Unless we want to turn a small part of America into a third-world country by suspending worker's rights, environmental protections and safety regulations, I don't think we could compete with these Asian countries.
I also don't think we should.
These jobs, well, suck. They are semi-skilled and are doomed to inevitable automation. The people who work these jobs are treated as chattel right now. When these people rise up and demand to be treated better forcing costs to rise, these jobs will move again to some other desperate country.
If the first world wants to compete better, start certifying products as (human & environment) cruelty free. Label how many children were used to produce the product. Label how many years of life were robbed from people by working on the product because of chemicals. Stick an import tax on any place employing children or harming the global environment. Because straight nationalism isn't going to cut it.
From another article: The total component cost of an iPhone in 2009 was $172.46. Workers in China assemble the iPhone, but because their wages are low the assembly cost per phone (labeled manufacturing costs in the table below) is quite small, only $6.50 a phone. The total production cost per phone is $178.96: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/12/29/the-innovati...
>"If iPhones were assembled in the US the total assembly cost would rise to US$68 and total manufacturing cost would be pushed to approximately US$240. Selling iPhones assembled by US workers at US$500 per unit would still leave a 50% profit margin for Apple": http://business.time.com/2011/01/11/is-the-iphone-bad-for-th...
However, I think it's fair to conclude: Slicing the iPhone in this way, we can see that the real value of the iPhone isn’t in the manufacturing process at all, but lies in its design and the development of its components. And by owning the technology and design, the U.S. also gains in global trade, even though the iPhone isn’t manufactured in America: http://business.time.com/2011/01/11/is-the-iphone-bad-for-th...
$6.50 of manual labor in China translates into $68 worth of labor in US only if you forget about automation. At American wage levels a whole set of production steps could be more profitably done by robots.
I think it's fair to include in our assessment how much these people would be suffering if these jobs weren't available. People take these jobs because they're the best thing available. They definitely suck when compared to our sit-in-a-chair-programming-all-day jobs, but would they even be able to afford to live without them?
The solution is probably for these places to voluntarily start providing better working conditions and pay, which is unlikely to happen. However, I can't say with certainty that taking those jobs away from them and bringing them back here is going to provide a net gain for those people.
You're so timid. The solution is obvious. Take wealth from the privileged superrich and use it to educate the poor.
And I mean actual education, like khans academy, not fake education, like American public schools (politically correct obedience training)
When 1% of the population hordes 50% of the wealth through nepotism, cronyism, monopolies, oligopolies, and bribing politicians, the solution to poverty is obvious. Guillotines.
The markets can't be free when bribery, nepotism, cronyism, monopoly and oligopoly dominate them. Free the markets from the cartels of privilege.
The French revolution was ultimately a huge success that robbed countless monarchies of their power.
Instead of requiring teachers to slave away on wall street before they teach, we should just pay them for every pupil who goes to them.
Let's organize society based on simple scientific observations instead of having faith in the superrich masters of the world. Your faith in the superrich reminds me of an evangelical Christian having faith in their god regardless of how bankrupt that god has shown himself to be.
It's time society arranged itself according to the wisdom of the scientists instead of the authoritarian superrich and their evangelical slaves.
Social science is based on statistics and philosophy. You betray your ignorance.
Right now you are entrusting your future to Rupert Murdoch and the Chinese Communist Party. They are the actors who will most shape your collective future.
Scientists are a much better option. Rule by experts - meritocracy - is the only way to save this dying economy.
>Social science is based on statistics and philosophy. You betray your ignorance.
Or you do. From what I can tell social scientists are scientists in the same way Christian Scientists are scientists. They start with the answer and work backwards.
>Scientists are a much better option. Rule by experts - meritocracy - is the only way to save this dying economy.
First of all, command economies, which is what you're talking about whether or not you want to admit it, have left a string of wreckage and bodies. Economics by science is exactly what the communists thought they were doing. Thanks all the same, but I'll pass.
And secondly, the economy is not "dying". It's trying to do what market economies do if you leave them alone - adjust to new circumstances and start growing again. The last think we need to do is have people start making decisions from the top.
Maybe we actually can implement meritocracy without a command hierarchy. It's a problem of technological limitation, that might be theoretically solvable.
You're an ignorant uneducated anti-intellectual with strong opinions on stuff you have no experience with and have spent no time investigating.
You repeat the slave morality taught to Evangelical Christians by the Goldman Sachs psychopaths to whom you bow down.
The economic system is entering a period of peak instability to be followed by transformation. You'll hear about after it has completed, at the same time American Idol fans become aware. Such is the fate of the anti-intellectual who shuns knowledge and education. So be it.
I'd rather that we, as a nation, consult with experts (for example, social scientists and really good educators), come up with a ten year plan, and execute on that plan consistently. If the plan works, great, if not, tune it and execute another iteration. Sort of like glacial-paced Agile for governments. Instead, what we have now is mostly a bunch of "common sense" stuff that really means status quo, which gets disrupted every single time a politician comes into office, anywhere.
> I'd rather that we, as a nation, consult with experts (for example, social scientists and really good educators), come up with a ten year plan, and execute on that plan consistently.
Good for you, but what's actually likely to happen?
I note that the department of education can do those things today, or 20 years ago, but didn't. What makes you think that this time will be different?
The Deptartment of Education is controlled by the power elite and by the masses who elected stupid represetatives.
The issue is democracy - better called dumbocracy. Rule by the dumb.
