Russ, it is VERY difficult to restart a manufacturing industry / process that has gone away. Case-in-point: semiconductors. There was a time when 90% of the semiconductor fabrication was dome in the US. That has been declining over the past 40 years where now it is single digit percentages. Now with the CHIPS act, as more fabs are being built in the US, the largest hurdle is finding skilled engineers and others to build these chips. There is no local memory and process experience of that industry.
What a load of bull. There are plenty of engineers and workers in the US. I'm one of them. 90% of chip designs, chip making processes and process equipment, chemical and substrate inputs for the chip making are made in the US. Sending all this to TSMC is welfare for Taiwan, which has run its course. Now it's all staying in the US, ,and it's called "TSMC investment in Arizona".
@@UncleV-ot7fy You are a tiny percentage of the semiconductor workforce compared to the past. 2024: less than half what it was in 2001 (which was even less than the late 1980’s - 1990’s). I am very involved with the TSMC facility in particular and they cannot find enough qualified workers and are staffing with their engineers from Taiwan.
@@Kyzyl_Tuva Yeah, it's called "autotherapeutic fantasies of being wanted. Here: www.gao.gov/assets/gao-18-69.pdf , page two is for you. They overdo Line 8 in an attempt to avoid Line 4.
Russ should do a podcast episode on the following topics for 2025: 1) 80th anniversary of United Nations. 2) The importance of medical freedoms, human rights and food sovereignty. 3) Zionism as a political ideology. 4) Regenerative Animal Agriculture. 5) The hypocritical nature of virtue signaling. 6) Lesser known geopolitical issues.
The record of free trade economists is obvious: the decimation of our mfg capability, making us vulnerable in foreign conflicts, drugs and alcoholism, weak family structure and more. I've stopped listening these economists who have lost credibility.
You think U.S. Manufacturing output is 10% of what it was, in, say 1960? I suspect you might be confusing Man. output with Man. Jobs. Also, blaming wildly unrelated phenomenon to one thing based on intuitions and coincidence is just silly and unscientific. Do umbrellas cause rain?
Our manufacturing output is higher than it was during WWII, it is just more automated so employs less. Protectionists think this is bad, but if you ask if we should go back to using only manual labor for food production they will of course say no. Lots of cognitive dissonance on the protectionist side.
I'm for free trade in theory. But in practice nations manipulate currencies, subsidize producers, erect non-tariff barriers, and take advantage of our adherence to a free market ideology. It ends up increasing returns on capital at the expense of returns on labor (wages).
Economists are well aware of everything you mentioned. Trade economists spend their entire lives studying and thinking about this one subject. That's what they do, and they've been doing it since Adam Smith wrote a little book on the practical impact of free trade. I recommend investigating their work and their reasoning. Listening to this podcast is a good start.
@bozimmerman Thanks for the reading recommendations that you apparently think will make me think like you do. I'm familiar with many of the ideas of Smith, Ricardo, Keynes, Hayek, Friedman, Krugman, Sowell, et al. They've been right on some things and wrong on other things. Theory rarely tracks perfectly with practice. And aside from right or wrong, there are few policies that benefit every person or group of people. There's nothing more common than people (usually elites) claiming their ideology & policies are beneficial to everyone. Individuals and groups have different values and interests, aside from maximizing efficiency and GDP. The interests of different sectors need to be balanced, so should the interests of capital & labor, white collar & blue collar, producers & consumers, importers & exporters. Which individuals & groups will get the policies they want is more of a political question that economists can't make with their quantitative models and theories. Doctrinaire free traders have been promising their ideas will result in "a rising tide to lift all boats" for years. They've been tragically wrong, and many of us can see that.
Good common sense points that are missing from the news, and sometimes even social media. Personally, I wouldn't even acquiesce to subsidies to kick start industries even when they seem like a slam dunk. They come at the cost of opening precedents and mis-educating the public, and there's money in private markets for that sort of thing anyway.
![Global Capitalism: The U.S. Election and Trump 2.0 in Historical Perspective [November 2024]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0-WR6Zq7Qec/mqdefault.jpg)
26:09 We'll put a link on that interview
Never puts a link to that interview lol
Russ, it is VERY difficult to restart a manufacturing industry / process that has gone away. Case-in-point: semiconductors. There was a time when 90% of the semiconductor fabrication was dome in the US. That has been declining over the past 40 years where now it is single digit percentages. Now with the CHIPS act, as more fabs are being built in the US, the largest hurdle is finding skilled engineers and others to build these chips. There is no local memory and process experience of that industry.
