[gowings97]

Arbitraging US manufacturing to Asia and pocketing the profit has led to current predicament where we have an economy of healthcare workers, people in software, bartenders/service people barely scraping by, and skeleton crew of blue collar labor holding up domestic manufacturing. That manufacturing labor force makes make vastly lower wages than two generations prior. The vast majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck - again, this was a labor arbitrage facilitated by US Companies and politicians from both sides. This is where there is a bit of horseshoe effect between the left and right when it comes to labor/jobs/the economy.

America is a farm - the US consumer is the product. The only thing that has gotten cheaper over the last few decades are consumer goods from Asia. The US auto industry is more or less an oligopoly - none of the OEMS, outside of Tesla, are seriously interested in competing on price.

[toomuchtodo]

Manufacturing jobs aren’t coming back, it’ll be automated primarily, and Americans don’t want to work the manufacturing jobs that already exist. You’re arguing for status based pay through work identity (“good manufacturing jobs”) when you should argue for living wages regardless of job, unions, and universal healthcare. 80% of US jobs are service based, that is unlikely to change, especially as healthcare grows with 4M Boomers retiring per year.

If American auto companies aren’t interested in building affordable EVs, why are we harming US consumers by preventing them from buying imported EVs? Because, as you said, farming profits for US legacy auto. I want to buy high quality, affordable Chinese products. I don’t want to buy lower quality US products solely because of cronyism and ideology to protect their profits using trade policy.

https://www.cato.org/blog/americans-think-manufacturing-empl...

https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2025/05/13/g-s1-66...

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-tariffs-ma...

[gowings97]

If you pay them, they will come. No is going to work in a plant making $20/hr. There are no shortage of people trying to get into unionized / Big 3 US automotive OEM plants making $60-70K base, $100K if you work at a plant making an in-demand vehicle that's running three shifts/overtime, but those are only a handful of those right now.

You really are missing the forest for the trees with respect to cheap stuff from Asia and completely gutting our capacity to manufacturer from a national security standpoint, and totally ignore what effect the gutting has had on manufacturing in the other 50% of the Country living outside of metro areas.

It's nerd-sperging - "I want cheap shit but I don't want to think about the externalities like hundreds of thousands of people that live outside of metro areas overdosing on opioids because their way of a middle class life has been destroyed or national security, because I discounted / ignore them because I life in a perfect world where I just type on a keyboard all day and get paid more than 95% of Americans and I want a perfect EV."

Yeah I'm sure the Chinese will sell you cruise missiles when the time comes.

[bumby]

What’s your perspective on manufacturing capacity being necessary for national security?

The U.S. has moved to service jobs because they tend to have the highest margins and capitalism is going to do what capitalism does. That is, unless specific guardrails are enacted to protect other societal interests.