This Article Explains Why Apple Makes iPhones In China And Why The U.S. Is Screwed

Business Insider ^ | 01/22/12 | Henry Blodget

[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.

[listenhillary]

China no longer publishes the figures for how many riots take place each year, but most people put the figure at around 80,000 and the vast majority go totally unnoticed.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/malcolmmoore/10122566/Tens_of_thousands_of_Chinese_fight_the_police_in_Shishou/

Chinese authorities use the term “mass incident” to describe a riots, demonstrations and group protests, petitions, and strikes, both peaceful and violent. The term appears to cover group actions ranging from minor work stoppages to serious riots. Sometimes the term is used to describe a group protest involving more than 100 people. Once regarded as taboo and still illegal, they occur surprisingly often. There were about 180,000 in 2010, according to Sun Liping, a Tsinghua University sociologist. That was up from 87,000 in 2005, according to the Ministry of Public Security. According to the New York Times authorities recorded 127,000 so-called mass incidents in 2010 but most were too small to gain wide notice. According to figures from the China Academy of Social Sciences fights over land account for 65 percent of rural “mass conflicts” and is also a serious problem in cities

http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=305&catid=8&subcatid=49

Sitting in her Nanjing hotel reading anti-government posts on her Blackberry and laptop, Ying Chan, the dean of Cheung Kong School of Journalism and Communication at Shantou University said: “In totalitarian states in the past, meetings among dissidents happened under a veil of secrecy. But here I was following the actions of these free-thinking strangers in real time without ever setting foot outside. In the age of the microblog, every mobile handset and computer is a news broadcast station, a node in a vast information network.

“The traditional one-way flow of information — from official media to the audience — is being altered by the multi-way flow of information online because of social media,” says Bu Zhong, assistant professor at Penn State University. “The compromises that we’ve seen lately show how officials are learning to handle crises in the age of social media — suppression does not always work anymore. What’s happening today was not conceivable in China 10 or 20 years ago.”

[1rudeboy]

So you propose gradually raising the cost of gasoline 5% at a time. How will that affect the price of nearly everything you pay for, American-made or not? And will it create enough high-paying American jobs to compensate?

If pointing out that "crap" makes me a "enemy of the state" [pun intended], then you might as well send me to the Gulag, comrade.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

We have no “free market” for our goods.

We only give away a “free market” to our adversaries.

Do you leave your front door open at night?

You you leave your car doors open in your driveway?

Do you leave your stereo in your front yard?

Do you leave money laying around at work?

Do you?

Why are we as a nation, doing things that foolish?

I’m all for “free markets”.

We don’t have any “free markets” for our goods.

It is beyond STUPID for us to keep ours open, to any nation which does not reciprocate 100%.

Tariffs. Now.

Or perhaps even total blockade.

Then, and only then, (begin) negotiating for reciprocal access.

We are doing nothing now, except giving away our nation.

[central_va]

If pointing out that "crap" makes me a "enemy of the state" [pun intended], then you might as well send me to the Gulag, comrade.

Just go see your Chinese handlers, they are your comrades.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Frankly, you’re full of it. Really.

I mean that in the nicest possible way.

[The Great RJ]

Note labor unions are illegal in China so workers won't see their wages pushed to $40/hour for putting screws in some sub assembly or be guaranteed their current salary and benefits for life if their plant closes.

[1rudeboy]

Tariffs are, like you said, amoral and protect the 94% of manufacturing workers that are non union as well as the 6% union types.

Unless, you work for a manufacturer such as Caterpillar, or Lockheed. But who needs them?

[central_va]

It is not possible to have welfare state and open borders and free trade. They cannot co-exist.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Only a matter of time, and they’ll be outsourced also.

Then what?

[1rudeboy]

Hey, I’m not the guy who wants to double the cost of oil overnight, and thinks it will stimulate the economy.

[central_va]

THere are plenty of right to work states where manufacturing workers are non-union and make very competitive products. I am for free trade INSIDE the USA.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

You (always) use that dishonest claim.

I did not say we should double the cost of everything.

I said I support a 100% _import_ tariff.

The cost of anything and everything made, grown, manufactured, mined or drilled out of the ground in America would not change.

Only imports.

[1rudeboy]

Now you are sounding like Milton Friedman! A minute ago it was Karl Marx.

[Chode]

the second problem is... if they were tariffed up or made in the USA, they'd prolly be cost prohibitive as most Americans couldn't afford them without increases in their own wages

[1rudeboy]

The cost of anything and everything made, grown, manufactured, mined or drilled out of the ground in America would not change.
Only imports.

Idiot.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

I believe Karl Marx actually was a supporter of “free trade”.

Believed it fomented social discord.

Coincidentally, exactly as it’s doing now...

[central_va]

Free trade is great until your job is off shored or H1-b visa’d.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Now now now.

If we’re going to respectfully disagree, let’s strive to retain at least a thin veneer of courtesy.

[1rudeboy]

So you agree with Marx, then?

[M. Dodge Thomas]

And in Seattle Gazelle Jones doesn’t come to work at all because he couldn’t manage to get up and drag himself in on Mondays till 9:30. He just couldn’t manage a schedule set by his job.

His half sister tamikila also no longer has a job because she couldn’t pass the drug test they gave every week

Did you bother to read the article?

I thought so.

Here's the Cliff Notes version: It's largely about a college educated, married man.

And I'm not surprised: at my Home Despot the last two "associates" I talked in the electrical aisle were an EE (formally at Motorola) and a Lawyer who formally did patent law for Tech firms, work which has largely been outsourced to India, with a US based attorney signing off on the final product.

If you think the reason the unemployment rate is where it is because the unemployed are lazy drug addicts with funny names, you really need to get out more - for starters the people you describe have been out of the work force so long they are not even being counted.