In a democracy, the government at best can be as good as the lowest common denominator.
The next step from democracy is meritocracy. People with demonstrated intellectual and proven-track-record merit should be allowed to vote in their field of expertise.
So if Khan and John Taylor Gatto have demonstrated that they are better educators than the DOE, then they have more voting power. The principle of meritocracy is that more votes should go to those with demonstrated merit.
Right now the government is controlled by a combination of stupid people voting for emotional gratification and the power elite manipulating the stupid people for personal profit.
Take away voting rights from those with no merit and give the rights to those with demonstrated merit.
The education system is a tremendous challenge and the first step is to STOP listening to the idiots who have failed, and start listening to the people who have succeeded. Since idiots never know they are idiots, we must forcibly remove their power by removing their ability to vote and certainly by barring them from ever being elected.
Instead of fatalistic laissez-faire capitalism that inevitably leads to a new aristocracy, let's work on creating a functioning meritocracy where those with logic and scientifically demonstrated merit are given the power. In particular, their votes should have greater weight.
Don't let the dumb drive DoE policy. Instead let all university educated people vote on DoE leadership after taking a basic exam proving their knowledge.
When we recognize that the Christian fascists (for instance) are pushing an illegitimate social model - fascism - it becomes a moral imperative for us to disempower them. The rational way to do this is by highlighting their lack of merit and highlighting the merit of the educated, intelligent, rational people.
I'm not saying it's a simple solution but good solutions are not simple. A good solution takes work and is going to be messy. But what other option is there? Let the country slip into corporate feudalism? The dumbocracy must end and be replaced by some form of meritocracy.
I tried to upvote you out of the gray because your comment is interesting. There is just one problem with deliberately giving some people more power than others: those whose power is taken will try to use the same arguments used by those doing the taking. Examples: "We know what's best for our children!" "Those idiot evolutionists are trying to force their beliefs on those of us who know better!" etc.
"Since idiots never know they are idiots," how do you prove that you're not the real idiot when you're busy allocating power, and how do you prevent the meritocracy from being manipulated?
It's obvious that the current system isn't leading us to the Utopian paradise we all want to believe is possible, so if you've solved these problems, I'd love to hear the solutions.
> Take away voting rights from those with no merit and give the rights to those with demonstrated merit.
Feel free to name three large human-caused disasters of the last 100 years that weren't driven by "those with demonstrated merit".
I write that because the vast majority of large disasters of the last 100 years were driven by such people.
Since you mentioned it, fascism was actually a creation of intellectuals and was driven by them. They eventually lost control to thugs but didn't object until that happened. (In some cases, they didn't even object then.)
Nte that any discussion involving progressives turns to camps for non-believers within a very short period of time.
The problem with that approach is a bunch of smart and interesting non-oligarchs also get the chop during the ensuing Reign of Terror. Then after a while, Napoleon steps in to fill the power vacuum.
The lives of the poor are of equal value to the lives of the rich. So the calculation must include the suffering throngs created by privileged and selfish nepotists and cronies.
Literal guillotines are unnecessary. Just take away their money, prosecute the criminals, and hold meritocratic elections free from the media circus.
Creating a better world is common sense. Tie the hands of the psychopaths among the superrich, discredit the mentally ill Christian fascists, and use scientific reasoning to fix the government and economy.
There is no shortage of resources when you recognize that the vast wealth of the superrich is unearned and won throug bribery, cronyism, nepotism, monopoly, and oligopoly. Wealth amassed through those methods is illegitimate.
>There is no shortage of resources when you recognize that the vast wealth of the superrich is unearned and won throug bribery, cronyism, nepotism, monopoly, and oligopoly.
I don't see any evidence this is true as a general rule. In some cases, yes, but not the general case.
Then you're blind. The far majority of the superrich inherited their wealth. This is called nepotism and it's bad for meritocracy.
The far majority of corporate and government leaders are there through cronyism. This is corrupt.
Mega corporations like halliburton enrich themselves with no bid contracts which they get by bribing officials. This is bribery.
Cellular networks and ISPs form oligopolies instead of competing with each other. The medical industry does this causing death and poverty.
The wealth of the superrich was inordinately acquired by combining monopoly, oligopoly, cronyism, bribery, and nepotism into one big ball of corrupt selfishness. This wealth is not earned legitimately through production and competition, it is stolen by distorting the market and corrupting the government both of which are fundamentally immoral.
Criminals must be stripped of their loot and sent to prison. Start with Lloyd Blankfein who scammed his own clients and made his riches by exploiting the trust inherent in the client-professional relationship that is a pillar of civilized society.
Just a quick history on some of America's wealthiest people
Larry Ellison--born to unwed mother, raised middle class
George Soros--poor immigrant to England, worked as a porter and waiter through college
Sheldon Adelson--son of a cab driver and immigrant
Michael Bloomberg--worked as a parking lot attendant to pay his college tuition
Carl Icahn--father was a cantor, mother was a schoolteacher
Leonard Blavatnik--Soviet Immigrant
Harold Simmons--parents were teachers
Harold Hamm--worked his way up from pumping gas and car repair
Andrew Beal--worked through high school fixing televisions
Ray Dialo--son of a jazz musician
Charlie Ergen--started out as a door-to-door salesman
Eli Broad--father was a housepainter, mother was a dressmaker
These are just the people who come from the middle classes and below. Most of the rest had parents who were only doctors or lawyers, or small businessmen (not what I'd call well connected power brokers), and most of them where only 2 generations away from lower class families.
