French Union Calls for Apple Retail Store Employee Strike Coinciding with iPhone 5 Launch

[Ping Guo]

This is what we are heading for in America. Soon we will be "Euro America".
Obama wants us to be more like Europe. He's a really cool guy and really cares about the little people, so lets keep him in office for another 4 years. More unions, more big government bureaucracies. Higher debt and higher taxes. I can hardly wait. Healthcare that is run by the government with the efficiency and style of your local Dept. of Motor Vehicles. This will be good for everyone. Romney is not much better either, at least he is for slightly smaller government. Not much smaller though. Romney is pretending to be a conservative and Obama is pretending to be a moderate. Romney is actually a moderate and Obama is actually far left. What we need is a viable third party candidate who is financially conservative but liberal on social issues. Sorry for the rant. I got carried away.

Keep parroting the MSM script... the left-right dichotomy is a sham. Obama is the opposite of a socialist. A socialist wants to finance public works and social benefits with private money. Obama wants to bail out private speculators (his banking buddies) with public money by debt monetization, counterfeiting by the Federal Reserve and pumping trillions of funny money in to the economy to buy our own debt that the rest of the world no longer wants.

I agree with you that Obama and Romney are practically the same, both stooges for globalists and bankers.

 

[GadgetDon]

No, the benefits I receive today are from doing excellent work and therefore fetching a high market value for my services. I didn't form a mob with my fellow employees to threaten my benefits out of my employer. I EARNED them. Imagine that!

Unions changed the expectation between employer and employee. There's no doubt that unions are a big part of the reason we stopped child employment, the five day 40 hour workweek is the norm (including breaks for lunch). (I disagree that they are the sole reason, I think the changing economy from the Industrial Revolution was also a big part of the reason. But there's no doubt that unions set that stage.)

Did you have a union set your particular set of benefits? Maybe not. But you've benefited from the big job the unions did. The Union movement changed the expectations and the work environment for the benefit, even those who have never worked a union job in their lives.

Now that's not the same as to say that unions (a) are equally necessary today or (b) are providing the same positive influence in our society. The grand old heroes of the union movement were men on the line , unions were to solve the problems people saw in the workplace. I'd trust unions more if the top guys spent most of their time as working stiffs, directly connected to what's going on. Instead, at some point, union leaders became kingmakers in politics, with a far wider agenda than workplace issues.

 

[Scott66]

Dear Americans ridiculing the 13th month of pay,

Do you get a bonus at the end of the year? Yes? Well that's your 13th month of pay.

Love and kisses,

Socialist Europe.

What is this bonus you speak of? There is no labour law saying we get bonuses. Many corporations do not give bonuses and the ones that do usually give it based on an individuals performance. They have to earn the bonus.

 

[MacDav]

Keep parroting the MSM script... the left-right dichotomy is a sham. Obama is the opposite of a socialist. A socialist wants to finance public works and social benefits with private money. Obama wants to bail out private speculators (his banking buddies) with public money by debt monetization, counterfeiting by the Federal Reserve and pumping trillions of funny money in to the economy to buy our own debt that the rest of the world no longer wants.

I agree with you that Obama and Romney are practically the same, both stooges for globalists and bankers.

Let me guess... A Ron Paul supporter? Or a Bilderberg conspiracy theorist? Or both? I agree that quantitative easing by the Fed is a bad thing, but then so does Romney. He has said so many times. Of course you believe he is lying, right?

 

[lilo777]

I can explain the difference.

Someone who receives an "entitlement" is enjoying a resource or benefit that they did not actually earn. Instead, it was taken from someone else by force, and given to them.

Someone like Tim Cook, on the other hand, is compensated based on his market value. The reason he can fetch $300M+ is because he has managed Apple so that it has increased its market value by 140 BILLION since he took his current position. You aren't worth 300M because you can't do Tim Cook's job. He doesn't make that money just for showing up. He makes it for getting big results. If Apple does not compensate him sufficiently (his market value), they would risk losing him to another company.

For all the talk I hear about evil overpaid corporate executives, I have never once heard an accusation that professional athletes or entertainers are greedy, corrupt, and overpaid, even though their contracts work the exact same way, and are often in excess of tens of millions of dollars. Get over the pathetic jealousy you have towards these individuals, as well as that self-destructive sense of entitlement. You deserve what you earn. Nothing more.

