The question no one is asking: SHOULD there be manufacturing in the US?

[Anonymous]

Slightly changed ot reflect reality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Without a living wage, no one is going to be doing any of these manufacturing jobs. I doubt any of these companies are going to offer a pension and I doubt a family of four will not be able to live off of a line worker's income like they did in the '50s. No matter how badly you want it, America will not be back in the '50s. I would love to be able to vacation and have a single family home in a suburb and our children in a great school and me stay home all day with just my husband's job as a line worker working 40 hours a week. But honey that ain't going to happen

Also the reason the fifties were a golden age was quite terrible and shouldn’t be replicated. Europe was decimated by fifty years of war, Asia and Africa and Latin America were struggling with the often violent ends of colonialism. Our only true rivals were Canada and Australia and they didnt have the human capital and Australia is super far. Do we want the whole world to be decimated so we can have that back ?

It was also during a time when white males didn't have to compete for high paying jobs with women and minorities.

BTW, taxes were much higher back then. Sure, let's go back to the 1950s tax bracket, too.

+1 we could fix a lot of problems by going back to a 1950s tax rate on the top earners.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Without a living wage, no one is going to be doing any of these manufacturing jobs. I doubt any of these companies are going to offer a pension and I doubt a family of four will not be able to live off of a line worker's income like they did in the '50s. No matter how badly you want it, America will not be back in the '50s. I would love to be able to vacation and have a single family home in a suburb and our children in a great school and me stay home all day with just my husband's job as a line worker working 40 hours a week. But honey that ain't going to happen

Also the reason the fifties were a golden age was quite terrible and shouldn’t be replicated. Europe was decimated by fifty years of war, Asia and Africa and Latin America were struggling with the often violent ends of colonialism. Our only true rivals were Canada and Australia and they didnt have the human capital and Australia is super far. Do we want the whole world to be decimated so we can have that back ?

It was also during a time when white males didn't have to compete for high paying jobs with women and minorities.

BTW, taxes were much higher back then. Sure, let's go back to the 1950s tax bracket, too.

+1 we could fix a lot of problems by going back to a 1950s tax rate on the top earners.

This is as misleading as anything Trump and his crew says.

Yes. Rates exceeded 90% from 1944 to 1963. But, and this is what your memes don't tell you, there were only a handful of taxpayers who actually paid that. The prevalence of entirely legal tax shelters, exclusions, etc. made it so the effective aggregate (income, payroll, etc) tax rate of the highest earners was still only around 40%. So when you get mad at Reagan for reducing the individual tax rates so much, remember he also eliminated a very large section of tax deductions and shelters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Without a living wage, no one is going to be doing any of these manufacturing jobs. I doubt any of these companies are going to offer a pension and I doubt a family of four will not be able to live off of a line worker's income like they did in the '50s. No matter how badly you want it, America will not be back in the '50s. I would love to be able to vacation and have a single family home in a suburb and our children in a great school and me stay home all day with just my husband's job as a line worker working 40 hours a week. But honey that ain't going to happen

Also the reason the fifties were a golden age was quite terrible and shouldn’t be replicated. Europe was decimated by fifty years of war, Asia and Africa and Latin America were struggling with the often violent ends of colonialism. Our only true rivals were Canada and Australia and they didnt have the human capital and Australia is super far. Do we want the whole world to be decimated so we can have that back ?

It was also during a time when white males didn't have to compete for high paying jobs with women and minorities.

BTW, taxes were much higher back then. Sure, let's go back to the 1950s tax bracket, too.

+1 we could fix a lot of problems by going back to a 1950s tax rate on the top earners.

Literally most of the US' problems could be fixed if we taxed the wealthy like me. I don't pay my fair share in taxes. I know this. I'm well aware of that fact as someone who grew up poor and married into wealth. I remember paying more as a single person making $65k/yr than I do now as a c-suite who married a wealthy spouse. There are so many freaking tax loopholes and breaks for me. I try to do my part by giving a lot back to my community, but that just gets more tax breaks.

