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Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'We Have a Moral Responsibility to Help Grow the Economy'
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He ain't getting my vote. I can't, in good conscious, vote for an Auburn grad.
Rampant commercialism in the US has become counter productive. Companies look at the bottom line instead of the right choice, there isn't much a government can do to stem the tide, red tape can't stop a flood without killing that commercial freedom. This is why Tim sees it as a moral obligation, because they do go to the lowest cost manufacturers with unscrupulous practises. Apple probably siphons more money to China than any other single US company so yeah I kinda agree with him that he's responsible. I'm not sure there is a way back or solution that will work now.
As a veteran and student of history, I respectfully disagree.
We were asked by the world - via the UN - to save Kuwait and neutralize the Iraqi threat to them and Saudi Arabia. We did that quickly, decisively, and with very little loss of life.
The original Gulf War and ensuing balance that was had thru 9/11/2001 was legal, just, and necessary.
Oh yeah... and a LONG time after WWII...
probably less than 1% of the people on this forum agree with that statement
LOL.. good one, living the "american dream" huh? I hope you don't have any female relatives in Saudi Arabia, they would probably wait too long for you to "save" them.
The UN are your parents.
Apple has def bumped the economy a lot in the past 30 years... I got the receipts to help prove it
No, you bumped the economy (thank you!). You and the rest of us, consumers. We need to stop looking at corporations as being a force for social good. It's quite the opposite. They have only on fiduciary duty and it's not to you, the environment or the government. It's to shareholders. That's it.
You may be right on the automation, and if anyone can do it, it is Apple. Then again, Chinese companies are already investing very heavily in state of the art automation. IIRC Foxcon replaced 60,000 staff with robots. Would further automation really offset the other costs increases?
As for your double the price/hotcakes bet? I'll take that bet! Apple is already losing share to the likes of Huawei who produces very nice and very affordable phones. If you doubled the price, then there would be twice the exodus to other brands; me among them.
No argument there. It isn't just a single company that is required though. You have to have the entire support infrastructure set up. I'm not convinced that exists in North America, and it is tricky to compete against China where they've spent decades building up very efficient processes and plants.
To the xenophobia? To the protectionism? To the anti-free trade? To the attack on health care and human rights? To the run away nationalism? To the withdraw from the Paris agreement? To the scandal after scandal? With all respect, if you are paying attention it's starting to feel that "Made In America" is associated with the above.
Why wouldn't it? And if the factories are automated why would you not want those automated factories in the United States?
Double the price and they'd be making a lot more money. So you'd lose some customers with that, of course, but you'd just make more money and probably offset the loses. Either way, if there is anything I'm not worried about, it's how Apple is pricing their products.
I don't disagree. We've lost a lot of that process and infrastructure, and I think we need to bring it back.
To the xenophobia? To the protectionism? To the anti-free trade? To the attack on health care and human rights? To the run away nationalism? To the withdraw from the Paris agreement? To the scandal after scandal? With all respect, if you are paying attention it's starting to feel that "Made In America" is associated with the above.
As has been always said to me during my travels throughout the world: "We love the American people, even if your government sucks".
What human rights attack are you referring to? And even as a staunch supporter of UHC I strongly oppose ObamaCare and think should be dismantled.
This is exactly what businesses do, they cater to the consumer. By providing the goods and services that we demand they grow the economy.
Cook has under two years to get Apple to a place that will weather the next economic downtown. It is his moral responsibility to us, his employees, and his investors to create the growth needed to sustain Apple. I see nothing wrong with this statement.
Cook has under two years to get Apple to a place that will weather the next economic downtown. It is his moral responsibility to us, his employees, and his investors to create the growth needed to sustain Apple. I see nothing wrong with this statement.
This fallacy is why the US is in so much trouble.
First, why do you think the iPhone would cost more? Apple is currently charging a price that maximizes their total profit off the iPhone, which is their obligation to their shareholders. They can't raise the price to compensate for making it in the US. If they had room to raise the price, they'd already have raise it. All we're talking about here is cutting into Apple's margins.
Now second, and you have to take this in the context that I was replying to Tim Cook's comment on his moral responsibility, Apple currently has the largest profit and margin in the industry by far. According to Tim Cook's own words in this article, Apple has a moral responsibility to eat into those margins for the good of the economy.
Third, your estimate about the increased costs is much too high. Foxconn spends about $5-10 in labor on each iPhone. If you're paying American factory workers $25/hour instead of Chinese workers $5/hour, we're adding at most $45 in labor cost to an iPhone. Eating that much margin would be a small price to pay for the effect it will have on the US economy, which is Apple's moral responsibility according to Tim.
Forth, Apple will get huge incentives from the state and federal government to move production to the US. If Foxconn got $300 million to build a plant here (money that will take the state more than 20 years to break even on in the best case), Apple can certainly get a sweet deal to move some production here too. Factoring that in, Apple won't even be out of pocket for the extra labor costs. Especially if they can negotiate terms to repatriate the money to build the factory without paying tax on it which is very likly.
Fifth, your basic premise that nobody wants to pay more for made in USA is both not true, and the reason the US is falling apart and the reason Trump was elected. $100 spent on a Chinese product is $100 lost forever from the US. $100 spent on an American made product will circulate the economy boosting it many times the original $100. *Some* people are willing to pay for that, you just give them no choice because US industry has pushed everything offshore across many markets.
