For the most part, I feel this is the correct take.
What bothers me most is Apple’s (Cook’s, really) stance on pushing equity and inclusivity, yet continuing to kowtow to authoritarian regimes. It’s the hypocrisy that’s most souring, IMO.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook 'Secretly' Signed $275 Billion Deal With China in 2016
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What bothers me most is Apple’s (Cook’s, really) stance on pushing equity and inclusivity, yet continuing to kowtow to authoritarian regimes. It’s the hypocrisy that’s most souring, IMO.
Agreed.
however Cook's 'oportunistic propaganda' wouldn't have any need to be done, unless it's for profits and it's been seemingly working for a few years now - even highlighted in analysts commentary when interviewed abroad. So there is some monetary usefulness here - heck for a while it was BlackBerry/ahem RIM singing that song for a while before Apple began over a decade ago.
wait what? in what way can you provide that Cook was a traitor to his nation: USA?
Hmmmm, 2016 the report says the 'secret' deal was made. This would have been during the 2016 US Presidental Elections. Two presidental candidates who have a disliking of China which could mean pressure put on China to improve things by the one who eventually wins the election. Tim Cook decides he is not going to take any chances and thus gets a deal signed before a new president is elected. Hell, no one is going to notice what Tim Cook is doing due to the majority of the country focusing in on the election. The new president and his office start to put political pressure on China to improve it's human rights, pressure which could hurt the countries economy whilst unbeknown to them, one of their own countries top companies has been working with China on how to improve it's economy, thereby undermining what the US government has been doing.
If the alleged secret agreement does actually exist then Apple could find itself in a lot of trouble.
If the alleged secret agreement does actually exist then Apple could find itself in a lot of trouble.
'secret' means publicly secret. The board was absolutely apprised of and approved of the deal. To imagine a quarter trillion dollar deal would be made without their knowledge is wild.
Here is my issue: $275B is likely nowhere near what 5 years of tax bills would be in the US and would have gone incredibly far here in the US.
Anyone taking shot the market size without considering long term realities is fooling themselves.
Anyone taking shot the market size without considering long term realities is fooling themselves.
My thought is this deal was necessary to expand to the Chinese market. That absolutely includes keeping a manufacturing base there.
It's pretty simple... Apple just about topped out their market cap at this point, China is the market they needed to move it upward.
There are a lot of entities in a similar space to Apple. Without going into specifics, major professional sports leagues for starters. The ultimate issue is China is an extremely large and fiscally expanding market.
Tim Cook and consequently Apple had a choice to do right by shareholders... or not. Let's extrapolate outward because it's far too easy to criticize from afar - everyone who has opined their disdain in this thread, are you boycotting Apple goods moving forward? Probably not.
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Lots to unpack here.
Illegal combatants have ZERO protections under international law. That's in place for a REASON. That and the alternative to nuking Japan to bring a swift end to the war was a ground invasion of a country where children were being taught to charge soldiers with sharpened sticks. There would BE no Japan if that had been required. Our bases around the world are in place in accordance with treaty agreements with the host country.
Now we know why Tim and apple are all in with biden and the Democrats and against President Trump.
China.
China.
Transferring technology to Communist China. Moving upwardly mobile STEM jobs to China, which also causes wage suppression in the USA. BTW, wage suppression has the same effect as price controls, which ends up lowering supply. This is one of many causes of STEM labor shortages. Cook needs to go.
Here we go.
respectfully I disagree that ANY of what you stated leads to being a 'traitor' for any company.
Early 80's the car manufacturing industry was all up in arms (especially in the USA) that jobs would goto machines and fund another <insert whatever country ills you at this time here> economy.
Q: guess what happened?
A: some labour reps lost their jobs due to initial downsizing. Those with some inquisitive minds engaged their management, received training to operate/program/maintain such robots/circuitry etc. Many, many are STILL employed today:
Y? People still buy vehicles, demand is still there if not increased the last few years.
