A mistake about manufacturing costing Americans millions of jobs - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1269172/the-epic-mistake-about-manufacturing-thats-cost-americans-millions-of-jobs <comment><USER3> The article doesn't explain the quality adjustment problem well:

> The problem is, the processor released in 2017 is superior to that sold in > 2016 in many tangible ways. But how do you account for the fact that a 2017 > processor provides users with more value? In general, statisticians assume > the difference in value between the two models is just the difference in > their prices. If, say, the 2017 processor costs twice as much as the 2016 > one does, then selling one 2017 processor counts as selling two of the 2016 > versions in the statisticians' books.

This makes it sound like the problem is prices rising from year-to-year. The real issue is that the comparison is made with the price of the 2016 processor _in 2017_. See "methods of quality adjustment" in [https://www.bls.gov/ppi/qualityadjustment.pdf](https://www.bls.gov/ppi/qualityadjustment.pdf)

So basically - let's say in 2016 a new CPU costs $200. Then in 2017 Intel releases a new model, prices it also at $200, and sells the old model at $100. The quality adjustment algorithm will see that _right now_ , the new one is selling for twice as much as the old one, and assume that there's been a 2x jump in value per item.

[EDIT: One way of thinking about this is: the method treats clearance prices for last year's model as _deflation_ in this particular market, and adjusts for it.]

<comment><USER4> I was thinking about this as well, and it doesn't seem like an easy problem to solve.

Subjectively, we know that the reason 2017 processors cost 2x as much as a 2016 processor, is because of improvements in process technology and architectural design. There might be incremental improvements in the manufacturing process, but not enough to say that _" manufacturing capabilities have doubled compared to last year"_.

The obvious solution here would be to compare the price of a 2017 processor in 2017, to the price of a 2016 processor in 2016. But that would give hopelessly cynical answers in other circumstances.

For instance, consider a factory for paperclips that produced 10M units in 2016, and due to various improvements, 20M units in 2017. The paperclips in both years are mostly identical to one another. But for various market reasons, the price of each paperclip has fallen by 50%. Possibly due to the enlarged supply from factories all over the country doubling their production.

In such a situation, if you rated the factory's output using the alternative metric suggested above, you would think that the factory hasn't made any improvements at all in the last year. When in reality, it has doubled its production capabilities and efficiency.

There just doesn't seem to be a purely quantitative to compare the manufacturing capabilities of factories that produce qualitatively different products year over year. This seems to make moot any single metric that rates aggregative manufacturing capabilities across multiple years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The fact that rapid productivity increases due to the computer industry began in the late 1970s is a flashing red light to me.

The late 1970s is when productivity and wages began to diverge. Much ink has been spilled about this, as it corresponded with the emergence of neoliberal economics by Reagan and Thatcher.

Maybe wages and productivity began to diverge not because labor was capturing less value due to political developments, but because we have been overestimating the productivity of industry in aggregate due to the rapid productivity growth in one sector, computers, skewing the aggregate.

It seems like a statistical misattribution of this scale could be applied to many other phenomena.

<comment><USER6> It's a bit surprising that statisticians and others who study the economy would miss this nuance. If Piper Jaffrey and others can pour into Apple's suppliers to divine whether Apple will meets iPhone shipment expectations, one would think professional economists would peer similarly into the nuts and bolts of the industries they profess to know about.

There was a time the US had an interest in the getting the rest of the work to "Globalize" to stem the Soviet tide. We won, it's over, but the American worker is still getting shafted by the industrialists who loved cheap outsourced labor. Clinton, Bush and Obama either were completely complicit in this or lacked the wherewithal to fight it.

Maybe Kanye along with others can get Americans reluctant to side with current American policies to see the advantages to bringing things back state side --or at least stemming the hemorrhage.

It's not like China or Mexico or anyone else thinks "Oh, those poor Americans who get laid off, who will think of them". Nope, everyone is out for themselves --despite what Globalists say.

<comment><USER7> The problem for Clinton, Bush and Obama is that if you put up protectionist firewalls against cheaper goods from foreign counties with cheaper labour two things happen. Firstly yes you stimulate employment in local manufacturing, but by definition all of the consumers buying those locally made goods are paying more for them.

You might have a million more manufacturing jobs, but hundreds of millions of people are paying through the nose for it. Meanwhile you may not actually make any significant difference to overall employment. Most of those million people now in manufacturing will have moved from jobs in other sectors, increasing costs in those sectors too. Meanwhile none of this does anything for America's exports, because foreigners can still buy the same goods from your cheaper foreign competitors. In fact it can hurt exports if the goods you're manufacturing are inputs to existing American exporters. Take steel, if American car exporters now have to buy more expensive locally made steel, the price of their cars goes up hurting car exports as well as shafting American car buyers.

<comment><USER8> The massive elephant sitting in the corner is that it's more expensive to pay for American workers because we have laws and regulations that protect them and ensure they have a decent quality of life. So now it becomes an ethical problem and we all know what to do when we encounter a difficult one of those: shift liability to a corporate entity and chalk up the negative ethical aspects as economics. ( _I 'm_ not the one exploiting foreign labor, that's mega corp.)

The greatest feature of globalization is that it distances consumers from the source of the goods they consume. This might be "good" for the consumers in the short term, but it's absolutely not good for their s/economy/quality of life/ in the long run.

What's the effect of instant gratification global capitalism? The American economy now has to compete with the foreign economy. If workers in the foreign country experience a lower quality of life in order to sustain American consumers, then the American worker gets shafted because they have to lower their quality of life to compete. If they won't or can't (because we consider those conditions too inhumane for our own workers) then they have to find new work.

Globalism is the great equalizer.

EDIT: I'm not necessarily saying this is bad for the world (except that human rights and quality of life regress to the mean), and one can also argue that the freed up resources might be put to more.. sophisticated.. uses. I don't know...

I'm responding to the parent: the only way globalizing an economy is good for a strong country (one sitting above the mean) is if you define good in a strictly economic sense like "lowest prices for the consumer" (which is the premise of the parent's argument). It's easy for an economist to do that in isolation because that's the name of the game. A government, however, is not tasked with driving down prices for consumers (that's a market's job) but rather is responsible for roughly maintaining quality of life for its citizens and with protecting its workers, among many other things. Allowing the economy to run unchecked at a global scale essentially equates to selling out the workers. It's not just about who's consumers get the lowest price at the end of the day.

<comment><USER9> Yes, as long as you take "protect them and ensure they have a decent quality of life" to not include employment!

We're telling grown adults what they can't do, supposedly for their own good.

That quote from C. S. Lewis applies:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

<comment><USER8> So we should let grown adults bypass our own ethical frameworks for minimum wage and worker protection and allow them to exploit foreign labor markets at the expense of local workers just because they're grown adults? Excuse me if I don't find that very compelling.

Look I generally agree with your C.S. Lewis quote, seriously.

But if it's tyrannical to maintain a baseline for workers, then we should abolish minimum wage and all worker protection laws and just let the adults go at it (I'm sure they'll eventually tap in cheap children too). Point being we've already agreed that workers need protection so you're arguing against the status quo (and calling it a tyranny nonetheless).

<comment><USER10> Workers are not exploited. If they have a better option they'll take it. If they don't have a better option, then you're not exploiting them, you're offering the best option available to them.

> we should abolish minimum wage

Certainly.

> we've already agreed that workers need protection

Actually, not all of us have agreed that.

> you're arguing against the status quo (and calling it a tyranny nonetheless)

Just because something is the way things are doesn't make it not a tyranny.

<comment><USER11> > Workers are not exploited. If they have a better option they'll take it

You're arguing against things that workers put in place themselves a century or more ago. 8 Hour workdays. Weekends. No child labour. Minimum wage. Workers have already fought these battles, are you suggesting we should go back to square one and do it over again for the hell of it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone know anything about the institute that produced this report, the Upjohn Institute? I've never heard of them, which doesn't man a lot but it means something.

[https://www.upjohn.org/](https://www.upjohn.org/)

Also, does anyone know anything about Houseman, the (principle?) researcher?

IME, there are many small organizations that produce reports to grind some small axe. It doesn't mean Upjohn is one of them, but it's important to know who you are listening to.

EDIT: It looks like a local research organization located in Kalamazoo, Michigan. They say they date back to the Great Depression. The Board of Trustees often gives a good introductory picture of an organization; in this case, I see a mix of academic and business leaders local to Kalamazoo:

[https://www.upjohn.org/about-us/board-of- trustees](https://www.upjohn.org/about-us/board-of-trustees)

Also, you can find Houseman's and other researcher's official bios here. They look like real economists, fwiw:

[https://www.upjohn.org/about-us/research-staff](https://www.upjohn.org/about- us/research-staff)

(Ironically, many in this discussion are citing research by economists to claim that economists are unreliable.)

<comment><USER13> The W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research has been around since 1932 [1]. They have a staff of around 100 employees[1], and assets of over 192 million dollars[2].

