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My point is, 780 billion dollars for creating “only” 20.000 jobs is crazy.
The $780 billion isn't for creating jobs?????

Which is why I am arguing that the investment is not about the jobs.
No one ever said it was.

Yep.

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.
Of course it includes revenue from other countries. But the revenue is booked in the US, so US taxes are paid in the US.

A overly simplified explanation:
Apple Europe makes $100. Apple US charges them $90. On the Apple US financial statements, this is booked as $90 in revenue from Europe. The other $10 is booked and taxed in Europe (Ireland).
 
Of course it includes revenue from other countries. But the revenue is booked in the US, so US taxes are paid in the US.
SOME of the revenue is taxed in US.
A overly simplified explanation:
Apple Europe makes $100. Apple US charges them $90. On the Apple US financial statements, this is booked as $90 in revenue from Europe. The other $10 is booked and taxed in Europe (Ireland).
But it is well known that Apple keeps most of that money overseas. Only the profit is taxed, not the revenue, and most of the profits on overseas revenue is kept overseas. You still don’t know how much Apple paid in US tax. I agree it is not zero.
 
I asked a question. Nothing more.
YOU made a claim.
You asked what part of ops statement is untrue. And I answered the question the most of it is opinion.

Tim Cook acts like a politician.
Opinion

For example, whenever Cook was asked why he didn't let Apple do more manufacturing in the U.S. rather than in China, he gave this excuse that manufacturing in China wasn't just for lower costs, but because of China's greater manufacturing infrastructure and expertise. But no one challenged Cook to explain WHY China has better manufacturing infrastructure and expertise.
Opinion

It's because decades ago, money-hungry
Pejorative opinion

companies like Apple shifted their manufacturing to China, thus creating the environment for China to grow that beneficial environment and workforce.
A fact

In an alternate reality, if companies like Apple had kept their manufacturing in the U.S., then that same awesome manufacturing infrastructure and expertise would have been in the U.S. today, not in China. I hate it when people in the Media, who interview Tim Cook, never press him on that point
Speculation
 
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SOME of the revenue is taxed in US.

But it is well known that Apple keeps most of that money overseas. Only the profit is taxed, not the revenue, and most of the profits on overseas revenue is kept overseas. You still don’t know how much Apple paid in US tax. I agree it is not zero.
You've just said a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with the conversation. Money held overseas is not listed as current revenue on Apple's (the main US company) books.

Again, the revenue in Apple's financial statements does not include money held overseas. All the revenue listed is US revenue (including revenue from repatriated funds from other countries). All of the income tax payments listed are US federal income tax.
 
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.
There are a wide variety of manufacturing methods. My most previous manufacturing environment was batch chemical blending, to create 3D printing materials. The only automated portion of this production was an intermediate asymmetrical tumbling session. The rest was done by hand. This company remains competitive through breakthrough material science and having the best product, not by sheer volume (as an assembly line would indicate). It was honest and rewarding work. To my main argument, I don't understand why people view factory work as less-than.
 
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.
Very fair points.

Although on the poverty example, I think a large chunk of the issue is also this: if I give a dollar to a homeless person (or a million) that person in need gets the full dollar.
If I do it through a government program, that person scrapes barely a few cents, the rest goes to bureaucracy’s pockets.

If we were to fix the homelessness problem, said program would cease to exist, a program that’s syphoning in a lot of money for each dollar collected. There’s no real incentive to fix the problem.
Same thing that happens with most “war on x” problem.

All this to say, the rich would need to give a whole lot more than the numbers you shared. I would be down to try your experiment though, if there was a way to give all that money DIRECTLY to the homeless, where the person in need receives dollar for dollar, out of the taxman’s dirty hands, but in exchange credit it all off from the IRS.
 
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That’s exactly what Trump IS doing, all the time. Time to take the blinders off.
The blinders is failing to realize that a worst case scenario for this country would be for Russia to get in bed with china. Trump keeping it chill with Putin is so important for this country and the world to be frank, and people have no clue. This sit and scream and spew false narratives because they have lost all power and they are losing their minds. Russia even agreed that they should cut spending (though of course china refused). You know the whole “keep your enemies closer” thing, this is the type of real world scenario is derived from. We need to keep Russian from joining forces with china by all means. And there would be lots of incentive for them to do so. Their economy is failing and they have lost so many lives and so much money. Russia is not thriving. They are surviving. It would be so beneficial to Russia AND china to be in bed together. All these people in the news and social medias have no freakin clue what they’re talking about. “Oh my God not trimming the fat off the country and cutting waste from the exceptionally bloated government. Not securing our borders after the last administration let millions and millions flood in, many of which are criminals. God! Please! No! He’s hitler!” It’s ridiculous.
 
