The focus on 12 hour shifts and dorms in China is all dandy, but what does it take to build a factory in the US?
By the time all the environmental reviews and other regulations are observed, and law suits from Sierra Club and others are cleared, there is simply no way to build the factory! Hence no one builds them, hence ...a current Apple executive said. βThe U.S. has stopped producing people with the skills we need.β
Factories get built in the U.S. all the time. Since there is some amount of competition for them between states, the typical approach is to shop around for a nice deal, where the state/city will usually not only offer to shepherd you through the environmental/approval process, but actually pay for it or subsidize your construction, and give you 10-20 years of tax breaks. Happens with car factories all the time. Even Apple is doing it with the A5 chip manufacturing facility it announced it's going to open in Austin.
That, my friend, is bullshit. Here in Indiana, we have factory space standing empty, thus no environmental review required, even if we had environmental reviews in Indiana, which we fucking don't.
All we require is health care and a working wage - and it's cheaper to let us die.
By the time all the environmental reviews and other regulations are observed, and law suits from Sierra Club and others are cleared, there is simply no way to build the factory! Hence no one builds them, hence ...a current Apple executive said. βThe U.S. has stopped producing people with the skills we need.β