I'd say at this point it is as close to insurmountable as one can imagine. The amount of capital would be huge, and if private investors can't be found, that means tax dollars in the hundreds of billions will be sunk in a ten year project of building capacity and training people, either as direct subsidy or through massive tax incentives. Not only does this mean Congress will have to be on board (last time I checked, while Trump may have no problem blowing the debt through the roof, his compatriots in Congress may not be such big fans), but in the end how is this any different from the planned economies that so many Republicans, and more than a few Democrats hate?
Even if your very rosy picture is true, who is it exactly that they're going to be selling a lot of those goods too? The US has been a mercantile nation for much of its existence, but if it starts erecting tariff walls, this will lead to trade wars.
You're living in an economic fantasy land. If the Rust Belt recovers, it won't be by some version of the 1950s. Oh, an dnatural gas may be better than coal as far as emissions go, but it is far from good. But no one will probably know that once Trump has finished decimating NOAA and the climate departments in NASA, and pulling out federal funding from climate research.
And just how many workers do you think those factories will be hiring?
Even Chinese factories are moving towards automation. You're not getting those jobs back, and as to deregulation, well, I think a look at the toxic legacy of the pre-EPA era should tell you all you need to know about how companies, well not held to proper standards, simply offload the cost of cleanup to the taxpayer.
The Rust Belt manufacturing jobs are largely gone, and they won't come back. Companies will invest in automation, just like they're doing everywhere else.
This intervention sounds suspiciously like how Britain kept coal mines afloat in the 1970s, costing British taxpayers vast amounts of money for very little profit at the end. It was Thatcher who finally decided the British government could not justify the expenditures just to keep industries who couldn't stay alive on their own afloat... well that and they were all Labour voters and union members. Still, the underlying argument that the government shouldn't be undermining overall national economic performance to keep sunset industries alive is sound.
Or look at how the Soviets and Chinese used to keep pointless factories running. In fact, the more you study what Trump *might* mean (because no one really knows what he means, probably not even him), it starts to look an awful lot like a planned economy where the fruits of profitable industries will be skimmed off to prop up unprofitable or even pointless industries. That's how Venezuela got into the shithole it's in now
Want to help the Rust Belt with government money, ramp up retraining programs and, where necessary, encourage people to migrate to areas of the country where the economy can better support them. The US has had economic migrants moving from one side of the country before, Hell, the bloody country was built on that basic foundation.
It would more than just hurt some companies, it would likely devastate large portions of the tech sector. The price of electronics would go through the roof, which would have severe effects on virtually every other industry, which rely heavily on computers, mobile devices and other electronics components. With no real supply chain in the US, any tariffs would lead to huge price increases.
Yes, China would be fucked, but the US would be in a pretty damned bad way as well, and while it's unfortunate that the Rust Belt isn't the manufacturing center of the US anymore, the kind of economic damage of a tariff war with China would put a lot of other people out of work as well. And for what, so those companies that do survive start building automated factories in the US?
The US is moving into the post-industrial age, and the real irony is that so is China. Believe me, China will have its own rust belts in the not so distant future.
When I hear about online bullying, it tends to be more than abusive jerks on random web forums, but rather people the children know in real life who use social media to continue the harassment. It's not quite so easy to say "Don't go on Facebook", but for this kind of bullying, the Internet is simply the most convenient means for a much more expansive kind of bullying.
The big problem I have is that children basically are not afforded the same protections an adult is. A lot of the bullying I received at school, even the non-physical kind, would likely constitute criminal harassment if it were a group of adults treating another adult that way. But if a kid is the victim and other kids are the perpetrators, it is just brushed off as "kids being kids".
To do that would require resources... the kind of resources that a newsroom has (or at least used to have), but not the kind of resources that a social media company would want to put into it. Maybe AI will eventually be able to automate this process, but at the moment fact checking means being able to actually evaluate the claims of an alleged story, which means someone has to ask the questions and seek the answers.
The pollsters assumed that the Obama voting patterns would persist, and that was the failure. If there was a bias, it was a bias based on the last two or three elections.
More like an advocate of the 1st Amendment, which pretty much bans the government from restricting the speech of private individuals, including groups of them like a corporation.
