The Consequences of Moving from Industrial to Financial Capitalism
The US has some terrible problems but this article doesn&#x27;t discuss them, preferring a convenient and lazy argument based on nonsense:<p>&gt; America doesn’t make its own shoes. It doesn’t make some nuts and bolts or fasteners, it doesn’t make industrial things anymore because if money is to be made off an industrial company it’s to buy and sell the company, not to make loans to increase the company’s production.<p>This is of course utter bullshit.  The US manufacturing output is more than 1&#x2F;2 china&#x27;s (about 16% of world production vs 28% for china) despite having less than a quarter the population.  Sure, on a per capita basis Germany produces more than the US but back of the envelope the US is #2 or #3. And that doesn&#x27;t include agriculture which in the US (and other OECD countries but not China) is highly industrialized, or housing or other such: just factories making physical goods.<p>What has happened is that the US manufacturing has moved into a saddle curve: either products that are too low in value compared to their transport costs (e.g. paper) or of such high added value that the other costs mentioned in the article are not relevant (high precision bearings, some kinds of software, chip fab equipment...and yes some fasteners).  Unfortunately some of this consists of arms (e.g. F-35) which are sort of the ultimate in Bastiat-style &quot;broken windows&quot; and end up reflecting very little in actual economic development and fundamental growth).  But still, a huge amount of manufacturing.<p>Of course by the nature of this, the US ends up exporting less of its manufacturing output than a country like China would, as its goods are either non-exportable or of more limited utility.