If I and others like me were properly taxed, the US could have universal healthcare, universal covered childcare, longer maternity & paternity leave, free or reduced state colleges, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Without a living wage, no one is going to be doing any of these manufacturing jobs. I doubt any of these companies are going to offer a pension and I doubt a family of four will not be able to live off of a line worker's income like they did in the '50s. No matter how badly you want it, America will not be back in the '50s. I would love to be able to vacation and have a single family home in a suburb and our children in a great school and me stay home all day with just my husband's job as a line worker working 40 hours a week. But honey that ain't going to happen

Also the reason the fifties were a golden age was quite terrible and shouldn’t be replicated. Europe was decimated by fifty years of war, Asia and Africa and Latin America were struggling with the often violent ends of colonialism. Our only true rivals were Canada and Australia and they didnt have the human capital and Australia is super far. Do we want the whole world to be decimated so we can have that back ?

It was also during a time when white males didn't have to compete for high paying jobs with women and minorities.

BTW, taxes were much higher back then. Sure, let's go back to the 1950s tax bracket, too.

+1 we could fix a lot of problems by going back to a 1950s tax rate on the top earners.

This is as misleading as anything Trump and his crew says.

Yes. Rates exceeded 90% from 1944 to 1963. But, and this is what your memes don't tell you, there were only a handful of taxpayers who actually paid that. The prevalence of entirely legal tax shelters, exclusions, etc. made it so the effective aggregate (income, payroll, etc) tax rate of the highest earners was still only around 40%. So when you get mad at Reagan for reducing the individual tax rates so much, remember he also eliminated a very large section of tax deductions and shelters.

Yes, but it was still higher than today's rate even with the loopholes. Top tax bracket today is 37%. In the 1950s, most of the 1% were paying about 45%. We can go back to 45% if people love the 1950s that much.

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/

However, despite these high marginal rates, the top 1 percent of taxpayers in the 1950s only paid about 42 percent of their income in taxes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Without a living wage, no one is going to be doing any of these manufacturing jobs. I doubt any of these companies are going to offer a pension and I doubt a family of four will not be able to live off of a line worker's income like they did in the '50s. No matter how badly you want it, America will not be back in the '50s. I would love to be able to vacation and have a single family home in a suburb and our children in a great school and me stay home all day with just my husband's job as a line worker working 40 hours a week. But honey that ain't going to happen

Also the reason the fifties were a golden age was quite terrible and shouldn’t be replicated. Europe was decimated by fifty years of war, Asia and Africa and Latin America were struggling with the often violent ends of colonialism. Our only true rivals were Canada and Australia and they didnt have the human capital and Australia is super far. Do we want the whole world to be decimated so we can have that back ?

It was also during a time when white males didn't have to compete for high paying jobs with women and minorities.

BTW, taxes were much higher back then. Sure, let's go back to the 1950s tax bracket, too.

+1 we could fix a lot of problems by going back to a 1950s tax rate on the top earners.

Literally most of the US' problems could be fixed if we taxed the wealthy like me. I don't pay my fair share in taxes. I know this. I'm well aware of that fact as someone who grew up poor and married into wealth. I remember paying more as a single person making $65k/yr than I do now as a c-suite who married a wealthy spouse. There are so many freaking tax loopholes and breaks for me. I try to do my part by giving a lot back to my community, but that just gets more tax breaks.

If I and others like me were properly taxed, the US could have universal healthcare, universal covered childcare, longer maternity & paternity leave, free or reduced state colleges, etc.

There's a reason why hundreds of billion/millionaires wrote an open letter to world leaders to tax them more.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/17/wealth-tax-super-rich-davos-abigail-disney-brian-cox-valerie-rockefeller

More than 250 billionaires and millionaires are demanding that the political elite meeting for the World Economic Forum in Davos introduce wealth taxes to help pay for better public services around the world.

“Our request is simple: we ask you to tax us, the very richest in society,” the wealthy people said in an open letter to world leaders. “This will not fundamentally alter our standard of living, nor deprive our children, nor harm our nations’ economic growth. But it will turn extreme and unproductive private wealth into an investment for our common democratic future.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Without a living wage, no one is going to be doing any of these manufacturing jobs. I doubt any of these companies are going to offer a pension and I doubt a family of four will not be able to live off of a line worker's income like they did in the '50s. No matter how badly you want it, America will not be back in the '50s. I would love to be able to vacation and have a single family home in a suburb and our children in a great school and me stay home all day with just my husband's job as a line worker working 40 hours a week. But honey that ain't going to happen

Also the reason the fifties were a golden age was quite terrible and shouldn’t be replicated. Europe was decimated by fifty years of war, Asia and Africa and Latin America were struggling with the often violent ends of colonialism. Our only true rivals were Canada and Australia and they didnt have the human capital and Australia is super far. Do we want the whole world to be decimated so we can have that back ?

