Posted on 06/25/2015 5:41:36 PM PDT by markomalley
What, aside from THIS instance which you already concede? Wouldn’t that be enough for you?
Let’s see... Apple bans apps that display watch faces in icons, Apple bans apps with guns in the icons, Apple bans apps that accept Bitcoin... Apple bans apps that allow in-app purchases of books.. The stories just go on and on, you’re welcome to use Google, it is all there. There are THOUSANDS of stories you’re welcome to read.
(2,290,000 results for the search ‘apple bans appstore -confederate’)
The only time I can think of wholesale lopping off of apps was in the book area, when Apple opened the iBook store. . . and separate book apps were no longer necessary. . . nor needed or useful.
agreed. There is no way this was an impulsive attack by the media. This had to be coordinated by the white house and them talking to the CEO’s of companies.
You either must have shares at Apple or work for them, because every post I ever see is you defending Apple over the last few months.
Definitely planned.
Not irrelevant at all if the Chinese worker might wish to participate in the world economy. Do new autos cost only 25% as much in China as in the US or Europe? What can the Chinese worker buy of the products desired by consumers all over the world. Are they eating lots of good beef?
People aspire for things beyond what their own less affluent homeland economies might provide.
You've gone around in several circles to say that these workers are cheap labor workers in any international comparison, but they should be satisfied with that.
Wiki shows the minimum wage in China to be $1.29, which would be $2,683 per year. Times seven is $18,782. Your $650 per month times twelve is $7,800. And I've read of minimum wages in parts of China near $3.00 per hour.
Nothing computes with your claim that Foxconn/Apple workers are paid seven times the Chinese minimum wage. They are low wage workers and that's why so many jobs have moved to China and even poorer Asian nations.
And I've not really gotten into the worker suicide discussion.
Look, I am educated as an Economist. You can only compare worker pay according to the economy in which they live and the cost of living THERE, not in the rest of the world. There are many countries which have far lower cost of living than does China. China is rapidly increasing its individual standard of living. . . and Apple has been instrumental in facilitating the increase for factory workers. There are many places in the world where pay levels are at less than $1 per day. If you think that is the driving force for moving work to China, you'd think the companies would be swarming to those countries and you'd be WRONG.
You mentioned a minimum wage in China of $1.29. In 2010, it was 63¢ an hour. with factory workers earning around $1.27. Apple insisted that workers on its lines started at three times that in an attempt to start raising the standard of living.
I have not been going in "several circles" to say that the workers should be "satisfied with that". . . but the fact is that worker pay is seldom compared to international levels because, as I told you, it is irrelevant. . . because such gross comparisons ignore the cost of living in the economy in which the worker lives. That's why I broke it down further to demonstrate that a worker in China who may earn $650 a month can get an apartment in the city for only $75 a month, less than 12% of his income. Food is not much of a burden on his monthly income either. His health care is free. So his cost of living is quite low in ratio to income. In the US, housing is now over 40% of the workers income. . . and food is becoming a larger and larger percentage of his income. Health care is NOT free.
Nothing computes with your claim that Foxconn/Apple workers are paid seven times the Chinese minimum wage. They are low wage workers and that's why so many jobs have moved to China and even poorer Asian nations.
There is far more to why our manufacturing jobs have moved away from our over-regulated, over-litigious business environment than low wages. The ability to open a factory without taking YEARS in going through all the regulatory hoops and judicial processes, that frequently make the opening of a new plant an almost moot exercise because the need and economic importance of that product line may be obviated by the time it all gets finally through that process, has one hell of a lot more to do with it than low wages. The ability to connect into the close supply chain of hundreds of other manufacturers making the parts so that they can be quickly ordered and brought to your assembly locations has more to do with it.
Steve Jobs outlined this to Barack Obama several years ago. . . and told him and others that our over-regulated business environment had to change if they wanted the jobs to come back. He gave the example of needing a new factory and that it would take over three years to get it built and staffed in the USA and it took just three months in China. . . and another story about needing a specific job to be done and that a Chinese factory had been built on the off chance that someone might just NEED that job done. No one was doing that in the US anymore, because such on-spec building was no longer economical to do here under our regulatory enviornment. The political class and regulatory agencies have done nothing but regulate it more. Wages is a less than 4% component of the product cost mix of those products manufactured over seas. Other nations are paying attention and are willing to change their business regulatory environments . . . and Apple has been contracting work to Brazil, Ireland, and other countries where they DON'T make it impossible. . . even Texas.
