[mdlug-discuss] Ethanol vs gasoline economy [Was: [mdlug] Automotive technical info ...]

[Robert Adkins]

allen wrote:
>>   
>> Robert Adkins wrote:
>>     A manufacturing base has far more benefits to a nation than simply 
>> being able to retool in the event of war.
>>
>>   
>>     
> I'm not sure about "far more" but the benefits to a nation of a 
> manufacturing base are a function of its economic value. If the 
> manufacturing base isn't economically justified it requires 
> subsidization which would be a bet favoring the likelihood of war and a 
> drag on the nation until the advent of war.
>
> It's an insurance policy and an insurance policy balances the likelihood 
> of loss (war) against the cost of insurance coverage (the subsidized 
> manufacturing sector). How much of a manufacturing sector do you propose 
> to subsidize, keeping in mind that even the fighting of war, along with 
> manufacturing, has become a much less labor-intensive enterprise, i.e. 
> one laser-guided bomb, one airplane and one pilot being the equivalent 
> of several hundred bombs, a thousand or so airmen and a couple of dozen 
> B-17s?
>   
    Let me ask you this.

    If you have nothing to little being manufactured locally, what do 
you export? (Hint: Look at the US Trade Deficit.)

    If you export nothing and import everything, where is your money 
going? (Hint: Out of your borders.)

    If your money is leaving the country in vast amounts, with virtually 
none of it coming back "home", how sustainable is this kind of activity? 
Personally, I don't know, has this happened before in history with good 
solid recording of the numbers and what ended up happening? In any case, 
unless things change, we certainly will discover how sustainable this 
is. I have a feeling that the end result will be at least equal to, if 
not more economically devastating than the Great Depression was.

>>     How exactly will that be done, in the US, if nobody has the know-how 
>> or interest (Because there are no to few jobs in manufacturing) to have 
>> a reason to pursue such a course of action?
>>
>>   
>>     
> And what opportunities do we forgo if an economically non-viable 
> manufacturing sector is sucking up money that might go to fund the next 
> generation of manufacturing technology? A next generation of 
> manufacturing technology that other nations most assuredly will not 
> forgo which would put us exactly where you claim you don't want the US 
> to be: in danger of being unable to defend ourselves because we have no 
> manufacturing base, or in the case of your prescription, an obsolescent 
> manufacturing base which is the functionally equivalent, in a time of 
> rapid technological change. Which is now.
>   
    Why would having a manufacturing base preclude advances in 
manufacturing technology. Am I suffering a disconnect in logic, because 
it really looks like a major leap of logic with no interconnecting bits 
to me...

    Of course, maybe I have a different perspective on this, working in 
the industry (even in a support role) where I have seen footage shot 
inside a Chinese factory where they had 4 guys sitting inside a massive 
press acting as a parts changing machine, while the press operates.

    In the US, that would never happen, because of the severe safety 
issues related to that. If the press fails, all 4 of those "living 
tools" would be crushed to death. Of course, with labor being so cheap 
in China, paying 4 guys, who you might not even have to pay anyway, is a 
helluva lot cheaper than going with the superior in speed and function, 
robotic parts changing machines that cost many times the costs of a 
dozen Chinese laborers.

    In the US, we (not necessarily where I work) build machines that end 
up being shipped to Mexico for manufacturing processes. We are forced, 
by law, to build those machines with safety mechanisms, shields and 
worker protection elements that are almost always immediately stripped 
off the machines in Mexico, because those protective devices MIGHT add a 
few extra seconds to the manufacturing process.

    Personally, I think it's silly to assume that the development of 
more advanced manufacturing techniques would simply cease to happen if 
there was more manufacturing happening in the US. We are big on 
efficiency and getting more out of everything, because that's just what 
we do. They don't care about that in China, because they have another 
30+ bodies ready to die on the line for every single worker currently on 
the line in a factory.

> Besides, all this "national defense" stuff is just eye-wash, isn't it? 
> It's just another way to sell a mandatory full-employment policy using 
> current affairs to make the idea more palatable. That's been shown to be 
> a bad idea everywhere its been tried and I don't see any reason why 
> it'll work any better with a flag being waved vigorously over it.
>   
    It's not just national defense. There's far more to it then that.

> By the way, I'm still waiting for an explanation of why a little war is 
> economically bad and a big war economically good. I'm familiar with the 
> concept of "economies of scale" but I don't quite see how manufacturing 
> ten thousand airplanes to be shot down results in, you should pardon the 
> expression, boom times and manufacturing a hundred airplanes to be shot 
> down results in economic stagnation. Care to clarify?
>   
    I didn't say a little war is economically bad. I did say that if the 
Iraq War was on the scale of WWII the effects would be far easier to see.

    Modern Conventional War, by its nature of needing supplies and 
equipment manufactured, will provide some kind of boost to an economy. 
That doesn't mean war is good, it's just a sober fact.

    Manufacturers of armored vehicles, body armor and other military 
equipment have been expanding and paying good wages to those who are 
working for them. This has had the net effect of boosting the economies 
of the areas those plants are located in.

   -Rob