Outside of a few strategic industries or products, why is this bad?

I’m going to offer a less defense-oriented point of view: manufacturing jobs are more lucrative than service jobs that are available to uneducated people, and allow them to live a more prosperous, happy life. More of these jobs is a net benefit for society.

If you want a jobs program just say you want a jobs program. Instead of churning out uncompetitive widgets how about we tax the wealthy and employ people fixing our infrastructure?

It’s fallacious that manufacturing can’t be done competitively in the US, it absolutely can, but policy allows business owners to make slightly more profit by offshoring production, so that’s what happens.

Regarding fixing the infrastructure, I like that idea too, but the government is pretty incompetent and full of grifters so I don’t really think that’s an efficient way to get money to poor uneducated people - most of the money will go to consultants and non-profit directors and so on.

>the government is pretty incompetent and full of grifters

Is this based on actual data or just vibes from your interactions with the DMV, IRS, etc.?

Michael Lewis writes well about this. His perspective is that the govt often shoulders the hard problems that lack a clear path to profitability for private industry. He’s studied govt extensively and seems to have the opposite view.

I know you aren’t the other guy, but it’s a really interesting argument that despite spending more and more money every year to solve this kind of problem, and seeing that the problem is getting worse (quality of life and economic security for uneducated people, in this case), one can still argue that the government is actually efficient and competent. It seems obvious to me that they are not successfully solving this problem with spending. I know a natural reaction is to blame one political party or the other for being especially bad, but you can see a lot of examples of failures to improve outcomes despite increasing spending at the state and local levels for both parties in the US. So if a politician comes along and says you know what, let’s try to solve this problem with policy instead of spending, the people who are suffering listen to that, even if the outcome isn’t certain.

What government jobs programs have we been dumping increasing amounts of money into with diminishing returns?

Seems to me your logic actually applies to the argument of not doing that, and letting the free market figure it out.

With respect, I asked for data and you came back with “it seems obvious to me…” without citing any real data. I know enough to know people who make feelings-based arguments can’t be persuaded by data-driven discussions.

You can go find the data about the diminishing financial security of this class yourself - your only argument was an appeal to authority, btw.

A reference is not an appeal to authority, it’s an opportunity for you to verify the stance and poke holes in it if you have the capability to do so. You have the opportunity to use whatever authority you want and cherry pick data. I’m just asking for an effort that has some rigor beyond “I can’t prove it, I just know it’s true because my gut tells me so”

As requested below: which jobs programs have we been shoveling money into with diminishing returns?

Because we can't actually make the strategic products. You might have a factory to assemble the highly strategic fighter jet in the US but it is problematic if you are dependent on foreign countries to source or manufacture the multitude of parts.

That was in the premise of the question. Obviously if you don't have a secure supply chain for all the parts of a jet, you don't have a secure supply chain for a jet.

It’s probably hard to silo a modern weapon system in the way your question supposes, meaning it may not be a good premise.

By that logic, I guess we oughta onshore everything right? Lest there be a forgotten screw that we don't produce.

And yeah, engineering a market economy is hard (read: impossible). That's why it's largely a fool's errand to try to do it comprehensively.

This is a bad faith argument, and I think you know it. There is a wide gulf between “just a few industries” and “everything”. The first is naive and the latter is impractical. My suggestion is we take a targeted stance, where the solution resides in that gulf.

And for what it’s worth, your screw argument belies a poor understanding, especially given your example of a jet. Aerospace parts are notoriously expensive because we want to track and manage the entire supply chain. That’s why an airplane screw can cost $1k, when naive people assume you can just pick up an equivalent part at Home Depot.

But you just said we effectively can't do it for narrow industries.

I’m saying it’s much harder than your original comment insinuates. That jet in your example has tens of thousands of parts and if you want to protect the entire supply chain, it can’t just be a few companies. Many of those suppliers are also not just supporting jet manufacturers. Eg, a company that makes teflon o-rings for the jet likely makes o-rings for dozens of non-aerospace products. Complex machines are not nice, vertically integrated manufacturing ventures in the modern economy.

I am aware of this, but obviously it's much easier (in that it doesn't outright destroy our way of life) to do it in narrow cases than for everything.

Perhaps I’m confused and misreading your previous comments. It seems like on one hand you’re advocating narrow application, while also saying an entire supply chain would need to be protected to have the intended effect. In a modern economy, those two seem in conflict in any complex system. This means the execution is neither easy nor obvious. The only one I can think of where that may apply is nuclear weapons, which is so tightly controlled it’s more of a quasi-government manufacturing endeavor.