Posted on 12/31/2015 8:11:22 AM PST by Lorianne
Tim Cook has come out about a real truth of the decline in manufacturing. What he omitted however, is that no one will manufacture in the U.S. unless they absolutely have to due to a 38% corporate tax rate.
On 60 Minutes Sunday, Charlie Rose asked Apple CEO Tim Cook about his company’s manufacturing practices in China. Cook said the decision to use Chinese manufacturing has nothing to do with American workers demanding higher wages. He said it was because the Chinese have more skill.
“Let me be clear,†Cook told Rose, “China put an enormous focus on manufacturing in what you and I would call vocational skills. The U.S., over time, began to stop having as many vocational skills.
(Excerpt) Read more at thechinamoneyreport.com ...
It's a matter of historical record that Apple was one of the last to move its manufacturing to China. They stood fast as long as they could until regulation and competition cost forced them to close their Elk Grove California plant in 2003 or so and move. All other computer makers had moved well before Apple. I think the other hold out was Dell. They moved shortly before Apple.
I think the final straw was the change in California's Workers Compensation Laws right around then and the huge increases in costs.
Uh, if you are talking about the Mac Pros, they use workstation class Intel Xeon processors, made in the United States. The case, power supply, heat sinks, logic board, many of the chips, all US made. At least 80% of the Mac Pro is US made. The RAM may be Crucial, assembled here, but using foreign RAM chips.
The same companies that contract with Apple also do contract assembly for every other consumer electronic company you can name for the exact same reasons. Cook just articulated them so we can do something about fixing them. Why should that make you hate Apple? "Killing the messenger!" Is never a good strategy, Blowhard.
Joe, Americans are manufacturing for Apple all along. . . Many parts of the iPhone, iPad, and iPods are manufactured in the United States. But if you are talking about actually building Apple products, they are. The Mac Pro is being made in Austin, Texas, and iMacs are being assembled in Elk Grove, California, about 20 miles from where I live. . . By Americans.
Americans make the millions of Intel processors that go into every Mac. Americans produce the Corning Gorilla Glass for every iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
I saw that hit piece too. . . But its claims were completely false. Apple has been using Corning Gorilla Glass on all its products since the first iPhone. They still do. Corning makes glass they do not need to get permissions to make glass. Corning's president refuted that piece of nonsense.
The president of Corning was on stage with Steve Jobs at the into of the first generation iPhone. . . when Steve told about using glass. I saw it. From Wikipedia:
"(Gorilla Glass) It was brought into commercial use when Apple asked Corning for a thin, toughened glass; it was used in the new iPhone.
The New York Times had to print a retraction. They still won a Pulitzer for their poorly researched hit piece. More egregious "errors" were discovered in following days.
They can't seem to grasp that the cost of living is not the same everywhere in the world that it is here in the US. For example, in China an apartment in the city will rent for the equivalent of $125 a month. Staying in the dorm at FoxConn with Room and Board is about $70 per month. In town you pay for your own meals while away from work, but at work they're provided.
Now, working at a regular assembly line can get you up to $2.50 per hour, but an Apple line can pay up to $3.70 per hour. 12 hour day for the peak Apple worker makes $44.40 X 6 days = $266.40. $1065.60 plus $222 overtime = $1287.60. The regular worker can get $30 per day, $180 per week. $720 per month plus $150 overtime = $870.
Not bad pay for hard, long work, but the cost of living isn't bad. It's far better pay than shop clerks get. Minimum wage in China is about the equivalent of a little less than $1 an hour.
The Apple assembly line top pay, in relation to US $7.25 minimum wage would be the equivalent of about $28 an hour. . . if the job were here.
I did work on a mine on Iryan Jaya - disputed island in Indonesia. The two guys that helped us with field labor made 50 cents an hour. With us they made $1.50 an hour as we worked longer than 8 hours and were off the mine site proper. They also were housed by the mine in shipping containers, and ate free at the cafeteria.
When I heard they only got paid 50 cents an hour I said something like “So is it true you get paid 50 cents an hour!?”
“Oh yes!! Best in all of Indonesia!”
Further conversation I found out that the one guy (carpenter by trade) was going to work at the mine for five years, then go back to his island and wife and children as he would have enough money to build a house.