Susan Houseman has a very distinguished CV[3], and you can read her full paper and presentation here.[4][5]

Here is a video of her speaking on the topic.[6]

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._Upjohn_Institute_for_Emp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._Upjohn_Institute_for_Employment_Research)

[2][http://www.upjohn.org/sites/default/files/pdf/Upjohn- Institu...](http://www.upjohn.org/sites/default/files/pdf/Upjohn-Institute- Financial-Report-2016-Final.pdf)

[3][https://www.upjohn.org/sites/default/files/housemancurrentcv...](https://www.upjohn.org/sites/default/files/housemancurrentcv_Jan2018.pdf)

[4][http://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1268&...](http://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1268&context=empl_research)

[5][http://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1054&...](http://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1054&context=presentations)

[6][https://www.c-span.org/video/?439645-1/manufacturing- jobs](https://www.c-span.org/video/?439645-1/manufacturing-jobs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Another economic number I ponder over is inflation, and the economists method of revaluation of goods called the hedonic quality adjustment [1].

If you follow the example on the link provided, they show how upgrading an old tv that cost $250 to a new one that cost $1250 actually was had a negative inflation effect due to the extra features that the new TV had.

From one perspective I can understand their point, but when the "new normal" of tv ownership basically demanded those features, so they weren't really extra benefits for the end user in the long run (and then became standard features where the prices did plummet back to the original $250, one again reading down the inflation figures).

Look if like to think that economist are smarter than that, but given the original article...

[1] [https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/questions-and- ans...](https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/questions-and-answers.htm)

<comment><USER15> There's an epically bad version of that error that I keep re-linking because it was such a central economic policy maker and such a clear version of the error[1]: essentially, yeah, food is more expensive, but iPads are faster, so it cancels out.

Even if you accept the core logic, they went about it in an absurdly naive way: a 50% faster chip does not make the iPad 50% better; very little of that went to relieve a true bottleneck and so doesn't translate into observably higher usefulness. Now, if iPads were _so much better_ that they actually freed up owners from significant household tasks that actually translated into e.g. greater free time or ease of earning, _that_ would make sense. But the chip simply being faster isn't good enough.

Incidentally, do they ever readjust inflation _upward_ when products get worse? Like, when packaging is flimsier or paper cups harder to grip? Somehow I doubt it.

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-dudley-ipad- idUST...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-dudley-ipad- idUSTRE72A4D520110311)

<comment><USER16> Or more relevantly, when ecological standards make household products worse. Removing phosphates from detergents, low-flow showerheads that are less relaxing, low-flow toilets that clog more often, high efficiency washers that break down more often, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There is some deep history here that has been barely reported on at all by any journalist, anywhere. It happened in many industries, in many political groups.

Rumsfeld et al started this bigtime in the 80s, selling and giving tech and IP to several asian countries for diplomatic favors. We were not consulted as to why at the time, just forced to make ourselves highly available for several Chinese government partners that were very interested in some of our advances, particularly in networking and manufacturing.

This song and dance apparently accelerated in the G W years, but by then all half our company had shut down and I had abandoned tech for the second time.

<comment><USER12> The assumption behind the parent is economic nationalism, which is a false model of economics. Economic development in other countries benefits the U.S. greatly; economics and trade are not zero-sum, but mutually beneficial. Would you rather sell (and buy) goods in a town of poor people, or in a town of wealthy ones? Would the U.S. rather sell and buy goods in a world of other wealthy countries, or in a world of poor ones? If China didn't develop economically, it wouldn't be huge market for U.S. goods today, and wouldn't produce so much that the U.S. needs.

Nationalism also ignores two fundamental moral issues: First, it is an unequivocal moral good for people rise out of extreme poverty, as has happened in China (and elsewhere). Second, there is no moral difference between the welfare of a human being in China and one in the U.S. or any other country; there is no reason the American deserves to be more wealthy. Everyone should have opportunity and a fair shot to earn what they can; if you don't make more, should you get special welfare because of your nationality?

<comment><USER18> This is all well and good in the global altruistic humanist sense, but if I just lost my job in Indiana because the company shuttered our plant and outsourced manufacturing to China, I'm voting for Trump. As they say, "All politics is local".

<comment><USER19> Of course ironically it has been the US pushing globalism and free trade on the rest of the world (with similar impacts on industries elsewhere it seems).

<comment><USER12> > the US pushing globalism and free trade on the rest of the world

No, the rest of the world has been pushing it too, with exceptional results, and still follows that path with the U.S. being the odd country out.

If this one study is correct, it only reflects on one aspect of a much larger issue. Trade has brought immense benefits to the world, lifting billions out of abject poverty; whatever it's drawbacks and imperfections, it's very hard to say it's anything but the greatest economic success in human history. Globalism is built on the foundation of universal human rights, probably the most important factor in the overall welfare of humans. If the people who happen to be on the other side of an arbitrary, invisible line don't have rights, then neither do you.

<comment><USER8> So economic prosperity is equivalent to universal human rights? If we raise the world's average income by enslaving the bottom 5% of the population in a sovereignty that does not defend human rights am I supposed to look the other way? Sorry if this is hyperbole but I think you get my point.

<comment><USER12> Certain economic needs - food, shelter, health care, education, etc. - <USER2> human rights.

I'm not sure what else you are referring to. Who said it's ok to enslave people? Or that the economic rights were the only ones that mattered?

> am I supposed to look the other way?

Absolutely not; it's wrong to look the other way. I shouldn't either.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps you _are_ missing my point. Your argument is that globalization is universally good for the world because it equalizes global economy. I am suggesting that's only true if the world also shares the same understanding of fundamental human rights. If we equalize global economy by trading with or including a country that does not treat workers humanely, how do we resolve that?

<comment><USER12> > If we equalize global economy by trading with or including a country that > does not treat workers humanely, how do we resolve that?

I agree that's a very important question.

First I think we need to stop talking in absolutes. I'm not saying globalization is "universally" good; I'm saying there are great benefits; there are also real problems, including the one you point out. Nothing in the world is perfect; if we only move forward on things when they are perfect, we live in caves - which are pretty imperfect themselves. The question is not perfection but how can we do better?

Post-WWII globalization has created the greatest benefit to common people in the history of humanity. After thousands of years, hundreds of millions of people in China have been lifted from desperate poverty to 'middle-class'[0] prosperity. The same has been repeated in India, Brazil, South Korea, and many other places in the world. People in the West also are immensely wealthier, live longer (and have more freedom). Also, specific to the question you raised, human rights have spread at a rate also unprecedented in the history of humanity; look at the explosion of democracies and of liberty. While there are problems, the benefits are overwhelming IMHO.

There also is a moral component: People generally believe in freedom, and economic freedom, to trade with whom you like without government stopping you, is an important one.

But I do take the problems seriously:

* Impact on individuals: This is the fundamental problem, IMHO: Capital can move much faster than individuals; a factory can move to another country much faster than the workers can find new, equivalent jobs - for most, moving to another country is practically impossible - especially if half the town is now unemployed. Therefore, trade provides a _net_ benefit, but the impact on individuals is disparate to a great degree. We need to protect those individuals, by giving them time to adjust (require a warning or continuing salary for X time, perhaps based on the impact on the local job market), by compensating them for the change (taxing the benefits of moving capital and giving some back to the people making the biggest sacrifice), and by means of the latter taxes, also raise the cost of such changes to the point where it's economically viable not just for the company and future employees, but for those left behind.

* Human rights: To not trade - to lock billions into extreme poverty (often defined as less than $1/day), starving, with no education, medical care, etc. - seems the opposite of concern for human rights. Money is essential to "life ... and the pursuit of happiness". As for liberty, there's long been the theory, often born out, that when a middle class grows in a country, they demand political rights. That's been true in many countries, including parts of China (Taiwan and Hong Kong), S. Korea, Brazil, Chile, etc. But to rely on it just happening is insufficient; we need to do more, including writing human rights into our agreements, leading on the issue (which the current US administration has abandoned), and pressuring others into expanding them.

* Labor practices: I think these need to be written into trade agreements, though I don't know what's already been done - I think it's widely assumed to be nothing, but I've never read anything by someone who actually knows what's in the agreements. However, it's a false assumption that labor costs are the prime cause of manufacturing moving, based on at least some economists I've read. Manufacturing was big in mid-20th century West and has been declining since; Americans now have much better paying, safer, more comfortable jobs than working in factories. That's a good thing; we need to do much better, but not by going backwards. Manufacturing is often done in China because that's where the expertise and other resources are concentrated (from infrastructure to bankers to talent to suppliers etc.), the same reason SV is home to the IT industry.

[0] I won't bother to define it here; I hope you get my point.

<comment><USER8> Thank you for the dialog. So I think it's fair to say we have not properly addressed the local fallout of globalism in the US (by doing any of the things you suggest) which is likely in part why we're seeing a call for protectionist stances on international trade, and very possibly the reason Trump is sitting in office.

Similar to you, I'd be curious what people are doing to underwrite human rights via trade deals so we globally don't regress to the mean, but that's a topic for another time. If underwriting human rights became expensive or a requirement in certain states in theory it impacts the free market...

