We've been coasting on advances made many decades ago. Most developed, sure. Successful? By nearly any metric you can imagine or make up. Strongest? Our economy is eaten hollow by termites. A stiff wind would make it crumble. Worse, there doesn't appear to be any path to true recovery... we can't create the jobs that people need to prosper, but if we could somehow do that we no longer create the people who would grow up to fill those jobs. What industry is it exactly that you think the United States dominates in 2025? What vital, 21st century technology do we have a monopoly on, or at least some undeniable marketshare of? Do we build boats or planes or cars? Do we make computer chips or garments or appliances? Our only saving grace might be that we're self-sufficient agriculturally, without that we'd probably already have starved.
The US is the second largest manufacturer in the world - it's just moved into high end manufacturing. One of the difficult things about the current situation is how confidently wrong people are about the basic facts of the US economy.
> Do we build boats or planes or cars? Do we make computer chips or garments or appliances?
I mean .. obviously yes? It's just that you don't make all the chips and cars on the planet. Or even all the locally used ones.
The US is mostly an astonishingly wealthy country that has somehow convinced itself that it's in the middle of a decline, while simultaneously avoiding facing up to any of the QoL questions which people routinely fight over on HN where the US average or poorer citizen might actually be worse off.
Tech is the obvious one, but there are lots of less obvious ones, like designing the things that are manufactured elsewhere.
It turns out production of most goods is commoditized and a race to the bottom (assuming free trade), so if you want margins that can support high salaries, you have to move up the value chain (read: services).
If we keep tariffs high enough for long enough, we will bring back manufacturing jobs. They will not be high paying unless unions artificially constrain labor supply. The cost of everything will be higher (relative to people’s incomes), implying a lower standard of living.
tl;dr: If we want to withdraw from the world economy we mostly can, but don’t expect to have as nice of a life afterward.
>It turns out production of most goods is commoditized and a race to the bottom (assuming free trade), so if you want margins that can support high salaries, you have to move up the value chain (read: services).
I know, right? When you go home and sit down on your Oracle database to relax, then go to the kitchen to cook your evening meal in an AWS Lambda, then afterwards relax a little more by changing into some spreadsheets, it really puts it into perspective: everything a person needs is technology and software, and who wouldn't want to dominate that industrial sector?
>If we keep tariffs high enough for long enough, we will bring back manufacturing jobs.
Sure, but we don't have a commitment from Trump's eventual successors that they will continue, let alone from the opposition party. In other words, everyone knows that it will not continue long enough... the only real question is how do they best mitigate the pain while it does continue short-term? Trump could easily drop dead of a stroke or heart attack tomorrow, he is not a young man or in great health. But even should he survive the full term, the clock's already ticking. Why would anyone commit to an expensive long term investment today, when January of 2029 it will no longer be necessary?
>They will not be high paying unless unions artificially constrain labor supply.
The labor supply is already constrained... demographic implosion is well underway. The only way to unconstrain it would be to import millions of people from foreign countries.
>If we want to withdraw from the world economy we mostly can,
Why would this be withdrawing? Who do you think we'd want to sell the products to anyway? No, I believe we're talking about switching our role from consumer in the global economy to producer. What do you think the Chinese could even buy with all the trade deficit cash they're squirreling away, when we don't make anything? Some large chunk of it is buying up stock, real estate, etc. Give them something else to buy.
>but don’t expect to have as nice of a life afterward.
I'm like a 8th class (or lower still) software engineer in a fly-over city, and even my salary's six figure. The rest of you I always figured were doing better still. So I can understand why you don't get that for most people in the United States, "nice of a life" hasn't been a thing for generations, it's mostly stories they tell each other that have been repeated since the 1960s that originated with their great-grandparents. I mean, I would've thought some of that leaked through reddit and other such forums, where they complain about working 3 Uber-Eats-style jobs and never having a day off, only to be able to scrape by in some shit apartment while wondering how to keep their crappy used car from being repossessed.
You swim in this little bubble of atypicality, never noticing that the cheap clothes on the Walmart shelf show up from the distribution center looking what we would've called threadbare just 30 years ago. That no one you know (even those earning like you do) owns real furniture even if they earn a salary like yours. Even the "fancy" McMansions that you see from time to time are garbage, constructed as if no one cares that they last longer than 20 years. How many of the consumer goods in your home can you lay hands on that aren't 50% plastic or more?
To be clear, I’m not saying your or anyone else’s life is “nice.” I’m saying that however nice (or not) your life currently is, it will be worse. Those goods at Walmart will cost 30% more and still be equally threadbare. You’re mixing two things together, the declining quality of goods, and the places those goods are made.
Did you know you can buy premium clothes made in China? You can. Check out producers like Bob Dong or Bronson. Ironically, they make a lot of thick, quality clothes inspired by vintage US work-wear. The reason you probably never heard of them is buyers have to pay extra for that quality, and the appetite isn’t there.
The fact that everything you buy is cheaply constructed of cheap materials is entirely due to that being what sells. Most consumers won’t pay a premium for quality, so you have to go out of your way to look for it. Moving mass-market garment manufacturing back to America won’t change that.