Early 2000's employees in I.T. (programming, app design etc, and especially technical support) went overseas mostly to India. HUGE uproar of STEM.
Q: guess what happened?
A: initially yes many jobs were lost in N.America - the cries especially came from the USA.
The end result:
1. a particular snr programmer in the USA (sorry was a long time ago so I don't have the news article) noticed his colleagues lost their jobs. His work load and deadlines increased and became more pressing. In a short span this programmer realized loss of personal life balance. He placed an add within that country, a young budding programmer answered. He outsourced specific parts of his coding role - NEVER supplying that young coder the full app design/purpose/company he worked for. HE, the programmer gained his personal life balance back! And helped a young person earn desperately needed money for his family. End result USA coder got raises, paid more, then when jobs opened again and saw old colleagues return the work load increased, he paid for flight to interview this coder - job was offered and accepted and that young coder now earns a lot more future goals can be made and achieved - a better life. THAT is the USA promise!!
EDIT: Here is a similar situation posted: Thu 17 Jan 2013 14.30 GMT
Programmer Bob who outsourced his job was a model modern employee | Steven Poole
Steven Poole: A star programmer fired for outsourcing his own job has learned a harsh lesson: exploitation is a job for employers, not staff
2. Many companies that outsourced IT Support over to India (Adobe and others, mostly sub-contracted out via Accenture - a major player), realized a few things:
a) N/American customers were extremely frustrated (dare I say huge arrogance as well as no patience) for people with strong accents or mis-using idioms/phrases that completely confused or relayed an inaccurate message/information that compounded communication or resolution. MANY jobs were pulled back locally.
OF these returning jobs, many within India were NOT affected. More training was needed, acquired, implemented and many support lines now have 24/7 support.
b) new jobs opened up at higher levels, graduates would take these.
c) support reps and coders within India - with more experience/training/knowledge/skills would apply and move to the USA with a visa or eventually getting citizenship.
Watch this video created by students in early 2000's regarding jobs going overseas. its intelligent yet simple and hilarious. The very end ... cannot wait until we reach support jobs going to 'Africa' because well people here recognize their hate for a people in an entire continent so in their minds countries there don't matter. like their eyes do, their minds this "they all look the same". I can bet when this occurs the hatred and uproar would be so palatable you could eat a donut out of it in the air (looney tunes style).
HOW/WHY?
- outsourcing jobs (due to lower costs / lack of those interested) is ok. it's a fact of the world and within just about every country has been done internally within their own nation for decades. Get use to this. It's time to adapt, learn and educate and apply that knowledge to get better ahead.
Wage suppression:
This can be affected by many factors WITH or WITHOUT outsourcing jobs:
- layoffs, company's merging/reverse-merging, recessions (many of which were a precursor to timelines I've listed above), and many more. There is no direct correlation to your statement that is caused by jobs or STEM jobs going overseas.
Wage suppression has no affect on consumer pricing. Consumer pricing is supply and demand and inflation - period! In any country in Africa, S.America or even in the USA the price for Milk, Meat, bread, vegetables etc have steadily increased over the last 50yrs and much much longer REGARDLESS of the medium income of residents in any country. There is MORE demand, and populations have grown exponentially in every country on earth (same Japan) in 50 yrs and the costs of producing produce, meats etc hasn't relatively exponentially increased (the source materials or labour have increased due to inflation NOT because the sources needed have increased to create them; hope this makes sense). BUT food and consumer goods have increased significantly.
ex: standard back of Hostess chips back in 1984 cost $0.25 CAN. Today its over a dollar. Is the cost of the seasoning, or what is needed to create fertilizer etc actually gotten more expensive to create? not really. The COST of sourcing them has (inflation) and thus the labour cost of supplies storage shipping has increased passed down to the end user.
So again ... nothing you stated is treasonous. Look up what the definition means and is considered in the USA before slinging that kind of hate. You dislike a person cool. your reasons are your own. cool (right or wrong they're yours and your feelings). But please don't lessen your ideals/thoughts by incorrectly placing incorrect meaning to them.