<comment><USER12> On a slight tangent: Human rights create wealth too, a very happy fact of life. Free, politically secure people, who feel they control their destiny are, not too surprisingly, the most productive. All the most productive, wealthiest nations are free.

One thing you say that I don't quite agree with:

> very possibly the reason Trump is sitting in office

Think of all the ways the theory doesn't apply: Most voters making less than $50K chose Clinton[0]; minority voters, who also lost jobs and who have higher unemployment than white voters, overwhelming chose Clinton; Trump's and the GOP's policies overwhelmingly favor the wealthy and big business, including cutting health care and other government services to the working class, and shifting relatively more of the tax burden onto them.

To the extent working class white voters supported Trump, they did so against economic self-interest. But that's long been true of many such voters; remember the book 'What's the matter with Kansas?' (or whatever it was called - a f*ng obnoxious, ignorant, arrogant title that reveals the problem with Dems: 'customers aren't buying our product, what's the matter with them?'). The question is, why?

[0] Based on a HN comment that cited some stats; I didn't check them myself, so take with salt. But I remember reading similar research after the election.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I didn't expect there was much electronics manufacturing in the US at all, let alone it has been driving manufacturing "growth". I honestly expected a solid chunk of design happened in the US, then the fab happened elsewhere. This article got me to do a bit more reading (yay!). So, I'm sharing a bit of that, as a starting point for anyone else that wants to dig in more.

This commerce.gov report [0] taught me a few pieces of the puzzle. I especially like the graphics on pages 5 and 7, showing major semiconductor manufacturing and lots of output from Cali, Oregon, and Texas.

This wiki page [1] shows lists semiconductor fab plants. The ones I recognize (as my own proxy for size) are Intel, TI, Broadcom, Seagate, former Fairchild, and NXP/Freescale.

[0]: [https://www.commerce.gov/sites/commerce.gov/files/migrated/r...](https://www.commerce.gov/sites/commerce.gov/files/migrated/reports/made- in-america-computer-and-electronic-products.pdf) [1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants)

<comment><USER21> Sometimes I wonder how well attribution of added value works. If a US plant imports a laptop, a laptop manual, and a box, puts them all together to make a laptop in a box, and sells the laptop to Best Buy for 20% more than what it cost them to get the pieces manufactured abroad, did they really just manufacture 20% of the wholesale price of a laptop? If so, their productivity is high, but it has nothing to do with automation.

<comment><USER22> This is one area of manufacturing that I am sorely lacking on knowledge in. However, isn't value added calculated on the COGS? That is, they take all the inputs, and then add labour, raw materials, property, etc. to get the total cost?

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure. I do suspect that a naive calculation of COGS gives essentially arbitrary results. Consider a hypothetical phone assembled in the USA. Maybe COGS is quite low. Then the maker shifts profits to Ireland by selling its IP to an Irish subsidiary and licensing it back at ruinous rates. Did COGS go up?

For factory productivity numbers, I assume that labor is not subtracted from value. If one person at $50/hr builds $51/hr of widgets completely from scratch, their productivity is $51/hr, not $1/hr.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> While I very much enjoyed the narrative of plucky Houseman and her cross- tabulation-of-truth battling against elites, smug in their complacent certainty, I'm also skeptical of it.

I spent most of this century in the UK, and the narrative there was always that these jobs have gone away, they are not coming back, that's why things say 'Made in China' on them. This seemed to be the conclusion of other EU countries too. Germany was very deliberate in its approach to manufacturing for export.

I find it very hard to believe that the US alone could come to a radically different conclusion than the rest of the world about the largest economic trend of recent times, because no-one had examined numbers.

The surprising thing is that as a politician you can say what you like, and journalists have neither the ability or interest to examine it before spreading. This seems to be what happened with the automation narrative.

<comment><USER24> > I spent most of this century in the UK

As a side note, I love this phrasing. I mean, it's only 17 or 18 years depending on how accurate you are with when a century starts, but it just _sounds_ so long.

I'm going to start saying that I've lived in the Bay Area since before the turn of the century, because it sounds cool.

<comment><USER25> Why stop there? It was also the beginning of the new millenia.

<comment><USER24> Yeah but "since the turn of the century" is a much more common phrase than "since the turn of the millennia".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > By 2016, real manufacturing output, sans computers, was lower than it was in > 2007

Maybe I just overlooked it, but I didn't see any mention of the big recession that happened on the 2007 end of that interval. A lot of industries that were hit hard in that took a very long time to recover (some still have not).

Because of that, articles that do comparisons from 2007 or thereabouts probably should include a short note explaining when whatever they are looking at recovered from that recession.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is a pretty interesting article. It reminds me yet again that understanding how the data is collected and interpreted is as important, if not more important, than the data since the post processed data can drive invalid conclusions.

Similar economic metrics that have undergone fairly large changes for both practical and political reasons are the unemployment rate and the cost of living.

In all of these cases if you can get the core data and the methodology (as Dr. Houseman did) and it is yet another reason to make _all_ of the data available rather than just to governors on the Federal Reserve board.

</comment><comment><USER28> If we work hard to bring all these manufacturing jobs back, won't this just increase the cost of goods by a great deal, and make people upset because of that? Sure, shipping goods from overseas isn't free, but it still seems like US workers will not accept wages that will keep prices as low as they are now. And I don't blame them; I imagine the salary of your average factory worker in a developing country wouldn't get you very far even in areas in the US with a pretty low cost of living.

Then again, I guess it's better to have a job but be unable to afford the the latest and greatest toys, than it is to just not have a job at all.

<comment><USER29> I"m not really sure. I'm not an expert on all of this, but I've sourced from the US and China, so this is my take.

The problem is that we (the public and various business owners) are still living under the assumption that it's the year 2000, when you could land from China for $3 and sell something for $30. This isn't true in the "New China," where wages are catching up to the US. That $20 item you are buying on eBay has a COL of $15.

There are three major issues:

1- China has a TON of engineers. This isn't so true in the US. This means that China can get from spec to market in short order. In the US, spec to market is much slower.

2- Supply chain. In China, the manufacturer, design team, broker, sales, printer, and so on are all in one building.

The US supply chain is incredibly convoluted, featuring 5 layers of people who's sole job is to prevent the buyer from contacting the factory directly.

3- China still has an unfair advantage. When you buy a product, a large chunk of that cost is shipping ("free shipping" is up to $7 that you don't see).

This is doubly bad for the supplier, as they have to work out the shipping price for China -> US and US -> customer.

Ever heard of e-packets? It's actually cheaper to use USPS ship from China -> customer than it is to ship a package US -> customer, even if the customer lives across the street.

In short, China has some inherent advantages, but the US also does many things that give China an unfair advantage. Last but not least, the US supply chain is a complex web of back-patting that does little more than destroy itself.

There are plenty of options for cheap US manufacturing, it's just that there is no scale for that, and there are many other small issues. The US has to do much more work than open up a new factory down the street. If we are talking about raw per piece production, the US often does it cheaper than China. It's all the other things that raise the price.

<comment><USER30> > The US supply chain is incredibly convoluted, featuring 5 layers of people > who's sole job is to prevent the buyer from contacting the factory directly.

Can you expand on this? Who/what would prevent me from directly working with factories?

<comment><USER29> Well, you are dealing with a lot of partners.

Let's say you want to create a unique mug for your company. In general, you can do this pretty easy by calling a promotional products distributor (you can't contact the supplier directly), but you are bull-headed and want to do it yourself.

You decide you want to buy something USA-made. Well, you contact the factory and you get yelled at for not calling their broker. (I contacted an unnamed factory in Texas and they were demanding all names and numbers, implying heads are rolling).

You call the broker. You contact the broker and she tells you that you can't really order from her, and you have the option of contacting a printer in Chicago.

You contact the printer in Chicago and now they are upset because you aren't ever supposed to call that factory, never mind you have a retailer license.

Okay, well... you call their broker, and well, yeah, they can do that, but you have to use their preferred artist located in NYC.

Got everything wrapped up now? Nah... you have to find someone to do the mold, and no, the factory doesn't deal with that. You contact someone in Colorado and you get quoted $15,000 for an injection mold.

So you go back to the broker who is... well, you don't really know who to contact, but it turns out that the Chicago printer isn't tooled to do anything but the shapes they are getting from Texas (you don't learn of this for 2 weeks because that broker is too tied up with other things). You call up Texas broker and she says "yeah, we do custom molds, but you still have to use our preferred network."

You ask if they can do orange and they say no, they only do red, black, and blue. Sorry.

You say to hell with it, call China who can do all of this in one phone call. You figure the cost is about the same (though the mold is only $5,000) and can get an sample in 2 weeks. They also offer to send you 15 different colors because they can.

I guess that doesn't explain why this happens. The reason is that there are a lot of "policing societies" that factories, suppliers, brokers, and distributors pay good money in order to keep the supply chain in check. There is no dirtier word than "double dipping," which means you are acting as supplier and distributor. Once you do that, you end up losing your society membership and you are basically toast.

