alt Hacker News> why isn't the west's own supply chain options as immense?
The US explicitly chose to be a service economy. China explicitly chose to be a mercantile economy.
The US can absolutely switch paths, it will just take a long time and will require pushing millions into poverty. But we're on track to do it.
Replies
> The US explicitly chose to be a service economy. China explicitly chose to be a mercantile economy.
In other words: the US wants its workers assembling hamburgers, China wants its workers assembling drones.
And when there's a conflict, the US will lose because you can't win a war with hamburgers.
> But we're on track to do it.
The only thing that the US is on track to is getting a taste of what real corruption feels like, enriching Trump's friends, and hollowing out its middle class.
"Explicitly chose" is a strong word.
US and China are on completely different stages of industrialization: The US had its massive boom of manufacturing almost a century ago, enriching its population massively. Those rich citizens make the same manufacturing uncompetitive today, because no one is going to work in a factory for $20k/year (median wage in urban China), when he can work for other "rich" people for more than twice as much.
Switching paths is not feasible for the US in the same way that it is not gonna be feasible for China to hold on to all its industry as wages rise: You can't compete globally at "poor people wages" while being "rich", as simple as that.