Comments by "Andre Falksmen" (@andrefalksmen1264) on "Will Young Americans Want to Work in Semiconductor Manufacturing?" video.

No amount of pay is going to make American workers actually want to work, that's the real heart of the problem. In the post World War ii. Americans were grossly overpaid relative to their skill and productivity and they still expect that to be the case today, well it's not. Expect the situation to get worse as the US Reserve currency status continues to deteriorate.
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@Mike-jv8bv "Dropping out of the workforce", so welfare payments have kept pace with inflation?
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@greenl7661 again, you clearly know nothing about economics. Not even the most basics, you're just repeating pop culture talking points. So as a real Economist let me educate you. US Dollars position as a world Reserve currency is absolutely a legacy of the Bretton Woods system, at the time the US represented the largest portion of trade in the Free World and thus had a right to hold the reserve currency position. That is no longer the truth, commodity, oil for most amongst them, prices currently being priced in US dollars play a major role and US dollar Reserve status, but heavy-handed use of us sanctions is causing that situation to rapidly deteriorate. The largest trading nation in the world today is china, the US is simply a massive consumer of world goods, parasite made possible by printing money. After the seizure of Russia's foreign reserves there is already massive sell-off of dollar Holdings by central banks all over the world, we need only look at the most recent reports and there is already plans underway to create an alternative to Swift that doesn't involve clearing funds in the us. As someone who actually works in such a field, and not an armchair observer, I can tell you that financial institutions around the world will be racing to that new system do not be subject to us sanctions, us laws, or other impediments to global trade created by the United states. With regard to how foreign countries recycle their US dollar balances from America's parasitic consumption of other people's productivity while only supplying pieces of paper in exchange, in the past, they have purchased US equities, Treasury bonds, and even sometimes hard assets, but for the most part all they got were more pieces of paper and exchange for the real Goods Americans consumed. American Reserve Monopoly and paper Printing has allowed all Americans to live far beyond their means, productivity, and represents theft from the entire world. Every American is effectively guilty, not just the top 1%, but every American who earns us dollars. As for the rest of your nonsense, about the choice of Reserve currency, American safety, Etc nonsense. The position of the world Reserve currency is not one which is held because other countries trust or like that country, it is merely a factor of production and consumption, of global trade. America's holding on to a legacy position, just like that of Great Britain and just like Great Britain prior to the end of the Sterling block, there may be some Nations who would like the United States to maintain the reserve currency position, but the economic reality is something quite different and your nonsense jingoistic americanisms will not save America from economic reality.
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@Mike-jv8bv in 10 years tsmc will be irrelevant to china, and Taiwan will be unified with China on voluntary grounds. The Chinese are going to develop an indigenous chip sector with indigenous technology that will allow them to make the most advanced chips available. Just as the Japanese have their own lithography technology, the Chinese will develop their own just as Taiwan, a nation of ethnically Han Chinese people, have been able to master fabrication, so will Mainland Chinese. When someone's back is against the law, another nation is trying to economically strangle them, and their future depends upon the outcome, they will find a way.
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@mrkazman these guys are already making top dollar, adding additional cost to their employment is only going to make them unemployed. But that's a lesson that American workers had to learn the hard way with the first wave of the industrialization in the United states. I suppose they're about to learn it again.
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@offred6013 Yeah, but India does not have the infrastructure to support a large manufacturing base and the Indian system of government does not allow for the policies to change that.
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@Steve_Johnson_ maybe so, but that is what is living America in Straits when it comes to actual industrial production. Without an industrial base a country is a paper tiger in America is quickly finding itself in such a position. Somebody has to get off they're behind and actually go into work and make physical things.
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@mrkazman yes, that is possibility. However, that would mean that tsmc's business model is not culturally translatable as they will not find as disciplined and capable a Workforce at a cost with an arrange to manufacture profitably. It's really an issue of culture and worker discipline. What's interesting is this problem was encountered at the turn of the 20th century both for capitalist and socialist economies. One of the reasons why Ford offered $5 a day was try to retain skilled labor, what is not talked about often today is that even at $5 a day workers didn't really want to work. Considerable numbers of workers in Detroit were of immigrant stock from pre-capitalist economies who are not used to regimentation, at any price. Ford even tried offering the same thing in Brazil to peasants, which meant incomes 40 times that of skilled persons in the city, and still they burnt the town fordlandia down twice. Capitalist solve this problem with increasing mechanization, so that the level of skill required from a worker to perform a task was very low and the workers can easily be trained and replaced. Stalin solve the problem in the Soviet Union with brutality, however I think the rationalization that came with the fight for survival during World War II played an even greater role. It may be that the West is simply sinking back in sophistication to The Peasant level. I suppose there's a great opening for competitor to tsmc that can develop equipment that requires less skilled workers to fabricate the same types of chips. In the short term it means that Taiwan will be the world's primary source of semiconductors.