Cheers and feel better.
I highly recommend everyone listen to this episode
this blew my mind and shocked me, China is not the world's friend and people need to wake up
this blew my mind and shocked me, China is not the world's friend and people need to wake up
The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future
Blocked from facts and truth, under constant surveillance, surrounded by a hostile alien police force: Xinjiang’s Uyghur population has become cursed, oppressed, outcast. Most citizens cannot discern between enemy and friend. Social trust has been destroyed systematically. Friends betray each...
www.amazon.com
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
Here we go.
respectfully I disagree that ANY of what you stated leads to being a 'traitor' for any company.
Early 80's the car manufacturing industry was all up in arms (especially in the USA) that jobs would goto machines and fund another <insert whatever country ills you at this time here> economy.
Q: guess what happened?
A: some labour reps lost their jobs due to initial downsizing. Those with some inquisitive minds engaged their management, received training to operate/program/maintain such robots/circuitry etc. Many, many are STILL employed today:
Y? People still buy vehicles, demand is still there if not increased the last few years.
Early 2000's employees in I.T. (programming, app design etc, and especially technical support) went overseas mostly to India. HUGE uproar of STEM.
Q: guess what happened?
A: initially yes many jobs were lost in N.America - the cries especially came from the USA.
The end result:
1. a particular snr programmer in the USA (sorry was a long time ago so I don't have the news article) noticed his colleagues lost their jobs. His work load and deadlines increased and became more pressing. In a short span this programmer realized loss of personal life balance. He placed an add within that country, a young budding programmer answered. He outsourced specific parts of his coding role - NEVER supplying that young coder the full app design/purpose/company he worked for. HE, the programmer gained his personal life balance back! And helped a young person earn desperately needed money for his family. End result USA coder got raises, paid more, then when jobs opened again and saw old colleagues return the work load increased, he paid for flight to interview this coder - job was offered and accepted and that young coder now earns a lot more future goals can be made and achieved - a better life. THAT is the USA promise!!
EDIT: Here is a similar situation posted: Thu 17 Jan 2013 14.30 GMT
Programmer Bob who outsourced his job was a model modern employee | Steven Poole
Steven Poole: A star programmer fired for outsourcing his own job has learned a harsh lesson: exploitation is a job for employers, not staffwww.theguardian.com
2. Many companies that outsourced IT Support over to India (Adobe and others, mostly sub-contracted out via Accenture - a major player), realized a few things:
a) N/American customers were extremely frustrated (dare I say huge arrogance as well as no patience) for people with strong accents or mis-using idioms/phrases that completely confused or relayed an inaccurate message/information that compounded communication or resolution. MANY jobs were pulled back locally.
OF these returning jobs, many within India were NOT affected. More training was needed, acquired, implemented and many support lines now have 24/7 support.
b) new jobs opened up at higher levels, graduates would take these.
c) support reps and coders within India - with more experience/training/knowledge/skills would apply and move to the USA with a visa or eventually getting citizenship.
Watch this video created by students in early 2000's regarding jobs going overseas. its intelligent yet simple and hilarious. The very end ... cannot wait until we reach support jobs going to 'Africa' because well people here recognize their hate for a people in an entire continent so in their minds countries there don't matter. like their eyes do, their minds this "they all look the same". I can bet when this occurs the hatred and uproar would be so palatable you could eat a donut out of it in the air (looney tunes style).
HOW/WHY?
- outsourcing jobs (due to lower costs / lack of those interested) is ok. it's a fact of the world and within just about every country has been done internally within their own nation for decades. Get use to this. It's time to adapt, learn and educate and apply that knowledge to get better ahead.
Wage suppression:
This can be affected by many factors WITH or WITHOUT outsourcing jobs:
- layoffs, company's merging/reverse-merging, recessions (many of which were a precursor to timelines I've listed above), and many more. There is no direct correlation to your statement that is caused by jobs or STEM jobs going overseas.
