US Reindustrialization and Immigration

[Mettelus]

@jabowery

You’ll have a hard time convincing me that machine learning is not directly applicable to embedded control systems for manufacturing – since this is directly in my field of expertise having managed software development of automated ordnance inspection systems at SAIC AND having developed the first hardware convolution-based neural image segmentation system using the same DataCube hardware.

In actuality, I was asking where will all the technical talent going to come from. That is kind of opposite of convincing you that technical talent isn’t needed.

There is very little fully manual manufacturing. Every machine has a control system. Anything with a start/stop button has a control system. Every machine builder will have a controller and a program to run the machine.

@jabowery

Reindustrialization is heavily dependent on automation which is, in turn, heavily dependent on embedded control systems even if not machine learning.

Automation is a broad brush. Every machine that is sold is automated to some degree and has been for years and years.

In order to discuss automation, definitions are important. It can be confusing because so many unit operations and process steps are already automated. To clarify my definition… the unit operation I am referring to is an individual operation within a larger manufacturing line. An example being a welding step in a automotive assembly line. That individual operation can be broken down into the many steps required. A machine may do some, most or all of these steps and be considered automated. Some, most or all of the unit operations may be fully automated and the manufacturing line can be called automated.

In manufacturing something is called automated when it used to be done by a human.

A fully automated process is what is commonly called “lights out” manufacturing. Meaning you can shut the lights off because there is no human involvement. Every single process step of every single unit operation included in the making of an output is done without human involvement.

Thus, automation is a spectrum between the elimination of a manual human preformed process step and no human involvement in any process step. In any sophisticated product there are literally thousands of process steps. At what point are we going to define it as automated?

Therefore, to say that automation is important is not arguable. It is also a given and has been for over 35 years that control systems are crucial part of manufacturing. If instead, you are saying that “lights out” manufacturing is a requirement for reindustrialization. I disagree.

The bad news is that starting from scratch (automating something you never made) is extremely hard and has a high probability of failure. It is an iterative process and it is hard to iterate on something that doesn’t exist.

Finally, the discussion about automation as a way to make the US competitive skips an important question. The built in assumption is that the only reason the US has lost manufacturing is due to labor cost. I have written on here previously that often the real reason is tax and duties. I illustrated it with a simple example calculation, but I have been involved in in depth analysis for capital projects and tax and duties is the main driver. Granted this is for sophisticated competent manufacturing that faced real competition and didn’t have a government backstop. Not industries that have been protected for 50 years like the auto industry.

Another simple question that is being skipped over is: If you assume that the manufacturing can be “lights out”, would the US have a competitive advantage?
Will China, which has a head start and a huge advantage for implementation, not fully automate? What drives the cost of a product when it is automated (when labor is removed)? Raw materials, energy and tax. How does the US stack up on those when everywhere everything is fully automated?

[Gavin]

@Mettelus

I have written on here previously that often the real reason is tax and duties.

Good point that labor costs were not a principal reason for uncompetitiveness of US manufacturing (back when there was US manufacturing). But – as important as high convoluted taxes and complex duties were – the glaring principal causes for US de-industrialization were (1) the tidal wave of constantly changing laws & regulations, and (2) the prevalence and high costs of lawyer-driven nuisance litigation.

Key factors to enable re-industrialization will be (1) repealing vast swathes of regulations whose costs far exceed their benefits – with the associated firing of hundreds of thousands of government bureaucrats, and (2) breaking the back of Big Law – including firing hundreds of thousands of lawyers – and returning the remaining lawyers to a true public-serving profession with an important but limited role.

Look on the bright side – many of those then-unemployed bureaucrats and lawyers can be retrained for genuinely productive jobs as our descendants restore manufacturing. After the Coming Collapse, of course.

[jabowery]

@eggspurt

… I think many US engineers have unrealistic salary expectations.

@eggspurt

The problem isn’t immigration though - it’s telecommuting.

Given that the context of that comment is my comment on my niece’s “dream” of telecommuting as a programmer so she can do with her very being as a woman what Elon Musk says she should be doing*, please elucidate.

* And, yes, I’m acutely aware of the contradiction between Musk’s advocacy of motherhood and his opposition to telecommuting.

[Mettelus]

This may not seem to be a deep question, but it is.

In reality what is done is a local wage survey is done in order to pick a competitive wage for hourly workers. If a free market, this would result in a compensation commensurate with the value add. Notice value add in place of difficulty.

Another way to answer that question would be to determine what I would do if I was a person with the skill set that is considering those jobs as an option. This is subjective and relative because a lot of factors play into a decision about work. People willingly pay California taxes because that is where they want to live for whatever reason. If I was a person considering the job versus other options locally, it is a top option. Difficulty whether physical or mental (including stress) is low compared to the pay unless you can do nothing and earn money.