Anecdotes are intellectually dishonest. Statistics show that social mobility in the USA is low and in sharp decline.
Your selection of 13 out of 50 indicates that 75% of even your sample inherited their privilege. So my statement about the "majority" stands.
In addition, the list you select from includes only public wealth. Inherited wealth is usually private, and the privilege associated with private wealth is rarely public. Privilege itself is a private phenomenon.
The top 50 is a paltry analysis. The top 400 is even too paltry, though it is instructive. Look at real statistics that include the entire population not cherry picked media darlings who are used as anecdotes to distort the real statistics.
"Census data show that 81.6 percent of those families who were in the bottom quintile of the income distribution in 1985 were still in that bottom quintile the next year; for the top quintile the fraction was 76.3 percent."
The media promotes visibility of that minority who worked their way up. They don't report on statistics though.
As the social safety net and human rights are further eroded, social mobility will decline more quickly.
Don't let a few cherry picked anecdotes fool you.
" A 2007 study (by Kopczuk, Saez and Song) found social/economic mobility in America at top income levels "very stable" and "not mitigated the dramatic increase in annual earnings concentration since the 1970s."[17]
Economist Paul Krugman, argues that despite their "great ferocity in presenting its case and attacking its opponents", conservatives have resorted to "extraordinary series of attempts at statistical distortion". While in any given year, some of the people with low incomes will be "workers on temporary layoff, small businessmen taking writeoffs, farmers hit by bad weather" -- the rise in their income in succeeding years is not the same 'mobility' as poor people rising to middle class or middle income rising to wealth. It's the mobility of "the guy who works in the college bookstore and has a real job by his early thirties."
How is social mobility among inner city blacks? It's a disgrace. The attitude of libertarians toward inner city blacks is deeply immoral and racist. "Just let them rot! No talented Ted Turners could ever come from the ghetto!"
The most meritocratic individuals in our society are not entrepreneur billionaires like the shallow and selfish Larry Ellison. They are unsung intellectuals in ivory towers whose genius is not recognized by CNN because CNN is junk TV for idiots.
We don't live in a meritocracy. People like Larry Ellison are not meritorious. If the superich had any caring for the unfortunate the wealth gap would not be trending the way it is.
Those 13 people I listed represent 13 out of the top 50 richest people in the US. Not cherry picked anecdotes. They represent 25% of the top 50 wealthiest Americans.
I'm not arguing about social mobility amongst the bottom quartile or the top 1% or anything else. I am refuting your claim that the all of the "super rich" inherited their wealth.
You said this:
>The far majority of the superrich inherited their wealth.
When I provided statistics that showed only 31% of billionaires inherited their wealth. You said this:
>It's bullshit. They were born into connected families and simply built on the advantages they already had.
You stated a fact without evidence, I provided evidence to refute your claim (also why do you care about evidence--you said earlier this isn't Nature).
At least 25% of the 50 richest Americans started out with no fortune or family connections whatsoever.
Even more of them were only upper middle class, but I didn't include them.
Well, I don't mean evidence in the sense of a scientific cite. But this is just an assertion - at least you can back it up with some argument as to why you think it might be true.
When 51% of the population decides that taking the money is legitimate and a good idea, it will happen. The poorer people get the more people hop on board.
The current ruling elite are flaming the fans of theocracy. They are responsible for pushing the slave morality of evangelical Christianity on the pathetic and miserable masses.
If we don't disrupt the growing master/slave relationship occurring between the superrich and the Christian fascists, we WILL see the majority voting for theocracy and they will get it.
The solution is to promote reason and science as tools of social improvement - meritocracy - not fatalistic laissez-faire capitalism which is nothing more than plutocracy.
I know what you're talking about. But you know, the real problem is human nature, and its selfishness and greed. It's those two that cause all of the problems you've listed. Basically, human nature is an intractable problem.
4% of the population commits the far majority of atrocities. That 4% is made up of the psychopaths - people genetically endowed with no conscience.
Psychologists and sociologists studying sociopathy have estimated that there are huge numbers of sociopaths in decision making positions who make the calls in favor of greed and brutality. Conscience bound people find it very hard to cause the deaths of innocent children in Nigeria though oil corporation policy.
Conscience bound people often will quit their job rather than make a decision for greed when that decision will harm people.
This is precisely how sociopaths rise to power - they will do the job and take pleasure in it. Now American institutions and corporations are run by sociopaths and we are surprised that evil is so prevalent.
> 4% of the population commits the far majority of atrocities. That 4% is made up of the psychopaths - people genetically endowed with no conscience.
I didn't mean people like Hitler and Stalin. Plenty of those in history, of course.
But think about politicians all over the world. Surely you'd agree that a lot more than 4% of them are mostly just concerned with their personal gain, instead of the common good. That's a result of the selfishness and greed inherent in human nature.
Even good people are selfish. I'm good but I'm also selfish. On the other hand, take Julian Assange for example. Now that guy is just about as selfless as humans come, but how many percent of the world's population do you think are like him? Maybe even fewer than the psychopaths you mentioned.
> Conscience bound people often will quit their job rather than make a decision for greed when that decision will harm people.
Sure, some would. But on the other hand, there are 21 thousand people working for Monsanto. Do you think only the very top executives know how evil the company is? What about, say, all of the so-called "financial services industry"?