If you just want to pay fistfuls of dollars for quality American-made clothing, you can do that today. Go buy yourself a $70 t-shirt from Lady in White. I’m sure we’ll be able to make shittier clothing cheaper, but it’s still going to be a lot more than shoppers are used to paying. You’re never going to get any American-made shirt for $4.98.
As to why tariffs constitute withdrawing: other countries can and will retaliate. China is not going to buy our expensive American-made commodity products, especially when they’ve got a 55% import duty on them, when they can buy equal or better quality things made at home or in SE Asia for half the price.
Even if successful, tariffs will make goods expensive. There’s no way around that. There is 0 reason to believe they will make goods any better. With reduced competitive pressure, quality is more likely to drop, if anything.
One of the "big things" people would joke about alongside solving world hunger was world clothelessness. People don't seem to realize that in our global economic state (at least a week ago) we solved that problem so hard that there's a pile of clothes in the atacama desert¹ (not to say it's without its consequences). Plastic microfibers are a problem I admit, but I would happily eat my weekly credit card(/s) knowing that far fewer people have to go naked. I for one hope that thrifting can fill the gaps, it may take a while to replace the 8000+ laborers that take part in making your white t-shirt² and maybe more.
We can definitely do better than where we're at. But I'm not sure working in factories is so much better. I wonder whether people will like having things like steel furnaces and injection molders in their towns. Exporting the dirty, smelly, dangerous stuff to elsewhere is one of the most devious tricks we played.
> No, I believe we're talking about switching our role from consumer in the global economy to producer. What do you think the Chinese could even buy with all the trade deficit cash they're squirreling away, when we don't make anything? Some large chunk of it is buying up stock, real estate, etc. Give them something else to buy.
Meanwhile over at the People's Daily, someone starts to type up "Why should we accept the Americans stealing good Chinese manufacturing jobs?"
> for most people in the United States
Now we start to talk about income inequality, and who exactly is having a nice life; but the minute you mention some of the policies of less unequal European countries, Americans go absolutely bananas and call you a communist. You might as well suggest doing something about the mass shootings, that's even more unpopular.
It the *right wing* Americans who go bananas calling you a communist. The left by and large wants to implement more social programs to reduce inequality and allow the growth of a middle class in our existing economy. You could probably say this is the crux of the culture war.
If everyone is educated, who is going to collect your garbage, fix your car, replace your broken pipe in the wall, cut down the rest of the tree that fell across the street, stock your groceries, sell you fast food, drive trucks across the country, build houses and buildings, pump septic tanks… I can keep going.
I don’t get it, never have. Education is not some magical bullet. In fact, having attended college and graduated with a now-lucrative job as an sw engineer, I can say I learned almost nothing at all in college because of the institution itself. At best it made me teach myself whatever was in the class textbooks. The professors mostly spoke English as a second or 3rd language and the TAs were even worse.
“Oh the culture, the diversity!” Meant absolutely nothing to me, I’ve had diverse family and friends since I was a child.
Did you mean to respond to my comment? I didn't mention education so don't really understand how it connects.
No one is saying to get rid of the jobs you mentioned. The goal is to make it so people working those jobs can provide for their families, have health care, have appropriate time off, and generally work with dignity.
And I should clarify that most of what you mentioned fall in the "middle class" category, including building houses, driving trucks, serving food, and pumping septic tanks. Cost disease (especially in housing and healthcare) has made these less stable occupations than they should be.
College education should be accessible and affordable for people who want to pursue it. I agree that it has been way over-emphasized in recent decades and had a similar experience to you. "Get an education" was a cop out excuse to paper over the structural problems occuring underneath (while tuition costs ballooned). For sure the pendulum has already started to swing the other way though.
Why is HN in English and always talking about FAANG?
Why do kids all around the world play with Spiderman?
Asking for "vital" and "21st century" is a paradox, so maybe it's not what you really meant. But the proof of our success is all around if you're willing to actually look.
>Why do kids all around the world play with Spiderman?
So we sell children's stories, in a world where technology makes it possible to copy not just any single story, but pretty much all of humanity's stories since time began onto a tiny little plastic doohickey that you can hang on a keychain. And then anyone in the world can also make up a new story with those same characters, or draw a picture, or whatever...
That's our wealth? Wow. Even if I had stock in that intellectual property, it seems like it never really was property to begin with and that I'm heading for ruin.
Those three examples were a sketch of the picture being missed by the parent comment. We clearly export entertainment on a massive scale, regardless of one's personal judgment of it.
> But the proof of our success is all around if you're willing to actually look.
Get a slice of humble pie.
The proof of American failure is also all around if you're willing to actually look. Urbanism, health, environment, MAGA, Vietnam, Irak, Afghanistan. Easy to cherry pick, turns out many of us who have the luxury of being able to work in the US if they wanted to chose not to do so, maybe with good reasons? "Most successful" is very subjective. "Dominant", yeah, you are.
