MacBooks now made in China would cost how much more if made in US?

[adk]

I don't know where you get that from. Why are American cars less reliable than most foreign cars?

Because they're made in Mexico



Anyways, the laws of supply and demand, not idealism, will always dictate the price of a good. My question is: Why should anybody pay an American $20 and hour to do a job when somebody in another country can do the same thing for $5 an hour?

 

[Mousse]

Like all companies, they price items at what the market will bear. How much enough people are willing to pay for a machine, they will price it accordingly. If there are enough people willing to pay $1300 for a MB, that's what Apple will charge, regardless of what it cost them to manufacture. Basic economics.

Why do you think they can get away with selling the original iPhone for $500. It was one of a kind. They could have priced it at $1000 and still sold. Not as much, but they'd still move. Now they've got plenty of competition, the market won't allow for a $500 iPhone anymore. A lot of people will look else where if the iPhone G3 were priced at $500.

 

[Aea]

Sorry- you outsource jobs, there should be a penalty.

That was blatant sarcasm, can't believe nobody picked up on it

 

[da2005pizimp]

That was blatant sarcasm, can't believe nobody picked up on it

i picked up on it and it, but you made no point so it was not a good post.

 

[EV0LUTION]

I'm in web design/college student and every job I have seen done by an outsourced person is complete crap. I end up cleaning up their crappy work and getting paid twice my normal rate (I do these a lot). So keep sucking you Indians!

Maybe its just me, but outsourced electronics seem to be put together better than an American made electronic.

 

[MacLadybug]

What about NAFTA?

 

[Henri Gaudier]

Anyways, the laws of supply and demand, not idealism, will always dictate the price of a good. My question is: Why should anybody pay an American $20 and hour to do a job when somebody in another country can do the same thing for $5 an hour?

Because it creates poverty where you live and gives prosperity to where your goods are made. You will become weak and they will become powerful. Your life expectancy and those of your friends and family will fall, crime and anti-social behaviour will increase. And more ......

Move towards the ideal of shared prosperity but don't forget, as much as the 3rd world needs assistance, so do the people of the towns, the length and breadth of Europe, America etc.

 

[jeremy h]

I can see a time (perhaps a long way off) where manufacturing ends up being spread quite evenly. As the developing countries become richer and their people command higher wages their goods will cost more and there won't be the incentive to 'outsource'.

It's going to be painful for us in the meantime in the developed world but why shouldn't the poorer nations get a slice of the action? We think we're getting poorer day by day in the West (and at the moment we probably are!) But...

"56 percent of the world's population lives in extreme poverty. They survive on an income of less than $730 per year or $2 per day."

We'd have to fall an awfully long way to meet that.

 

[angelneo]

Chinese laborer = approx $3-4 hourly
American laborer = approx $12-20 hourly

This came from my former employer and most likely differs from Apple, but is relative to the tech market.

If you are talking about Chinese assembly line workers, you can go a lot lower than that.

I'm in web design/college student and every job I have seen done by an outsourced person is complete crap. I end up cleaning up their crappy work and getting paid twice my normal rate (I do these a lot). So keep sucking you Indians!

Maybe its just me, but outsourced electronics seem to be put together better than an American made electronic.

Different job type yields different results when outsourced, obviously stuff like customer support, if outsourced would be detrimential due to language and culture barrier. It's also harder to keep an eye on outsourced jobs especially in the QA department. Assembly line work will be harder to fault.

 

[garybUK]

Governments in those countries give tax breaks to companies willing to setup shop there, it's all about the bottom line, operational expenditure (including Land, Building Rent, Facilities, Wages, Taxes etc) are all a lot lower there.

They can then afford to pay 3 or 4 people to do a job over there and it would still be lower than the price of one person here!

The trouble (my company) is seeing in India, as more companies move in the people who got the training from one company leave and they are having huge trouble with retention.

These countries are building economies, not on their own, but on the back of other countries and it's not stable.

 

[0098386]

Eh, as a Brit I don't want to pay even more just because the computer was made in the US instead of China. Just as I don't want them to open a factory in the UK. It has no effect on me whatsoever. Most of my electronics are from China/Japan and I haven't had a gadget break on me this turn of the millennium (except for a hifi amp built in the 80's, in England no less).

 

[nanofrog]

For so long we've been looking at it in terms of, "Oh no, we can't give these jobs to American workers! They'll demand actual salaries instead of pittances!" that we're kinda brainwashed that way. So we reap what we sow: a lot of jobs that could be making people good money here are in China. Or Malaysia. Or wherever.