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@jjoonathan7178 okay so you obviously don't understand basic economics. Artificially keeping the value of the dollar High through the US Dollars position as a reserve currency allows Americans who are paid in dollars to consume more of the world's goods and services proportionately, regardless of their source of dollars. As for the tech sector, as with any other sector wages can only rise with productivity growth, as some areas of tech have seen increasing which rates due to their increases in productivity. If workers at tsmc want higher wage rates they have to be more productive. Still, the level productivity of Americans semiconductor workers is most certainly not higher, and probably lower, then workers in Taiwan who will underbid them in wage rate. Therefore they cannot out earn those workers without some sort of subsidy from outside of their productivity or their product is not competitive on the global market.
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@epicsuper6775 it's pretty obvious all of this is dead on arrival. Sitting aside the regulatory burden of Environmental and water restrictions, it's pretty clear Americans are too lazy to even take these jobs at a pay rate that is competitive on the global scale. Barring some sort of generous government subsidy, like all other vital Industries, semiconductor production is dead in America.
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@Mike-jv8bv work culture has always been the same, do you remember the movie Man In The Grave final suit, people just don't want to work. Male Workforce participation as a percentage of the population has been declining in the United States since the 1950s. So you're busting your butt in the trades, great. How long do you think your body is going to last doing that? There's a reason why work is called labor, It's a Grind you trade your labor for money hopefully you save that money and create Capital so you don't have to work. That's life get over it.
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@johnwig285 The sector of persons who can preform the job of a roughneck and that of a semiconductor fabrication technican are considerably distinct. Both groups are over paid, but the different market dynamics for each means the cost can be passed on in the one and not the other. In any event, semiconductor production in the US is a deadletter and that is a loss for the US and not the world.
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@HyzersGR I see you're comprehension level is quite low. The answer is EVERYONE, everyone who has to do business with china, which is essentially everyone for goods, whether production or consumer, will join the system. As well as all of those who sell commodities to china, which is all of them [ because China is the largest buyer of commodities] will join the the new system because China will pay them in Chinese yuan, not us dollar, because if they will not take Chinese Yuan they lose their biggest customer. There are plenty of other nations who need to pay in Chinese Yuan (for Chinese goods) that will accept Yuan in exchange for their commodities or other goods.
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@nexusyang4832 yeah sure, that's why all of those Taiwanese workers are now in mainland China working for Chinese chip manufacturers! Taiwan and China will be reunified eventually one way or another, the idea that most taiwanese, who are also ethnic Han chinese, are paralyzed with fear at the idea of being a part of China is nonsense Western propaganda.
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@jjoonathan7178 what are you trying to claim? Are you trying to claim that productivity has grown while wages have not, this is untrue. When you peel apart the numbers we find that only in two sectors, finance and Technology, has productivity increase in even that is someone dubious. For most sectors there has not been any gain in productivity since the late 1960s. Furthermore, we can see in the differential for quite a few countries between per capita GDP PPP and their nominal per capita GDP that US dollar Reserve status is cheating quite a bit of the world of its relative income by their government's operating a leak currency policy relative to the US dollar.
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@temptemp563 yeah well that's called ricardian specialization, the problem of course is it leaves America dangerously reliant on foreign producers of microchips. To be fair, the software side of the tech sector has artificially inflated wages because of loose monetary policy, as the FED tightens and the dollar ceases to be a reserve currency, we will see if the fat pay packages, largely supplied by stock options through a monetary asset bubble, will still hold Sway in the world of programming. At the end of the day, there is no way to raise wages for fabrication facility workers high enough for them to do the work and then still have those chips be competitive on the global market.
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@Mike-jv8bv great you found it occupation that's paying you more for your labor, something you are willing to do. I hope it works out for you.
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@jjoonathan7178 okay buddy, good luck with that. That's why America is turning into Italy, but there's not going to be any EU bailout or subsidies for the United States.
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@RoughNeck777 exactly, and that is what is artificially propping up us industrial production numbers, if you used units of production, or another method that uses the amount of still contained and finished products of production, mother of which is perfect, but we would find that America's industrial output would measure less than a third of its stated figures.
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@xhy12 LOL, sure!