Those Foxconn workers would be worse off without their job (otherwise, why not quit?). Of course, when you have millions of employees, there will inevitably be some nut-jobs among them.[1]
Also, I think you misunderstand the meaning of externalities. From Wikipedia:[2]
In economics, an externality, or transaction spillover, is a cost or benefit not transmitted through prices that is incurred by a party who did not agree to the action causing the cost or benefit.
As far as I know, everyone part of the iPhone manufacturing process agreed so.
Disclosure: I live a few blocks away from the Foxconn's plant in Shenzhen.
That must be the Longhua plant (Foxcon City) because no way I would want to live near the Guanlan one ;-). I spent a few weeks at the Guanlan iPhone factory at the end of 2010, debugging my device driver.
Let me see if I understand you. You'd rather people be unemployed than have the opportunity to work a (by your standards) crappy job? What do you intend to do with all the people who get taxed out of a job?
What about people who work crappy jobs in China but aren't employed by multinationals? Shall we tax them too? That's going to be kind of a hard sell, isn't it? I mean, the Chinese people might have this crazy idea they ought to decide what's allowed to happen in China.
Scarcity is a myth. There is plenty of food and shelter for everyone. If there are no jobs then take the wealth from the superrich and use it to feed the poor. Human life trumps property rights.
The superrich job creators are not creating jobs. Time we took their money and put it to better use.
>Scarcity is a myth. There is plenty of food and shelter for everyone.
But only because people have incentives to produce food and shelter. Take away those incentives and there will certainly be scarcity.
>If there are no jobs then take the wealth from the superrich and use it to feed the poor. Human life trumps property rights.
No it doesn't. Or rather, you can't have a functioning economy without property rights, and then you'll have millions starving. We've been down this road, so this shouldn't be a point of contention. It's no coincidence China's economy didn't start growing until they junked all that silly Marxist claptrap and started to respect property rights.
I just have to ask - how old are you? I don't see how anyone could have reached middle age and hold these opinions.
There is a happy medium between outright fucking communism and outright corporate fascism.
The superrich acquired their wealth through illegitimate means: nepotism, cronyism, bribery, monopoly, oligopoly, war-mongering, and all sorts of predatory scams.
Money acquired through illegitimate means is illegitimate and anti-meritocratic. Property rights do not apply to those who distort markets for their own benefit or avoid competing in the marketplace by creating a cartel or bribing a politician.
Superrich who engage in this behaviour are making themselves bigger than the market and bigger than the state, they are making themselves into autocrats, aristocrats, plutocrats, tyrants, slave-holders.
China is a slave state dominated by unmeritorious Party cronies and their nepotism. Chinese workers are slaves.
The proper response to slavery is rebellion and liberation. Humans are obligated to provide for themselves, not to be enslaved by psychopathic businessmen and broken economic systems.
When CEOs award themselves $100million salaries and golden parachutes they are engaging in cronyism and oligopoly. The free market no longer holds sway and this is immoral. Money gained through these methods is not private property, it is stolen goods.
Anyone who distorts a market or corners a market is an enemy of the public and forfeits their property.
>The superrich acquired their wealth through illegitimate means: nepotism, cronyism, bribery, monopoly, oligopoly, war-mongering, and all sorts of predatory scams.
Again, this is an assertion for which I see scant evidence outside a few specific cases. Most of "the superrich" own pieces of companies that do things like make toilet paper or provide insurance. Their money is invested in concerns that provide me with products and services, and I don't begrudge them a profit.
>China is a slave state dominated by unmeritorious Party cronies and their nepotism. Chinese workers are slaves.
Oh bullshit. Chinese people are not slaves. They may not have all the political freedoms we do, but work is a voluntary association just like it is in the US. In terms of the party, well, you'll never have a large organisation of people without power imbalances. It's neither the worst government in the world nor as bad as it was just a few decades ago.
>When CEOs award themselves $100million salaries and golden parachutes they are engaging in cronyism and oligopoly. The free market no longer holds sway and this is immoral. Money gained through these methods is not private property, it is stolen goods.
CEOs do not pay themselves. Where did you get this idea? CEOs are paid by the shareholders, ultimately, and if you're not a shareholder in that company, why do you care what the CEO makes?
Sure, but retirees had many decades to save up enough money to survive without a job. Since poverty is the default condition of human existence, i.e. all you have to do to be poor is not do anything to make money, most people will need some kind of gainful employment.
The direct cause of poverty is the police. A naturally born human goes into the forest and hunts for deer to eat. Then the police arrest him and throw him in jail.
He was not born poor; he had a forest full of food. The police made him poor.
In this way what you are calling natural poverty is actually a creation of civilization. The natural state of a human is that he may live off the land. Civilization has broken this connection in favor of the state and so the state has an obligation to the human to provide him with a fair chance.
Note that the superrich or even the middle class are not born in poverty. Rather they are born with silver spoons in their mouth. How is that justice? These wealthy families then engage in nepotism to ensure the wealth of their offspring at the expense of the poor. This is deeply unmeritocratic and is injustice. For these upper classes to then turn around and tell the poor to be enslaved or die is the height of evil.
"He was not born poor; he had a forest full of food. The police made him poor."
No, the forest is NOT full of food all year long. The roman empire knew that people in the forest will go down to the cities several times a year to loot the agriculture and cattle raising people because they STARVED(they will have too much food in spring, nothing in winter), so they will force this people to settle.