Who exactly took something "by force"? You need to read Karl Marx a little to understand how re-distribution works. Do you seriously believe that Tom Cook is that smart? I am not sure that intellect-wise he would even make it into 1% in this country let alone 0.00001% as he did with his income. It's not like he either designed or manufactured all those iPhones. Yet the society is built in such a manner that it needs 100 CEOs and 30 million janitors. Imagine a situation where all 300 million Americans are equally smart and work equally hard. Would they all be CEOs? Nope. There would still be 100 CEOs and 30 million janitors. And Tim Cook (and especially some "investors" on Wall Street) are earning as much as they do only thanks to redistribution (some call it "expropriation"). We can live with this but the society will stay stable only if those who work can make a decent living. Society has to make sure the distribution of wealth is reasonably equitable. It is a society/state that makes it possible for Tim Cook to earn this much in a first place. It's easy to prove. Let's send Tim (or Trump or whoever) to Somalia and let them apply his skills. How much do you think he will make over their? I guess the right question would be how long would he make it there.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

I'm sure the Australians would beg to differ. Possibly even the Chinese but a lot of people don't seem to include them in WW2 because their war with Japan predates WW2 (or marks the real start).

I'm talking about the US winning without the aid of the UK.

I'm not enough of a history buff to say anything about Australia in WWII... and though I took an Eastern Asian Studies class in which we talked about some wars between Japan and China, I can't think of anything specific... IDK if the class even covered stuff newer than the 1800s...

 

[MacDav]

Love all the ignoramuses coming out of the woodwork.

Nothing excellent? Except the Statue of Liberty, laws of thermodynamics, the diesel engine, gyroscope, stethoscope, braille, pasteurization, the parachute, the bikini!

Check out the Millau Viaduct, the world's tallest bridge completed in 2004. When's the last time the US built anything on that scale? *cue crickets*

Not to mention major contributions to western culture from French philosophers, writers, and artists. Descartes, Sartre, Rousseau, Robespierre, Simone de Beauvoir, Victor Hugo, Albert Camus, Balzac, etc...

I spend time in France every year, and lived there for 3 years previously. The quality of life for the average person is much better than in the US. They actually spend money on infrastructure and the cities and towns are beautiful with excellent public transport. Do they love going on strike? Hell yes they do! It's part of their culture, they're not a bunch of obese mouth breathers being manipulated by the MSM, corporate apologists or armchair Libertarians who think big 'gummint is the root of all that's wrong in their lives.

All but one of the contributions and people you mentioned happened before France was socialist.

 

[estockme]

i'll support anyone anywhere in apple's supply chain who wants to strike... and for that matter all the other companies slowly getting tangled up in their monopoly as a purchasing gateway. great products, sure, but this has got to stop somewhere.

 

[North Bronson]

Who exactly took something "by force"? You need to read Karl Marx a little to understand how re-distribution works. Do you seriously believe that Tom Cook is that smart? I am not sure that intellect-wise he would even make it into 1% in this country let alone 0.00001% as he did with his income. It's not like he either designed or manufactured all those iPhones. Yet the society is built in such a manner that it needs 100 CEOs and 30 million janitors. Imagine a situation where all 300 million Americans are equally smart and work equally hard. Would they all be CEOs? Nope. There would still be 100 CEOs and 30 million janitors. And Tim Cook (and especially some "investors" on Wall Street) are earning as much as they do only thanks to redistribution (some call it "expropriation"). We can live with this but the society will stay stable only if those who work can make a decent living. Society has to make sure the distribution of wealth is reasonably equitable. It is a society/state that makes it possible for Tim Cook to earn this much in a first place. It's easy to prove. Let's send Tim (or Trump or whoever) to Somalia and let them apply his skills. How much do you think he will make over their? I guess the right question would be how long would he make it there.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/08/25/how-apple-works-inside-the-worlds-biggest-startup/

"[Steve] Jobs imagines his garbage regularly not being emptied in his office, and when he asks the janitor why, he gets an excuse: The locks have been changed, and the janitor doesn't have a key. This is an acceptable excuse coming from someone who empties trash bins for a living. The janitor gets to explain why something went wrong. Senior people do not. 'When you're the janitor,' Jobs has repeatedly told incoming VPs, 'reasons matter.' He continues: 'Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering.' That 'Rubicon,' he has said, 'is crossed when you become a VP.' (Apple has about 70 vice presidents out of more than 25,000 non-retail-store employees.)"

This is why the leaders earn as much money as they do.