Free markets have lifted humans out of poverty, provided the best standard of living in history and made countries the most powerful in the world. Free markets are nothing other than competition. Wages should be determined in a competitive free market.

If you hide from competition, whether as an individual or a corporation or a country, you will lose. You or your children will suffer. Competition isn’t exclusive to sports, it is foundational to life. A none competitive nation looks like the Soviet Union.

I have a friend that was a pole vaulter in high school. He wasn’t good. The good pole vaulters could skip a height. Too easy not worth the effort so to speak. They would pass until the height got challenging. My friend would do this, like he was good. Pass, pass, pass until he had to do it and then he would scratch.

That is what the US is doing. Pass (trade tariffs), pass (paying people that can but don’t work), pass (not working because the pay is too low), pass (everyone gets a trophy), pass (reduce standards), pass (subsidize businesses)… It’s just a question of when we scratch.

Without competition GM would be making cars as reliable as they did in 1980 and they would cost more. The problem is that the competition they faced came from Japan. It should have come from the US and then Japan would have never been an issue. It would have been painful for the auto workers that were being over paid, but long term healthy for the US.

[jabowery]

@Mettelus

In actuality, I was asking where will all the technical talent going to come from. That is kind of opposite of convincing you that technical talent isn’t needed.

Then by your own admission, made belatedly due to my pointing out the gaping chasm in your original post, there is a vast pool of technical talent that is now looking for work in precisely the area of need.

@Mettelus

I have written on here previously that often the real reason is tax and duties. I illustrated it with a simple example calculation…

…What drives the cost of a product when it is automated (when labor is removed)? Raw materials, energy and tax. How does the US stack up on those when everywhere everything is fully automated?

If technology entrepreneurs continue to side with private sector rent seekers, they’ll go down with the ship of state.

Trump can’t fix this because, even to the extent that he’s an entrepreneur, he’s not enough of a statesman to understand the motivation of my 1992 white paper:

Replace the 16th Amendment with a single tax on the liquidation value of net assets at the interest rate on the national debt and use that revenue to replace the welfare state with a citizen’s dividend.

That was 1992 and was of a piece with my efforts to unlock the inventive potential of the US to address the very issues you identify as critical, starting with space launch services costs – the capitalization of which was the very paradigm of institutional failure. John Walker was a very rare exception and was operating under the kind of governmental sclerosis that replacing regulation with privatization of delivery of social goods would have reamed out.

Falcon Heavy vs Necessity And Incentives Opening the Space Frontier

Anyone who thinks they’re going to address the problems you point out without something at least as radical as that which I proposed is kidding themselves. As evidenced by my response to Gavin regarding the median income levels of households in the US, the immigrant households are going to oppose the required reforms.

It’s too late now due to the massive influx of immigrants to supposedly solve the problems created by the existing deadly embrace between rent-seekers in the public and private sectors who have a tacit agreement not to reform government in such a manner as to get rid of rent seeking and privatize government with a citizen’s dividend.

The immigrants to the US are highly evolved rent seekers, far more advanced in this character than the settler culture of the US, who will ensure any such reform never sees the light of day.

[Mettelus]

@Gavin

But – as important as high convoluted taxes and complex duties were – the glaring principal causes for US de-industrialization were (1) the tidal wave of constantly changing laws & regulations, and (2) the prevalence and high costs of lawyer-driven nuisance litigation.

I agree these were and are ever growing issues, but I think the most nasty thing that people don’t understand about regulation is that it is the actual tool large corporations have been using to prevent competition.

Recalling when the automakers first had competition coming from Japan. That is when the US zeitgeist was about competitiveness. Everyone ran to Japan to figure out how they could do it and they returned with decent tools (lean manufacturing, Deming’s work etc.) thought to be real solutions. But these were tools not solutions. It should have been obvious that for some reason(s) the US was no longer fostering free market competition. I don’t recall if the auto makers were using the current big tech strategy of buying up every competitor or whether they used the government to put in place regulations that create a moat for competition. I am guessing it is the second one.

What is really sad is that the US could have easily competed against Japan or China. GM tried to go to the full automation which was stupid and bound to fail since automation is a continuous iterative problem solving exercise.

At the same time GM was facing auto competition, I worked in the US video (VHS) tape factory. We faced stiff competition from Japan (Fuji and Sony) and not so much from Europe (BASF). We closed every foreign factory (Japan, England, Germany) because they were not competitive. Fuji and Sony had to offshore their production to be competitive with a US manufacturer. They never won. They moved to Korea and then China and they never made video tape at a lower cost than we did. That business died from technology change (DVD) and 3M manufactured VHS up to the point when there was no significant volume demanded (circa 2000).