So you don't think electronics doubling or tripling in price wouldn't damage the economy? And since China manufacturers a shit load of other stuff, walk into your Walmart, count out about 60-70% of the goods being sold, and then double their price as well.
And when the factories come back, just how many people do you think they'd employ.
How much did you pay for your last laptop or smartphone? How much would you pay if it was manufactured in the US or Europe? You receive a significant benefit from cheap Chinese manufacturing.
"Bringing back the manufacturing" would require hundreds of billions of dollars of investment and several years (probably on the order of 5-10). YOu also have almost no one trained in the US, so you would have to ramp up training programs to a massive degree, and it's not exactly clear with relatively low unemployment where you would get the people from.
Trump's declaration is fantasy. It's not going to happen. Maybe he can negotiate some better terms for US companies exporting to China, maybe, but the notion that manufacturing in Asia is going to be repatriated is pure fantasy. And let's remember here that the US is not China's only customer, and if the US starts putting on its big boy protectionist pants, it will likely piss off other trade partners like Europe. Even now Canada, the US's largest trade partner, is signing a trade deal with the EU, in no small part because it wants to diversify away from the US.
The US is a vast economy, but it isn't the only large economy, and if US companies become heavily disadvantaged in other markets, particularly huge ones like China, you will see a great deal of damage done to the US economy.
And for what, exactly? Do you think all those factories that would be built in the US would be major employers? In ten to fifteen years, a factory would be thousands of robots and some technicians. Even a best case scenario does little to restore all those high paying jobs to the Rust Belt.
Trump made a lot of promises he can't keep, and some that if he did, would be ruinous. And let's remember here, he is not an emperor, he would have to bring Congress along for a lot of this, and Congress isn't simply going to sign up for even short term economic suicide. A lot of those people are up for re-election in 2018, and how do you think they would fair if a trade war with China lead to huge leaps in unemployment?
If you voted for Trump to disrupt the system, then okay, but if you actually voted for the man because you thought he would or could keep his promises, well, that's just plain stupid.
But automation means you have factories with relatively few people working in them. And that is the problem. No matter how this plays out, you don't employ all those angry Rust Belters, because manufacturers won't need them. Whether it's low-paid Chinese building those phones or robots in the US, the effect would be the same; no great surge in employment in that sector. But really, even now, Chinese factories are investing heavily in automation, so probably in the next ten years or so, a lot of Chinese workers will be in the same boat.
The game is up. Manufacturing is no longer going to be a major employer, no matter how many low-wage countries the US tries to punish. If those Rust Belters think Donald Trump can get them their jobs back, well, then, for lack of a better word, they are naive.
Do you think cutting corporate taxes would reduce automation? Lower corporate taxes and more automation would mean even more profit.
Automation is here, and it will continue to further entrench itself and minimize employment in the manufacturing sector. Nothing short of outlawing the robots will do that.
I don't think even more low wage jobs is what the Rust Belt had in mind. But then again, they made sure a guy whose idea of business is to screw over his workers and investors and charge licensing fees for the use of his name got into the White house.
And therein lies the real problem. Even if Trump were the biggliest businessman in the world, international trade does not work like a business. It is immensely more complex, and anyone selling simple solutions like ""We'll just make 'em in the US" is either a complete idiot or is lying.
And how much idling in the US would you like to see. A trade war rarely has winners. If Trump wants to play economic protectionist, he will damage key sectors of the US economy
And yet parts of it will remain, which means a new funding model. As well, if he lets the loony right write parts of the new bill so women can't get birth control covered because Jehovah doesn't want single women on birth control, well things will get ugly.
Not when other countries start slapping tariffs on your exports. And automation is rendering most of these high paid low skilled jobs moot. What are you going to.do, ban robots?
This has been tried before, and the end result isn't the wonderland you think it is. Stagnating economy and increasingly uncompetitive industry is what you get.
Slashdot Mirror
In Trumpamerica, hybrids and electric cars will be replaced by God-fearing American coal burning cars!
