Unless I’m missing something, Apple products are still engineered in American, only built in China. The sad reality is that we couldn’t run an Apple plant here in the US if we wanted to. The regulatory/union environment wouldn’t allow it.
I agree with you 100% in being concerned - I just think we see the cause for concern in entirely different terms.
Manufacturing (workforce) is a 20th century path to economic power - resources and energy are the issue and path of the current era. Food, water, oil, mined materials, etc.
“Apple products are still engineered in American, only built in China.”
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What does that mean exactly?
“engineered in America”.
The factory is in China. The automation is in China. The skilled labor is in China.
The tooling is in China.
“engineered in America”.
Baloney.
“MADE IN CHINA”.
Exactly.
Everyone whines about how people don’t “buy American”, but we have made industry nearly impossible in this country with all the taxes, legislative overhead, bureaucracy, litigation, union activity, environmental regulation, never mind our own government deliberately jacking up the cost of energy.
We cannot mine. We cannot drill. We cannot build factories. We cannot employ people.
And it all stems from an overreaching, mountainous bureaucracy of federal, state and local government that is mounted on a one way ratchet that is only allowing them to get bigger, fatter, more bloated, more liberal and more restrictive over time.
It isn’t that America doesn’t have a capable workforce, manufacturing know-how or ability to leverage technology to produce goods and products. We aren’t being allowed to increase and grow industry. It is NOT an accident.
What investor, with good money is going to invest in a factory here in the USA with the accompanying taxes, environmental regulations, union/government meddling etc. when they can invest in a place like China where the government says “Just give this person and that person this much money, and we will stay out of your way. You won’t have unions protesting and making court challenges. You won’t have the Sierra Club protesting and blocking you in court. You won’t have the government agencies crawling up your butt. Just pay the tribute and your can build and prosper.”
There was once a time in this country where our way of business had a huge advantage over countries whose business environment was lubricated with bribes and payoffs and whose products were less cost competitive because we could get the raw materials here and didn’t need to pay shipping costs from making it elsewhere.
Our country has, since WWII, developed huge, encrusted growths of tax-fed, legislative, bureaucratic barnacles on the hull of our industrial ship, to the point our engines cannot develop enough thrust to drive us through the water.
The Chinese are not dumb. Even if we are do the engineering in the USA today, the Chinese engineers are learning or have learned what we are doing.
I think we have gone past the tipping point. If we don’t restart manufacturing here, then we won’t be able to tip it back the other way.
The pathetic union and welfare leaches will soon suffer incredible hardships when we have used up all the credit our forefathers fought hard to collect. Unfortunately, most of us and our children will suffer along with them.