I am not sure how it is in other countries. There are few Americans that are truly prepared for the possibility that they are not allowed to make mistakes at work. There are few "janitors" that are prepared for a life where things that go wrong are your fault, regardless of whether or not it was because of negligence or outside circumstance; you will probably lose your job and will have to explain to any potential employers why they should offer you work after your very public mistakes at Apple cost their shareholders billions.

Chick Hearn used to call these kinds of situations "The Pressure Cooker".

 

[GoldenJoe]

Who exactly took something "by force"? You need to read Karl Marx a little to understand how re-distribution works. Do you seriously believe that Tom Cook is that smart? I am not sure that intellect-wise he would even make it into 1% in this country let alone 0.00001% as he did with his income. It's not like he either designed or manufactured all those iPhones. Yet the society is built in such a manner that it needs 100 CEOs and 30 million janitors. Imagine a situation where all 300 million Americans are equally smart and work equally hard. Would they all be CEOs? Nope. There would still be 100 CEOs and 30 million janitors. And Tim Cook (and especially some "investors" on Wall Street) are earning as much as they do only thanks to redistribution (some call it "expropriation"). We can live with this but the society will stay stable only if those who work can make a decent living. Society has to make sure the distribution of wealth is reasonably equitable. It is a society/state that makes it possible for Tim Cook to earn this much in a first place. It's easy to prove. Let's send Tim (or Trump or whoever) to Somalia and let them apply his skills. How much do you think he will make over their? I guess the right question would be how long would he make it there.

I've taken the time to write this out clearly an impersonally, so please make an honest effort to understand this:

You have things completely backwards. It is the efforts of businesses that afford the society its wealth and prosperity. Society (government) did not create the iPhone. Apple created the iPhone. Government did not create roads and utilities from nothing. They were built using wealth that businesses created at their own risk.

Your socialist way of thinking is also outright wrong in assuming that we are in a zero-sum situation. There is an infinite of wealth and prosperity that can be created. One person's success does not mean another's failure. On the contrary, every success creates new opportunities that can in turn become new successes.

Socialism has been tried many times, and it has always failed without exception. The only reason we are even able to have this conversation is because thousands of people across hundreds of companies were incentivized to take risks in exchange for earning greater wealth in a capitalist system. Look around you, at all the technologies and resources that would have been completely unimaginable just a century or two ago. It all came from capitalism. The right to take risks. The right to earn. The right to personal property. The right to succeed. The right to fail. Without these, we would have come no further in the previous two centuries than we had in the two millennia prior. That is not to say that capitalism should exist without regulation - some regulations must be put into place in order to prevent situations like monopolies or price fixing. The reason is that those situations undermine one of the main concepts of capitalism, which is the creation of better products through competition. Properly maintained, capitalism can eventually provide for every material need of man. Again, look at the unbelievable improvement in the quality of life it has brought us in just a few generations.

 

[Ping Guo]

Let me guess... A Ron Paul supporter? Or a Bilderberg conspiracy theorist? Or both? I agree that quantitative easing by the Fed is a bad thing, but then so does Romney. He has said so many times. Of course you believe he is lying, right?

Not a big Ron Paul fan, although I find him less loathsome than 'Bamma and Mittens. Of course Mitt will say he disapproves of Obama's monetary policy until he gets into office (he won't), in which case it'll be QE to infinity.

I'm a supporter of free markets, not de-regulation, and letting bad companies and insolvent banks fail as part of a normal economic cycle. We've moved far away from that now, to crony-capitalism.

I'm allergic to conspiracy theories. The Federal Reserve is neither federal, nor a reserve. It's a banking cartel. Check out the story of Jekyll Island and the formation of the FR.

 

[GadgetDon]

Who exactly took something "by force"? You need to read Karl Marx a little to understand how re-distribution works.

Marx wrote what he wanted to. Can you give any example anywhere of a society where property (money, real estate, companies, items, intellectual property) was taken from those who had owned it before and given to the state to divvy part of it up for the benefit of the people, other than at the point of a gun? Oh, maybe not a literal physical gun point at the prior owner, laws passed/decreed and enforced by police/army who will use guns if you say no, that is my property not yours and you can't have it.

 

[GoldenJoe]

Unions changed the expectation between employer and employee. There's no doubt that unions are a big part of the reason we stopped child employment, the five day 40 hour workweek is the norm (including breaks for lunch). (I disagree that they are the sole reason, I think the changing economy from the Industrial Revolution was also a big part of the reason. But there's no doubt that unions set that stage.)

