can't do industrial policy doesn't mean that industrial policy can't or shouldn't be done.