Fantastic! Sharing with everyone I know. This is what “Trumpism” is really all about out. I don’t care for the rest of his egotistical shenanigans but he got this right and that’s why he won.
Two thoughts. 1) Offshoring is partly what happens when we base our tax system on production (income) rather than consumption. Every day the CFOs spreadsheet says produce offshore and to do so is easy. Moving consumption offshore is hard. 2) That same CFO's spreadsheet never measures the externalities of moving production offshore. Nothing gets paid into Social Security. The former worker's house goes unpainted, property value declines, schools have less revenue, and children have to leave the place of their upbringing to find work. These are all costs borne by consumers but not reflected in the price of a Chinese Sharpie.
Ummm, executives moved to China b/c they could pay workers less and damage nature more. They moved to China to make more money for themselves and their shareholders. And their paid stoogies (Congress...Reagan, Bush, Clinton, etc.) went along.
Which is what the column already said. Then it explained how through automation, the company moved production back to America, increased their productivity, and gave employees raises without any lay offs. Maybe read the column before commenting on it.
Yeah, that is what it said but your analysis is flawed.
Yes, Sharpie came back to America, but it employs way far fewer employees that it did before it went to China. And the few people it does employ have to have skill sets far above those of the ordinary workers that they employed before, thus requiring the training programs.
Yes, wages of those employees are up, but again, there are many, many fewer employees thanks to all of the automation.
The same thing will happen with Artificial Intelligence. People will get displaced and will have to be retrained. However, there will be a percentage that will be unable to make the leap through retraining that will end up as workers unable to support their families no matter how many jobs they can take on.
I don't find this argument particularly persuasive. The point of the original "I, Pencil" is that the complexity of modern industrial production is so high that it isn't comprehensible by any single locus of management. That's as true for a Sharpie as it is for a pencil. The antecedent components of the Sharpie include the petrochemicals used in its plastic; the chemical components of its ink; the steel and electronics used in the robots that assemble it; the food and housing that sustains the workers in the factory; etc. Can Chris Petersen comprehend all of those factors in their totality?
No, which is why the lesson of "I, Pencil" is that we should approach questions of economic management with humility, recognizing the inherent limits of our knowledge, the traditionally conservative perspective.
And with that humility, we also recognize the dangers of unintended consequences that can come when we assume that we are wiser than we are. For example, those same tariffs which contributed to the "supply chain uncertainty" that convinced Petersen to move Sharpie assembly back to the US are also massively reducing the amount of overall industrial production in the US (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-manufacturing-contracts-further-october-supplier-delivery-times-lengthen-2025-11-03/). So the policy that's good for Sharpie and its workers might not be so great for lots of other American companies and American workers, and seems to be having the opposite of the effect that its creators intended.
Do we really think that the American federal government -- this current one, or any other one -- has the wisdom to get it right? Do we think that our governing class is immune to the lure of corruption, to design policies that benefit their friends first and not the public good (and no, I don't just mean Trump -- does anybody remember Burisma or Solyndra or Halliburton? It's a long tradition)?
No, the "invisible hand" isn't a mystical force -- it's just a metaphor for lots of people making lots of little decisions. It's no more mystical to try to replace them with a few people making big decisions. But it is more dangerous.
You also have to shrink the “Dutch curse” of the American economy - the financial sector.
As long as huge returns can be made via derivatives, tax advantaged investing, share buybacks, etc, then talent and money won’t go to process manufacturing.
Policy is good when it's good policy. Just make sure you stop short of turning into a Brazilian-nightmare of policies that simply make it difficult to import and more difficult to make it locally, and then make it even more difficult to import and on on...
A. The ideal critic will see in it a picture not only of what the final and highest stage of capitalist development is going to look like (which turns out to be a form of socialism in all but name only; see Chapter Two, note v), but of what can justly be described as the apotheosis of the entire Judeo-Christian project out of which capitalism emerged, the overarching theme of which is the long human struggle from servitude to freedom. (see Chapter One, note iii, and Chapter Four, pages 83 and 106). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
Fantastic! Sharing with everyone I know. This is what “Trumpism” is really all about out. I don’t care for the rest of his egotistical shenanigans but he got this right and that’s why he won.