To make your case, you have to mire the Chinese worker in their nation’s economy and take away any aspirations they have for being able to participate in the world economy, i.e., own a vehicle and most of the fancy gadgets they help produce. That’s not irrelevant.
And since wages have increased, many companies are leaving China for Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh and other poorer nations.
And many US companies moved to China twenty and more years ago. The main reason was cheap labor. The sewing and shoe factories were some of the first to leave and they were some of he lowest paying in the US. I know two families who’d operated sewing factories for several decades and they never complained about government regulations. It was cheap foreign imports that finally ended their businesses.
You talk about opening factories in the US, but he biggest result of China trade has been the closing of US factories that had operated for many years.
Many people are more comfortable talking about regulation and taxes in the US and other factors, rather than talking about the immense labor and overhead savings realized in a move to China or other cheap labor nations. And most of this export of jobs and factories took place twenty and more years ago, not in the past few years.
Steve Jobs, like any other businessman who’d move their production to a cheap labor nation was trying to justify his actions. But they never seem to quantify how much regulation cost, or whatever their complaint was. But it’s pretty easy to quantify the labor savings if we know how many employees are involved.
Sorry, it is NOT just about low labor costs. It is a minor component, but not a major consideration. You can scream that it is all day but it isn't. That is just a fact. Our governments chased the jobs away. . . by over regulation, over taxation, and refusing any changes that could be allowed to rapidly respond to changing economic conditions in the market. First Japan, then China, embraced those quick changes that did allow those fast responses to the market forces.
The clothing and shoe makers are not the segment of the economy we are talking about here. . . those are sweatshop jobs that can be set up almost anywhere in the world. We are talking about hi-tech manufacturing that requires quick response to competition and access to infrastructure and supply chain. Clothing and shoes can be made by even low education workers at minimum wage with very little input of raw materials compared to what is required to make consumer electronics.
Like I said, we can quantify the labor savings pretty accurately, but no one, including you and Steve Jobs, ever quantifies the costs of regulation and taxation. They just make the claim and declare they are correct/.
Sewing and shoe factories provided jobs for hundreds of thousands of Americans for almost a couple of centuries. Those jobs are much better than our trillion dollar annual cost of means tested poverty programs. That's where all the savings of 'free trade' are.
You want to talk aspirational buying, Apple is selling more of the Apple Watch Edition, the solid gold model in CHINA than elsewhere. . . because China is building a larger and larger aspirational middle class of small business people. There is a mall in China that is 13 stories high that sells ONLY consumer electronics to the public. . . from private stores. There's another, almost as big selling jewelry. Again, these are facts.
Your picture of China as a country of low wage slave labor with workers unable to participate in the economy is very outdated and simply WRONG. That was why I was doing a comparison with American minimum wage and showing how it compared in relative buying power. . . in their economy. They are not going to buy a car in the American economy, they will buy one in the Chinese economy.
I have made the case on this forum that China is really no longer communist. . . It is still a dictatorship, but it has embraced a Capitalist economy, even to having a stock market, a rapidly growing middle class, and entrepreneur class, multi-billionaires, privately owned property, upward mobility, and all the other trappings of economic freedom. . . because they found that Capitalism works. It is a strange mix of socialism and Capitalism and still in flux. . . but it is certainly not communist.
Here's an article from 2010 and that trend continues. They're not talking about taxes and regulations, and that's not why the factories left the US, either.
Guess what? I don’t give a < epletive deleted > about the Chinese. I could care less whether they work or starve to death in urine filled rice patties. Get it? I care about the USA, with the exception of you. I am not a gloBULList.
When the ChiCom Premier farts swordmakers ears flap.
That's not my picture of China. I'm well aware around 15% to 20% of their population has benefited from the technology and factory production and jobs they've lured to China. That adds up to a large number of people and a large total economy, but still only part of the population participates in the new prosperity.
But China is still a cheap labor nation and that was, and still is it's main attraction to US capital. Plus the growing home market.
The US is reckless and probably just plain stupid in how it has aided the enrichment and empowerment of China. The military build-up and territorial ambitions don't indicate that they have become the freedom loving capitalists those in the US who promoted trade with China promised back during the 1980s. This could prove to be the dumbest and most costly mistake in US history.