There is a bit of inflection point these days. Suppliers / manufacturers are starting to sell direct. The distributors don't really like that the supplier / distributor relationship is breaking down, but it is slowly happening in some segments.

In sum, there really isn't a such thing as a "middle man." There is a whole party of people involved in everything that you buy. It's just a matter of how deep the rabbit hole goes. China smartly chose to streamline the process.

<comment><USER30> Damn, thanks for the overview - I didn't realize manufacturing in America was so ridiculously convoluted. Do you know if there are regulations protecting those "partners", or is this just the established norm for doing business?

<comment><USER29> It's kind of like a membership to a club. You can see some of the symbols on various websites.

People and companies pay to be a member of these clubs. Basically, it's saying that no one is going to step on each other's toes. Not being a member would make things hard for you to do business.

This obviously isn't universal to all industries. As far as I know there are no written legal codes, so it's basically an example of self-policing a la libertarianism, where you pay to play and follow the rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I want to like the article, but the lack of units on the axes are killing me! With the automation one... what's that mean? 300 what? 300 robots? And similarly with jobs declining and such. Some of them describe what's going on in the title, but a lot are sort of handwavy. I'm sure there's real data under it, but it's not presented very well.

<comment><USER32> For some reason, Jounalists, no matter how techincal the thing they're writing about, uniformly forget the basic graph-drawing rules their math and science teachers made them follow when they were 13. It might have seemed like pointless pedantry to their child selves, but then they get it wrong and their graph becomes an empty emotional gimmick instead of actually informative.

<comment><USER33> To be fair, that might not necessarily be the fault of the journalist. Could be some hapless intern told to conjure up graphics within a few hours.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > There are also observable signs that automation wasn't to blame. Consider > the shuttering of some 78,000 manufacturing plants between 2000 and 2014, a > 22% drop. This is odd given that robots, like humans, have to work > somewhere.

We need more information to tell if that is odd. Yes, robots, like humans, have to work somewhere--but robots, unlike humans, don't care _where_ that somewhere is.

Plants using mostly human labor face more size constraints, I'd expect, than do plants using mostly robot labor. Adding more humans to a plant means you need more housing in the nearby communities, more traffic capacity, bigger schools, and so on. There are limits on how fast communities can add those things, so you can end up having to have several plants in different communities.

With a mostly robotic plant, your growth constraints are land, energy infrastructure, and transportation infrastructure to bring in raw materials and ship your output.

I'd expect, then, that a company using mostly robot plants would move to have a smaller number of larger plants for a given level of output than would a company using mostly human plants.

<comment><USER34> You are forgetting financial burden (short vs long term) and technological investment. It kind of reminds me of the state of Chrysler vs Toyota in the 90s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is why people don't trust institutions, and is why we shouldn't treat economics as science. Smells like willful ignorance to me.

The brain dead obviousness of these shocking new revelations have been apparent to most people for decades — I wrote a paper about it in high school in 1992. I live upstate NY, once an economic powerhouse, now an empty shell. Every sector is dead, from farming to traditional industry.

It was pretty obvious 25 years ago what was happening, and pretty obvious now. Work went to Mexico. That includes the machinery and tooling. Ten years later, it went to China. Automation is a thing, but the jobs left years ago and the upside of automation like mechanical engineering and tools are all being realized in China.

<comment><USER36> "This is why people don't trust institutions."

Too bad there's no HN gold. :)

While its possible there is something to it, even if there is it irritates me to see so many people harp on Cambridge Analytica and Russia and such for why Trump won. Trump won because he was the only one who really ran on the collapse of the interior as an issue. I am not convinced Russian trolls or CA had much to do with it. At the very least I think without the rust belt he would have lost badly.

<comment><USER37> Stats show Trump won more based on culture than economics; Clinton won handily with low income voters.

<comment> purple-again This statement is not supported by the facts.

[https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how- group...](https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups- voted/groups-voted-2016/)

<comment><USER38> Hillary A) won the popular vote B) won voters who considered economics an important issue C) won voters making less than 50000.

... what do you think your link says?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Great article. Interesting that simply pulling the contribution of the computer sector out of the numbers makes things look terrible for American manufacturing. Currently China is working hard on being more relevant in the semiconductor sector and likely they will succeed. So be prepared for a long term trade war with China is my thinking.. but ultimately automation will become a bigger thing in China and then their employment will also stagnate, so will be interesting to see how they deal with finding enough jobs for everybody as well..

<comment><USER40> Automation was never really a macro-level job killing force anywhere. It both created and destroyed jobs.

It was mainly a useful scapegoat. The reality was that highly automated factories were more visible (because they were the ones that _didn 't_ close and move abroad) and there was no shortage of anecdotes about jobs eliminated.

If you're trying to protect profitable trade deals and austerian government budgets, a scapegoat is necessary.

The most automated profession in the US has suffered no macro level disemployment effects: [https://qz.com/962427/what-its-like-to-be-a-modern- engraver-...](https://qz.com/962427/what-its-like-to-be-a-modern-engraver-the- most-automated-job-in-the-united-states/)

<comment><USER41> People not going into the field (because someone else is working 5x faster) sure seems like a macro effect.

Or are you explicitly dismissing jobs that are never created?

<comment><USER40> I'm saying that when 90% of all jobs were in farming and those jobs were automated it didn't mean 90% unemployment. New kinds of job appeared to employ those people who would have gone to work in the fields.

The whole "oh but this time it's different because AI" argument is a load of bullshit. The disemployment effect is actually about 10x milder than it was when we came in off the fields and new kinds of job are created all the time.

<comment><USER41> Laborers left farms for better jobs in factories. They weren't pushed out.

<comment><USER40> Small landholders were pushed out by the enclosure movement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The efficiency quandry is really interesting to me. It makes me wonder if there is a practical limit to the utility of pure efficiency for a society? Obviously there are huge upsides to efficiency in resource usage etc. but it seems to harm portions of society at a certain point.

<comment><USER43> What you're left with is social inefficiencies instead of material or process inefficiencies. It's like trying to fix bad management at a company through engineering fixes: it just doesn't work. You have to solve the human problem. Also, the world is limited: you can't balloon out resource usage indefinitely to appease bad societal patterns. Eventually external factors will intervene such as resource exhaustion, ecosystem collapse, climate change, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I disagree that automation was the main opposition narrative about why manufacturing jobs were declining. The dominant line among folks I knew was that Americans didn't want to put up with the lifestyle offered by, say, Foxconn China (which produced a suicides alongside iPhones). That's consistent with "losing jobs to foreign competition", but hardly and argument for moving that capacity back to the States.

Note: I personally think there is amazing innovation around production happening elsewhere in the world, besides low wages. That's something I would like to see happening more in the USA. But I doubt it is as significant as cheap labor in moving manufacturing abroad.

</comment><comment><USER45> Did anyone sensible think automation was largely responsible for the job loss in the richer countries? Manufacturing has chased cheap wages globally since the 1960's.

I always thought the widely accepted narrative was that automation might bring some bulk manufacturing back to richer countries when it starts to compete with the cost of a skilled worker in a lower wage economy, after a decades long policy of outsourcing manufacturing chains, not that richer countries somehow automated away all the jobs at home.

</comment><comment><USER46> Stripping out computer manufacturing is an interesting take, but the rise of import of intermediate (partially completed) goods is another major cause of the decline of manufacturing in the US. Labor, energy, and environmentally intensive partially completed goods are often manufactured elsewhere now, we do final assembly here and add the output value to our "manufacturing output" so that line goes up even though we're doing a lot less of the work here.

</comment><comment><USER47> The US needs a serious industrial policy to counter this. Couple of ideas:

\- A venture fund, similar to In-Q-Tel, focused on investing in cutting edge manufacturing tech startups. It'll make sense to focus on defense applications initially, but many of those techniques do get carried over into private enterprise.

\- Increased grants for fundamental research, and tax write offs for corporates who expand R&D facilities adjacent to production facilities in the country.

\- Inevitably any company doing manufacturing today will experience labor shortages, most experienced staff are now retired. A federal program to re- train displaced workers to become technicians servicing the robots doing the assembly, monitoring quality, and doing basic troubleshooting work onsite.

\- Tax writeoffs for companies who provide training for front-line employees to move into design and engineering roles.

EDIT: Old time manufacturing jobs are gone and not coming back, however they are loads of opportunities in other areas of manufacturing that will generate much more value per employee and hence will pay better. Giving companies incentives to create these jobs, and providing a pathway for individuals with minimal training to attain the skills necessary to do them will solve the problem over time. Of course, it's all in the details.

</comment><comment><USER48> Its really hard to understand. I mean the newspapers were full of outsourcing stories, and how China was the world's sweatshop. The factories are there, they produce stuff, they employ massive amounts of people, manufacturing things that used to be manufactured in the west.

NNT was right, again.

<comment><USER12> > manufacturing things that used to be manufactured in the west

That's not how economies and economics work. It's not zero-sum at all. In fact, the more your neighbor works, the more work you have to do, because now you have someone to buy your goods and now things you need to be more productive are more available.

