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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (772886)	11/28/2022 5:16:58 PM
From: skinowski	2 Recommendations Recommended By Jacob Snyder Roads End Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793824

I think I understand better what you are saying. But, I remember the 90’s quite well, and there was no conscious decision to transfer our industrial capacities abroad. Back then, being a free market thinker was cool. “They” would be doing X; we would be doing Y… and the consumer would benefit. All this creative destruction stuff may sound cool - but it involves lots of real life hardships, and often impoverishment. I had a patient in the 80’s - a smart guy, about 60 - who had the misfortune of being very good at fixing old mainframe computers. One thing he truly hated was sitting in classrooms and learning - and with his field continuously changing, that was exactly how he was spending his life. He was a bitter man. But, at least his company was loyal to him - and he had that option. My brother retired after a career as a mechanical engineer. Must have had at least a 100 patents, maybe 200 - all owned by his employers. His company started ordering parts from China I think in the early 90’s, before it became fashionable. The parts were crude, but they worked. The cost was a small fraction compared to similar (but better made) domestic products. Isolationist approaches - ultimately - are probably worse. In the end, we would enjoy neither the quality nor the low price of products traded in open international markets. One of the ways to compete would be automatization. South Korea has by far the highest number of industrial robots per 10,000 employees. Maybe that’s how they manage to be both a rich, high income country - and a manufacturing giant. None of the above, unfortunately, solve the problem of destroyed businesses - and personal hardships. The U.S. are not alone in this regard. Germany is probably the only nation that has a positive trading balance with China - they are the best at manufacturing precision machinery. This reminds me - some of the products my brother's company made were great sellers in China.