[quote=no_such_reality]The same argument can be made about clean air, clean water and everything else that is an input.

Many countries have lower costs of doing business. From a regulatory environment to labor to actual resource inputs.

Those countries are choosing economic growth over externalized costs.

Kind of like the Hoover Dam, I really doubt we could get it built today. The laws were different then, employment expectations (and employee safety) were different then.

IMHO, the G8 need to do a much better job at pushing the developing world into uplifting it’s standard of living.[/quote]

You wouldn’t need as many people to build hover dam today, because you would have technological advances for which machines did some of the work that labor use to do..

Also, you would have fewer U.S. workers making the components of that dam, because some of those components could be built more efficiently elsewhere since the manufacturing line was already setup elsewhere, when in the U.S. no company invested the time, resources, over decades to create that know-how here (bad analogy, since with damn building, there probably isn’t some special factory line that is needed, but for some industries, technology to be specific, you need Fab, and not many companies have the knowhow. How many companies will be able to Fab at 10nm and 7nm in the U.S? Maybe intel, and that’s big if. Samsung and TSM, are expected to in 2016….Should all chips made in the U.S. be restricted to being only made in the U.S. and not be able to access 10nm and 7nm that will be first available in Korea and Taiwan respectively? If so, wouldn’t this put U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage versus your OEM from China that can use 10nm and 7nm at TSM and Samsung?

I suppose you could mandate that we should use fewer machines and more people, but it would take longer and cost more, which would be something that the taxpayer would end up paying for.

A lot of people think that going overseas is simply about being cost. In many cases, that’s not true. Especially in technology, some of this stuff is no longer done here and to bring it back will take a unsurmountable amount of time and resources, and may not even yield results from companies doing this for some time elsewhere with the expertise. There is a reason why most chip companies are Fab-less and do the bulk of the Fab work to companies like TSM and Samsung. Because they wouldn’t be able to do it better, and they definitely wouldn’t be able to get to the market quicker if they did.