or smaller profits? Rather than the excessive current ones.
----------
It depends on how you define slavery? Your 'argument' is arrogant and limited.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Riot Shuts Down Foxconn Plant, Impact on iPhone 5 Production Unclear
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
or smaller profits? Rather than the excessive current ones.
----------
It depends on how you define slavery? Your 'argument' is arrogant and limited.
What? No. I just finished reading the Jobs bio. In fact, I will reprint a couple passages from Obama's meeting with Silicon Valley CEOs in 2011:
"When Jobs' turn came, he stressed the need for more trained engineers and suggested that any foreign students who earned an engineering degree in the United States should be given a visa to stay in the country. Obama said that could be done only the in context of the 'Dream Act'."
"Jobs went on to urge that a way be found to train more American engineers. Apple had 700,000 factory workers employed in China, he said, and that was because it needed 30,000 engineers on-site to support these workers. 'You can't find that many in America to hire,' he said. [...] 'If you could educate these engineers, we could move more manufacturing plants here.' The argument made a strong impression on the President. Two or three times over the next month he told his aides, 'We've got to find ways to train those 30,000 manufacturing engineers that Jobs told us about.'"
-- page 546
I'm sorry but Jesus don't want that. He want capitalism for us all.
Produce, Spend, Die.
It the political will is there it could be done in months. Perhaps a world war is needed to stimulate the will to realize that a manufacturing base is critical to this nation.
in your world, does 5+5 = 2? Even your fairy dust cant change the facts, or history for that matter. Get a clue.
For every worker at Foxconn today there are two more waiting for their job... Strike and they will simply be replaced.
Oh Wait, stop the presses. Only one man knows all the answers that have been suppressed for years.
There have been shortages in qualified engineers for years. Jobs & Cook are spot on needing qualified engineers to keep Apple production in the U.S.
http://talentmgt.com/articles/view/...sist-in-skilled-trades-engineers-and-it-staff
http://www.schumer.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=337648&
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-rele...-trades-engineers-and-it-staff-155265875.html
Apple hasn't gotten to where it is right now by focusing on "smaller profits" and I don't see many complaints around here when Apple announces new profit records each quarter.
I do find it ironic however that Microsoft used to be Micro$oft around here yet no one around here would ever openly suggest that today's Apple is greedy.
Everyone who says they'd be happy to pay an extra $50 for a US manufactured iPhone should donate the $50 to SACOM, Chinese Labor Watch or one of the other groups doing good undercover work and actually trying to make life difficult for Apple, Foxconn etc.
Yes, there are shortages, but what is your point? Surely you should be asking why is there a shortage in qualified engineers?
Is it because all the engineering jobs have been bled from the country? Is it because to study engineering you have to borrow more than the previous generation borrowed cumulatively their entire lives?
If Apple wanted homegrown engineers, it could easily get them educated and trained up in a few short years. Apple cite no shortage of software engineers, and that is because they put their resources behind that area of the labor market.
There are so many qualified people needing jobs, it's not even funny. When we post a job opening, we're swamped with overqualified people.
The real problem is that companies are not willing to pay for experienced home talent. That's why they send work offshore, and get back crap, which then has to be fixed by the few experienced people still on the onshore payroll.
What Jobs and Cook and one of your links points out, is that American companies, which are unfortunately run these days by beancounters, want to import cheaper green card labor.
You're seeing the complaints about business practices right here. Like many who follow this site, I am an Apple stockholder. Have been since 2003, and I'm pleased they've managed spectacular growth.
But I also effectively hold stock in USA Inc., as well as Planet Earth, and that is why I can see the bigger picture.
Yes I benefit when Apple makes profits, but when they do so at the expense of this wider portfolio, it doesn't make me, my children, or my children's children better off.
The very advent of corporate social responsibility was to instill a wider perspective than traditional profit-focussed corporate governance achieves, because there are many stockholders who are not all about ROI at all costs. Apple got the message and has begun to treat Planet Earth better... hopefully they will get the message about treating people better.
Not sure about the size of your company, what you produce, and the demand for your product. But to do it on a much larger scale to supply it in sufficient quantities to the world is a different matter.
We also need to make sure what engineers we are talking about. I'm sure there are an abundance of software engineers. But as far as mechanical engineers/machinists for machine fabrication, automated production, fabricating parts necessary to make these devices.
Importing qualified engineers from outside the U.S. is one of the ways to fill the gap not being filled internally. If we are talking about doing it cheaper, one way is to move production overseas, not by bringing workers into the United States.
We are not talking about picking fruit, but highly skilled labour. Something that does not come cheap. Initially they may get paid a low starting wage, but over time, likely to see a number of pay raises to put it on par with wages for workers already in the U.S.
The cost of education and repaying student loans is not something unique to the engineering field. In some aspects it is actually much cheaper then some fields.