What a load of bull. There are plenty of engineers and workers in the US. I'm one of them. 90% of chip designs, chip making processes and process equipment, chemical and substrate inputs for the chip making are made in the US. Sending all this to TSMC is welfare for Taiwan, which has run its course. Now it's all staying in the US, ,and it's called "TSMC investment in Arizona".
@@UncleV-ot7fy You are a tiny percentage of the semiconductor workforce compared to the past. 2024: less than half what it was in 2001 (which was even less than the late 1980’s - 1990’s). I am very involved with the TSMC facility in particular and they cannot find enough qualified workers and are staffing with their engineers from Taiwan.
@@Kyzyl_Tuva Yeah, it's called "autotherapeutic fantasies of being wanted. Here:
www.gao.gov/assets/gao-18-69.pdf
, page two is for you. They overdo Line 8 in an attempt to avoid Line 4.
Russ should do a podcast episode on the following topics for 2025:
1) 80th anniversary of United Nations.
2) The importance of medical freedoms, human rights and food sovereignty.
3) Zionism as a political ideology.
4) Regenerative Animal Agriculture.
5) The hypocritical nature of virtue signaling.
6) Lesser known geopolitical issues.
The record of free trade economists is obvious: the decimation of our mfg capability, making us vulnerable in foreign conflicts, drugs and alcoholism, weak family structure and more. I've stopped listening these economists who have lost credibility.
You think U.S. Manufacturing output is 10% of what it was, in, say 1960? I suspect you might be confusing Man. output with Man. Jobs. Also, blaming wildly unrelated phenomenon to one thing based on intuitions and coincidence is just silly and unscientific. Do umbrellas cause rain?
Our manufacturing output is higher than it was during WWII, it is just more automated so employs less. Protectionists think this is bad, but if you ask if we should go back to using only manual labor for food production they will of course say no. Lots of cognitive dissonance on the protectionist side.
I'm for free trade in theory. But in practice nations manipulate currencies, subsidize producers, erect non-tariff barriers, and take advantage of our adherence to a free market ideology. It ends up increasing returns on capital at the expense of returns on labor (wages).
Economists are well aware of everything you mentioned. Trade economists spend their entire lives studying and thinking about this one subject. That's what they do, and they've been doing it since Adam Smith wrote a little book on the practical impact of free trade. I recommend investigating their work and their reasoning. Listening to this podcast is a good start.
@bozimmerman Thanks for the reading recommendations that you apparently think will make me think like you do. I'm familiar with many of the ideas of Smith, Ricardo, Keynes, Hayek, Friedman, Krugman, Sowell, et al. They've been right on some things and wrong on other things. Theory rarely tracks perfectly with practice.
And aside from right or wrong, there are few policies that benefit every person or group of people. There's nothing more common than people (usually elites) claiming their ideology & policies are beneficial to everyone.
Individuals and groups have different values and interests, aside from maximizing efficiency and GDP. The interests of different sectors need to be balanced, so should the interests of capital & labor, white collar & blue collar, producers & consumers, importers & exporters. Which individuals & groups will get the policies they want is more of a political question that economists can't make with their quantitative models and theories.
Doctrinaire free traders have been promising their ideas will result in "a rising tide to lift all boats" for years. They've been tragically wrong, and many of us can see that.
Sorry, Bo is right on this one. You out yourself by basically stating that politics should pick winners and losers. That rarely works as intended.
Wish you discussed Joe Studwell’s How Asia Works. Russ should do an episode with economist Noah Smith for a livelier debate on industrial policy.
Good common sense points that are missing from the news, and sometimes even social media. Personally, I wouldn't even acquiesce to subsidies to kick start industries even when they seem like a slam dunk. They come at the cost of opening precedents and mis-educating the public, and there's money in private markets for that sort of thing anyway.
the man the myth the legend
Episode 865 of EconTalk podcast with Michael Munger highlighted a more accurate depiction of industrial policy to be honest.
🌚🌝
Russ failed to correct Scott when he said Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 several times throughout this episode.
💀💀💀
“China has no expansionist aims beyond Taiwan.” This guy needs to ask any of China’s neighbors that same question. Good podcast nonetheless