Did you have a union set your particular set of benefits? Maybe not. But you've benefited from the big job the unions did. The Union movement changed the expectations and the work environment for the benefit, even those who have never worked a union job in their lives.

Now that's not the same as to say that unions (a) are equally necessary today or (b) are providing the same positive influence in our society. The grand old heroes of the union movement were men on the line , unions were to solve the problems people saw in the workplace. I'd trust unions more if the top guys spent most of their time as working stiffs, directly connected to what's going on. Instead, at some point, union leaders became kingmakers in politics, with a far wider agenda than workplace issues.

I have never had anything to do with a union. You are making false assumptions. I owe nothing to any union.

Unions were established as a way of regulating industrial companies that employed inhumane labor practices before we had proper regulations for such things. They were not about nonsense like a 13th month of pay; they were about not burning to death in the factory because a fire started, and the doors are locked from the outside.

The industrial revolution is the reason for the 40 hour work week, not unions.

To your list of things that would make you trust unions more, I would add unions leaders not earning millions of dollars each year. Again, it's funny how I never hear anyone complain about their millions, which are taken out of the pay of union members' salaries, yet everyone is quick to criticize the businessmen who provide the actual salaries.

 

[lilo777]

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/08/25/how-apple-works-inside-the-worlds-biggest-startup/

"[Steve] Jobs imagines his garbage regularly not being emptied in his office, and when he asks the janitor why, he gets an excuse: The locks have been changed, and the janitor doesn't have a key. This is an acceptable excuse coming from someone who empties trash bins for a living. The janitor gets to explain why something went wrong. Senior people do not. 'When you're the janitor,' Jobs has repeatedly told incoming VPs, 'reasons matter.' He continues: 'Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering.' That 'Rubicon,' he has said, 'is crossed when you become a VP.' (Apple has about 70 vice presidents out of more than 25,000 non-retail-store employees.)"

This is why the leaders earn as much money as they do.

I am not sure how it is in other countries. There are few Americans that are truly prepared for the possibility that they are not allowed to make mistakes at work. There are few "janitors" that are prepared for a life where things that go wrong are your fault, regardless of whether or not it was because of negligence or outside circumstance; you will probably lose your job and will have to explain to any potential employers why they should offer you work after your very public mistakes at Apple cost their shareholders billions.

Chick Hearn used to call these kinds of situations "The Pressure Cooker".

How many janitors do you know? I know for sure that the garbage bin in my office is cleaned religiously. Have you forgotten how Steve Jobs screwed up Apple? If Steve Jobs died after he was fired from Apple he would be considered one of the biggest CEO losers. Such is the life.

But that's not even important and does not address my point. I do not mind him getting higher salary but it is in the interest of the society to make sure that the results of the labor and progress are distributed more equitably. How much of what Steve Jobs earned did he actually used? Very little. Then what's the point? Yet this money would have been better spent helping children from poor families to study (or at least to eat properly).

 

[bry223]

As someone who works 50-60 hours (but I only receive 4 weeks of PTO which is still great) I don't see the issue here. Europe has always been known to have some of the best labor laws and in due some of the best quality of life. I would love to make my salary and only work 35 hours a week w/ free healthcare. As it turns out I spend so much time at work I have no personal life, and in turn it effects my family life.

There are millions of Americans in my same boat, corporate greed will always be a issue in America. I always envied the work life balance that a lot of European countries promote , unfortunately corporate America in the states will never allow this

 

[mike2q]

French unemployment amoung the nations young (presumably the age range Apple is hiring) is at an all time high. Employers are avoiding hiring entry level employees because of the countries restrictive employment laws. The problem is so bad the French govt is stepping in with tax payer funds to pay 1/3rd of those sallaries for three years. How bad does the situation have to be before the govt feels the only solution is to help pay the employees?

See below:

http://economywatch.nbcnews.com/_ne...fers-to-pay-most-of-young-hires-salaries?lite

 

[lilo777]

Marx wrote what he wanted to. Can you give any example anywhere of a society where property (money, real estate, companies, items, intellectual property) was taken from those who had owned it before and given to the state to divvy part of it up for the benefit of the people, other than at the point of a gun? Oh, maybe not a literal physical gun point at the prior owner, laws passed/decreed and enforced by police/army who will use guns if you say no, that is my property not yours and you can't have it.

