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echelonlast Monday at 7:33 PM2 repliesview on HN

How do we recover from this?

Five years ago you'd be called sinophobic for suggesting we do something to stop bleeding industries to China. (My wife is Asian ffs, I'm not racist.) Yet we already saw how this had happened to Canada with Nortel, etc.

China wants every industry it can have. If we give up technological salients, we won't be able to get them back. China has so many advantages - manufacturing, chemicals, materials, electronics. They now have better experience than we do with design and engineering.

The outcome of this happening broadly and at scale is that high paying US jobs will disappear and the country will slide into economic stagnation.

You wouldn't hire a robotics or mechatronics engineer in the US. There would only be small bespoke jobs. The vast majority of supply would come from China where everything is both vertically and horizontally integrated. Cheap, fast, better. These career sectors will shrink and atrophy. There won't be enough talent, jobs, or pay to support building new companies, meaning we're dead in the water and that industry is dead to us.

We need to do something fast. It'll be gone within a generation if we don't.

I don't have anything against Chinese people. I just want America to dominate or be competitive in enough key industries to keep us all employed and growing. For our own economic security and insurance.


Replies

throw44d3ettytoday at 1:25 AM

> (My wife is Asian ffs, I'm not racist.)

I’m not saying you are a racist but this statement never really holds much weight.

I’ve met plenty of western expats in Asia that are married to locals, have mixed raced children, and yet still say the most racist things about the locals.

bsndjdkdlast Monday at 9:01 PM

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