I think GM on the other hand had to offshore to get away from the regulations, unions and lawyers.

[eggspurt]

@jabowery

Given that the context of that comment is my comment on my niece’s “dream” of telecommuting as a programmer so she can do with her very being as a woman what Elon Musk says she should be doing*, please elucidate.

Here’s my argument in points:

• You’re unemployed when your asking price is higher than the market price. There are still jobs, but remote jobs can have a taker anywhere in the world, doesn’t have to be in the US.
• As a result, there are many jobs moving from the US to other countries with lower living expenses.
• Free market in remote labor created a competition in quality of life per dollar. US is woefully noncompetitive: life is far more expensive compared to other countries. Politicians aren’t particularly interested in this matter, it seems.
• Immigrants are wiling to have a simpler more modest lifestyle at the same level of competence and capability. As a result, they’re winning. But most remote jobs aren’t subject to this competition: those jobs are simply going off-shore.

I think what would make more sense is

[jabowery]

@eggspurt

You’re unemployed when your asking price is higher than the market price. There are still jobs, but remote jobs can have a taker anywhere in the world, doesn’t have to be in the US.

I can attest this doesn’t hold water in the case of my niece who is living with her parents and has been taken in by con-jobs offering $15/hour in teaching programming only after you’ve put in a large amount of time and effort jumping through other hoops.

This isn’t an environment in which employers can seriously claim that workers are demanding too-high salaries in a key skill for reindustrialization.

No, what employers have to answer for is:

Please at least try to explain these inordinately high median household incomes going to Asians in terms other than deadly combination of DEI and ethnic nepotism.

It’s ridiculous to claim that the nation that planted and cultivated the technological seeds of the present network effects is incapable of producing employable programmers at $15/hour.

[BlackPrince]

@jabowery

Please at least try to explain these inordinately high median household incomes going to Asians in terms other than deadly combination of DEI and ethnic nepotism.

These groups have a strong ethnic identity and promote values that will further strengthen and empower their group. Unfortunately, “the right” doesn’t believe in that sort of thing anymore (I guess it’s because it’s racist to think this way…it’s the right’s equivalent of DEI, but I digress) and we witness the inevitable result.

[Mettelus]

@BlackPrince

These groups have a strong ethnic identity and promote values that will further strengthen and empower their group. Unfortunately, “the right” doesn’t believe in that sort of thing anymore

This is what many blacks think about whites and what many women think about men. That we held them down in preference to our own color or gender. Are you saying they are correct?

@BlackPrince

To a certain extent, yes, but empowering your own group doesn’t mean that you necessarily have to put another group down. People of European descent have totally given up on any kind of ethnic or group identity…and it shows…not in a good way…BIG TIME. I’ll give you one example: Why are so many white women getting tattooed these days? If you don’t care about your ethnic group, then you will most certainly be replaced by an ethnic group who does—it’s that simple. It’s a pretty unforgiving world out there—I didn’t make the rules—and “right wing” utopianism is just as delusional as “left wing” utopianism.

I don’t really know whether you are right or wrong. Certainly my experience is that people from a given country seem to prioritize their countrymen. But so did German, Irish, Italian immigrants and so do Mormons, Muslims, Jews and Christians.

When I was young my parents never talked about their lineage. One time, while the neighbors were celebrating their “Irishness” my dad told me “You are more Irish then those people”. I later found out my mom’s parents were 100% Irish ( although she was adopted) and my dad was probably Norwegian. I don’t and never have celebrated St Patrick’s day. I think it is foolish and I think the same about LGBTQ month, woman’s month and the black month.

My opinion was and is that these things are divisive. My opinion was that the reason all of the various groups have strong identity to a group is because politicians (mainly Democrats) used that to gain power.

This constant divisiveness irritates me to no end. While working, I really got tired of every identity group having their own “support” (actually political) group. Thus, I understand why white men would finally say. Ok enough. If we are all going to fight for our group, then I am going to fight for my group.

[BlackPrince]

@Mettelus

Are you saying they are correct?

To a certain extent, yes, but empowering your own group doesn’t mean that you necessarily have to put another group down. People of European descent have totally given up on any kind of ethnic or group identity…and it shows…not in a good way…BIG TIME. I’ll give you one example: Why are so many white women getting tattooed these days? If you don’t care about your ethnic group, then you will most certainly be replaced by an ethnic group who does—it’s that simple. It’s a pretty unforgiving world out there—I didn’t make the rules—and “right wing” utopianism is just as delusional as “left wing” utopianism.

[Citizen_bitcoin]

The immigrants from Asia especially East Asia are not the problematic immigrants. When I think of immigration being a problem it’s illegal aliens coming from Mexico or Latin America or refugees from the Middle East or Africa like Somalia.