That was more than 2000 years old. Now human population is x600 bigger, and there is no way forest could sustain all of us without artificial fertilizers, and land planning.
"Note that the superrich or even the middle class are not born in poverty. Rather they are born with silver spoons in their mouth. How is that justice? These wealthy families then engage in nepotism to ensure the wealth of their offspring at the expense of the poor. This is deeply unmeritocratic and is injustice. "
This is deeply meritocratic, if I'm the best at something and make enough money I decide witch person or people receive the money, including my descendants, especially when I already pay over 60% of what I earn in taxes so other people could have opportunities.
>In this way what you are calling natural poverty is actually a creation of civilization. The natural state of a human is that he may live off the land. Civilization has broken this connection in favor of the state and so the state has an obligation to the human to provide him with a fair chance.
No, actually. Civilization is what is necessary to avoid periodic famines. There's a reason the hunter-gather existence fell out of favor. It's only an idyllic lifestyle to people who haven't really thought about it.
On the subject of the state having an obligation to provide a "fair chance", well, a fair chance isn't handouts, no matter how much other people may have. We have a system in which you can apply your talents to accumulate resources. It works very well.
>Note that the superrich or even the middle class are not born in poverty. Rather they are born with silver spoons in their mouth. How is that justice?
Is it justice that some people are better looking than others, or have better health? Is it justice that some people find a compatible mate and others don't? It's not the state's job to dispense "justice" - if it was I'd have a hot girlfriend. Even the court system isn't there to dispense justice - it's there to carry out the law.
>These wealthy families then engage in nepotism to ensure the wealth of their offspring at the expense of the poor.
Nepotism doesn't mean what you think it means. The wealthy families invest their money in an effort to stay wealthy, that much is true. But the side effect is poor people get wealthier, not poorer.
>This is deeply unmeritocratic and is injustice. For these upper classes to then turn around and tell the poor to be enslaved or die is the height of evil.
That's a little hyperbolic. "Enslaved"? Who's enslaved? A job is a free exchange - you get money for the work you do. If you don't like it do something else. That's not slavery, that's just life.
> Civilization is what is necessary to avoid periodic famines. There's a reason the hunter-gather existence fell out of favor. It's only an idyllic lifestyle to people who haven't really thought about it.
Not actually true. Most hunter-gatherers were better fed and healthier than people living in cities - they worked for a couple of hours a day gathering food.
It fell out of favour because city dwellers were eventually able to fortify and outproduce on the better land, forcing everyone else to the outskirts.
Hence the line about people being pushed to the outskirts.
Now hunter-gathering is a subsistence lifestyle. Back before agriculture it was a very different story, since there would have been hunting in the most productive lands, too. Fossil records back this up - early hunter gatherers were much larger and taller than later farmers.
Actually, the FoxConn workers are making a lot more than their parents, and in fact are sending money home. I don't think you could say that of anybody in US, even a university graduate.
The real problem in US is everything is expensive.
And don't forget that the government of a country with 1340 M people, has an enormous incentive to keep the status quo. If automation destroys hundreds of thousands of jobs, it's a recipe for chaos. The ones ruling China, surely want to keep people working with low wages, so they can be replaced easily if they start causing trouble. Having hundreds of thousands, or millions of unemployed people is by far much more dangerous for them, than loosing a few bucks per phone by not automating the process.
An interesting factoid I saw online was the economic value of a quantity of oil. One of the cost visualizations was what the lost oil could produce in economic output in China, and the US. The US value far exceeded China's.
China benefits from low-wage and low-rights labor. Capital productivity is still higher in the US. Not something to take as a given for all times, though.
How would that help those people though? Presumably these people are not forced to work in those factories, so just moving their jobs to robots in America isn't going to help them. It would only help them if the premium is going to the workers (and you could probably make do with less than $100: assuming that the workers get $5 of the $6.50, increasing the price of the phone by $100 and giving it to the workers would give them 20x additional salary).
In aggregate, this would result in fewer products being purchased and fewer jobs. That said, the conditions in these jobs appear to humane- with a few exceptions.
There are many organizations you can donate that $100 to instead. It may not make the world a better place for those specific people who assembled your particular iPhone but it'll make just as strong an impact someone's life.
I don't like their assumption of 50% profit margin (including nothing but hardware). They have the manufacturing cost and the retail cost, why not use the american manufacturing cost to think up a real retail price?
Companies have closed major facilities in the United States to reopen in China. By way of explanation, executives say they are competing with Apple for shareholders. If they cannot rival Apple’s growth and profit margins, they won’t survive.
They don't care about workers, they care about shareholders. If Apple says to its shareholder "We'll earn 30% less next quarter, but we'll create 30000 new jobs in the US!" how do you think the market would react ? They'd sell like crazy! The share price would plummet. No one wants to loose money.
What's the moral advantage of using American over Chinese workers? By a similar token, why not just raise the wages of those Chinese workers by 100%. They'd be madly richer, very happy, and still far cheaper than American workers. Then again, the existing wage level is such that it commands some 8 000 applications a month (at Foxconn).
Part of the gist of the article was that US regulations make building out flexible manufacturing capacity rapidly incredibly difficult. Quicker to do it in China. Ironic considered the PRC's legendary red tape (no pun).
Apple owes its existence to American education, infrastructure, and a host of other services provided by American taxpayers. Why shouldn't they support the same families that supported them all these years?