I won't disagree with the premise that jobs are better than welfare. . . but the jobs have to make economic sense if they are going to be viable. They cannot exist in a world of competition with other companies who can undercut the price because they simply will not sell at an exaggerated price simply because you can support an American worker clothing or shoe worker. THAT is why the American jobs disappeared. Those products did have a large labor component. . . as I mentioned above. . . and factories for clothing and shoes can be set up anywhere there is a labor pool.
In clothing, there are only a few economic inputs: cloth or leather, thread, fasteners — buttons, zippers or equivalent — decorative additions, energy, and labor. It can be done by hand or with machines. That's a total of under twenty possible economic inputs. . . easily moved. Shoes are similar. . . and including synthetic and athletic shoes, you might have upwards of 40 economic inputs, but again easily moved.
Consumer and industrial electronic devices have component counts of up to 20,000 economic inputs. . . and manufacturing and assembly steps in the hundreds or thousands. IIRC, the iPhone has over 2200 individual patent licenses involved in its components and manufacture. They require thousands of workers who have higher than minimal educational requirements, often engineering level degrees. Not easily moved or easy to establish in any locality. Parts of the iPhone and iPad come from all over the world, and some of those parts are manufactured in the USA.
Nor am I . . . but I am a realist. . . and the Chinese have an army that outnumbers ours by a huge number, and atomic weapons, and they are building their navy while OBAMBI has decimated (in the real meaning of that word) ours! The Chinese are literally marching forward to take OUR place in the world economy and WE are ceding it to them. We need to understand WHY that is happening and we cannot do that by burying our heads in the sand and think that we can go back to the way it was in the 1950s and 1960s. It simply won't happen! Recognizing that the economic reasons why our jobs left our homeland had very little to do with lower wages is important. . . and fighting the wrong battle will not win this war.
We cannot win this war by edict, forcing our businesses to bring jobs back. We have to change what our government and the economic decisions did that caused us to lose those jobs in the first place. . . but our politicians and regulators refuse to change a DAMN THING except to make it worse.
We are fighting the wrong war. The war is HERE. We can win this but we don't do it by targeting those who try to compete. We need to remove the hobbles and chains we ourselves have put on them that prevents us from competing with what we make here, and there are lots of hobbles and chains on our business, starting with the highest corporate income taxes in the world.
It makes economic sense to keep labor intensive, lower value added jobs in the US as opposed to allowing them to go to cheap labor nations, and then seeing the resulting increase in US poverty programs which now exceed a trillion per year.
A enormous fallacy of international trade was that most poorer nations of the world had something to trade. What did China have to sell to the world in 1980? Poor nations have maybe some raw materials, a few unique ag products, and a few crafts or products native to their country.
Other than that, they have little to trade. So, they trade their cheap labor for factories and jobs from advanced nations. So called comparative advantage in cheap labor, but the problem is, such nations have a population of four or five billion people. Plenty of cheap labor, and even some excess skilled labor.
They can trade cheap labor for every job in the US that can be moved or performed over communications networks. This continuing trend will ruin the US and half or more its citizens. It's a fantasy that the US can constantly create new and different types of jobs to replace all those that are being exported and outsourced.
I have proposed that all university positions for economics professors and instructors be outsourced to cheap labor nations. There are probably already sufficient trained economists in other nations to accomplish that. With maybe a US department head and a few class monitors, that could be accomplished with the modern technology available. I'm surprised that econ departments at US universities aren't already working on this to take advantage of the comparative advantage many nations have in lower paid economists.
The stupid trade agreements, immigration policies, guest worker policies, and all the outsourcing and H1-B games are destroying the economic opportunity of many US citizens. The econ theories don't work because the pool of cheap labor is too large around the world. And it's not trade, but the transfer of capital, technology, and production facilities and jobs, and then the shipment of products from cheap labor nations to the US tariff free, or almost tariff free. A recipe to destroy the US under a mountain of debt, declining employment and growing poverty programs.
Who knew?
Lol, this is become entirely too long winded. But can you provide, or link to some actual study that shows the regulatory costs and taxes that caused some specific business to relocate? As I’ve said, everybody talks about how that’s why companies leave the US, but no one ever provides any actual data.
And plenty of data concerning the labor savings can be provided.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.