Wage suppression has no affect on consumer pricing. Consumer pricing is supply and demand and inflation - period! In any country in Africa, S.America or even in the USA the price for Milk, Meat, bread, vegetables etc have steadily increased over the last 50yrs and much much longer REGARDLESS of the medium income of residents in any country. There is MORE demand, and populations have grown exponentially in every country on earth (same Japan) in 50 yrs and the costs of producing produce, meats etc hasn't relatively exponentially increased (the source materials or labour have increased due to inflation NOT because the sources needed have increased to create them; hope this makes sense). BUT food and consumer goods have increased significantly.
ex: standard back of Hostess chips back in 1984 cost $0.25 CAN. Today its over a dollar. Is the cost of the seasoning, or what is needed to create fertilizer etc actually gotten more expensive to create? not really. The COST of sourcing them has (inflation) and thus the labour cost of supplies storage shipping has increased passed down to the end user.
So again ... nothing you stated is treasonous. Look up what the definition means and is considered in the USA before slinging that kind of hate. You dislike a person cool. your reasons are your own. cool (right or wrong they're yours and your feelings). But please don't lessen your ideals/thoughts by incorrectly placing incorrect meaning to them.
Cheers and feel better.
I agree with you that treason isn’t at play here. That is a bunch of hyperbole.
I know you weren’t replying to me, but I don’t fully agree with you free trade points…
The auto industry is a bad one to use in a Free Trade context as they successfully lobbied Congress for tariffs on imported autos into the US. The tarrifs are fairly steep, but this isn’t unusual in the auto sector as China and others do the same. These tarrifs are the reason why you see things such as Toyota being the largest car maker in America (and I mean manufacturing cars in America not sales). It is cheaper to build a factory in the US using non-unionized labor than it is to pay the import tariffs. In that vein, the push against free trade has helped save American manufacturing jobs.
Additionally, free trade is only in the best interest of everyone when it is even trade. You can have countries like China who practice currency manipulation which allows them to artificially lower the cost of labor in China relative to US labor making the trade anything other than free and fair. China also will heavily subsidize companies in various industries to enable them to flood the market with goods to kill off foreign competition. With the government subsidies the companies are able to sell the items below costs into foreign markets and can raise prices once they’ve killed foreign competition. You also have the lack of labor and environmental standards that can also unfairly make China a cheaper place to produce your item.
It reminds me of one of the things the NY Times cited as a reason Apple wasn’t bringing manfuacturing back to the US for the iPhone. In China the factory workers sleep in company provided dorms so when Apple decides they want to increase production they can just go wake them up from their sleep and put them back to work. That really helps apple to be “just in time”, but it isn’t a labor standard anyone should be living under China, America, or anywhere. It also isn’t a low American should shift to in an effort to “compete”.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/technology/iphones-apple-china-made.html
We’ll also disagree that wage suppression has no influence on consumer pricing. You’re correct that the intersection of supply and demand will give you the equilibrium price. In perfect competition the consumer should pay essentially nothing above costs for an item because in a fully competitive market it will move naturally toward the equilibrium price. That’s good in economics class, but the real world is a lot less clean and a lot murkier. Apple has a very handy price premium on iPhones even though they sell a smartphone in a competitive landscape. Burger King charges more than McDonald’s even though both are selling you the same classic hamburger in pretty much interchangeable settings. Not to forget the classic of Coke versus Pepsi...
Wage suppression in international trade will make one countries labor appear artificially cheap relative to another countries labor. It will in turn kill off the more expensive countries labor as the inefficient producer is pushed out. This can lead to a less competitive landscape which will result in higher prices for consumers as less competitive markets always push prices higher for consumers.
I take the time and effort to craft a well-reasoned argument to anything that challenges my opinion, in the very least, as a mark of respect to the people I am responding to. I wish more would.
FYI I wasn’t talking anything about free trade, simply how paradigm shifts play out vs whiners that spread FUD vs adapting.