In fact, global economic production increased around 700% in the 20th century[0]; in the U.S. since 1950 it's grown around 3,000% 1950-2010[1]. By the zero sum theory, GDP would not have grown at all and we'd all be doing the same jobs we did in 1900 or 1950, just in different places (which means not a lot of software development jobs!).

Another benefit is that as worse-paying jobs move to poorer countries, the wealthier countries get better-paying, higher-skilled jobs.

China has become one of the largest markets for U.S. goods, and IIRC is the world's largest market for things like smartphones. American companies make a lot of money selling goods to Chinese people, who without the manufacturing would not be able to afford them, and U.S. unemployment is below 5%.

The U.S. has problems with income and wealth distribution, but other advanced economies, which have seen similar transitions from industry, don't have nearly the same difficulty. As I understand it, it's a product of U.S. law, tax codes, and government investment, which strongly favors the wealthy. For example, almost alone among advanced economies, the U.S. does not provide health care to all its citizens. That's not because China has more manufacturing jobs!

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_GDP_per_capita_20th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_GDP_per_capita_20th_century.GIF)

[1] [https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/usgs_line.php?title=US%...](https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/usgs_line.php?title=US%20Gross%20Domestic%20Product%20GDP%20History&year=1950_2010&sname=US&units=b&bar=0&stack=1&size=m&col=c&spending0=300.2_347.3_367.7_389.7_391.1_426.2_450.1_474.9_482_522.5_543.3_563.3_605.1_638.6_685.8_743.7_815_861.7_942.5_1019.9_1075.9_1167.8_1282.4_1428.5_1548.8_1688.9_1877.6_2086_2356.6_2632.1_2862.5_3211_3345_3638.1_4040.7_4346.7_4590.2_4870.2_5252.6_5657.7_5979.6_6174_6539.3_6878.7_7308.8_7664.1_8100.2_8608.5_9089.2_9660.6_10284.8_10621.8_10977.5_11510.7_12274.9_13093.7_13855.9_14477.6_14718.6_14418.7_14964.4)

<comment><USER49> > in the U.S. since 1950 it's grown around 3,000% 1950-2010

sure it's clear that the overall pie expands with additional trade. economists have been selling globalization to the US voter with that idea for a long time. i don't even think the comment you're replying to was disputing that.

but, more interestingly, such pie expansion does not guarantee that every group's slice of pie grows too. it hasn't really worked that way in the US. Joe Stiglitz, in 2011:

 _Most Americans are worse off than they were ten years ago, a dozen years ago, so it 's actually trickle up economics. All the gains in our economic growth have gone to those at the top .... we've been getting more unequal while other countries have been becoming less unequal_

[https://www.wnyc.org/story/121224-stiglitz-american- inequali...](https://www.wnyc.org/story/121224-stiglitz-american-inequality/)

<comment><USER12> Agreed, there are serious problems of distribution and opportunity, as I said in my last paragraph in the GP.

> economists have been selling globalization to the US voter with that idea > for a long time

And politicians have too. The argument long has been, as I understand it: There's a big aggregate benefit and the rising tide will lift all boats. Obviously that hasn't worked out, which shouldn't be surprising, raising a few issues:

1\. People need opportunity to participate in the globalized economy. Opportunity and social mobility have decreased in the U.S. for decades, IIUC. Just consider access to quality K-12 and higher education, the latter probably being important for getting into the globalization game, much less the necessities for survival such as health care.

2\. If people are to vote and work for the country's and world's aggregate benefit, rather than their particular benefit, then the 'aggregate' needs to support them in return through social benefits such as unemployment insurance and guarantees of basic needs such as healthcare, shelter, food, and education, and through opportunity (see #1). As it is, the beneficiaries are arguing for aggregate benefit, and then putting the benefits in their particular pockets and walking away with it.

3\. My hypothesis for the cause is that working people simply didn't have a seat at the table when these deals were negotiated. Big business insisted that the particulars of their needs were explicitly addressed in great detail; consider the global intellectual property regime, for example. Working people were told that it would just work out somehow, 'a rising tide lifts all boats'. Strange that wasn't the response to Wall Street's and Hollywood's demands. Assuming things would just magically sort themselves out for everyone else was lazy and careless governance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> If it were me, I'd want to know what % of manufactured goods consumed globally[0] were manufactured in the US over time. If that % has dramatically dropped over the last, oh, 50 years, I'd say we've exported our manufacturing, regardless of automation.

[0] Semi equipment, earth moving equipment, networking equipment, aircraft,... a lot of big, expensive stuff made in the US gets exported, wouldn't want to leave that out of the picture.

</comment><comment><USER51> I think the real mistake (which isn't a mistake, but an intentional deception) is that the manufacturing that left the US was in less capital-intensive industries (i.e. where labor costs were higher), and the lowering of the number of labor hours per dollar of earnings was intentionally misinterpreted as an increase in automation as a way to get industry-favored legislation passed.

</comment><comment><USER49> _... according to Houseman's data, without computers, manufacturing's real output expanded at an average rate of only about 0.2% a year in the 2000s. By 2016, real manufacturing output, sans computers, was lower than it was in 2007._

This is a very interesting story that deserves a much wider hearing.

</comment><comment><USER38> So what they're saying is that manufacturing is still going up just in different fields, and the nobody got hired for the manufacturing that _is_ happening...

I understand the distinction they're trying to draw but I don't know if it's actually all that _usefully distinct_.

</comment><comment><USER52> Gets a guy thinking about Steve Keen...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Keen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Keen)

<comment><USER53> Absolutely one of the more interesting economists these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Good article, my only gripe is that it seems to me that the author had to meet a word count target and expanded the content by 400% to meet it.

</comment><comment><USER55> This article fails the basic sniff test. The US is running net trade deficits and continuing to take on more debt every year.

As you go about your daily life in the US a significant amount of the manufactured things you purchase are made overseas. Most electronics, made in Asia. Cars, if assembled in the US, have a significant amount of foreign content. Clothes, more often than not overseas. Dishes & kitchen items, mostly China. Major appliances, unless you are buying a GE (now owned by Haire Chinese company) or Whirlpool, made in Mexico, Asia or Europe. Furniture, many choices, especially the ones you assemble, overseas. Lamps, fans, light bulbs, switches, HVAC system etc....mostly China, Mexico etc.. Bed linens, towels, mostly overseas. Your luggage, Asia, Mexico or Europe. If you fly on a US airline on a Boeing plane, it's major overhauls and inspections are being done in Mexico, China etc..

If automation were the culprit, given the transportation costs, these would be manufactured in the US by robots.

<comment><USER56> Did you _read_ the article? The central thesis is that automation is _not_ the primary culprit for manufacturing job losses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I don't buy it. You can lie with statistics and You can also lie with data. The fact that many many jobs moved to China coupled with the growth of their own manufacturing industry and it's clear that globalization is an issue. The argument is that consumers pay cheaper prices but it doesn't work that way with technology. Consumers have the money they are willing to spend and they'll get the best item then can with that. Which is more important, my 65" HDTV or a 55" 1080p that comes with jobs and economic balance.

<comment><USER58> You should go tell walmart that their business model isn't working.

<comment><USER30> It's exploitative, unsustainable, and highly profitable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> This line at the end is the most frustrating:

> But they still don't seem to grasp what's been lost, or why. It's easy to > dismiss the disappearance of factory jobs as a past misstep—with a "we're > not getting those jobs back" and a sigh. Then again, you can't know that for > sure if you never try.

If there is one thing that Obama did that was vital to the US it was saving of the automotive industry in 2008. He did this in spite of the "learned" economic experts saying otherwise.

Too bad, he didn't ignore them with the banks and jail the bankers.

<comment><USER60> The issue with jailing bankers is that nothing they did was illegal. It was highly immoral but we don't jail people for being immoral (they do in some countries).

If you want to jail bankers in the future, supporting institutions like Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and electing politicians that want to pass more strict laws is the only way to accomplish what you want.

In this diametric political climate we have one party that is gutting the CFPB by installing leaders that are pro-finance/banking industry and rolling back protections under the guise of "not being fair."

<comment><USER59> > The issue with jailing bankers is that nothing they did was illegal.

They were never investigated. Looking back to earlier banking meltdowns, plenty of crimes were discovered. See for just such an example: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_and_loan_crisis)

It is a perfectly reasonable to suspect that similar crimes were also committed.

You could also look at the court cases at : [http://4closurefraud.org/](http://4closurefraud.org/) Many of the foreclosure cases involve banks not being able to demonstrate that they actually had standing to foreclose on houses. For example: [http://4closurefraud.org/2018/02/09/fl-3rd-dca-reverses- ruli...](http://4closurefraud.org/2018/02/09/fl-3rd-dca-reverses-ruling-that- found-hsbc-forged-mortgage-documents/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I'm just wondering why we research and policy have been built around "net numbers minus computer numbers" instead of "non-computer sectors, aggregated."

