If this just replaces steel beams or allows more post frame construction, the walls wouldn't change. Actually, if used in post frame style construction, it would allow for more space for insulation with less thermal bridging.
Totally agree on taxing undesirable behavior--everyone complains about 'traffic' and the potential traffic impacts of something. If noise/pollution was taxed appropriately perhaps traffic would be less of a concern.
A government needs to get revenue somehow and wages are just a very convenient way to do so. However, with all the modern technology that we have now, I think there are options available that are not being taken (such as fair land use tax with computer calculated values)
The higher level story is that the administration deliberately used an app that circumvents records laws, lied about it under oath, and then did not take any accountability whatsoever for their actions. "Carelessness is contagious"
US manufacturing is at an all time high in terms of output. Less people are needed in that sector because it's an area where automation is highest. I agree that there is a national security reason to have tariffs to protect some manufacturing, but that should be a precision targeted tariff if anything.
Your level of paranoia and aggression will vary depending on how hawkish you are. If you’re more hawkish you’ll be more aggressive and make your move as early as possible, and you’ll also tolerate a lot more pain to achieve your goal. Bessent seems pretty determined.
I do think it’s clear that our industrial capacities have eroded. Look at our infrastructure compared to China. We lag on every metric: transportation initiatives, building projects, solar production, new energy plants, and so on. Manufacturing is just 1/10th of the “full stack”.
I’m not making any political commentary as to whether tariffs are the right move or not, I’m only explaining the line of reasoning.
I'm not even sure that it is to the detriment of our domestic laborers. It certainly makes domestic manufacturing less competitive, especially the lowest skill/barrier to entry manufacturing. However, the US manufactures a LOT still, there are loads of reasonably well paying jobs for lower skill worker. I will say that housing and healthcare costs are high in the US but those are not things that are imported.
It also depends on what you think people want. Do they want a vast array of cheap consumer goods and entertainment, or do they want more affordable basics, like housing, cars, and healthcare?
If you go by PPP alone, the US is already in second place [0].
PPP is a horrible metric, but I’m not sure GDP per capita is any better.
His argument is pretty circular, which is e.g. not that Americans would work for Vietnamese wages but that we'd produce automation that can do the same work. But in that case: why aren't we doing that today?
The answer is that it's still more advantageous to pay Vietnam to make our clothes.
It's basically just no free lunch theorem: we can afford the CapEx of doing such a thing today precisely because we have better alternatives. If there were no better alternatives and we had to produce our own garments, we wouldn't be able to afford the CapEx to do it in a dramatically more labor-efficient manner.
We could already do it, then we automated huge portions of it, then as other economies matured we handed that work to them and developed into a high-margin, high-income knowledge economy.
We can rewind back to a middle income economy if we want, I guess, but I don't see the appeal.
I'm open to the argument that we want some domestic mass manufacturing capacity for reasons of self-sufficiency, supply chain resilience, etc, but just come out and say it: we need handouts to keep certain strategic industries alive despite their lack of economic viability in the marketplace.