I'd say at this point it is as close to insurmountable as one can imagine. The amount of capital would be huge, and if private investors can't be found, that means tax dollars in the hundreds of billions will be sunk in a ten year project of building capacity and training people, either as direct subsidy or through massive tax incentives. Not only does this mean Congress will have to be on board (last time I checked, while Trump may have no problem blowing the debt through the roof, his compatriots in Congress may not be such big fans), but in the end how is this any different from the planned economies that so many Republicans, and more than a few Democrats hate?
Even if your very rosy picture is true, who is it exactly that they're going to be selling a lot of those goods too? The US has been a mercantile nation for much of its existence, but if it starts erecting tariff walls, this will lead to trade wars.
You're living in an economic fantasy land. If the Rust Belt recovers, it won't be by some version of the 1950s. Oh, an dnatural gas may be better than coal as far as emissions go, but it is far from good. But no one will probably know that once Trump has finished decimating NOAA and the climate departments in NASA, and pulling out federal funding from climate research.
That would practically make the alt-right outright fascists if one of Fox News' leading talking heads is now left-of-center.
And just how many workers do you think those factories will be hiring?
Even Chinese factories are moving towards automation. You're not getting those jobs back, and as to deregulation, well, I think a look at the toxic legacy of the pre-EPA era should tell you all you need to know about how companies, well not held to proper standards, simply offload the cost of cleanup to the taxpayer.
The Rust Belt manufacturing jobs are largely gone, and they won't come back. Companies will invest in automation, just like they're doing everywhere else.
This intervention sounds suspiciously like how Britain kept coal mines afloat in the 1970s, costing British taxpayers vast amounts of money for very little profit at the end. It was Thatcher who finally decided the British government could not justify the expenditures just to keep industries who couldn't stay alive on their own afloat... well that and they were all Labour voters and union members. Still, the underlying argument that the government shouldn't be undermining overall national economic performance to keep sunset industries alive is sound.
Or look at how the Soviets and Chinese used to keep pointless factories running. In fact, the more you study what Trump *might* mean (because no one really knows what he means, probably not even him), it starts to look an awful lot like a planned economy where the fruits of profitable industries will be skimmed off to prop up unprofitable or even pointless industries. That's how Venezuela got into the shithole it's in now
Want to help the Rust Belt with government money, ramp up retraining programs and, where necessary, encourage people to migrate to areas of the country where the economy can better support them. The US has had economic migrants moving from one side of the country before, Hell, the bloody country was built on that basic foundation.
I'm sure all those idled Rust Belt workers will feel Trump kept his word when they're assembling flat screen TVs for a couple of dollars an hour.
It would more than just hurt some companies, it would likely devastate large portions of the tech sector. The price of electronics would go through the roof, which would have severe effects on virtually every other industry, which rely heavily on computers, mobile devices and other electronics components. With no real supply chain in the US, any tariffs would lead to huge price increases.
Yes, China would be fucked, but the US would be in a pretty damned bad way as well, and while it's unfortunate that the Rust Belt isn't the manufacturing center of the US anymore, the kind of economic damage of a tariff war with China would put a lot of other people out of work as well. And for what, so those companies that do survive start building automated factories in the US?
The US is moving into the post-industrial age, and the real irony is that so is China. Believe me, China will have its own rust belts in the not so distant future.
When I hear about online bullying, it tends to be more than abusive jerks on random web forums, but rather people the children know in real life who use social media to continue the harassment. It's not quite so easy to say "Don't go on Facebook", but for this kind of bullying, the Internet is simply the most convenient means for a much more expansive kind of bullying.
The big problem I have is that children basically are not afforded the same protections an adult is. A lot of the bullying I received at school, even the non-physical kind, would likely constitute criminal harassment if it were a group of adults treating another adult that way. But if a kid is the victim and other kids are the perpetrators, it is just brushed off as "kids being kids".
To do that would require resources... the kind of resources that a newsroom has (or at least used to have), but not the kind of resources that a social media company would want to put into it. Maybe AI will eventually be able to automate this process, but at the moment fact checking means being able to actually evaluate the claims of an alleged story, which means someone has to ask the questions and seek the answers.
The pollsters assumed that the Obama voting patterns would persist, and that was the failure. If there was a bias, it was a bias based on the last two or three elections.
More like an advocate of the 1st Amendment, which pretty much bans the government from restricting the speech of private individuals, including groups of them like a corporation.
