“Batya Ungar-Sargon stuns Bill Maher into submission when talking about Trump’s rationale on tariffs:
• BUS: “The 70’s the largest share of our GDP was in the middle class [25% of economy was manufacturing, working class had middle class SOL]. Now the top 20% controls over 50% of the GDP [real estate & finance]. That manufacturing is still being done: It’s just being done in other countries.”
• Maher: “For wages we will not work for.”
• BUS: “That’s what the tariffs are for. They are to make American workers more competitive in the global market. Why are we accepting that there should be a race to the bottom? China: What is its competitive advantage over us? They pay slave wages. It’s important that we have a stake in the manufacturing of the things that we need as a nation [Trump: 5 industries critical to national security], so that when China goes to war against us we’re not relying on them for steel and aluminum in order to fight them.”
In yesterday’s WSJ, Phil Gramm and Don Boudreaux predictably argue for free trade and against tariffs and say:
“We are today taking actions to protect manufacturing jobs the same way we did with agriculture a century ago. In the process, we are imperiling our access to the world market in high-tech and AI, which are the economic future.”
I have often seen this assertion of a polarity between manufacturing (old, boring, low growth and low margin) and ‘high tech’ (new, cool, high growth and super-profitable) and wonder what the writers think ‘high-tech’ exactly IS.
Is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (market capitalization $758B) considered high-tech? It is certainly a manufacturing company?
How about ASML Holding NV (market cap $274B)?…this is the only company in the world that manufactures the Extreme Ultraviolet machines which are essential for making the highest-performance semiconducors.
Consider GE Aerospace, now trading as a separate company with a market cap of $206B. It may lack the Cool factor of the above two companies, but anyone who thinks that making jet engines doesn’t count as ‘high-tech’ should read this article: ‘Why it’s so hard to build a jet engine’ at the Construction Physics substack.
The above examples are companies that sell business-to-business rather than to consumers. Okay, for a business that sells to consumers, look at Tesla–there are many articles and videos available about this company’s innovations in manufacturing.
What, exactly, do Gramm and Boudreaux think ‘high-tech’ actually means?
Personally, I’m not particularly fond of the term ‘high-tech’ nor even of just ‘technology’ when used in a narrow and restrictive sense–I think it’s pretty odd to consider a company that sells some garden variety consumer product online (with AI algorithms!) as being ‘technology’ while excluding the making of jet engines (or power turbines) from that category…and also pretty odd to consider an Amazon warehouse for delivering products to consumers as being inherently more ‘high-tech’ than a factory for actually making those or other products.
Excellent post, David Foster (11:46 a.m.).
Thanks, Kate. The article also referred to ‘services’ as being higher paid than manufacturing–I think ‘services’ is so broad as to be almost meaningless–from fast food to outsourced call centers to high-end consulting services.
Here’s something I wrote back in 2010 about public attitudes toward manufacturing…thinking about updating it & reposting,
Marc Andreessen breaks down how the University scam works and how they misappropriate taxpayer money. “There is a government supported and funded cartel that doesn’t allow new entrants to get access to Federal money. They must be allowed to fail.”
A splendidly brief summation of the state of higher ed (if not education in general) today. Pass it on, woeful though it may be. People need to hear this case.
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https://x.com/i/status/1900743275117768788
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOZ5T6bKbNo
Beware!
In yesterday’s WSJ, Phil Gramm and Don Boudreaux predictably argue for free trade and against tariffs and say:
“We are today taking actions to protect manufacturing jobs the same way we did with agriculture a century ago. In the process, we are imperiling our access to the world market in high-tech and AI, which are the economic future.”
I have often seen this assertion of a polarity between manufacturing (old, boring, low growth and low margin) and ‘high tech’ (new, cool, high growth and super-profitable) and wonder what the writers think ‘high-tech’ exactly IS.
Is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (market capitalization $758B) considered high-tech? It is certainly a manufacturing company?
How about ASML Holding NV (market cap $274B)?…this is the only company in the world that manufactures the Extreme Ultraviolet machines which are essential for making the highest-performance semiconducors.
Consider GE Aerospace, now trading as a separate company with a market cap of $206B. It may lack the Cool factor of the above two companies, but anyone who thinks that making jet engines doesn’t count as ‘high-tech’ should read this article: ‘Why it’s so hard to build a jet engine’ at the Construction Physics substack.
The above examples are companies that sell business-to-business rather than to consumers. Okay, for a business that sells to consumers, look at Tesla–there are many articles and videos available about this company’s innovations in manufacturing.
What, exactly, do Gramm and Boudreaux think ‘high-tech’ actually means?
Personally, I’m not particularly fond of the term ‘high-tech’ nor even of just ‘technology’ when used in a narrow and restrictive sense–I think it’s pretty odd to consider a company that sells some garden variety consumer product online (with AI algorithms!) as being ‘technology’ while excluding the making of jet engines (or power turbines) from that category…and also pretty odd to consider an Amazon warehouse for delivering products to consumers as being inherently more ‘high-tech’ than a factory for actually making those or other products.
Excellent post, David Foster (11:46 a.m.).
Thanks, Kate. The article also referred to ‘services’ as being higher paid than manufacturing–I think ‘services’ is so broad as to be almost meaningless–from fast food to outsourced call centers to high-end consulting services.
Here’s something I wrote back in 2010 about public attitudes toward manufacturing…thinking about updating it & reposting,
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/11680.html
https://x.com/AutismCapital/status/1883697882857087058
A splendidly brief summation of the state of higher ed (if not education in general) today. Pass it on, woeful though it may be. People need to hear this case.