It was also during a time when white males didn't have to compete for high paying jobs with women and minorities.

BTW, taxes were much higher back then. Sure, let's go back to the 1950s tax bracket, too.

+1 we could fix a lot of problems by going back to a 1950s tax rate on the top earners.

This is as misleading as anything Trump and his crew says.

Yes. Rates exceeded 90% from 1944 to 1963. But, and this is what your memes don't tell you, there were only a handful of taxpayers who actually paid that. The prevalence of entirely legal tax shelters, exclusions, etc. made it so the effective aggregate (income, payroll, etc) tax rate of the highest earners was still only around 40%. So when you get mad at Reagan for reducing the individual tax rates so much, remember he also eliminated a very large section of tax deductions and shelters.

Yes, but it was still higher than today's rate even with the loopholes. Top tax bracket today is 37%. In the 1950s, most of the 1% were paying about 45%. We can go back to 45% if people love the 1950s that much.

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/

However, despite these high marginal rates, the top 1 percent of taxpayers in the 1950s only paid about 42 percent of their income in taxes.

Please read the WHOLE thing . . .

"How could it be that the tax code of the 1950s had a top marginal tax rate of 91 percent, but resulted in an effective tax rate of only 42 percent on the wealthiest taxpayers? In fact, the situation is even stranger. The 42.0 percent tax rate on the top 1 percent takes into account all taxes levied by federal, state, and local governments, including: income, payroll, corporate, excise, property, and estate taxes. When we look at income taxes specifically, the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid an average effective rate of only 16.9 percent in income taxes during the 1950s.[4]"

[Anonymous]

Here is your answer:

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Manufacturing Comes Back!

I fail to see the humor here in this pic. Can someone enlighten me? Explain it?

Because what I see is a skilled laborer, making a useful item, in a presumably US-based factory.

As if anyone here on this forum could do that job themselves? Laughable. Most of you would sew through your hand within 30 seconds of taking a seat at that machine. Most people here are highly educated dummies.

Very low skilled work, anyone can be trained to do it in a day, lower skill than being a stocker at a big box store. The joke is that they are bad jobs and no American aspires to do that. That and some fat, ugly, slow American humor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here is your answer:

[Anonymous]

How will companies afford to build factories here? Where will the capital come from?

Issue stock, the traditional purpose of the stock market.

Will there be enough skilled labor here in the U.S.?

You train it up, you know like we used to before financializing everything.

What will the work practices be like? There is a huge gap between what is acceptable in the US vs Asian countries like China and Taiwan:

According to US standards, OSHA and environmental laws.

How long will it take for the factories to churn out goods? Doesn’t it take years to build a factory and make it a success?

It takes years, but investment in the future rather than short term gains is better for the nation than a quarterly bonus or financial speculation.

Where will these factories be located?

Anywhere just like the factory towns of old that have the energy supply, rail capacity, or natural resources.

Which towns will be willing to absorb the pollution, contamination and any other externalities resulting from factories?

The ones that don't want to rot and loose their kids to drugs.

Goods will be more expensive if made in the United States. For goods that aren’t essential, isn’t it likely that American companies that rely on the foreign supply chain will simply go out of business?

Hate to break it to you but foreign competition uses protectionalism for domestic industry. Though arguably it's a defense concern too.

Guess you don't remember the buy American campaigns of ages long ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Without a living wage, no one is going to be doing any of these manufacturing jobs. I doubt any of these companies are going to offer a pension and I doubt a family of four will not be able to live off of a line worker's income like they did in the '50s. No matter how badly you want it, America will not be back in the '50s. I would love to be able to vacation and have a single family home in a suburb and our children in a great school and me stay home all day with just my husband's job as a line worker working 40 hours a week. But honey that ain't going to happen

Also the reason the fifties were a golden age was quite terrible and shouldn’t be replicated. Europe was decimated by fifty years of war, Asia and Africa and Latin America were struggling with the often violent ends of colonialism. Our only true rivals were Canada and Australia and they didnt have the human capital and Australia is super far. Do we want the whole world to be decimated so we can have that back ?

