[traceroute66]

> look at China, look at their manufacturing industry and what they are able to do with it.

"look at China" what ? Have you seen the population size of China ? Have you seen the geographic size of China ?

Remember what is often said when Mr Trump talks about bringing tech manufacturing back to the US ....

Yes great idea Mr Trump. But even with the most generously optimistic figures, due to the lack of available workforce and space the US could only ever provide the capacity equivalent to one Chinese manufacturing town of which the Chinese have dozens.

[pjc50]

> Have you seen the population size of China ? Have you seen the geographic size of China ?

British thinking seems to be that because we won the Opium War we should just expect a country with 20 times our population and a vast land area to be poorer, both per capita and in total, than our island, forever.

[psd1]

I think you're ascribing intent to a stochastic outcome.

China's rise comes because it acquired, from inauspicious beginnings, competence at planning an economy.

Britain's decline relative to China comes because it is a democracy - which is to say, vacillating.

Britain has been particularly callow over the part decade, because we indulged ourselves in a bunfight about Brexit to the exclusion of all other concerns. This created a purge of ministerial talent and a sequence of governments primarily occupied with propping themselves up. Elections have been fought on Get Brexit Done and I Would Have A Pint With That Man, not on policy.

The entire edifice is deeply stupid, but it is a stupidity orthogonal to questions of industrial policy. Ministers haven't been in post long enough to reveal any strategy about such.

In a microcosm, the compulsory land purchases were done for HS2 and it was as on-track as infrastructure projects get, when Sunak cancelled half of it, writing off the sunk costs but crippling the long-term value of the project. Meanwhile, China laid more track than the test of the world combined, because it has the will to make large long-term investments.

[lazide]

It did work for awhile though, eh?

[8note]

the US and china are basically the same size geographically though? and the US federally owns tons of land it can create manufacturing cities out of

[traceroute66]

> and the US federally owns tons of land it can create manufacturing cities out of

Ok, being generous and accepting your point at face value ....

What about the people staffing those manufacturing cities ? Is the state creating them too ?

I seem to recall reading somewhere that – at most – the US could "find" 200,000 people for new manufacturing plants.

Sounds about right to me, no ?

I think even with a generous mind the US would struggle to "find" much more than that, let alone getting to or exceeding 1 million which is the value you would need for seriously thinking about >1 manufacturing city.

[nradov]

The US labor force participation rate is currently at a relatively low level. There is plenty of surplus labor available with the right economic incentives.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART

[gruez]

Isn't that just due to people retiring?

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060

[nradov]

No, the labor force metrics only include people of working age.

[yorwba]

They include the civilian noninstitutional population, which includes retirees who are not institutionalized in a nursing home: https://www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm#population

[gruez]

Then why does my link specifically have a "25-54 Yrs" qualification, and has a totally different shape compared to the first link? The difference between the two is stark, 21.8 percentage points. Do you really think there's that many people willing to work between 18-25 and 54+?

[8note]

as far as people go, the US could grant citizenship to all those people its trying to deport?

and there isnt a lack of people that would accept working in one of said manufacturing towns for 10 years or something to get US citizenship?

If manufacturing was a serious problem, the US could definitely solve that problem too.