While Apple may of put resources into software development, it in itself did not create the market for software engineers. It only expanded it.
Last edited:
Last time i recall reading any history lessons there weren't slaves lining up at the cotton plantations to work? Did it ever occur to you that making $1.50 or whatever is better than not having a job where they are form? Putting American standards of living and wages on a country with a billion people is simply not in touch with reality. Not every country is going to pay the same "min wage" that the US has.
Google it. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapo...e-devices-will-never-be-made-in-america-okay/
Samsung plant in Austin is a semiconductor plant that employs about 1,000 workers taken from this article. Not even close to what Apple would need.
Mercedes in Alabama from this article employs about 3,000
Need I go on? Care to share any example outside of GM that employs anywhere near the 1.3 million workers Foxconn has working for them? Sure not all for Apple but there are figures well above 300,000 working on iPhone, iPad and iPhone lines. Estimated totals of 700,00 are quoted by several new articles about Apples world wide jobs created from the company. I think something like 70,000 here in the states.
Show me any city in the US that has a willing 300,000 to 500,000 people in a 50 mile radius willing to work for min wage type jobs. We simply do not have the population base willing to do it. I"m sorry but most teenagers complain if they don't make $10/hr at a fast food restaurant. They would lose their minds with the repetitive mind numbing work that is required. It's not all about the $$$, you have to have people willing, and not just a vocal few, hundreds of thousands all in the same area to make it feasible.
I'm always interested in learning new things but please stop guessing at numbers if you haven't even bothered reading the very articles you quote as being a basis for Apple to open a plant in the US. The cost is irrelevant if you don't have workers willing to work. Don't feel bad for every person on unemployment, most of them are lazy and would rather collect unemployment than work. Don't believe me? next time you see that guy or gal on the corner with the cardboard sign asking for work, offer them a job, anything from raking leaves, mowing, whatever at $10 an hour. See what happens. They want the hand out, not work. I've offered it many times for legit jobs at a lumber yard, and at my office to clean. Never been taken up on a legit offer of work and the lumber yard was paying $12/hr for full time work.
Last edited:
Uh... no. This is laughable. The only reason Apple (and others) out-source to China is the $1.50/hr wage along with the tax havens. Holy crap some of you guys are naive.
Which is why there are so many die makers over there. US = expensive for die makers to become educated/qualified so nobody bothers investing. China as you correctly say is very cheap so there is already a huge base of experts over there. Why would Apple move everything to the US, knowing that the Chinese probably won't follow?
... Same reasons why Tomatoes are grown in Spain mainly... more sunlight = cheaper and higher quality crop. Move it to another part of the world, say iceland and you'd have to spend £££ on artificial lighting haha.
... I'm not getting political about this by the way!
You literally know nothing about South Africa. The only good change that would benefit South Africa is bringing back apartheid and turning *IT* into a police state which I am sure you would have a problem with if you knew anything about apartheid. South Africa will no longer let the white man change government. And no, America is not a police state. You're spoiled. And by your logic, the whole, " Wieners run, men change the government " - America would never have been founded to begin with.
Hey Hans, I see a great future for you as a cop in OC. You will get a fitted uniform, a weapon or two with a badge and a local chapter for after work activies i bet you like so much. One drawback, they dont run macs there. Good luck to you and pray for not being reassigned to South Central. You should also hope that no big dude from INS is getting your ip reading this and later your sorry ass out of the US.
Random. South Central? Really? You think South Central is scary compared to Johannesburg, SA? You really are ignorant. Riverside, Pomona, South Central, Compton and Fontana rolled into a burrito pales in comparison to Johannesburg. INS is for illegal immigrants. Wow, I know more about the U.S than you do, and you're a citizen. That's just sad. Was you edu-mucated in Souf' Central or sometin' homie?
Forgive the young minded people of today's age where they think the Crips and Bloods are the roughest most toughest gangs out there!
<3. Indeed. It's actually better to not know the state of certain places, it is depressing at times. On a side-note, one of the larger "gangs" ( I see them more of miniature armies ) is called, " The Americans ". Very random fact, and I'm not trying to make any point with it. I like America.
Only if the profit margin remains at 75%... anything less is just commie talk.
Ironic...
I fear that what's happening in China will happen in Space, Greece, the UK, the US, etc... the Chinese are fed up with slave labor conditions, slave wages, etc... who can blame them, apart from their supervisors?
Long-term, think decades or centuries, humankind might regain a true sense of empathy and community, but - for now - it's been broken down and these are the consequences of past leaders tearing down those walls. After all, the one who said "we are not a society" happens to be living cushy in retirement off the taxpayers she preached to... But we don't value work and then blame people for not wanting to do work... we need psychologists running companies, not slavers and profiteers...
----------
What cause(s) do those street gangs have? Nobody's ever quite said... until then, both groups can only be seen as brutish thugs. Still, at least they deal with guns and not balance sheets. Could be worse...