It was also during a time when white males didn't have to compete for high paying jobs with women and minorities.

BTW, taxes were much higher back then. Sure, let's go back to the 1950s tax bracket, too.

+1 we could fix a lot of problems by going back to a 1950s tax rate on the top earners.

This is as misleading as anything Trump and his crew says.

Yes. Rates exceeded 90% from 1944 to 1963. But, and this is what your memes don't tell you, there were only a handful of taxpayers who actually paid that. The prevalence of entirely legal tax shelters, exclusions, etc. made it so the effective aggregate (income, payroll, etc) tax rate of the highest earners was still only around 40%. So when you get mad at Reagan for reducing the individual tax rates so much, remember he also eliminated a very large section of tax deductions and shelters.

Yes, but it was still higher than today's rate even with the loopholes. Top tax bracket today is 37%. In the 1950s, most of the 1% were paying about 45%. We can go back to 45% if people love the 1950s that much.

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/

However, despite these high marginal rates, the top 1 percent of taxpayers in the 1950s only paid about 42 percent of their income in taxes.

Please read the WHOLE thing . . .

"How could it be that the tax code of the 1950s had a top marginal tax rate of 91 percent, but resulted in an effective tax rate of only 42 percent on the wealthiest taxpayers? In fact, the situation is even stranger. The 42.0 percent tax rate on the top 1 percent takes into account all taxes levied by federal, state, and local governments, including: income, payroll, corporate, excise, property, and estate taxes. When we look at income taxes specifically, the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid an average effective rate of only 16.9 percent in income taxes during the 1950s.[4]"

Yes, indeed.. read the WHOLE thing...

Finally, it is very likely that the existence of a 91 percent bracket led to significant tax avoidance and lower reported income. There are many studies that show that, as marginal tax rates rise, income reported by taxpayers goes down.

So, they paid a lower tax rate because they probably cheated. With Trump gutting IRS, I guess we'll see more wealthy tax cheats like himself.

Also note:

The average tax rate on the 0.1 percent highest-income Americans was 50.6 percent in the 1950

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:self sufficency
quality control
better polution standards in US than overseas
Strengthening the US
Price

Is this question that stupid? Its like you're 18 and have never been in the real world. Producing our goods overseas isnt better than producing goods in the US.

I question the education of people here

We DON'T manufacture. No one wants those jobs. And I grew up in the rust belt where factory work was where all my uneducated (in an academic sense) ancestors worked. Those factories are no longer there and they all transitioned to other jobs.

Further, this is a GLOBAL economy. The idea that any nation can be as isolationist as Trump is being right now is ridiculous.

A global economy is a race to the bottom.

[Anonymous]

[

quote]
Finally, it is very likely that the existence of a 91 percent bracket led to significant tax avoidance and lower reported income. There are many studies that show that, as marginal tax rates rise, income reported by taxpayers goes down.

So, they paid a lower tax rate because they probably cheated. With Trump gutting IRS, I guess we'll see more wealthy tax cheats like himself.

When income is taxed you take compensation in alternative tax advantaged ways. When those ways are discouraged you take it as income. For example a distribution isn't subject to FICA while a salary is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I genuinely don't understand what problem we're trying to solve for with bringing manufacturing back to the US.

Middle class jobs. Why can't people pivot to new expanding fields? If it's a problem with education, we can fix that instead.

Supply chain. What was wrong exactly? We made it through covid more or less intact.

Reliance on other countries. Also what's wrong with how things have been going? Do people really look back on the past several decades and think "I wish we were less reliant on every single country?" Can we be more targeted or specific?

Cost. Um, clearly this isn't going to lower costs for anyone on anything.

Quality control. Not understanding this argument either. Don't buy cheap crap from China if you don't want things breaking. You can pay more for higher quality now. You'll be forced to pay more in the future with tariffs (and I have little faith that quality will be better).

What else is there?

Remember when they said factory workers could get call center jobs and they went overseas?