Spelling errors and poor grammar in worldwide communication is utterly pathetic for the leader of the United States, and the world DOES pay attention to typos. It suggests he's a moron and isn't detail minded.

You'd feel pretty embarrassed if Tim allowed typos in the documentation that comes with a $2700 MacBook Pro, like it's some $29.95 Amazon import with spelling mistakes.

"Please to insert MagSafe cord cable into slot opening."
By your standards I am happy to see we are in agreement the Trump "dictation issue" is utterly pathetic for a $3.71T market cap company such as Apple. Obviously the engineer who made the change is a moron. And not only that, the change was approved by the highest levels of Apple engineering, who are apparently not detail minded. I'm sure Tim is extremely embarrassed by it. It's like the immature actions of some off the wall Bluesky person.
 
Very fair points.

Although on the poverty example, I think a large chunk of the issue is also this: if I give a dollar to a homeless person (or a million) that person in need gets the full dollar.
If I do it through a government program, that person scrapes barely a few cents, the rest goes to bureaucracy’s pockets.

If we were to fix the homelessness problem, said program would cease to exist, a program that’s syphoning in a lot of money for each dollar collected. There’s no real incentive to fix the problem.
Same thing that happens with most “war on x” problem.

All this to say, the rich would need to give a whole lot more than the numbers you shared. I would be down to try your experiment though, if there was a way to give all that money DIRECTLY to the homeless, where the person in need receives dollar for dollar, out of the taxman’s dirty hands, but in exchange credit it all off from the IRS.
There’s a gaping hole in that argument though. Why does that dollar become cents if we give it to the homeless person, but not if we give it to the billionaire? I’m not asking you or the billionaire to give money to homeless people. I’m asking the government to do it. That should be why they are there. And I don’t buy that it would disappear in bureaucracy, because we are already handing out money. You just need to change the number on the bank transfers.
 
There’s a gaping hole in that argument though. Why does that dollar become cents if we give it to the homeless person, but not if we give it to the billionaire? I’m not asking you or the billionaire to give money to homeless people. I’m asking the government to do it. That should be why they are there. And I don’t buy that it would disappear in bureaucracy, because we are already handing out money. You just need to change the number on the bank transfers.
Because government entities are some of the biggest, bloated and inefficient machines. Albeit a necessary one.

There’s no gaping hole:
- if I give myself a dollar to the person, that person right there has the full dollar, I see it with my eyes.
- if the government collects a tax dollar from you for homelessness programs? Close to zero. The next day they will take $10 from you because it wasn’t enough. Then a $100. While you could be giving $100 directly to the person by then.

The “handing out” of money still needs somewhat of a source, meaning all tax collected and donations.
However I agree that we do indeed magically create more and hand it out, but that’s one of the reasons for food, shelter and basics (and even gold, bitcoin, etc) go up in price.

(Gold for example, doesn’t really go up in price that much, the value of the dollar goes way down… by gold standards home prices haven’t gone up remotely as high if you think about it)

Can’t remember why we got into this discussion, probably me, but we do agree that we have to help the people in need with shelter, finding a job so they can do their work, etc
 
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Because government entities are some of the biggest, bloated and inefficient machines. Albeit a necessary one.

There’s no gaping hole:
- if I give myself a dollar to the person, that person right there has the full dollar, I see it with my eyes.
- if the government collects a tax dollar from you for homelessness programs? Close to zero. The next day they will take $10 from you because it wasn’t enough. Then a $100. While you could be giving $100 directly to the person by then.
It seems so bad when you use completely made up numbers instead of real data.
 
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Because government entities are some of the biggest, bloated and inefficient machines. Albeit a necessary one.

There’s no gaping hole:
- if I give myself a dollar to the person, that person right there has the full dollar, I see it with my eyes.
- if the government collects a tax dollar from you for homelessness programs? Close to zero. The next day they will take $10 from you because it wasn’t enough. Then a $100. While you could be giving $100 directly to the person by then.

The “handing out” of money still needs somewhat of a source, meaning all tax collected and donations.
However I agree that we do indeed magically create more and hand it out, but that’s one of the reasons for food, shelter and basics (and even gold, bitcoin, etc) go up in price.

(Gold for example, doesn’t really go up in price that much, the value of the dollar goes way down… by gold standards home prices haven’t gone up remotely as high if you think about it)

Can’t remember why we got into this discussion, probably me, but we do agree that we have to help the people in need with shelter, finding a job so they can do their work, etc
I don’t want you or me to hand out that dollar (but before someone attacks me, I do do exactly that, every month). I want the billionaires to do it, or in lieu of that, to give them less money in the first place.
 
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Trump keeping it chill with Putin is so important for this country and the world to be frank, and people have no clue.
Maybe many of us do have a clue.

Maybe a great many clues.