Apple is a boon to the US economy. It adds a market capitalization exceeding the GDP of other sovereigns, high-paying jobs, and international prestige in design and technology.
Apple also pays taxes to the US Treasury. These taxes, in addition to those on the incomes of its stakeholders, are meant to repay the presumed social debt Apple gains from being here. Whether those rates are set badly or the taxes squandered isn't Apple's question.
A person across the Pacific could similarly ask, if Apple hired only Americans, why Apple insists on supporting the richest country while denying people in East Asia a meager income for a crime no greater than not being American.
>Apple owes its existence to American education, infrastructure, and a host of other services provided by American taxpayers. Why shouldn't they support the same families that supported them all these years?
You mean, why shouldn't Apple pay even more to support families it's already been supporting all these years? Do you honestly think Apple, as a corporation, has been a net-negative to the taxman?
Apple is no longer utilizing those services. It is instead using Chinese education and infrastructure. Why should Apple continue paying for services it no longer needs?
Absolute and total nonsense. Do you really think Apple and other multinationals could operate as profitably, or at all, without many of "those services."
Enforcement of Apple's intellectual property? Protection of their brand and trademarks? The contracts they rely on? The banks they rely on? Safe passage of ships and aircraft carrying raw materials and finished goods? The security and safety of their executives and engineers?
No. We are talking about Apple. You may be talking only about Apple's Chineese subsidiaries. Even so, they do not exist in a vacuum, and it is foolish to think that Apple's IP, brand and trademarks would be as secure in China without the global system of IP protection that the US government has been instrumental in building.
There was another article on Foxconn that was really good. The working conditions are absolute SHIT. No exaggeration. Despite being shit, the abuse at the factories is still better than a life of poverty. To you and I Chinese workers are treated like shit, but to them, it's better than before. And that's when it really hit me. As human beings, we like to climb UP, but not down, we like to ADD but not take away. We want MORE but never LESS. And as soon as a country stablizes and steps on it's feet, it's growth stops. There's no one to take advantage of. Everone has climbed up. And business is all about taking advantage of someone. This is a re-occuring theme in history.
I think this is what Americans need to understand the most.
China is the new America (in it's younger years, pollution, slaves, child labor, no rights, but lots of growth and opportunity), America is the new Europe. One day, everyone reading this will be dead, but rest assured China too, will stablize, be free, and then it will be Africa's turn.
There's another article that I can't seem to find that talks about this exact process. It takes time for a country the size of China to grow. People's living condition doesnt just suddently get better.
I see people complain about the working conditions when they're living in the US in their single family homes with 2 cars in the garage with boat loads of disposable incomes. They just dont understand the alternative of these giant factories is just no work or even worse jobs. Overtime, when these unskills people becomes more skills at what they do, they will have more options and things will naturally get better.
The only benefit of the workers was their ability to be quickly reconfigured with rudimentary training and strict scheduling. A robotic assembly line with the same just-in-time reconfiguration is superior for obvious reasons.
We've reached peak oil, peak children, and now it's probably time to consider the effects of peak labor.
These are middle class jobs, not some sucky jobs. You are too comfortable where you are, hence you don't see other people's plight.
Try 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. “The U.S. has stopped producing people with the skills we need.”
I know plenty of factories in the US. They're robotic. The US churns more product out now than it ever has, but it employs fewer and fewer people to do it. These are the productivity gains from 40 years of computerized automation taking its toll on the American worker. It's not a skills problem, it's much worse. If it's a skills problem the only solution is for humans to acquire the skill of working 24/7 performing repetitive tasks with a predictable maintenance schedule.
They're not, but the supply chains are already in place, which brings up the other elephant in the room. If labor isn't the issue pollution is. As EPA laws tightened China's lax oversight beckoned. It's not easy to find a place in the US that will look the other way and is located close to labor/transportation.
In the UK these are defiantly not classed as middle class jobs. Heck teachers are only JUST about considered lower middle class in the UK. Working on the shop floor is not a nice job. Humans are just not designed for fitting one component for 8 hours a day with little variation.
It's one the great tricks america has done, almost everyone thinks they're middle class. In the UK i'm not even sure i'm middle class.
A UK factory job might not be fashionable, but thanks to unions, they pay fairly well, easily twice or three times what supposedly-educated people make at any call-centre (possibly excluding credit-collection ones -- they make some real dough in commissions). There is no "free overtime" or other white-collar euphemism for unpaid work, automation has made workload extremely light for almost everyone, and good luck firing them without hefty compensation.
The problem with these jobs, apart from perceived low social status, is that they tend to be few and far between, mostly because of automation, high startup costs and low margins in the industrial sector.
No trust me. I had a family member in factory job. They did not like it at all. He gained arthritis from working there, then despite the fact he had been working there most of life without any complaint about his performance tried to performance manage him out a few years before he was due to retire. He earned less then my first grad job.
And, if Federal Reserve created inflation hadn't destroyed their purchasing power, they'd be 20% ahead on wages at the bottom than they are today even if those wages had stayed at the same literal dollar amount they were at over forty years ago.
The middle class is getting hammered and because they have less disposable income they save less and spend less, hence the economy grows slower.
Wages have been stagnant since the 70s, while healthcare costs and cost of living have skyrocketed
This sentence is a jumble of confusion. Wages have not been "stagnant", wages adjusted for a flawed [1] measure of the cost of living have been. Nominal wages are way up. You are correct that health care costs increased, but those costs are mostly not paid for with wages [2].