Apple saying they have a moral responsibility is one of the biggest hypocritical statements any CEO has said in decades while the company hoards $250 billion in profits overseas and keeps it out of the US economy indefinitely.
There's nothing wrong with making illegal the various business practices which destroy competition, such as monopolies and collusion, but our government today has its greedy hands in every industry now, and it makes doing business a lot harder than it has to be. At this point, there'd be more competition if the government would pull back a bit. They won't, because that would mean less power, and less power means less potential for greater payouts. It's all about money, in the end.
People always talk about 1984 as the ultimate dystopian novel. The reality is that 1984 was a British book and the British got 1984 as their reality.
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley was an American book and that is the reality of modern America.
A big part of the problem is that with the rampant commercialism came the love for all things disposable. People *want* their TV/smartphone/laptop/appliances/etc to break in 3 years because then they get the latest shiny replacement. What is so wrong with paying $200 more for a smartphone made in the US if your expectation was to have something great and up to date for 5 years? It's better for the environment, better for the economy, but cuts into corporate profits.
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Your view is brilliant. The ignorant masses should all get jobs at subsistence wages so they can labour their whole lives to buy cheap trashy goods to enrich the elite. We certainly shouldn't have fair markets to give everyone an equal shot.
Yes, the government should not be allowed to meddle in the economy. First thing they should do is throw away antitrust legislation. If a company is big enough to dominate a market, they deserve the right to use techniques like dumping and taking over the retail channels to destroy competition.
Interest rates should always be 0. Raising them is a technique the government uses to moderate the pace of the economy and control inflation, but 0 interest will make it easy for companies to finance their plans and easier to get customers to use consumer debt to buy more of their stuff. Sure we'll have major 5+ year recessions every 10-15 years as we did before modern fiscal policy was invented, but the economy will take care of itself in the end and the recessions are just opportunities for "smart" businesspeople.
And how dare they make insider trading illegal? If I'm great enough to become a senior exec at a publicly traded company I deserve to profit without limit from my status at the expense of the ignorant masses just trying to scrape together enough of a 401(k) to retire. If they want to retire some day they should go start their own company...expect oops with no antitrust laws we'll crush them like a bug before they get to market.
What you're proposing makes the Indian Caste system look absolutely progressive and fair to the lower castes. At least they have some hope of improving their lot in life. You want to make it impossible for anyone who's not already rich to ever have money.
See, that's the thing about Silicon Valley and high tech. They've got a moral responsibility - to create CODING jobs. Yeah, get Swift into the classrooms...so everyone can code more iOS apps to increase the Apple monopoly even more.
A problem with the US is that not everybody can work high-tech jobs. Millions are factory workers, farmers, coal miners, construction workers, etc. A hell of a lot of blue collar.
If Zuck or Cook or any billionaire techie wants to be President they have to realize that this country is not filled with Cal grad millennials. You can't just sweep them under the rug and make a statement like "Find a different job".
See, when you're world is bounded by San Francisco and San Jose it's easy to be blind to the real problems.
A problem with the US is that not everybody can work high-tech jobs. Millions are factory workers, farmers, coal miners, construction workers, etc. A hell of a lot of blue collar.
If Zuck or Cook or any billionaire techie wants to be President they have to realize that this country is not filled with Cal grad millennials. You can't just sweep them under the rug and make a statement like "Find a different job".
See, when you're world is bounded by San Francisco and San Jose it's easy to be blind to the real problems.
Yep. You can't be the richest capitalistic company in history and then go on about global warming, the environment, and saving the whales. It's all so endearing - as long as it doesn't interfere with cranking out a billion iPhones, building a leviathan spaceship (what does all that construction do to the environment?) or hiding billions in Ireland.
Zuck and Cook should just shut up. It's hard to hear what they're saying anyway, with all that loud machinery printing money.
You completely misunderstood everything I said, and I can hardly find a thing in your post that I agree with. This is a straw man argument in steroids. There's no point in even picking apart your post. I'll let you try again.
"Apple has a moral responsibility to help grow the economy, unless it directly conflicts with our business profit projections, then, the US economy can **** off"...
but Tim would get in trouble if he actually said the truth
"Apple has a moral responsibility to help grow the economy, unless it directly conflicts with our business profit projections, then, the US economy can **** off"...
but Tim would get in trouble if he actually said the truth
You're right. But then why does he feel so compelled to lie? He could just keep his mouth shut about the subject like every other major CEO.
Money. it's going to always come down to money. Tim Cook's greatest strength is bean counting and supply management.
I think it's been very telling that, over the last few weeks, many of the executives and many of Trumps groups have pulled out and stopped working with Trump in opposition. Yet the one name that hasn't been on any of those lists of people taking moral highground has been Tim Cook.
Foxconn announced the factory in the US (despite it being a money sink). I guarantee that it's going to be some form of kick-back to Cook (Apple will likely get some form of exclusive access to resourcing there).
I think Tim is trying to play big player in politics and he's walking a tight rope between his "progressive image" and his "show me the money" image. And when push comes to shove, he's going where the money is
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