Not you and you have valid points that are relevant not trying to ignore them so it’s helpful.
Here we go.
respectfully I disagree that ANY of what you stated leads to being a 'traitor' for any company.
Early 80's the car manufacturing industry was all up in arms (especially in the USA) that jobs would goto machines and fund another <insert whatever country ills you at this time here> economy.
Q: guess what happened?
A: some labour reps lost their jobs due to initial downsizing. Those with some inquisitive minds engaged their management, received training to operate/program/maintain such robots/circuitry etc. Many, many are STILL employed today:
Y? People still buy vehicles, demand is still there if not increased the last few years.
Early 2000's employees in I.T. (programming, app design etc, and especially technical support) went overseas mostly to India. HUGE uproar of STEM.
Q: guess what happened?
A: initially yes many jobs were lost in N.America - the cries especially came from the USA.
The end result:
1. a particular snr programmer in the USA (sorry was a long time ago so I don't have the news article) noticed his colleagues lost their jobs. His work load and deadlines increased and became more pressing. In a short span this programmer realized loss of personal life balance. He placed an add within that country, a young budding programmer answered. He outsourced specific parts of his coding role - NEVER supplying that young coder the full app design/purpose/company he worked for. HE, the programmer gained his personal life balance back! And helped a young person earn desperately needed money for his family. End result USA coder got raises, paid more, then when jobs opened again and saw old colleagues return the work load increased, he paid for flight to interview this coder - job was offered and accepted and that young coder now earns a lot more future goals can be made and achieved - a better life. THAT is the USA promise!!
EDIT: Here is a similar situation posted: Thu 17 Jan 2013 14.30 GMT
Programmer Bob who outsourced his job was a model modern employee | Steven Poole
Steven Poole: A star programmer fired for outsourcing his own job has learned a harsh lesson: exploitation is a job for employers, not staff
2. Many companies that outsourced IT Support over to India (Adobe and others, mostly sub-contracted out via Accenture - a major player), realized a few things:
a) N/American customers were extremely frustrated (dare I say huge arrogance as well as no patience) for people with strong accents or mis-using idioms/phrases that completely confused or relayed an inaccurate message/information that compounded communication or resolution. MANY jobs were pulled back locally.
OF these returning jobs, many within India were NOT affected. More training was needed, acquired, implemented and many support lines now have 24/7 support.
b) new jobs opened up at higher levels, graduates would take these.
c) support reps and coders within India - with more experience/training/knowledge/skills would apply and move to the USA with a visa or eventually getting citizenship.
Watch this video created by students in early 2000's regarding jobs going overseas. its intelligent yet simple and hilarious. The very end ... cannot wait until we reach support jobs going to 'Africa' because well people here recognize their hate for a people in an entire continent so in their minds countries there don't matter. like their eyes do, their minds this "they all look the same". I can bet when this occurs the hatred and uproar would be so palatable you could eat a donut out of it in the air (looney tunes style).
HOW/WHY?
- outsourcing jobs (due to lower costs / lack of those interested) is ok. it's a fact of the world and within just about every country has been done internally within their own nation for decades. Get use to this. It's time to adapt, learn and educate and apply that knowledge to get better ahead.
Wage suppression:
This can be affected by many factors WITH or WITHOUT outsourcing jobs:
- layoffs, company's merging/reverse-merging, recessions (many of which were a precursor to timelines I've listed above), and many more. There is no direct correlation to your statement that is caused by jobs or STEM jobs going overseas.
Wage suppression has no affect on consumer pricing. Consumer pricing is supply and demand and inflation - period! In any country in Africa, S.America or even in the USA the price for Milk, Meat, bread, vegetables etc have steadily increased over the last 50yrs and much much longer REGARDLESS of the medium income of residents in any country. There is MORE demand, and populations have grown exponentially in every country on earth (same Japan) in 50 yrs and the costs of producing produce, meats etc hasn't relatively exponentially increased (the source materials or labour have increased due to inflation NOT because the sources needed have increased to create them; hope this makes sense). BUT food and consumer goods have increased significantly.
ex: standard back of Hostess chips back in 1984 cost $0.25 CAN. Today its over a dollar. Is the cost of the seasoning, or what is needed to create fertilizer etc actually gotten more expensive to create? not really. The COST of sourcing them has (inflation) and thus the labour cost of supplies storage shipping has increased passed down to the end user.
