TheMann said:
I don't think America could make goods like those, but I think with modern technology most industries are within reach of American manufacturers.
I don't see why not, if the idea is to sell in volume to 2d/3d World countries. Will this sustain the highest-wage jobs? No... It will, IMO, enable those countries to boost productivity, & so boost their attractiveness for higher-value exports by making them wealthier.
TheMann said:
The obvious high-value ones (automobiles and auto parts, aircraft and their components, machinery, consumer electronics, shipbuilding and the like) are easier for a high-wage nation to have....With modern equipment, I think even higher-end clothing products could be on deck for American makers.
Agreed. I find myself wondering if it's not possible to achieve a kind of "botique" manufacturing: combining robots & CADCAM to produce very personalized products like cars for a smaller, but high-profit, market--in effect, Rolls or Benz with bots.
TheMann said:
The United States is one of the most open-to-trade markets on the planet, honestly. Supply management and import restrictions are much worse in most other developed nations, particularly the Asian economies. (Japan isn't great but the best of the lot, Taiwan a little worse but not maddeningly so. South Korea, Thailand and China are massively restrictive on imports that would threaten domestic industries.) The Europeans tend to be more restrictive on importing from other countries than the United States is, too.
I'm thinking of restrictions on African agricultural products in the main, here. There's been a pretty concerted effort to stifle them. I'm also far less sanguine about Japan than you, but I'll confess substantial ignorance.
If true the U.S. is less restrictive, maybe higher tariffs are a good idea. I've heard it said high tariffs aren't necessarily antithetical to a strong economy; my grasp of economics is in no way competent to judge the argument.
TheMann said:
The problem with this point (though the historical references are accurate) is that intellectual property in modern times, with modern communications, are ludicrously easy to steal and/or pirate, which reduces the costs to some consumers but is a big problem for a company's bottom line.
I don't say that's the only, or even the best, option. It's only the one that came to me.

I thought of banking & finance, & insurance, but seeing how the Bandits of Wall Street have been treating the U.S. economy in the last 5yr, alone, encouraging more of the same seemed like a bad idea.

(Go back to the '80s & the S&Ls, IMO, there should be whole prisons just for bankers.

)
TheMann said:
You can also do this by raising the wages of many service workers, but that risks inflation
It might, but if you recognize good service
deserves higher pay... IMO, it does. We've done it with cheats, like "mandatory" tipping. And we've had a tendency in business to go after labor wages as if that's the only way to reduce cost. It's not.
I find myself coming back to Henry Ford's proposition: if your employees can't afford them, who's buying your products? (I know, it's nothing like so simple...

)
TheMann said:
I don't see why it can't, either. Companies in competitive markets where they cannot cut costs are always looking at ways of increasing sales. Automobiles are a very good example - what got the Japanese automakers into North America in the 1960s was excellent fuel efficiency and cheap prices, but as Detroit fought back against that the Japanese kept improving the quality of their products to keep their ability to sell them even as their original competitive advantages eroded away. Detroit is currently trying the same thing, and many Japanese makers, in their attempt to fight Detroit, are trying to make additional profits on cars by cutting costs, which is causing them some unhappy problems. It hasn't seriously hurt their reputation, but if they keep having issues and Detroit keeps improving, then it will start hurting.
I was thinking much the same thing. Japanese makers still have the reputation for quality, & Detroit still hasn't overcome the "junk" rep from the '60s & '70s, even tho the defects
per 1000 of Detroit cars is comparable to Japan's & has been for more than a decade.
TheMann said:
Don't remind me, please.

Seriously though, that's why when I do American TLs I always aim for bigger union movements and to try and nip the Reagan Revolution in the bud and/or try to move American business into the mold of thinking of their companies not as top-down empires but as large (in some cases very large) teams of people aiming to be greater together than apart. I'd rather not strictly regulate businesses but rather get them to either do things right on their own or be able to have their employees and/or consumers push or goad them into it.
I agree on unions. My trouble with it is, how do you achieve it? What kind of social & economic conditions you need to make it true...? IDK anything like enough about it.

The idea of profit-sharing looks good to me, but if it works out anything like executive stock options has...

Some companies have gotten it right, but it looks so idiosyncratic, IDK how you'd translate it to the economy at large.
I think some regulation is essential, tho. At a minimum, tough standards on pollution & safety (product & worker both). Fraud protections. Restrictions on interest charges (so you don't end up with payday lenders & pawn shops charging tougher rates than loan sharks,

& doing it legally



--which is what we have now

). Or, to take some recent examples, NINJA loans, or selling credit default swaps you know are poisonous, or selling shares you know are garbage (& in which you have a conflict of interest, to boot:

either one ought to disqualify it being sold by you--& if it's such garbage, having
anybody selling it

)
Some of the airline regulations were a good idea, too, because removing the regulations created enormous debt, shrunk the number of carriers, reduced service, & increased seat prices & fees...

Not to say some of the crazy regs you find in rail make sense.

(Seriously, a regulation on when you can, or must, blow a horn at city limits--set in DC?


) Neither am I a fan of the CAFE standards.
TheMann said:
As I said above, getting out of the way will only get you so far in the lassiez-faire world, because then companies have all the incentive to keep on chasing the lowest wages
Could be. How far does it go? Let's say India is producing cars & exporting them to the U.S. That's taking some market share from U.S. companies, maybe--tho by now, probably not (& upmarket cars are more profitable anyhow). So India is making export dollars, & Indian workers are getting paid pretty good wages (for India, anyhow

) making cars. What do Indian carmaking workers want? More iPhones & laptops & DVD players & Britney Spears albums & "Twilight" sequels? How much of that can you get from India? Or China? How much does that increase India's GDP? How how much does that stimulate, say, air travel, & the demand for 757s (or Challenger 600 RJs, to be a bit chauvinistic

)?
TheMann said:
I rather think that early on in a nation's industrial development, the idea of countries building their own industries rather than being branch plants for Western multinationals is a better idea.
I'm thinking much the same thing, actually. Just putting less clearly, it seems.
I have a sense local industry has to start that way in some fashion, since there are established, successful products, & it's easier to copy than innovate: so, Japan copies the Austin Seven & Jeep...& India copies (some British car I can't think of the name of


).