So you don't think electronics doubling or tripling in price wouldn't damage the economy? And since China manufacturers a shit load of other stuff, walk into your Walmart, count out about 60-70% of the goods being sold, and then double their price as well.
And when the factories come back, just how many people do you think they'd employ.
The Trans-Pacific deal was all about hemming China in. It's death is of great relief to China.
How much did you pay for your last laptop or smartphone? How much would you pay if it was manufactured in the US or Europe? You receive a significant benefit from cheap Chinese manufacturing.
Ah yes, time to blame the Jews again.
"Bringing back the manufacturing" would require hundreds of billions of dollars of investment and several years (probably on the order of 5-10). YOu also have almost no one trained in the US, so you would have to ramp up training programs to a massive degree, and it's not exactly clear with relatively low unemployment where you would get the people from.
Trump's declaration is fantasy. It's not going to happen. Maybe he can negotiate some better terms for US companies exporting to China, maybe, but the notion that manufacturing in Asia is going to be repatriated is pure fantasy. And let's remember here that the US is not China's only customer, and if the US starts putting on its big boy protectionist pants, it will likely piss off other trade partners like Europe. Even now Canada, the US's largest trade partner, is signing a trade deal with the EU, in no small part because it wants to diversify away from the US.
The US is a vast economy, but it isn't the only large economy, and if US companies become heavily disadvantaged in other markets, particularly huge ones like China, you will see a great deal of damage done to the US economy.
And for what, exactly? Do you think all those factories that would be built in the US would be major employers? In ten to fifteen years, a factory would be thousands of robots and some technicians. Even a best case scenario does little to restore all those high paying jobs to the Rust Belt.
Trump made a lot of promises he can't keep, and some that if he did, would be ruinous. And let's remember here, he is not an emperor, he would have to bring Congress along for a lot of this, and Congress isn't simply going to sign up for even short term economic suicide. A lot of those people are up for re-election in 2018, and how do you think they would fair if a trade war with China lead to huge leaps in unemployment?
If you voted for Trump to disrupt the system, then okay, but if you actually voted for the man because you thought he would or could keep his promises, well, that's just plain stupid.
But automation means you have factories with relatively few people working in them. And that is the problem. No matter how this plays out, you don't employ all those angry Rust Belters, because manufacturers won't need them. Whether it's low-paid Chinese building those phones or robots in the US, the effect would be the same; no great surge in employment in that sector. But really, even now, Chinese factories are investing heavily in automation, so probably in the next ten years or so, a lot of Chinese workers will be in the same boat.
The game is up. Manufacturing is no longer going to be a major employer, no matter how many low-wage countries the US tries to punish. If those Rust Belters think Donald Trump can get them their jobs back, well, then, for lack of a better word, they are naive.
Do you think cutting corporate taxes would reduce automation? Lower corporate taxes and more automation would mean even more profit.
Automation is here, and it will continue to further entrench itself and minimize employment in the manufacturing sector. Nothing short of outlawing the robots will do that.
You've bought into a load of horseshit.
I don't think even more low wage jobs is what the Rust Belt had in mind. But then again, they made sure a guy whose idea of business is to screw over his workers and investors and charge licensing fees for the use of his name got into the White house.
And therein lies the real problem. Even if Trump were the biggliest businessman in the world, international trade does not work like a business. It is immensely more complex, and anyone selling simple solutions like ""We'll just make 'em in the US" is either a complete idiot or is lying.
And how much idling in the US would you like to see. A trade war rarely has winners. If Trump wants to play economic protectionist, he will damage key sectors of the US economy
Fuck all that! In Trump America there will be a coal-fired power plant on every block, so no one will need these so called alternative power supplies.
And yet parts of it will remain, which means a new funding model. As well, if he lets the loony right write parts of the new bill so women can't get birth control covered because Jehovah doesn't want single women on birth control, well things will get ugly.
Not when other countries start slapping tariffs on your exports. And automation is rendering most of these high paid low skilled jobs moot. What are you going to.do, ban robots?
This has been tried before, and the end result isn't the wonderland you think it is. Stagnating economy and increasingly uncompetitive industry is what you get.
Why not? You're taking your cues from a reality TV star.