itfitzme
VIP Member
I mostly agree with you, but isn't there something to be said about at least trying to design good government regulation that can protect the US? The economy is complex, but it's not impossible to do a few simple things that will protect American manufacturers, and make Chinese manufacturing look more expensive and less desirable for businesses.
China's a powerhouse that's set to have an economy double the size of the US in 2050ish; workers demand only $1/hr, work 15 hour days and live on site - how the heck do you compete with that kind of cheap labor? If our government does nothing, what's to keep American companies in the US?
I think our government needs to at least do something to protect American interests and keep manufacturing here instead of moving overseas, like a tariff on certain types of imports, or a subsidy to help out a manufacturing sector. Agree that subsidies/tariffs are often politicized and become meaningless and even harmful (as you state), but we need to keep trying.
China is a myth. Cheap labor based on the transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy allows for a great deal of production. China is simply a hundred years behind the West. However, just as we have seen in Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, et al, that is a gap that closes fast. In 25 years the labor costs and worker demands of China will be on par with Singapore and Korea, then another source of cheap labor will be needed.
What will keep manufacturing on domestic shores is automation. The days of thousands of assembly workers pulling a lever all day are gone forever. The key to American prosperity is knowledge. We dominate technology. Sure, chips are mass produced in Asia, but the design and the technology is American. Intel, AMD, Rockwell, Texas Instruments, Motorola, et al - they are North American companies developing the next generation of chips.
The next big thing is Biotech, dominated by America.
Not exactly.
Biotech started decades ago. Genentech was founded in 1976. Now 36 years old, one has to wonder what is taking the biotech boom such a long time to get started. We can only hope there is something big there. We could use another tech bubble.
China's population ranges from, as you say a hundred years behind the West to already fully up to speed in capitalism and education.
The process has been that manufacturing moves to China. Manufacturing engineers and managers of chip manufacturers begin their own support start-ups in China. Companies in the US, then looking for support services for the "system on a chip" devices employ the overseas
As well, the US engineering labor market has been a globally competitive market with engineers from China and India competing for jobs in the US. Manufacturing engineers and project managers from the Chinese subsidiary complete for positions at the US facilities.
It won't be long before the design is done in China.