In fact, total compensation for labor is up considerably. Workers simply receive more of their benefits in the form of untaxed health benefits rather than taxable wages:
Further, the stagnation of wages themselves is due mainly to Simpson's Paradox. Immigrants enter the US and occupy low levels of the wage ladder, lowering the averages. But the immigrants are better off, as are non-immigrants (who's wages did not stagnate):
> In fact, total compensation for labor is up considerably
Over 40 years, you'd hope for a little more than "considerably". Especially since a lot of growth is in worker productivity - people doing real work (i.e. those on minimum wage) work harder than ever.
Maybe 39% (from 1975-2005) isn't enough for you. That's your call. To me, it's a far cry from "stagnation".
As for growth in worker productivity, I seriously doubt it occurred due to actions of minimum wage workers. Are you asserting that a burger flipper flips more burgers now than in 1975?
If we follow Paul Krugman's logic [1], this is not the case. Workers tend to be paid their marginal product. This suggests that if wage gains were distributed more to the top than the bottom, this is because the productivity of high earners increased more than the productivity of low earners.
The middle class is smaller because we've added fifty million immigrants (legal and illegal) to the bottom end. So of course the people who were here make up a smaller percentage of the total.
Its excessive regulations and crazy labor laws that stop people from building factories in much of the US. I am mostly leftist on much of my view and I'm sure people here will downvote me, but unions have screwed workers.
People in the US can continue saying these are sucky jobs etc, but every Chinese person I've met who's worked at these factories has claimed they've enjoyed the experience. Although the ones I met said they did it while putting themselves through school etc.
They "like" the factory because it's Better than starving and working on a farm. They make more money in a factory than on the farm. China is the place to manufacture but NOT the place to live. Everyone wants to do business with china but no body in their right mind wants to actually live there.
That's right. Assuming you're American, its exactly what your grandparents or great grandparents might have done in the late 1800s or early 1900s when they got off the farm.
When the Chinese people have had enough of their working conditions, they'll change things themselves.
Good for your great-grandparents. I've had white co-workers who took me to the textile mills where their grandparents worked in the Boston area, in abysmal conditions by today's standards. They've been long shut down and turned into office buildings.
There are no property rights in China as we understand them. Farmers grow stuff on "their" land, but get to keep their produce. They're actually pretty productive.
If you read the article none of the executives quoted directly mention how cheap Chinese labor is. They talk about how quickly they can "scale up or down." There are only 2 countries where you can scale up your semi-skilled work force rapidly, and the other country hasn't started ramping up for manufacturing just yet.
Regarding your comment about suicide, China for various reasons has a rather high suicide rate. Its not clear to me if the suicide rate amongst FoxConn workers is just a symptom of their society or something really bad about FoxConn itself.
Keep pressure on them to improve. Not just Foxconn, which is getting singled out (and will, most likely, end up being one of the better ones due to scrutiny after this blows over), but on all of the factories until they reform.
Specifically, they appear to pay no attention at all to worker safety. You'd think that after things like that horrible carcinogenic Sanlu milk, they would be more interested in things like chemical safety, but I guess they're not quite there yet.
While America is by no means perfect, they should copy us and have people monitoring workplace injuries, require worker education on safety, require appropriate protective gear for anyone doing dangerous things, and hold companies responsible for the health & safety of their workforce. It's not impossible to improve. I don't expect them to be perfect, but there are plenty of things they could be doing which, according to the reports, they are not.
When the Chinese people have had enough, they'll demand change. Who are we to force change down their throats?
In 2003 our President invaded a country that had nothing to do with the war on terror. We didn't listen to anyone including our closest allies. Why would China or anyone else give a shit about what we have to say now?
>> When the Chinese people have had enough, they'll demand change.
> You mean like the group that threatened suicide? Or the outrage over that Sanlu milk powder?
Like I said, when it gets too much, they'll demand and get change. Its not our problem.
>> In 2003 our President invaded a country that had nothing to do with the war on terror.
> I don't know why you're comparing bad PR to starting a war. You appear to have a very different idea of "pressure" than I do.
My point is we don't have a lot of moral authority anymore. Everyone remembers that we started a war under false pretenses. And that we killed 100s of thousands of Iraqis in the process of bringing them "democracy". Our own jihad for democracy.
It isn't just bad PR. You said we should "pressure" China to force their factories to provide better working conditions. Why should they?
Or were you implying that we should invade China as well? Is that your idea of "pressure"?
The "pressure" I'm talking about is the existing bad PR. That is, what's happening right now. And it is getting results, because Apple itself is auditing its suppliers.
I most certainly do not advocate starting any wars. I'm not even talking about government pressure. Frankly, the economic pressure from Apple, which doesn't want to take crap for factory conditions in China, may do more good than anything the US government is likely to try.
And I'll add that Apple is one of the best companies to put pressure on. They have a super-strong strong brand and their products often fetch higher prices and profit margins than their competitors. This gives them a strong incentive to protect their brand, and the means to do so.
Part of the reason their products can demand a premium price and healthy profit margins is because they have high standards for quality, profit margins and quality both rely on a strong and well managed supply chain. This well managed supply chain gives Apple greater ability than most to extract compliance with their required labor standards. The demand for quality means, in part, that Apple's suppliers make a greater investment in training their workers, which makes retaining those workers more important.