I do think H1B visa recipients are a problem because there are so many. It seems like India has a monopoly on these work visas and they all end up in California.

[eggspurt]

@jabowery

Please at least try to explain these inordinately high median household incomes going to Asians in terms other than deadly combination of DEI and ethnic nepotism.

US has the fortune of importing the highly capable people from many countries (that you list above).

This is a major source of strength, although some of them will engage in their own self-serving identitarian politics instead of striving for the good of the host nation. From what I know, however, the majority are loyal, and many hold a grudge against their home country elites that didn’t take them in but pushed them out.

As for your family member, she could look for projects on Upwork instead of trying to get jobs.

Undocumented immigrants don’t take software jobs anyway:

[civilwestman]

Are there not laws in force which make it illegal to hire people without Social Security Numbers? My recollection is that only citizens and legal immigrants may obtain SSN’s. Is there not a web of crimes at work here?

[Mettelus]

I agree with your point that about many of the visa holders we are selecting highly educated people and should expect that the group will have a higher median income. There is also the fact that Asians do better in school and test better on standardized testing and from my experience work harder and are willing to sacrifice to improve pay.

I have trouble believing table 1 that you included. The numbers seem extraordinary low. Only a million or so illegals working? Really. It also doesn’t pass my personal experience. I know a few guys that roof, but when I go into new housing builds it is nearly 100% Hispanic roofers. I live in Minnesota and I do check out new housing every year just out of interest.

Edit: The Hispanic workers could be legal immigrants or US citizens, but my typical interaction is that the supervisor can speak English and the crew cannot.

[Mettelus]

I also want to comment on birth rates. I have seen the drop in birth rates attributed to immigration. This is nonsense. It doesn’t comport to my personal experience or the data.

I just wrote down my seven closest friends from high school, my seven closest friends from college and my six siblings. High school friends birth rate is 1.2. University friends birth rate 1.1. Siblings birth rate 2.1.

All of these people are better off financially than their parents by far. DINK (dual income no kids) was a common saying by 1990. Therefore, it likely has nothing to do with economic despair either.

My guess it is directly related to woman working making an already tough job of having children even more difficult. The idea that you can have it all is about as realistic as a free lunch.

Then I looked up the data.

[Citizen_bitcoin]

Terrible joke:
Women with college degrees are committing genocide

https://scanalyst.fourmilab.ch/t/private-humour-thread/4296/49

[jabowery]

@eggspurt

US has the fortune of importing the highly capable people from many countries (that you list above).

Thanks for addressing the inordinate median household income of Asian immigrants to the US.

So you have your theory and more than a supermajority of the American people have theirs in opposition to yours, and have had that opinion for over a half century despite you relentlessly telling them your opinion and imposing your opinion on them for all of the last half century.

This is back to the old mesopredator problem – a problem that Trump’s apparent election is making worse because, as we’ve all seen in his rallies:

Whenever Trump starts talking about increasing legal immigration, the cheers stop.

Mesopredators think that all they need to do is continue to impose their will on those men in Trump’s base because, well, what are they going to do about it? They haven’t done anything before about it have they? Must be because the mesopredators are right about the immigrants “all full of passionate intensity” while the worthless lazy, spoiled settler culture men “lack all conviction”. And this has nothing to do with the dropping fertility rates? Of course it doesn’t. That would mean mesopredators might have to go on a diet.

Trump isn’t the second coming.

You’re not going to like it.

Bill Kristol: White Working Class Should Be Replaced by Immigrants

[eggspurt]

Most successful societies had some immigration. There’s a balance between too little and too much. The elites and the populace will disagree on what’s best.

I’m also reminded of the difference between citizens and civilians from steve-bannon-once-suggested-only-property-owners-should-vote - #4 by eggspurt

[jabowery]

@Mettelus

I also want to comment on birth rates. I have seen the drop in birth rates attributed to immigration. This is nonsense. It doesn’t comport to my personal experience or the data.

This is the kind of “reasoning” that’s going to get the mesopredators killed.

I’ve offered you guys at least three ways out of your situation:

1. Replace the 16th Amendment with a single tax on liquidation value of net assets to fund the replacement of the welfare state with a citizen’s dividend.

Don’t like that social theory? Have a better one? OK, then we fall back to:

2. Hume’s Guillotine to award monetary prizes for an objective criterion – the Algorithmic Information Criterion – for macrosocial causal model selection, incrementally improving our understanding of what is causing the genocide of humanity (over the objection of the social pseudosciences).

Too high brow? Non-starter?

3. Replace the 13th and 14th Amendments with sorting proponents of social theories into governments that test them so as to avert a rhyme with the Thirty Years War for freedom from central imposition of social theories so that people can actually consent to the social theory under which their children are going to live.

Too radical? Can’t get there from here?

You’re dead.