Two thoughts. 1) Offshoring is partly what happens when we base our tax system on production (income) rather than consumption. Every day the CFOs spreadsheet says produce offshore and to do so is easy. Moving consumption offshore is hard. 2) That same CFO's spreadsheet never measures the externalities of moving production offshore. Nothing gets paid into Social Security. The former worker's house goes unpainted, property value declines, schools have less revenue, and children have to leave the place of their upbringing to find work. These are all costs borne by consumers but not reflected in the price of a Chinese Sharpie.
Ummm, executives moved to China b/c they could pay workers less and damage nature more. They moved to China to make more money for themselves and their shareholders. And their paid stoogies (Congress...Reagan, Bush, Clinton, etc.) went along.
Which is what the column already said. Then it explained how through automation, the company moved production back to America, increased their productivity, and gave employees raises without any lay offs. Maybe read the column before commenting on it.
Yeah, that is what it said but your analysis is flawed.
Yes, Sharpie came back to America, but it employs way far fewer employees that it did before it went to China. And the few people it does employ have to have skill sets far above those of the ordinary workers that they employed before, thus requiring the training programs.
Yes, wages of those employees are up, but again, there are many, many fewer employees thanks to all of the automation.
The same thing will happen with Artificial Intelligence. People will get displaced and will have to be retrained. However, there will be a percentage that will be unable to make the leap through retraining that will end up as workers unable to support their families no matter how many jobs they can take on.
Read was 60 when he wrote “I, Pencil.” He had sense enough to marvel at how free people can create so much good in the world.
You find no mystery in it, and turn the lesson inside out.
You’re more like that annoying wise-ass paper clip that Microsoft used to force on us.
(Go Sharpie! But find a better market rep.)
I don't find this argument particularly persuasive. The point of the original "I, Pencil" is that the complexity of modern industrial production is so high that it isn't comprehensible by any single locus of management. That's as true for a Sharpie as it is for a pencil. The antecedent components of the Sharpie include the petrochemicals used in its plastic; the chemical components of its ink; the steel and electronics used in the robots that assemble it; the food and housing that sustains the workers in the factory; etc. Can Chris Petersen comprehend all of those factors in their totality?
No, which is why the lesson of "I, Pencil" is that we should approach questions of economic management with humility, recognizing the inherent limits of our knowledge, the traditionally conservative perspective.
And with that humility, we also recognize the dangers of unintended consequences that can come when we assume that we are wiser than we are. For example, those same tariffs which contributed to the "supply chain uncertainty" that convinced Petersen to move Sharpie assembly back to the US are also massively reducing the amount of overall industrial production in the US (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-manufacturing-contracts-further-october-supplier-delivery-times-lengthen-2025-11-03/). So the policy that's good for Sharpie and its workers might not be so great for lots of other American companies and American workers, and seems to be having the opposite of the effect that its creators intended.
Do we really think that the American federal government -- this current one, or any other one -- has the wisdom to get it right? Do we think that our governing class is immune to the lure of corruption, to design policies that benefit their friends first and not the public good (and no, I don't just mean Trump -- does anybody remember Burisma or Solyndra or Halliburton? It's a long tradition)?
No, the "invisible hand" isn't a mystical force -- it's just a metaphor for lots of people making lots of little decisions. It's no more mystical to try to replace them with a few people making big decisions. But it is more dangerous.
You also have to shrink the “Dutch curse” of the American economy - the financial sector.
As long as huge returns can be made via derivatives, tax advantaged investing, share buybacks, etc, then talent and money won’t go to process manufacturing.
Policy is good when it's good policy. Just make sure you stop short of turning into a Brazilian-nightmare of policies that simply make it difficult to import and more difficult to make it locally, and then make it even more difficult to import and on on...
Remarkable. Should be read by every adult in the United States.
A. The ideal critic will see in it a picture not only of what the final and highest stage of capitalist development is going to look like (which turns out to be a form of socialism in all but name only; see Chapter Two, note v), but of what can justly be described as the apotheosis of the entire Judeo-Christian project out of which capitalism emerged, the overarching theme of which is the long human struggle from servitude to freedom. (see Chapter One, note iii, and Chapter Four, pages 83 and 106). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U0C9HKW
WSJ had an article in 2023 about Bath and Body works doing the same titled: A Soap Maker Cracks the Code to ‘Made in America’
So good. 😊 Re-stacking and sharing elsewhere!