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@alanhonlunli Excatly!!
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@alanhonlunli yeah, no. No one is hardwired into the US dollar system because of inelastic demand. It's simple that, it is a legacy of the Bretton Woods system. It continues to carry weight because commodity producers, most importantly the oil producers of the Middle East continue to sell their commodities for us dollars. Secondarily, and you can argue even more critically, China who is the world's largest exporting nation, continues to sell its exports for us dollars. The system was already stretched with China piling up mountains of US dollars as Reserves and looking to buy assets all around the world to reduce the dollar pile, as an economy the size of China and one which is the primary trading Nation cannot avoid the world of the reserve currency for long. Secondarily, as the primary consumer of Natural Resources in the world has become china, and China is already there largest trading partner, it makes only sense that they should ditch dollars and use Chinese yuan. So America if it's lucky may have another 10 years as a reserve currency whatsoever, but it's fate is pretty much the same as the British pound after the end of the Sterling block. Again, it seems as if armchair pontificators have not bothered to do any research on how global banking and trade actually functions.
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@alanhonlunli LOL, "we" are transitioning now, of you mean by "we", non-Westerners. So the YouTube videos haven't really been giving you a clear picture of the situation. Are you unaware of the massive drawdown of US Dollars being held by numerous countries as a reserve currency, most notably china? Have you not heard about Nations doing third party transactions in Chinese Yuan to buy Russian goods, including China's rival india? Are you not aware that there is already functional workaround the sanctions for Russians by funneling payments through the Chinese union pay system? Are you not aware that there is already agreement for alternative to Swift that doesn't involve dollar clearing or settlement in the us? Yeah , Again YouTube does not really keep you informed does it?
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@HyzersGR lol. Clearly you have not been paying attention, too many YouTube videos? The alternative Swift system is already forming, Russia has already connected its banking system to China's union pay, and there is already direct lending of Yuan by Russian banks. We have even seen hostile countries to china, like india, purchase Commodities from Russia and Chinese yuan. However, at the end of the day countries just want to be able to freely trade and an alternative to swift, with the US dollar and American extra territorial jurisdiction, offers that. This is all aside from the deciding factor that, China is the world's largest trading nation, the largest trading partner for most nations in the world, and therefore there is already an ecosystem of Yuan Surplus and Yuan deficit countries that can settle their current accounts in Chinese Yuan without skipping a Beat.
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@HyzersGR lol. Your low level of understanding of basic economics is hilarious. What percentage of China's GDP is exports? Not gross exports, net exports, the answer is 2%! I know westerners like to think that the Chinese live to manufacture things for them and cannot survive but for the west, but in reality China exports to pay for the commodity Imports it needs for its industrial base which is to supply domestic consumption and investment! Not to mention, the Chinese Yuan has performed quite favorably against most of the G7 currencies as of late, and as a reserve currency would perform even better given that it no longer needs to position itself vis-a-va Reserve currency. As for manufacturing leaving china, okay much over hyped. That is low level manufacturing that is going to places like vietnam, and Vietnam doesn't even have the infrastructure to absorb the factories leaving china. Lastly, remember I said the words NET exports, not gross exports. I know you have a comprehension problem. What most people tend to mention is gross exports, or gross imports. While those measures can be helpful to identify things like supply chain integration, they are not useful in understanding the dependency of a country on trade.
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@skyisreallyhigh3333 again in most industries that is not the case. Once you adjust for inflation you see that the addition of technology has only allowed workers to stay basically as productive as they were in the late 1960s. This is a great mystery of Labor productivity, how is it that you can have so much advance in technology yet see no real leap in productivity, outside of the sector's producing the technology, and the answer of course must be the decrease in the quality of workers.
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@skyisreallyhigh3333 I see your understanding of Economics is not even basic. Your argument is that technology has made everyone more productive, well that's a hard argument to make because in every sector you have to show that technology has been employed to make workers more efficient, that is clearly not the case. When we look at the industrial sector we would measure productivity, by the dollar value of units of production per worker per hour. However, that can be highly misleading, when we start looking carefully at the American industrial sector by units of production produce per worker per hour, setting aside the bloated prices government and government contractors are prepared to pay for made in America industrial products, we see no productivity increases since the 1960s. Sure, there have been productivity increases in the mining sector, although there is significantly less mining, and we would see the same thing in the financial sector, information technology, and other things of that sort. However, when we look into the service sector, large parts of the secondary economy like logistics, Warehouse services, and government bureaucracy we see no increase in productivity why, Baumol's cost disease, look it up.
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