If Apple's suppliers attract and retain workers with better pay and better working conditions, then that creates pressure on other manufacturers, who must improve the package they offer workers in order to keep them from going to work for Apple's suppliers.
I'm sure there are other good targets for this sort of pressure, but Apple has to be among the best.
> The rest of the world (and those of us who deal with it) begs you not to start any more wars.
I didn't really have any planned, you know. I mean, I don't even have a lair in a volcano on a skull-shaped island yet! You can't seriously expect me to go around and start wars without one. It simply isn't done.
But seriously, I think that bad PR for image-conscious companies with factories that have substandard working conditions is a good way to leverage economic pressure. Because their brands have value to them, they'll try to restore them by putting pressure on their suppliers to clean up their acts and hopefully that will lead to reforms by driving competition. None of which involves wars or even government intervention, though it might take a bit of investigative journalism.
Hahaha. Very funny man. LOLCATZ, Cheezburger Catz!
You know I meant "United States" when I said "please don't start another war".
We have a big difference in the way we think. I think if someone CHOOSES to work in a factory under semi-inhumane conditions so their children can have better lives, they are fucking heroes.
You think they are victims. Your Western brothers (including the clown who got his post deleted) think they are somehow less than them.
> Label how many children were used to produce the product.
Exactly who is going to count this and not report back 0? Either because they resolved all the issues they found, because it's illegal, or because they're not going to admit to it, because it's illegal.
Off the top of my head, everything in the US and countries with strong labor/environmental laws gets a US certified "cruelty free" sticker with little checkboxes under it that state that no child labor, etc. was used. No one else gets to have a label unless they pay to have their entire supply chain certified on a yearly basis.
The absence of a label will be taken as the product did in fact use child labor, unsafe work environments, etc. just like the lack of an organic label is taken to mean that the farm uses pesticides when in fact, it could just be they couldn't afford certification.
You make a good point. Much "organic" produce in the US is now grown in China, particularly of processed ingredients. China is selling the certification, the food is grown in toxic soil with fertilizer and pesticide, then a gentleman signs off that it is organic and it can be sold in foreign markets for a premium to naive customers.
Certifying that something is "child labor free" or "slavery free" is just as reliable.
Especially in a factory, you shouldn't trust anyone giving you numbers that are too good to be true. Sure, you can have automated processes that keep track of things, but if anything unexpected happens (which is common) and the processes change in ways the monitors don't expect, your numbers become meaningless.
My boss, an old guy in his 50, scoffed the notion of "Made in Canada" (or "Made in USA").
He said that "Made in X" (CA/US, interchangeable) used to be good when they first came out. But quality drop significantly that they weren't any better than "Made in Y" (China, Philippine, Nepal, Srilanka).
Even after you put those gory details, if the quality of the "better-morale" products suck, it won't matter much.
I think we all (everyone in this world) know what it takes to make iPhone by now. But we're trained not to care any more.
Good suggestion, but not sure the perception will change much.
I'm almost an old guy (50 in May), I'm the guy who makes the LEGO-compatible iPhone 4/4S and iPod Touch cases (www.smallworks.com)
We recently moved the molds for these out of China, and back to the US, in order to save money. The production costs are nearly equivalent to those in China, and the 6 week 'float' of cash while the product is on the boat is a huge PITA.
The cost advantage varies by industry. For some industries 6 weeks on the boat for final product is a lot. For others, every component 6 weeks or so on tens of boats is more problematic.
I agree with the gestalt of your statement, however; painting this with broad brushes, e.g. manufacturing has left the US for good, is simplistic.
Anecdotal, I have had a few items made in China over the years I've replaced with USA made stuff that was much higher quality: my gas grill (going on 7 years of use, chinese one lasted 2 years) and some bakeware I recently bought.
Some things are better from here, some aren't, but lately most of the items I buy from the US are usually higher quality, albeit often much more expensive.
It's not anecdotal and I agree with you: some things are better and some aren't.
Perhaps there were a time in the past (of my boss's life) where made in USA weren't as good as it promised/advertised thus giving way to made in China.
When I grew up in the late 70's and the 80's, a lot of US made stuff seemed to be crap. I think that part or most of the stuff now made in the US is more quality, because it's much more difficult to make cheap stuff and compete with China.
The are not doomed to eventual automation, because the people who work these jobs have a huge advantage over the machines that might replace them:
they are flexible in what they build, and easy to train.
Robots have to take a huge leap forward before they can even come close to the flexibility offered by a person.
People are flexible in what they build, they are flexible in how they build it, they are flexible in what job they do, and (depending on the contract) they can be dropped instantly where they are unnecessary.
Compare that with a factory made of robots representing a large capital investment that could very quickly become out of date if you change your product slightly.
If you had actually read the article, perhaps you would have added the immigration of all of Foxconn's employees into the U.S. Apple's complaints weren't about wages or regulations in the U.S. at all. The primary complaint was that there simply weren't enough people with the sufficient training to do these jobs in the U.S. the workers do not exist.
I also don't think we should.
These jobs, well, suck. They are semi-skilled and are doomed to inevitable automation. The people who work these jobs are treated as chattel right now. When these people rise up and demand to be treated better forcing costs to rise, these jobs will move again to some other desperate country.
If the first world wants to compete better, start certifying products as (human & environment) cruelty free. Label how many children were used to produce the product. Label how many years of life were robbed from people by working on the product because of chemicals. Stick an import tax on any place employing children or harming the global environment. Because straight nationalism isn't going to cut it.