And did it make any difference? These grand gestures seem to make no difference. All the skill and manufacturing resources still reside in China. We have to make do with becoming service and support. We need to be able make them here and gain the skills so we are not vulnerable to the leverage we have given to China. I am not fond of the current administration and do not like the leverage being applied to Apple, but Apple handed both the current administration and China the tools and means to have the leverage applied.
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Apple Announces $500B US Investment Plan, Adding 20K Jobs
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Apple won’t even commit to make a core hero product here.
“AI servers” to me sounds like M_ chips in off the shelf rack-mounted 1U boxes that customers will never even see.
This isn’t a commitment to American manufacturing. It’s even less of a gesture than when they assembled the ultra low volume Mac Pro here.
That approach is the core of Leftist-Democract ideology which continues today (2025) -- namely, that (1) America is the root cause of the hatred towards the West, and (2) if we be nice to the baddies, then they will stop being baddies when they see we are now being nice to them.
I admit, in the late 1990's, I tended to be of that mindset. Nixon's mindset was that if we invite China into the WTC and let them be part of the global economy, China would eventually become nice like everyone else. (We see the same ideological assumption with people thinking that, if only we had let Russia into NATO and EU, Russia would have been nice.)
But with the hindsight of 25+ years, we can see it does not work. It's the difference between Chamberlain's approach to Hitler, versus Winston Churchill's.
In summary, outsourcing money and technology to a nation that sees itself opposed to the West ... with the hindsight of 25+ years of that experiment ... has proved to be wrong. And yet 50% of the people cannot shake off that failed ideology.
No I don’t. I think BS should be called out. I don’t blindly follow anyone. There’s a difference between a blind follow and a supporter.
I’m not pretending anything, that’s a fabrication of yours. What I’m focusing on is the present. This is great news.
Caving to Trump again. I’ve lost all respect for Tim Cook and Apple, and regret buying a MacBook Pro recently. I won’t buy another Apple product until Cook is gone.
It is nice to see Apple investing more in the US. Apple has experience dealing with authoritarian dictators in China. Dealing with co-Presidents Dictator and Elon the Nazi should feel like putting on some well worn slippers.
That and US companies see five years as long term planning. The Chinese were thinking decades.
Actually it’s the opposite. I’m working with Chinese manufacturers, and the reason China has been moving so fast is that they DON’T think ahead. They don’t care what happens five years into the future, because the world has changed by then. They just do something really fast, and then change if it doesn’t immediately work. They don’t consider long-term.
Don’t confuse Japan with China. Japan is all about long-term planning, precision and quality. China is all about speed.
That’s exactly what Trump IS doing, all the time. Time to take the blinders off.
2016-2020:
How much money does the US federal government collect? | USAFacts
About $4.9 trillion in fiscal year (FY) 2024. This is about $14,600 per person in the US, however individual contributions vary based on income, spending, and other factors. Government revenue is the total amount of money received from individual and corporate taxes, and other sources that are...
usafacts.org
Historical Average Federal Tax Rates for All Households
Average federal tax rates for all households, by comprehensive household income quintile.
taxpolicycenter.org
The US tax revenue has an overall upwards trajectory, with a post dot-com bubble dip and a global financial crisis dip, both of which happened during Bush 43 (although you can reasonably argue that the dotcom bubble was so early in his presidency that if you want to blame the president it would be Clinton). During Trump, tax revenue was slightly down every year, while tax rate was also down every year.
The revenue graph is an upwards slope but with those three outliers, plus a 2023 dip that I’m not sure what is caused by (I’m by no means an expert in US financial politics).
Trump is going to have to change the laws first and build a time machine, he can't serve 3 terms and is already so old.
Aren’t those part of the jobs created by the investment too? Or is it considered separate from the 20K ones.
In any case, if it even created 200K jobs between some 20K main ones and 180K ancillary ones, it is still $2.5 millions per head.
But I have no clue what’s the full cost of creating a single job position in any domain.
It’s literally salary plus administration, plus perhaps a desk space. Average US salary is 75.000 USD as far as I can google, let’s get him a nice computer and round up, and call it 100k a year. For 500 billion you could pay 100.000 Americans 75k a year to play Solitaire for fifty years.
This investment is not about American jobs. It’s an investment in factory and hardware that will bring in money to Apple in the long run, and a few guys to oversee it.
One of the main tools to keep the public in check is the average person underestimating the difference between millions and billions. People tend to think the difference between ten dollars and a thousand dollars is larger than the difference between a million and a billion.
If you had a thousand dollars in your pocket, would you give one dollar to a beggar? Probably. If you had one billion dollars, that’s equivalent to handing out a million. That’s how rich billionaires are.
Edit: To add to that, if all US billionaires had zero increase in wealth in 2024 instead of increasing their already staggering wealth by a combined sum of two trillion USD, they could have given an average working wage of $50k to all 40 million Americans living below the poverty line, from newborn to 110 years old. Without losing any wealth! But no, that would be communism, and we all know communism is bad.
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I assume you meant to reply to me. I think it makes a significant difference that the entire premise of your post was based on a faulty assumption.
No difference? $780 billion and more than 20,000 jobs over the last 7 years seems like a difference maker to me. The problem is that you are assigning a different goal to the investment than Apple intended.
20,000 jobs is literally nothing at this scale. It’s 3% of the people working at McDonalds. Using the same calculation as above, you could hire them for 14 billion for those 7 years. I’m willing to bet that government subsidies to the corporation making the investment is much higher than that.
Edit: okay, not quite - Apple has received subsidies of 2 billion since 2000. It is not clear how much they have paid in taxes, since they don’t break out where they pay tax.
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What scale? One company? 3/4 of a trillion dollars over 7 years is certainly not nothing. Heck, the US government only spent around 40 trillion in that time frame.
Trying to dismiss it by comparing it to the entire US economy doesn't seem reasonable.
Not quite? That would be a massive understatement! 😂😂
Not sure what that means. Their financial statements, including income tax, are available on their website.
Investor Relations - Apple
And what kind of manufacturing is that?
I’m honestly curious about your argument. Especially regarding the viability of millions of people working in non-assembly line manufacturing, resulting in products that are competitive in the market. My job is partially related to hand-crafted, expensive luxury products (although I’m white collar), but even then I’d still classify it as assembly line.
I was talking about the 20,000 people, from one of the largest companies in the world. Not the money.
Hence comparing to a different large company.
Yes, that was an admission that I was wrong. I know, that is not a common thing to do, but I’m not above that 🙂
As far as I know, they tell you how much they pay in tax, but not how much of that is paid in the US. But I didn’t go through the actual statements, just based on previous articles.Not sure what that means. Their financial statements, including income tax, are available on their website.
Investor Relations - Apple
investor.apple.com
Well, you seemed to be refuting my statement which included the money. Ignoring $780 billion to declare it "literally nothing" seems disingenuous.
How many jobs did that different large company add since 2021? Since the intention is to compare apples to apples.
It's their US financial statements for their US company. It doesn't include income tax payments made by foreign subsidiaries in foreign countries.My point is, 780 billion dollars for creating “only” 20.000 jobs is crazy. Which is why I am arguing that the investment is not about the jobs. If we want to create more jobs (which doesn’t make sense in the first place since US is almost at full capacity, and about to throw out all the Mexicans), it can be done a whole lot cheaper than that.
About zero. But they also didn’t invest 780 billion.How many jobs did that different large company add since 2021? Since the intention is to compare apples to apples.
Sure? It includes revenue in other countries. I can find the articles that discuss this, but have to go so it will have to wait. I have several sources, including Apple, that says they don’t break out what they pay where.