There are plenty of such examples. USSR obviously being the primary one. But we are not talking about re-distributing something people already own. We are talking about distributing the results of labor (in progress). Taxes is a proper mechanism for this.

----------

French unemployment amoung the nations young (presumably the age range Apple is hiring) is at an all time high. Employers are avoiding hiring entry level employees because of the countries restrictive employment laws. The problem is so bad the French govt is stepping in with tax payer funds to pay 1/3rd of those sallaries for three years. How bad does the situation have to be before the govt feels the only solution is to help pay the employees?

See below:

http://economywatch.nbcnews.com/_ne...fers-to-pay-most-of-young-hires-salaries?lite

Surprisingly, unemployment among youth is extremely high in USA too right now.

 

[lilo777]

I've taken the time to write this out clearly an impersonally, so please make an honest effort to understand this:

You have things completely backwards. It is the efforts of businesses that afford the society its wealth and prosperity. Society (government) did not create the iPhone. Apple created the iPhone. Government did not create roads and utilities from nothing. They were built using wealth that businesses created at their own risk.

Your socialist way of thinking is also outright wrong in assuming that we are in a zero-sum situation. There is an infinite of wealth and prosperity that can be created. One person's success does not mean another's failure. On the contrary, every success creates new opportunities that can in turn become new successes.

Socialism has been tried many times, and it has always failed without exception. The only reason we are even able to have this conversation is because thousands of people across hundreds of companies were incentivized to take risks in exchange for earning greater wealth in a capitalist system. Look around you, at all the technologies and resources that would have been completely unimaginable just a century or two ago. It all came from capitalism. The right to take risks. The right to earn. The right to personal property. The right to succeed. The right to fail. Without these, we would have come no further in the previous two centuries than we had in the two millennia prior. That is not to say that capitalism should exist without regulation - some regulations must be put into place in order to prevent situations like monopolies or price fixing. The reason is that those situations undermine one of the main concepts of capitalism, which is the creation of better products through competition. Properly maintained, capitalism can eventually provide for every material need of man. Again, look at the unbelievable improvement in the quality of life it has brought us in just a few generations.

I am not arguing for socialism at all (at least not in USSR terms). Your assumption that "there is an infinite of wealth and prosperity that can be created" is flawed. Wealth creation is gated by technological and social progress. The better society is organized the most it can get given current state of technology but the limits are clearly there. Let the capitalism work but let's have fair taxes. Consider the fact that no matter how high the taxes can go, there will always be "The right to take risks. The right to earn. The right to personal property. The right to succeed.". Well, there will also be something else - safety net. Also, while money is a strong motivator, true success is never just about money (and often not at all about it). And as far as tech progress is concerned, keep in mind that it existed before capitalism too (and let's not forget that socialists were the first ones to send a human to Space )

 

[GadgetDon]

How many janitors do you know? I know for sure that the garbage bin in my office is cleaned religiously. Have you forgotten how Steve Jobs screwed up Apple? If Steve Jobs died after he was fired from Apple he would be considered one of the biggest CEO losers. Such is the life.

But that's not even important and does not address my point. I do not mind him getting higher salary but it is in the interest of the society to make sure that the results of the labor and progress are distributed more equitably. How much of what Steve Jobs earned did he actually used? Very little. Then what's the point? Yet this money would have been better spent helping children from poor families to study (or at least to eat properly).

Um... Steve Jobs was never CEO of Apple until returning after his years in the wilderness. First CEO was Michael Scott, then Mark Markula, then John Scully. As for who screwed up Apple in those early days and how Jobs would be considered if he'd died then, well, I would pass out the blame a lot wider than Jobs, and he did accomplish things that never would have been forgotten.

As for taking all that money away - at what point would you have taken it away? Before he bought Pixar with it, helped it grow into a significant moviemaker? Before he'd set up NeXT and had written the OS that became the basis of what OS X (and later iOS) became? Take the money from Apple from the iMac so there was no funding to enter the consumer products market?

Yes, he left a lot of money to his widow and his kids. Do you know what they will do with it now? You're sure that there's no benefit in what they'll do, so we should just confiscate it all?

 

[erockadus]

I wish our workers would stand up for their rights as well. Apple is the richest company in the world and pays it's CEO's 4,000,000 x the average employee.
Go France ! Lead the way !!!!

