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OT: American Politics

zeke said:
this is what really burns me.

let's say Elon & Co. are actually honest actors. who really wants to help.

So he just had the fullest access possible to all goverment spending, and it showed clear as day that almost all the fraud and waste they were told was there didn't actually exist.

The clear result of this should be them declaring that all the claims of fraud and waste were largely bullshit, and then them questioning the sources that told them it existed.

But that will never, ever happen.
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you should really just stop after the bolded :p
 

Manufacturing Went South​

Excellent piece by Gary Winslett in the Washington Post. As I pointed out in my piece on Manufacturing and Trade, the US is a manufacturing powerhouse. So why did the rust belt rust? Because manufacturing went South.
The Rust Belt’s manufacturing decline isn’t primarily about jobs going to Mexico. It’s about jobs going to Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee…In 1970, the Rust Belt was responsible for nearly half of all manufacturing exports while the South produced less than a quarter. Today, the roles are reversed, it is the Rust Belt that hosts less than one-fourth of all manufactured exports and the South that exports twice what the Rust Belt does.
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Why the move? Better policies:
Economic research suggests that labor conflict drove much of the decline of the Rust Belt. Right-to-work laws in the South, by contrast, created more operational flexibility and attracted capital. The average unionization rate in the Rust Belt is 13.3 percent; in the South, it’s 4.3 percent. Southern states’ political leaders are quite open about how they see right-to-work as foundational to their competitiveness.
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But that’s far from the only factor. The South offers cheaper electricity, a critical input for energy-intensive manufacturing. Ten states in the South have industrial electricity rates under 8 cents per kilowatt-hour; zero states in the Rust Belt do. Ohio has some of the country’s most restrictive wind-energy setback regulations. You know who doesn’t? Texas.
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Despite the economic growth, Southern states have built so much housing that they kept costs from becoming unaffordable. Last year, both North Carolina and South Carolina each built more than four times as much new housing per capita as Massachusetts, according to U.S. census data. Florida, Georgia, Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina and North Carolina, all built more housing per capita than all of Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, California, New York and Massachusetts. That is not just a 2024 dynamic. That is true for every single year going all the way back to 1993. Comparatively low-cost housing makes it easier to attract and retain workers, which further attracts capital, which adds yet more investment and jobs, and the virtuous cycle spins upward.
…Immigration helps a lot, as well. More immigrants live in the South than any other region of the country. The region with the fewest immigrants? The Midwest. Immigrants promote growth, makes the workforce more robust, and create the goods and services that support manufacturing.
Right-to-work laws, cheap energy, affordable housing, low-cost land, fast permitting, low taxes, immigration. That’s a powerful combination…
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Neither party wants to face these realities. The Republicans are mired in victimology and don’t see that the South’s success is built on exporting and immigration, both of which they are cutting. The Democrats don’t want to acknowledge right to work laws, cheap energy and low taxes.
Both parties prefer simple villains, whether it’s China or greedy corporations. But what’s needed isn’t more warm fuzzies about the way things used to be or globalization scapegoating. It is a clear-eyed approach that understands why companies choose Alabama over Ohio and that embraces the choices made by Southern states. That means leaning into globalization, right-to-work, all-of-the-above energy policy, permitting reform, immigration and low taxes. America’s economic future depends on embracing this reality rather than in indulging in turn-back-the-clock fictions.
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If employers are gonna lean on right to work legislation, then the state will need to take ownership of health services provision and retirement incomes in the absence of unions.

Energy is tech driven, can be addressed through investment and regulation.

But agree that both parties are fighting the last war…
 
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CH1 said:

Manufacturing Went South​

Excellent piece by Gary Winslett in the Washington Post. As I pointed out in my piece on Manufacturing and Trade, the US is a manufacturing powerhouse. So why did the rust belt rust? Because manufacturing went South.

Why the move? Better policies:



Neither party wants to face these realities. The Republicans are mired in victimology and don’t see that the South’s success is built on exporting and immigration, both of which they are cutting. The Democrats don’t want to acknowledge right to work laws, cheap energy and low taxes.
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The underlying truth though is that manufacturing jobs aren't great jobs. If you're an advanced economy and you're relying on mid level manufacturing jobs, you're failing at education. When "better policies" = cheaper labour and fewer labour rights, someone has lost the plot and you're bragging about temporarily winning the race to the bottom.
 
MindzEye said:
The underlying truth though is that manufacturing jobs aren't great jobs. If you're an advanced economy and you're relying on mid level manufacturing jobs, you're failing at education. When "better policies" = cheaper labour and fewer labour rights, someone has lost the plot and you're bragging about temporarily winning the race to the bottom.
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Advanced manufacturing isn’t bad. Making the machines, robotics. Still pretty high value and decent use of labour.

But yeah, putting screws into iPhones is ridiculous. Almost everything in China would just move to other Asian countries. Crazy to go to any developed countries.
 
Also… wondering about David Autor’s work on the “China Shock” and it’s impact on certain areas in the US. Not sure how this southern switch argument plays with that.
 
lecoqsportif said:
Advanced manufacturing isn’t bad. Making the machines, robotics. Still pretty high value and decent use of labour.

But yeah, putting screws into iPhones is ridiculous. Almost everything in China would just move to other Asian countries. Crazy to go to any developed countries.
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Advanced manufacturing is awesome. The jobs involved in high tech manufacturing are high skill, high pay, professional jobs. Massive value add, massively productive. There's a certain amount of mid tier manufacturing/industrial that is in the national interest to maintain (steel, aluminum, some domestic auto, ship building, etc) but those are industries that need to be poked and prodded politically from time to time to shuffle tax benefits to because when the country actually needs them to exist, their utility in whatever crisis you find yourself in is worth the years or decades of tax investment into keeping the sector modern, healthy, and productive. It's like when we woke up during covid and realized that we can't manufacture a single fucking dose of vaccine....sure would have been in the national interest to have been helping Merck float some production facilities in Manitoba for the last couple of decades just in case eh?

But once you've gotten beyond having enough of the important stuff to blunt the impact of a national crisis...the fuck are you worried about widget factories for? Educate for what you want to be good at, and do that.
 
MindzEye said:
The underlying truth though is that manufacturing jobs aren't great jobs. If you're an advanced economy and you're relying on mid level manufacturing jobs, you're failing at education. When "better policies" = cheaper labour and fewer labour rights, someone has lost the plot and you're bragging about temporarily winning the race to the bottom.
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I agree.

But just as important is that both parties are not coming clean about the data and what it means in terms of outcomes

They’re selling emotions and the GOP will always have an edge because they care less about nuance
 
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