Here it comes...

Tiggity®

Ultimate Clemson Legend [108405]

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That industrial growth is exactly WHY it's coming.

May 3, 2025, 11:20 AM

Make a widget in China for $100, sell it in the US for $700. In between China getting higher wages, and shipping/logistics, then the American company who makes the widget, and their profit margin, to the consumer, that's all gravy. $600 in profits. Make that same widget in the US, and you're spending maybe $600. That company WILL NOT sell it for $700 as before, as they would go bankrupt. So they will sell the formerly $700 product for $1,000, and even then eat some losses. And you won't have a choice to get a cheaper import. So you pay it. And the wages go up, and inflation right along with it.

That's why I can see some of the good numbers from the 1970's coming back to bite us in the ####. The entire reason we lost manufacturing jobs is because we could make more money NOT with manufacturing jobs. Then you have illegals working here where one illegal can do the work of TWO Americans, for 25% the labor cost. He leaves, you have to find two Americans to replace him because he works harder and appreciates the opportunity to pick lettuce in the US. So lettuce prices go up, and supply shrinks as we won't find enough Americans to pick the lettuce, and the few we do find demand higher wages.

America has peaked, and we don't even recognize that fact, much less understand why.

We all look at money, and dollars, and few Americans look at labor in a tangible/meaningful way.

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Re: That industrial growth is exactly WHY it's coming.

It's actually worse than that. Capital costs are soaring because the Boomers are all hitting retirement, which means they're now burning savings instead of investing them. And factories cost. A lot.

You and I also both know the labor numbers. There isn't a chance in he!! America can build a modern tech stack with the limited labor we now have in the country. We'll need Canada. We'll absolutely need Mexico. We'll need Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan. And since even that is not going enough we'll need places like India or Vietnam that can step up and give us that good old-fashioned sweat-shop labor for the low-value-added stuff the Chinese once offered.

Cutting China out of our supply chain is absolutely a necessary thing. But not only can we not go it alone, even trying to do so defies sense and logic and has only one outcome, and that outcome is really bad.

Agree. Inflation is on the horizon.

Too much industrial growth to worry about a little inflation. It's coming.***

That industrial growth is exactly WHY it's coming.

Re: That industrial growth is exactly WHY it's coming.

Modernize and mechanize it. It's the 21st Century. It's solvable.***

If it was solvable, it would have been solved.

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