What an ass-backwards approach. No wonder the data has been wrong and the findings have been wrong. You have access to _raw_ data, and you instead chooose to go to final results that already include some measure of error and approximate the solution in reverse rather than simply summing up non-tech industry growth? Really?

</comment><comment><USER62> _> Trade may have been a factor—but it clearly wasn't the main culprit. Automation was._

Why can't both be considered? Trump wasn't wrong when he pointed out trade agreements were shifting labor abroad.

 _> The Economic Policy Institute think tank estimated that as of 2010, the trade imbalance with Mexico had cost the U.S. about 683,000 net jobs — about 60% of those in manufacturing._

([http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mexico- jobs-20161212-s...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mexico- jobs-20161212-story.html))

</comment><comment><USER63> _" two kinds of people who lived in America in 2016: people who believed Donald Trump, and people who believed data."_

This is scientism.

The question around the effects of economic globalisation, trade relations, the size of china's manufacturing industries, automation and other advances in manufacturing methods... it's not a decided issue. You can't just put quote an economist on _" The Long-Term Jobs Killer is Not China. It's Automation._" and present this as a "case closed, science has spoken" decree.

<comment><USER64> I think this line is about repeating the narrative about the trade debate during the last US election. The author follows by explaining why it was wrong, showing why data is not always reliable and in a sense rehabilitating the value of gut feeling.

<comment><USER63> That is fine. It is a perfectly reasonable argument. She should make it, and make a case. But, she started with " _the data /science is in_" as if she's reporting on an indisputable truth, rather than a plausible narrative. This puts anyone who disagrees with her in an irrational truth denier category, as if her position was an authority on par with newton's laws. This is scientism, and it's harmful when public debate (especially around politically charged questions) picks up this style of writing/speaking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> How come people don't realize that less jobs due to automation should mean more vacation?

</comment><comment><USER66> Manufacturing is a waste of time. People don't need real stuff.

Paper wealth is where it's at. Check out the 'growth' in banking:

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DceTLZ9UQAAr335.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DceTLZ9UQAAr335.jpg:large)

"The divergence first emerged in the late 1970s". Hmm.

</comment><comment><USER67> Wow - that was a great read. I like how it started by saying,

> Looking back, there were two kinds of people who lived in America in 2016: > people who believed Donald Trump, and people who believed data.

...only to show that, against the odds, people who believed "data" ended up being incorrect about some of the most crucial conclusions drawn by the use of that data.

However, I have this itching feeling that I always have whenever I read an analysis on this topic, and it's this:

 _Americans don 't want those jobs back_. We really don't.

I think Dave Chappelle said it very well: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inlDT62oGy8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inlDT62oGy8)

And that leads to an even bigger realization: people (and the body politic) don't _want jobs at all_. Jobs aren't useful. People generally only want the resources and independence that come with a job.

We've been sold the idea that the connection between "a job" (ie, something that someone does for hours a day, 5 days a week, in the tack of a career) and resource (like food and shelter, ie, the Money) is a natural, wholesome consequence of a free market.

But then, why don't animals have jobs? Why don't very wealthy people have jobs? Why don't very poor people have jobs? Why don't indigenous people have jobs? Why don't well-adjusted hippies (think Rainbow Gathering) have jobs?

I think that we can find a _truly_ free market, with the price signals and freedom from state intervention that free market fans always cheer, but whose central models are the Job and the Money. If the internet means anything truly useful to our species, I think it's best viewed as our chance to finally shed the Job and the Money.

<comment><USER68> > _Americans don't want those jobs back_. We really don't.

> I think Dave Chappelle said it very well: > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inlDT62oGy8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inlDT62oGy8)

> "I want to wear Nikes, I don't want to make them"

I don't mean to sound like a dick, but it's very easy for a multimillionaire speaking to a upper middle class audience or for an upper middle class software developer on hackernews to agree with this sentiment. I think if you asked 100 unemployed Americans living in poverty, you might hear a different answer.

<comment><USER67> You think that they'd say that, given the choice over whether to be given Nikes, made entirely by automation, or to have to work to make them, that they'd choose the work?

I'm not saying that there aren't classes issues in play here. I'm saying that I wish poor people didn't have to wish to make shoes.

Surely if we can automated all the matter around us to do our will, we can also shape instill in our economies the basic tendencies toward compassion and freedom.

<comment><USER46> Automation is not a magic wand that means no labor, thought, decisions, or resources are used in the production of goods.

Automation makes people more productive, given the same inputs, but requires knowledge to operate.

It will be hundreds or thousands of years before automation is advanced enough to resemble a magic wand in the way you are describing, where no person is involved at any step of making shoes.

Even then, there will be two kinds of people: those who are given magic wands and learn/are taught how to use them and keep them working, and those who need help obtaining and using magic wands. I don't think I have to tell you that there will still be a power dynamic.

<comment><USER67> > It will be hundreds or thousands of years before automation is advanced > enough

But is there no gradient to be observed during that time? Aren't we already deep enough into automation to have this discussion?

Did we _have_ to ship those jobs to China? In a more just world, might the Chinese laborers be spared exposure to benzene sooner than a thousand years?

> Even then, there will be two kinds of people: those who are given magic > wands and learn/are taught how to use them and keep them working, and those > who need help obtaining and using magic wands.

There are two kinds of people in this world: people who try to convince everyone to think of things as simple dichotomies with no middle ground, and those who do not.

<comment><USER46> automation is clearly not sufficiently advanced that no Chinese laborers need be exposed to benzene to sate the global appetite for cheap sneakers.

the trouble with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money; modern socialism tries to get around this problem by positing that there will eventually be infinite resources thanks to automation, so we should just start acting like that's already the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is stripping away computer manufacturing a legitimate thing to do though? After all, it is still output.

<comment> purple-again In this instance yes, it's core to understanding what really happened in our economy.

The critical point is how they account for better products year over year. A faster chip in 2017 is counted as 2 2016 chips because it's that much better.

A can of soda in 2017 is equal to a can of soda in 2016.

So when you remove this one weird industry that is experiencing tremendous growth in power, it turns out our manufacturing has been well and truly gutted.

If you look at manufacturing "value" including computers it doesn't look so bad.

If you look at manufacturing units not including computers...you understand Trump 2016 a little better.

<comment><USER25> Yes, but didn't the computer manufacturing industry use up lots of investment to get there?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> >Since he took office, however, Trump has paid minimal attention to boosting US manufacturing. Instead, he's favored counterproductive protectionism and ignored currency manipulation, preferring the punitive over the constructive.

If those are counterproductive methods to boosting manufacturing, what would productive methods look like?

<comment><USER70> I think you need to read your quote again. A productive approach would focus on currency manipulation instead of protectionism.

<comment><USER69> Oops, I missed the "ignored" in the second sentence. Good catch, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> What was the mistake?

<comment><USER72> An increase in the speed of computer was counted as an increase in manufacturing output.

Once you remove all of that the data looks radically different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> To say that outsourcing manufacturing was a good thing for anyone other than banksters is to say the sun shines out of my ass. And this is exactly what the US has allowed to happen over the course of decades. When manufacturing goes so too goes all the knowhow locked in real people along with all the innovation those real people could bring to the next generation of manufacturing. All that potential is now happening elsewhere. Because the US let it happen elsewhere.

Oh, and in case it wasn't obvious, that sentiment is partly responsible for the election of Trump.

<comment><USER74> Agreed. The article touches on that, and Andy Grove spent the last decade or so of his life warning about it.

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/23/andy_groves_warning...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/23/andy_groves_warning_to_silicon_valley/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> So that 300+ Billion trade deficit with China isn't the cause of a net job hemorrhage? Really?

<comment><USER54> May I suggest you try to read more than the first paragraph of a linked article (or more than just the headline) before commenting?

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> It's called competitive advantage.

<comment><USER77> I mean sure, but what extent does creating competitive advantage become unfair and immoral? At what point is it a long term liability, both to industry and civilization as a whole? The US exploded after WWII because Europe and Asia were in ashes. That sure is a competitive advantage. We could attempt recreate that competitive advantage by bombing cities and manufacturing centers in other countries. We could create competitive advantage by invading and subjugating other resource rich countries. How about slave labor (chattel or coerced) sold it at pennies on the dollar?

How about Standard Oil artificially lowering regional prices to put all competition out of business, only to raise the prices once dominance is attained?

The question is really did China achieve that competitive advantage in unfair and unscrupulous ways? Should other countries be free to regain competitive advantage by finding even more unfair and unscrupulous methods? What does the world look like after walking down that path for another 50 years?

<comment> barry-cotter > How about Standard Oil artificially lowering regional prices to put all > competition out of business,

Lowering prices to increase market share is perfectly fine, especiallly when you have decreasing costs of production.

> only to raise the prices once dominance is attained?

No evidence of any policy of them doing that, or of it happening on any long- term scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> No jobs, no homes for millions. No wonder things look so rosy. Like a plane with no economy class.

But ... will this aggression stand?

</comment><comment><USER41> Doesn't New York make a lot of Yogurt? Do the farmers know they stopped working?