Yeah, a Mac would cost you more, but if you had that job (or a similar one with another manufacturer in the U.S.), you could afford it that much better. That's the way it was in this country during the entire post-WWII industrial boom.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other, IMO.

Don't forget, we didn't start exporting jobs so we could have cheap goods. We started exporting jobs because companies wanted to keep more of the profit for themselves. It was hardly altruistic.

At least if we have those jobs in the US, we do two things: we give ourselves more rewarding jobs than handing out shopping carts at Wal-Mart, and we stop sending so much money to countries that don't like us very much. (Where've we heard that before? )

Spot on.

Unfortunately, it all comes down to the bottom line, and if they can make a fraction of a penny, they will. A fraction x a very large number is still a considerable amount. So long as there isn't any form of penalty for doing this, nothing will change, and the money will continue to flow out of the US economy in greater amounts than stay or make it back.

 

[Henri Gaudier]

Eh, as a Brit I don't want to pay even more just because the computer was made in the US instead of China. Just as I don't want them to open a factory in the UK. It has no effect on me whatsoever. Most of my electronics are from China/Japan and I haven't had a gadget break on me this turn of the millennium (except for a hifi amp built in the 80's, in England no less).

I buy all my electrical equipment from the UK because I think it's the best and at a good price too. Soundcraft, Tony Larking Audio etc all make their things in the UK and go for great prices with great reliability too. Other English companies that have been bought by the Chinese like Castle Speakers, Audiolab and Quad are made in China and sold at the same prices or more.

I remember reading about microphone manufacturing in China and there the problem is that under a totalitarian system, with no quality control, simply to make the units was enough. It took SE Electronics to de-programme their staff of this mind set and create fantastic sounding, reliable mics. Before them, most microphones made in China were absolute crap. Personally, when it comes to hi-tech if I read "Designed in the UK" or "Designed in France" but "Made in China" I don't buy it. Look at the drop in quality of Behringer products. Once made in Germany, at a reasonable price and a 5 year warranty. Now made in China, dirt cheap, sound crap, 1 year warranty but it's probably not worth the courier costs to use the warranty when you need it. And you will need it. A bit of a ramble but it is possible to make good quality at a good price in the West.

 

[The Past]

I don't think it is as much as whether we can afford to pay the price os US made products. It is more to do with what Apple will have left behind after selling at the same price.

These decisions are about profits, not prices. Not that anything is wrong. What I saying is that prices stay the same, the only difference being that more companies will be solvent.

 

[leighonigar]

Am I not right in thinking that Apple outsources production to other companies? Therefore it's not their primary problem where the factories are, rather what the factory can turn out and for how much? It's not their workforce...

 

[peteryan7hao]

Chinese laborer = approx $3-4 hourly
American laborer = approx $12-20 hourly

This came from my former employer and most likely differs from Apple, but is relative to the tech market.

With $3 you can buy 2 Big Mac burgers in China, but what can you buy in the US?

 

[McGiord]

Am I not right in thinking that Apple outsources production to other companies? Therefore it's not their primary problem where the factories are, rather what the factory can turn out and for how much? It's not their workforce...

absolutely right, business is focused on their design, define how the product is going to be built and hire a OEM company to produce the products for them, outsourcing @ MAX.

the quality has suffered significantly, which also comes tied with higher production levels.

if products were manufactured in the US, they might be done by a 3rd party also and the logistics and shipping cost of all the components made in Asia will be higher than just the shipping cost of the end product.

for to swap a defective iPhone is easier than to 'repair' it, because it doesn't cost a dime, all the defective ones are charged back to the manufacturer, despite the negative impact on the customer they don;t losse money.

With the Macs the 'replacement' thing is a little more tricky.

China and India booming companies suffer the same human resources issue: many people is available, they don't plan to stay on a job for more than 1~2 years, any little thing they learn becomes valuable for a new employer to offer them a promotion to hire them with a significant increase in salary.
Many companies are used to this business model and they know that they will loose some employees and need to retrain the new ones to keep the company budget and head-count steady = same 'skilled' type of employee with a cheap salary.

 

[McGiord]

With $3 you can buy 2 Big Mac burgers in China, but what can you buy in the US?

a song in the iTunes Store, or an iPhone App...

 

[bruinsrme]

The company I work for started outsourcing a particular part for the construction of the final product. It was outsourced to one company.
We have had a number of issues causing scrap and costing the company nearly a million $$$$ in under 2 months.
It was discovered that that company has outsourced the material to 4 other companies. Its almost like everything made gets checked, checked on to the pallet and we waorry about it.
Never had the problem with the state side vendors

 

[wywern209]

chances are it would cost that much more, but apple would make less profits as a result.