> i.e. one Intel chip produced today is considered to be thousands of times more output than one Intel chip produced in the 80s, because it's thousands of times faster.
This point is a bit of a rorschach... is that an over-estimation or an under-estimation? Sounds like a massive under-estimation to me, in the same sort of qualitative way that it's silly to try to quantify the economic effect of the internal combustion engine in terms of horses displaced... it's measuring something kinda relevant but totally missing a qualitative shift that unlocked impossible-to-quantify economic activity (for better or worse is up to us).
Sure, but remember where we started - an argument about whether there is more or less domestic manufacturing than in the past or not. Increasing the performance of the product does not mean more manufacturing is going on - that mistakes value for output.
Perhaps another way to look at it would be that, as the quality of computers has increased, the total number of computers being made worldwide has also massively increased.
If we treat each computer made in the US today as equivalent to a thousand 1980s computers, then I'd hope to see the weighted data show that US manufacturing has massively increased as a result of making an exponentially larger number of exponentially faster computers. Rather than seeing it stagnate despite weighting each computer as worth so many old computers.
> I'd hope to see the weighted data show that US manufacturing has massively increased as a result of making an exponentially larger number of exponentially faster computers
This point is a bit of a rorschach... is that an over-estimation or an under-estimation? Sounds like a massive under-estimation to me, in the same sort of qualitative way that it's silly to try to quantify the economic effect of the internal combustion engine in terms of horses displaced... it's measuring something kinda relevant but totally missing a qualitative shift that unlocked impossible-to-quantify economic activity (for better or worse is up to us).