Putin is an oligarchal petro-dictator.

He also pushes the ethno-nationalism of the Russian Orthodox Church, to keep his grip on ethnic Russians. (Trump tries to do something analogous but Trump is not able to even imitate religiosity.)

Here's a clue for you: authoritarian over-reach and dictators are bad for humans. It does not matter who you are or where you are. Unless you are part of the inner circle of the dictator then your life is worse off.

Putin is bad. Yes, the CCP is bad too. Ironically, the CCP is bad mostly to their own people, while Putin goes off killing Ukrainians, and support murderers like Assad. It's all back to the old idea of a Russian Empire and being the big player on a global scale.

So if you're trying to sound either clever or wise by championing Trump being a fool for Putin then you're going to fail.

Trump's trade war fantasies is just Trump being a fool. The PRC is not our enemy, but Trump plays on an old anti-Chinese bigotry that still remains in the US. Trump still lies about who pays for tariffs (example, see video today: https://bsky.app/profile/acyn.bsky.social/post/3lj6l2gneoh2e )

Trump's tariff on Chinese goods and cozying up to Putin is not some brilliant master plan. It's just Trump being maliciously stupid.
 
If Apple intends to make massive investments, it could explore establishing educational institutions to develop the skills it wants — an Apple University. Better yet, a "Steve Jobs University".

The only problem is Apple's management is super-#Woke, and the institution, even if it started off as a hard-core engineering school, would quickly become infested with with far-left characters who would take it in a social-engineering direction.
 
2016-2020:



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).
So those tax cuts expired in 2020? :confused:
 
So those tax cuts expired in 2020? :confused:
I’m not a deep expert in American taxes, but either that or new taxes was introduced, since the average effective tax rate went up significantly from 2020 to 2021.

It’s always easier to demand backup of other people’s claims than to provide your own. I think it’s time you provide backup for your claim, that lowering tax rate does not lower tax income.
 
Trump's trade war fantasies is just Trump being a fool. The PRC is not our enemy, but Trump plays on an old anti-Chinese bigotry that still remains in the US. Trump still lies about who pays for tariffs (example, see video today: https://bsky.app/profile/acyn.bsky.social/post/3lj6l2gneoh2e )

Trump's tariff on Chinese goods and cozying up to Putin is not some brilliant master plan. It's just Trump being maliciously stupid.
This.

Trump’s plan clearly is to make the rest of the world pay for the tax breaks he wants to give to US millionaires and billionaires. It won’t work. Not only is he facing retaliatory tariffs from the countries he is putting tariffs on - people (and governments) in Europe are right now boycotting US products on an unprecedented scale. They will literally prefer a product from China over a product from US. And it’s not just Tesla’s, it’s just that those are the most immediately visible. Stores are literally flagging products by American companies so the customers can buy something else. I don’t think US has any idea how impactful this will be to the US economy over the next couple of years. Tariffs is nothing in the face of consumers turning their backs on your product.
 


Apple has announced plans to invest $500 billion in the United States over the next four years, including a significant expansion of its domestic manufacturing and research capabilities, according to Bloomberg. The commitment comes following a recent meeting between CEO Tim Cook and President Donald Trump.

Apple-Logo-Cash-Feature-Yellow.jpg

The tech giant's plans include the construction of a new server manufacturing facility in Houston, where Apple and Foxconn will produce servers for Apple's Private Cloud Compute system. The 250,000-square-foot facility is scheduled to open next year.

Apple will also establish a supplier academy in Michigan, "to train the next generation of US manufacturers," and will expand its data center presence across multiple states, including Arizona, Oregon, Iowa, Nevada, and North Carolina. The company confirmed that chip production has already begun at TSMC's Arizona facility, which is currently manufacturing components for some Apple Watch and iPad models.

The 20,000 new jobs Apple plans to create will focus primarily on research and development, silicon engineering, and artificial intelligence. This matches the company's previous hiring wave, which added 20,000 R&D positions over the last five years.

In Detroit, Apple plans to double down on manufacturing education by opening a dedicated academy to support smaller companies. The tech giant is also doubling its US manufacturing fund to $10 billion.
The announcement is likely to have been strategically timed, given that Trump has threatened to impose an additional 10% tax on Chinese imports. Cook previously succeeded in protecting the iPhone from tariffs during Trump's first term by arguing that such measures would end up benefiting competitors like Samsung.

Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Article Link: Apple Announces $500B US Investment Plan, Adding 20K Jobs
This isn’t the first time Apple has made such promises. In 2018, during the first Trump administration, Apple pledged to create 20,000 new jobs as part of a $350 billion investment in the US economy. Then in 2021, with Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the White House, Apple once more promised 20,000 new jobs as part of a $430 billion investment. Do you begin to detect a pattern here?

 
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