<comment><USER35> Dairy farmers are well aware of how hard they work. They lose about $0.10 for every dollar they make in New York.

Most of them are just trying to stay solvent until they can sell.

<comment><USER41> So is the sector dead or is it frantically losing money? I'm confused.

(I'd sort of guess it matches up with the broader US milk market and produces more milk than it did in 1992, with the average producer being larger)

<comment><USER35> In my county, more than half of the dairy farms that were operating in the early 90s are gone.

I worked on a farm as a teenager that was fairly large, and was in continuous operation since the Dutch colonial times. It was literally a going concern older than the state. It went out of business in 2005, unable to handle the burdens of rock bottom commodity prices, fuel costs, taxes and regulatory costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Silly me, I thought this would be an article about manufacturing.

Of course it's really poorly written political propaganda. Ugh, a minute lost.

</comment><comment><USER80> Meanwhile economists STILL bang on about ricardian free trade while, out the other side of their mouth, talking gleefully about the fading usefulness, way of life and, ultimately, existence of the people whose communities were destroyed by their recommendations.

<comment><USER81> I don't disagree, but I also don't think it's appropriate to say that globalization and free trade should be avoided just because they've harmed those communities - globalization just needs to occur alongside policy changes that offset the localized harm that it does.

At its current level of globalization, the US is at a point where it stands to benefit significantly in aggregate from further globalization [0]. The problem is that the benefits of globalization disproportionately accrue to the wealthy, both in aggregate and at the US's current level of globalization [1].

IMO, the best approach is to "grow the pie" by promoting globalization and free trade and then implement distributional policies domestically to ensure that no one gets screwed over. Most advocates of globalization would likely say the same. The issue is that in practice, that increase in globalization has occurred, but domestic policy has been regressive rather than progressive in terms of its impact on wealth inequality.

[0] [https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2018/03/13/The...](https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2018/03/13/The- Distribution-of-Gains-from-Globalization-45722), page 23 of linked PDF

[1] Same source, page 26

<comment><USER82> > _I don 't disagree, but I also don't think it's appropriate to say that > globalization and free trade should be avoided just because they've harmed > those communities - globalization just needs to occur alongside policy > changes that offset the localized harm that it does._

Why does it "need to occur"?

For example eating local produce is better for the environment than eating stuff that has been transported for 1000s of miles, with the respective carbon footprint. And that's just an example from an environmental perspective.

<comment><USER83> There is no local produce in winter. The only fruits and vegetables available would be those that could be be stored for months without spoilage. I'd be eating potatoes and corn for 8 months of the year.

We could grow just about anything indoors year-round, but it's much better for both the environment and my wallet to grow crops in places where we don't need to enclose, light and heat them.

<comment><USER82> > _There is no local produce in winter_

Depends on the country -- and region of the country. There are countries that sport different climates and micro-climates. And there is stuff that thrives during the winter as well. And if it's really needed, we've had greenhouses for ages.

But that's part of the proposition: don't eat out of season stuff, even if it means changing the diet in an annual cycle (which, e.g. tons of Italians has no problem doing -- even if it means no, of much fewer tomatoes in winter).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A document signed by a five year old, agreeing to be deported - <AUTHOR> https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5000507-Stillman-Hellen-2.html#document/p1 <comment> james-skemp Is there any context to this particular item?

<comment><USER2> The context is that 5 year olds are being asked to read legalese and understand their rights to stay in this country. This is a small piece indicating how inhuman US immigration has become.

An analogy would be a 5 yr old American kid being read Miranda laws and asked to sign a release while in front of a cop. Do you know a single 5 yr old who understands what this means?

If this still doesn't sound brutal to you, I can't help.

<comment><USER3> Other direction - in 1997 Bill Clinton was deporting people without process which is where this body of law came from. The standard practice was that children with adults would get a bond hearing (because adults could represent themselves and their children) but unaccompanied children were being deported OR they pretty much became permanent residents of the detention system.

Then in 2017, they left limbo and have the right to be heard in a court: [https://www.ilrc.org/sites/default/files/resources/flores_v....](https://www.ilrc.org/sites/default/files/resources/flores_v._sessions_practice_alert_final.pdf)

So... is a five year old expected to deal with their legal process? Yes, and they're appointed council to help with that, which is way better than where we were 20 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Whoever put this together is devoid of any kind of empathy. You can almost see the hatred.

The all important future impacting page 1 is in English, Page 2 is mockingly in Spanish asking to colour in a symbol of freedom.

They would torture and execute these kids if they could get away with it.

</comment><comment><USER5> On contracts with minors (USA perspective): [https://contracts.uslegal.com/contract-by-a- minor/](https://contracts.uslegal.com/contract-by-a-minor/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I agree to be deported from this thread, but I wish to keep the colouring page.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this the official doc? This one doesn't have the coloring section?

[https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/orr/request_for_...](https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/orr/request_for_a_flores_bond_hearing_01_03_2018e.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER8> A contract between an infant (i.e., someone under 18) and anyone else is binding...on the other party, and generally voidable by the infant.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sorry Helen.</comment>


Amazon's Tactics Confirm Its Critics' Worst Suspicions - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/amazons-tactics-confirm-its-critics-worst-suspicions/ <comment><USER2> So it is better for customers when Amazon accepts whatever prices the publisher dictates and does not use its _customer base_ to get better prices for its _customers_?

This line of argumentation wasn't exactly seen through here. The fear was that Amazon, having crushed any online shopping competition, would increase prices on their customers. Nobody loses sleep if they devour some publishers margin to decrease prices.

<comment><AUTHOR> What if we were talking about Walmart instead of Amazon, and shoes instead of books? There are many brands and styles of shoes that Walmart doesn't carry because they can't get a low enough price to make it worthwhile.

Of the brands and styles of shoes that Walmart does choose carry, some they may promote by placing them on an end cap, and others can be hard to find, or even stuck in the stockroom and not displayed for customers.

Nobody thinks Walmart is being unfair. Walmart can choose what merchandise to carry and how to display it.

So what's different with Amazon? Is it their infinite shelf space? Is their industry dominance and market power?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Am I the only one who doesn't really have a problem with this? A store increasing prices and not offering pre-orders does not seem like much of a problem. Increasing shipping times is a little more questionable, but assuming they aren't slowing already ordered books' shipping times, then again, what's the problem?

<comment><USER4> It isn't a problem when one store among many decides to increase prices /etc, because business can shift to other stores. The problem arises when there is only one store. I think the comparison with ISPs refusing to upgrade transit links is much more apt than the comparison with a book store raising prices.

Of course, Amazon is not techincally the only store. But they are large enough to have substantial market power (and, indeed, the current dispute proves it: it would make no sense for Amazon to embargo a publisher if Amazon had no reason to believe this would do any harm to that publisher). You also need to take into consideration the prevailing trend in the market (power accruing to Amazon) and what this says this about how Amazon will behave in the future (use of power to benefit itself).

As much as I dislike publishers: replacing multiple old publishers with a single high-tech publisher does not seem likely to be a happy ending for either consumers or authors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The main issue is that selective-delay in order fulfillment is the essence of what comcast and the cable companies want to do (and the opposite of Net Neutrality). Amazon is one of the comanies that supports the Net Neutrality-- because if comcast did this to Amazon make no mistake they would be fucked. It would be much better (for everyone) if AMZN stuck by its principles, and did not just revert to being a bully (when they think they are in-vulnerable). There are plenty of other ways for them to negotiate and exert leverage with their business partners.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not exactly a dupe, but covered by [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7789753](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7789753).

<comment><USER5> the underelying stories are being added to and re-written. this story (for example) is a supplemental piece. even the eiarlier story has had its headline changed (by the publisher) and had extensive revisions to its text/body.

Problem is--the comments--aren't going to reflect this.

So, the issue is this becomes a corner case. By banishing all articles besides the first one, the comments get locked into a single worldview--one that is less informed.

Its sort of a catch-22 of actively moderating a #hot-topic

<comment><USER7> A better idea than submitting a near dupe might be to post a comment to the active thread addressing the update, in which case the comments may all be in one place, but it will no longer be less informed.

<comment><USER5> This would be good if it was stickied at the top.

But that's not how HN comments, as a default, work.

(Mod's might be able to sticky a reference comment, tho)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know Hachette at all but if they behave anything like Pearson then I'd say they probably _NEED_ to be taken down a notch (or two or three).

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm shocked I tell you! Shocked!

Sarcasm aside, honestly I would be more shocked if they hadn't behaved this way.

I'm happy to continue to not buy anything from Amazon. Especially when there's folks like NewEgg around who are quite the opposite.</comment>


What to Expect from the L.H.C. Reboot - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/what-to-expect-from-the-rebooted-large-hadron-collider <comment><USER2> The article claims that 1000's of Higg's events were detected. My belief is that CMS saw 20 ish events and Atlas about 200. Is there anyone who actually _knows_?

<comment><USER3> This is not a very straight-forward question to answer. The short answer is that both CMS and ATLAS detected a couple thousand Higgs events.

