Posted on 01/22/2012 4:49:53 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
This Article Explains Why Apple Makes iPhones In China And Why The U.S. Is Screwed
Henry Blodget | Jan. 22, 2012, 5:30 AM | 3,191 |
The manufacturing processes of Apple and other electronics companies have come into sharp focus of late, with the revelation of more details about what life is like for the Chinese workers who make the world's gadgets.
When one reads about these working conditions--12-16 hour shifts, pay of ~$1 per hour or less, dormitories with 15 beds in 12x12 rooms--the obvious assumption is that it's all about money:
Greedy manufacturers want to make bigger profits, so they make their products in places with labor practices that would be illegal in America.
And money is certainly part of it.
But an amazing new article by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher of the New York Times reveals that there's a lot more to it than that.
The article illustrates just how big a challenge the U.S. faces in trying stop the "hollowing out" process that has sent middle-class jobs overseas--and, with it, the extreme inequality that has developed in recent years.
The reason Apple makes iPhones and iPads in China, the article shows, is not just about money.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
So you support domestic production content laws as a condition of access to US markets?
I'm guessing you don't realize that the entire Federal government was originally funded by ... tariffs. We are under no obligation to provide a market for goods produced outside our nation that throw our own citizens into poverty, it's self-defeating. "Free men" respect and protect the source of their freedom, not compare it to a failed totalitarian state.
The Founding Fathers as just a bunch of Kim Jong Il forerunners ... really. Listen to yourself, you've gone completely 'round the bend.
Nope.
I support (significant) across-the-board import tariffs.
100% on everything imported. No other rules, regulations or government.
Let the market decide. Just remove the incentive to destroy American jobs, and the problem will solve itself, simply by the decisions American consumers make.
Remove the incentive to outsource US jobs.
Then let the market fix things.
I’ve worked plenty of 12-16 hour days, plus weekends, without compensation, so I’m not afraid of long, hard work.
But there is something wrong when employees work 12-16 our days at $1 an hour, & the CEO earns billions of dollars. In some ways, this is taking advantage of desperately poor people who will work for pennies to feed their families because they have no other options.
There is another aspect to this. What kind of life does one have when all they do is work?
Years ago, I took a job with IBM in sales & support. The work load quickly became enormous. I became concerned that I could not do so many things properly, & that all would suffer as a result.
I went to talk to my boss, whom I greatly respected & admired as a boss & family man. He told me he began working during his morning shower & didn’t stop until his head hit the pillow at night. He suggested I put more time in the job.
I was single at the time, but looking, & I had been divorced a few years earlier. I told him the last time I worked like he did, all it got me was a divorce. In my zeal to advance my career, I had neglected my wife, with predictable results.
Well, I didn’t care much for working at IBM. Too much sales & not enough support. So I found another job & moved on.
A year or so later, I attended a seminar at IBM, & I asked about my former boss. I was told he was promoted to Atlanta, but was back in town attending to business related to the terrible divorce he was going through.
I guess the money was more important than the family. Sad.
No. It's because they have a bigger and better factories and a bigger and better supply chain.
“No. It’s because they have a bigger and better factories and...”
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Those factories were American once.
Bring them back.
Actually I know that it was funded entirely by tariffs. These tariffs were not large. I would think that the governmental barriers to trade are higher now than they were back then.
And they can be. That was actually part of Rick Perry's message and he was right.
Oh, you do? What’s with the overwrought North Korea crap, then? Do you really think or do you just emote? Sounds like your ox is being gored, so I suppose that explains it, but answer this, is impoverishing your primary market any sort of recipe for success? No, it’s not. You’re selling the rope with which you’re going to be hanged. Wake up. Find another way to make a buck.
We just have to accept Chinese-labor living standards...so the CEO can have 5 vacation homes instead of just 3. That’s what the American dream is all about, eh?
(Or we could just tell Apple that if they’re not going to make it here, then they’re going to have to pay to get their products to the American market. You know, the way things were done in the good old days before the income tax).
I think you are the one who is “overwrought.” It is correct to observe that the Founding Fathers (and the Constitution) intended tariffs to provide revenue to the Federal Government. Not all of the Founding Fathers (and not the Constitution) provide for tariffs to “bring jobs back to the U.S.,” or whatever populist garbage your typical protectionist uses to argue in favor of a larger, and more intrusive industrial policy. And at the extreme end of that industrial policy, you have the example of N. Korea.
Anyone that believes this BS is either stupid, mentally ill or Chinese.
Indeed, the situation of the ploy of the Chinese worker and the maintenance of bad investment into greedy short sighted death cult communists in China is not going to improve with America so long that Zero in chief without a head is in power.
We agree except I would start import tariffs low, say at 5%, then slowly raise them say 5% a year. I would like the Free Traitors squirm a little first rather than burn them alive.
Higher taxes will make the economy grow. People are simply too stupid to see it, so we must increase taxes slowly.
You should really do some research, the only thing that the Chinese pay import duties on is on flat screen TV's. And it is a tiny little duty.
Respectfully pointing out in response to your choice of emotionally-laden words that the root, of the word “protectionism”, is the wonderful word: “protect”.
Same thing America’s brave, selfless military service people do.
Protect ... America; protect America.
You got a problem wit’ dat “free trade” punk??
:D
Nobody listens to your Free Trade crap anymore. Traitors can GTH.
Word games, huh? “Free,” as in “free market,” means liberty.
Tariffs are, like you said, amoral and protect the 94% of manufacturing workers that are non union as well as the 6% union types.
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