So again ... nothing you stated is treasonous. Look up what the definition means and is considered in the USA before slinging that kind of hate. You dislike a person cool. your reasons are your own. cool (right or wrong they're yours and your feelings). But please don't lessen your ideals/thoughts by incorrectly placing incorrect meaning to them.
Cheers and feel better.
Comparing outsourcing 1980's auto manufacturing to high skilled engineering fields is not valid. You don't need a graduate degree to work on an auto assembly line. Retraining is much less costly. I constantly see software engineers with decades of experience and advanced degrees get turned down for a job because they don't have 2 years of experience with whatever the "flavor of the day" programming language was "required experience" for the job. An experienced software engineer can become proficient in any language in a very short period of time, so don't blather on about needing to be "eager to retrain" - such nonsense just proves ignorance. A Computer Science degree is in Computer Science, not any specific programming language. No one gets a Phd in Java. Employers pass over experienced candidates because they don't want them, even if the candidate is willing to work for less salary (which BTW is a valid market force).
Your paragraphs about wage suppression related to consumer commodity pricing also does not apply to ANY STEM field. Citing an example of a Hostess brand food snack in comparison to non-commodity industries is not a valid comparison.
There are many problems with your "Early 2000's employees in I.T. ..." logic. I'll only address a few:
Lumping "technical support" into ALL of "I.T." is an invalid grouping. The "Tech" industry has evolved in the last 25 years, which has caused large numbers of support positions to transition toward being lower skilled. Again this lowers retraining costs during job disruption. "I.T." support positions do NOT require graduate degrees.
You list 2 numbered examples as "The end result" of outsourcing. #1 is some vague reference to a "programmer" that you cannot provide a reference for, but your #2 example actually disproves your point because "Bob" was fired for outsourcing his FTE job to foreign company. So you end up advocating a strategy that gets people fired! You could not do a better job making a counter argument for the point you were trying to make!
And again, lumping "programming, Tech support, design" into a single "I.T." category demonstrates the pinnacle of ignorance. Some software design positions require a Phd degree. Do you really think a highly specialized software designer working on 3D medical imaging software is in the same category as a tech support person answering phones in India? Sounds like it.
Also your logic would suggest that firing a Phd with 20 years of experience writing 3D medical imaging software is a good idea if a company decided the software should be rewritten in a different language. If you think this example is hyperbole you are wrong. I've seen similar cases happen when a company was lured into foreign outsourcing with the false claim a new "modern" language somehow eliminated "complexity". In all cases, experienced employees were NOT even given the opportunity to simply learn the new language. Luckily, all those companies failed after making such mistakes.
Cook is a traitor because his larger goal is to transfer the means of wealth creation outside of the USA. Upwardly mobile STEM positions used to be the largest vehicles for wealth creation in this country. Now they are seen as dead end jobs because people just end up being pushed out of their industry before they even hit 40.
Cook and his ilk are following a modified strategy from the socialist playbook. Socialism focused on the "means of production", but today it has evolved to attack the means of wealth creation. BTW, production was already moved to China, so the strategy evolved to continue the destruction of the USA.
I bring up socialism because even your commodity paragraphs are filed with errors that form the underpinnings of socialism. Wage suppression is a form of price controls. Price controls cause market shortages. This is a basic market principle that has been ignored, and now it is getting worse.
Communist China has been at war with the USA for decades, and thanks to people like Cook China is winning. Cook is firmly on the side of China, so he is an enemy of the USA.
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Must be true of every other CEO that is doing the same thing then? Correct?