The long answer depends on your definition of detected. As you probably know, the Higgs decays into many different combinations of particles. In some of these cases, we have very little chance of determining whether there was a Higgs in the event. In fact, only in H(iggs) -> ZZ -> 4l(eptons), do we stand a reasonably good chance of saying whether a specific event contains the Higgs. In this channel, CMS and ATLAS both observed ~20 events.

The next two most sensitive channels are H->WW->2l+2nu (neutrino) and H->2photon. In the most Higgs-enriched regions that have been constructed, the contribution from Higgs is ~10% in H->WW->2l+2nu and ~20% in H->2photon. So in these channels, we have very little chance to say whether a specific event contained a Higgs, but if we look at all the events, we see features that wouldn't be present if there weren't any Higgs bosons. The contributions from Higgs in these channels are a few hundred events in CMS and ATLAS.

Then there are even less sensitive channels, which means we have even less chance to say whether a specific event contains a Higgs. CMS and ATLAS probably detected a few hundred to a thousand or so events each in these channels.</comment></comment>


IoT Developer Survey - <AUTHOR> https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/HackerNews2020 <comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure, I am an employee of the Eclipse Foundation. We are running a technical IoT Survey for developers. The survey results will be made available free of charge to all respondents.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I become an expert JavaScript and Python debugger? - <AUTHOR>

I spend so much time debugging.  If I can become super fast and effective at debugging then I'll get MUCH more done.<p>What are your best tips for becoming a more effective debugger in JavaScript and Python? <comment><USER2> For JS:

\- Learn how to use a certain debugger religiously. Know its features from the inside out. For instance, I consider myself good enough to wield the Chrome Dev tools to the point that I can debug anything with it.

\- Know different debugging techniques like the different ways to pause and inspect code. Know how to add breakpoints, break on exceptions, inject debugger statements in code and dynamically. How to read the stack traces and watch variables.

\- Know your error messages. It's faster if you know how they're caused, rather than having to spend 5 mins on Google to know what caused it.

\- If you're spearheading a project, choosing a good architecture could help. For instance, I have favored Flux over MVC because it pins down mutations to a single place - your stores. So if you can log actions and their payload, and the state of the store before and after mutation, then that could really help you debug the app.

\- Know JavaScript. The language itself is your greatest tool.

<comment><USER3> Cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> some things that help:

\- integrate a good repl to your workflow, maybe lighttable? and build a logger that matches your needs

\- maybe a scratchpad/playground app like jsfiddle or hsandbox can help also (idk)

\- learn to code golf, writing unnecessary lines of code wastes time

\- for learning: go back and optimize something once a week, or optimize other peoples code for fun. especially render pipelines, or bottlenecks identified by profiling, pretty good learning experience for me.

\- for learning: maybe idle in irc and answer peoples questions

\- i tend to keep a warehouse folder or txt file of code snippets that help me debug the current project im working on. expiriments, testbeds, helper functions, whatever

\- alternatively you can build your own debug.py over time for each project, adding a test/helper function when you use it, then you wont have to write it next time.

\- invest in a good dual 20-24" monitor setup, this way you can have docs open, shell open, dev tools open, and still 2-3 code windows open.

anyway thats my idea, gl :)</comment>


(Python) Tornado Rest Handler - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/paulocheque/tornado-rest-handler A simple Python Tornado handler that manage Rest requests automatically.
You may like it:
http://paulocheque.github.com/tornado-rest-handler/ https://github.com/paulocheque/tornado-rest-handler <comment><AUTHOR> A simple Python Tornado handler that manage Rest requests automatically.

You may like it:

<http://paulocheque.github.com/tornado-rest-handler/> <https://github.com/paulocheque/tornado-rest-handler>

Best regards</comment>


Show HN: our prototype - like Facebook for History - <AUTHOR> http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/xtf/search

<comment><USER2> Maybe 'like Facebook for history' would make a better slogan. I wasn't quite sure whether I was going to get funeral services or zombie apocalypse tips from your original come-on. I quite like the site itself as a research resource.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, I like that much better as a slogan. Thanks</comment></comment>


Show HN: Filetree.py – simple Python script for create files and folders tree - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/azelpg/f7830159b612dd81478feaf7e5c2e9f7 <comment><AUTHOR> More details on its developer page (in Japanese).[0]

[0] [http://azsky2.html.xdomain.jp/python/filetree.html](http://azsky2.html.xdomain.jp/python/filetree.html)</comment>


Piracy and ad-blockers are both theft - <AUTHOR> http://james.cridland.net/blog/piracy-and-ad-blockers-are-both-theft

<comment><USER2> I have some sympathy for the point of view that people visiting web-pages should not run ad-blockers. I don't run one myself. Unfortunately my willingness to see ads is being exploited by two things.

i) Shitty quality link-bait articles.

ii) people willing to serve some just plain awful ads. (Things with noise; things with Flash; things that blink and shake and in horrible colours; things that violate basic privacy and are borderline illegal in EU; etc etc.)

Please: Offer me sensible ads, or offer me a payment option.

I'm amazed at the number of newspaper sites that still don't offer an online only subscription mode. I have no interest in having a dead tree newspaper delivered to me, but I'm more than happy to pay for online access to good quality articles.

I'd happily pay to read articles suggested by Longform. Perhaps they should have a tipjar for each article with a suggested donation price; with a separate tipjar for their site running costs?

</comment><comment><USER3> I would have more sympathy towards the "blocking ads is theft" view if ad- supported websites and applications didn't routinely claim they were free.

Either it's free (and we have no obligation to load ads, not that they should be involved anyway) or it costs some of our privacy and/or attention (so we should at least stick the ads on our screens, even if we don't consciously pay attention to them). But claiming that something's free and then whinging that we cut the ads out isn't on.

</comment><comment><USER4> Offer me an option that removes the ads, even if it costs me a little bit, we both win. Otherwise the site owner looses, because if the ads are to much in my face I either block them or never come back. I don't have cable TV for the same reason. I'm tired of ads.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ridiculous.</comment>


Ask HN: What email client do you use on OSX? - <AUTHOR>

I just got a new laptop and have decided I'm in the market for a new email client for OSX.  I've used thunderbird (2.x, because 3 just can't handle my email at all, it completely crashes), I've used Mail.app, and I've used PostBox.  Thunderbird is the only one which really comes close to what I'm looking for, since it has "proper" threading, none of this "thread by subject" nonsense.  There are other things which irk me about Mail.app, but that's the primary issue.  What client are you using, and why? <comment><USER2> If you're using Gmail or Google Apps for your email needs, I'd reckon you try Sparrow (<http://www.sparrowmailapp.com/>). It's truly the client I've been waiting for years! It's still in beta and lacks some final polish on some areas, but it's freaking awesome nonetheless

<comment><AUTHOR> gmail also threads by subject, and I need proper display of threaded message trees too, not forum-style flat threads. That's the other problem with Mail.app :)

<comment><USER2> I didn't know thunderbird displayed threaded messages without the subjects matching. I actually haven't heard of any client doing that. Wouldn't subject base threading be more dependable? How do you organize threaded messages with different subjects?

<comment><AUTHOR> thunderbird does do subject-based threading by default. Fortunately there's a way to disable this by enabling strict-threading.

Threading works by using the In-Reply-To: and References: headers in emails. This way you have a direct correlation between an email and what it was replying to. It allows you to trivially build a tree structure for a thread, which is what a thread is, not a flat conversation.

I get lots of emails from our notification systems that have similar or often the same subject. Having it thread by subject alone is extremely irritating here because it combines completely unrelated things together.

<comment><USER2> Ahh I understand. I generally don't use threading (I rather threat emails as a standalone items), but I can see why you'd find subject threading annoying. I tend to filter emails and reroute different types of emails that don't belong in my inbox to other systems, so I don't see a need to be as stringent on the requirements for threading. That being said, I don't know if any clients that would fulfill your expectations. I guess you're stuck with Thunderbird!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Difficult,rewarding,entertaining cert 2 jump start security,app,& OS knowledge - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/search?q=oscp+exam&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=oscp+exam+night

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. This certification is not your average certification. The exam is all hands on and 24 hours long. Even if you have no plans to study "infosec". I highly recommend it. The lab where you attack workstations and servers is most addicting. I have never been so motivated to learn. [https://www.offensive- security.com/information-security-cert...](https://www.offensive- security.com/information-security-certifications/oscp-offensive-security- certified-professional/)</comment>


Show HN: A meal planning app for real people (frozen pizza allowed) – Open Beta - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.spoonacular <comment><AUTHOR> spoonacular is a meal planning app with nutritional information and an automatic shopping list. You can add both recipes and store bought food and get the daily macro- and micronutrients. The web app has been online for a couple years ([https://spoonacular.com/meal- planner](https://spoonacular.com/meal-planner)) but the link is to the Android open beta test. Hoping to find out what's not intuitive/user friendly, should be beyond anything disastrous now (crashes), but you never know with Android! Next goal is to add fast food/restaurant data for a complete, real person meal planner.</comment>