Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Manufacturing Surface Hub In the US
overThruster writes: According to the New York Times, Microsoft has chosen to manufacture its Surface Hub in Wilsonville, Oregon. The announcement follows Apple’s decision to build the Mac Pro in Texas. "It makes a lot of sense to manufacture in the U.S.," said Steve Hix, an entrepreneur who founded several Portland-area tech companies, including one that had a manufacturing facility in Wilsonville. "The key issue is quality."
Unless there are location advantages, or artificial barriers, pure labor costs will tend to even out as the global labor pool finds a level.
The major questions are:
Where is that level going to be, and are there enough of those jobs for everyone in the world?
Chances are, the level of payment for labor in an automated world is likely to never again approach what it was due to barriers to work movement and strong unions. The reason for that is fairly clear, the race to the bottom, with the combination of not enough manufacturing jobs for everyone means that there is nothing that props up manufacturing wages except those tasks that have not yet been automated.
So the manufacturing sector is pretty much a dead end for employment, but if we can produce goods without the need for labor, then perhaps we can consider making it unnecessary to maintain a menial job to have a living. I don't know if we're actually there yet, but at some point, we may need to start seriously discussing what it means to not have to have full employment while having the ability to produce more than ever. If someone can come up with a basic income idea that doesn't have us ending up as entitled proles who expect the government to pay for everything, which then turns into shitty politicized central planning, it may be worth serious discussion.