 

[lilo777]

Um... Steve Jobs was never CEO of Apple until returning after his years in the wilderness. First CEO was Michael Scott, then Mark Markula, then John Scully. As for who screwed up Apple in those early days and how Jobs would be considered if he'd died then, well, I would pass out the blame a lot wider than Jobs, and he did accomplish things that never would have been forgotten.

As for taking all that money away - at what point would you have taken it away? Before he bought Pixar with it, helped it grow into a significant moviemaker? Before he'd set up NeXT and had written the OS that became the basis of what OS X (and later iOS) became? Take the money from Apple from the iMac so there was no funding to enter the consumer products market?

Yes, he left a lot of money to his widow and his kids. Do you know what they will do with it now? You're sure that there's no benefit in what they'll do, so we should just confiscate it all?

You probably believe that Steve Jobs created Pixar using his own money. He did not. The days when people used their own money to fund new businesses are long gone (well, not entirely but still). There is plenty of investment money around and it does not matter if all of it belong personally to, say, Bill Gates, or collectively to California teachers retirement fund. And as far as Apple is concerned, their success has very little to do with "funding product development". Their R&D budget always was and still remain ridiculously small.

 

[roadbloc]

It's clear the French have no idea what poor working conditions are really are. An extra month's pay? I'd love to have that, but it is never going to happen.

Get real France.

 

[GadgetDon]

There are plenty of such examples. USSR obviously being the primary one. But we are not talking about re-distributing something people already own. We are talking about distributing the results of labor (in progress). Taxes is a proper mechanism for this.

Yes, the USSR was a completely bloodless, no-violence, weaponless change of government. Lenin and his people made the argument to the Czar and Czarina, they went (in Russian) "We see, we have been enlightened, we are turning everything over to you with our blessings."

The USSR (and Communist China) are definitely examples of where everything was taken from force. It's also a wonderful example that when a group of people seize assets for the benefit of the people that the people benefited are mostly those doing the seizing. (To which the True Believers in Communism will say "but that wasn't real communism")

And I think Woody Harleton, among others, who would dispute that taxes are not taken by force.

Lastly, no, taxes are not an appropriate way to cause redistribution of wealth. Taxes are to fund the government. We can have a long discussion about what the government should be doing with its funds and I suspect there will be a lot of shouting and very little agreement, and the value of what levels of progressivity in collecting the taxes. But there is nothing in constitution or law that the purpose of the tax code is to remove excessive wealth from the rich and distribute it to the poor.

There are those who want to use it as such, because they know if they did it honestly, propose a new economic system where any assets over a certain amount or income above certain arbitrary levels will be seized and distributed to those with less, it would never fly. So they try to manipulate an existing tax scheme for that. (Just like there are those on the right who want to manipulate the tax scheme in other directions and are equally wrong to do so.)

 

[staypuffinpc]

Dear Americans ridiculing the 13th month of pay,

Do you get a bonus at the end of the year? Yes? Well that's your 13th month of pay.

Love how you attempt to cite this as if it's normal and Americans are too stupid to figure out the similarity. The short answer to your question is that, no, most people don't (especially if they're low-level retail associates). When they do, it's a bonus and not a requirement. If it becomes required, by definition it's not a bonus. Don't get me wrong, France is a great place (esp. outside of the large cities), but there's a reason things are so expensive it has a lot to do with high taxes and entitlement programs.

 

[GadgetDon]

You probably believe that Steve Jobs created Pixar using his own money. He did not. The days when people used their own money to fund new businesses are long gone (well, not entirely but still). There is plenty of investment money around and it does not matter if all of it belong personally to, say, Bill Gates, or collectively to California teachers retirement fund. And as far as Apple is concerned, their success has very little to do with "funding product development". Their R&D budget always was and still remain ridiculously small.

Actually, George Lucas created Pixar with his money, it was a division of Lucasfilm doing computer graphics. When Jobs left Apple, he cashed out his Apple stock and had a lot of money, so was able to buy Pixar for $10 million from George Lucas. Over the next few years, he put more money into the company from his personal funds.

So unless you're saying "but the money Jobs got from selling his stock wasn't really his, because really, all assets belong to the state", yes, he did use his own money. His own money for NeXT too. If NeXT hadn't created an OS to sell to Apple that proved so successful, and if Toy Story had flopped, Jobs would have lost the vast majority of his fortune he'd earned from founding Apple (yes, I'm working from the assumption that founding it means he did earn it).