That was 20 years ago. I just paid off my mortgage after 25 years! (Granted, my house and his house are probably quite a bit different, but...)
Exactly, cost of living. My first job was at minimum wage many years ago . . . $1.25 an hour running kiddie rides for Detweiler's Kiddie Land. A two bedroom apartment in the area rented for $175 a month, 140 times the hourly minimum wage. Now, in the same area, the minimum wage is $10 an hour. A two bedroom apartment in the area rents for only $700 or so, only 70 times the minimum wage.
Hmmmm. Something seems to be out of whack. The starter wage has doubled in rental buying power, yet the "I want" class is demanding a minimum wage of $15 an hour.
On the other hand, the job I did is no longer viable. There are no "kiddie lands" in existence any more. No one can afford to keep them going. The cost of living has changed. Back then, when the minimum wage was $1.25, even though people earned a lot less, they could afford to take the kids to a kiddie ride place that was open year round and employed youngsters at minimum wage. Now, people earn a lot more, but the rides would cost $5-7.50 a pop per kid and no one can afford to go. So, no kiddie rides, no kiddie land, no jobs, no fun.
Of course, you could buy a brand new Volkswagen bug for $1600 then too, and gas was 27 cents or less a gallon. Sometimes they had gas wars and the price would drop to 17 cents. . . but you got Blue Chip or Green Stamps with every purchase and a minimum wage worker pumped your gas, checked your oil and air in your tires, and washed your windshield for you. . . and you might get a water tumbler with a scene of mountains on it (collect the whole set) with a fill-up.
“The starter wage has doubled in rental buying power, yet the ‘I want’ class is demanding a minimum wage of $15 an hour.”
Rent might be $700 a month, but toss in a cell phone and cable TV and internet and add another $100 to $200 a month. And $3.00 lattes once or twice a day. (My son was taking a long bus trip and didn’t know if he would have enough battery to watch the football game on his cell phone. I said “Gee - if I had known - I could have given you this cool invention I have. A transistor radio - even has the ear plug!”)
Perhaps I should have said the “spoiled generation?”
I didn’t know that some of the Xeons are still U.S. made, that’s great! There is also a nifty video on line showing the cases and motherboards being made. These are certainly more than being “assembled” here.
Now, if they can only do a better job of keeping the processors, GPUs, and i/o up to date (need USB 3.1).
Personally, I’d rather have an updated version of the giant tower, rather than a bunch of wires sticking out, but that’s just me.
I’d also like a wallet to support such a device, but it is NOT overpriced. The Linux guy I work with would say he could build as good a machine (desktop or Mac Pro equivalent laptop) and as soon as I mentioned the proprietary high speed interface for SSD in the Mac laptop he started immediately backtracking on “things that the device doesn’t need”. I then pointed out the Porsches he drools over. “That’s different,” he responded.
Asian cultures respect and demand high achievement in their kids. American culture no longer does that. We have two generations now of borderline retards. Of course Chinese have more skill.
This is why I call them Free Traitors™, and a lot Freepers get mad at me for it.
Its all about college prep...in the school systems in my neck of thee woods.
Continually raising wages with phony money does not make you more wealthy. It does however make you unable to compete in the world market. An ounce of gold still buys you about as much in real goods today as it did when the value of gold was fixed at $35.00 an ounce, and hamburgers were 10 cents at your local restaurant.
Would they have more rights if Apple were not there? Didn't think so, in fact they would likely be worse off.
Sure would iPhones would sell for $4,000.00 and Samsung would be $500.00. Yeah!!!!
Whether Cook is wrong or right, we need more vocational training in this country. Not everyone needs/wants an academic college degree nor should we expect them to.
People are not the same. Any program that assumes people are interchangeable cogs in society is, in my opinion, a dangerous concept because it fundamentally dismisses human individuality.
D@mn straight buy only SamSung products they are made here buy union workers, right? The ignorance displayed on these threads is astounding. Until every country is using the same currency and a chicken is the same price in every store there will always be inequality so I guess people are totally fine with One World Government.
We can all never be equally rich, but we can all be equally poor.
Gee the labor per each I - phone is about 3%. The profit is about 3-4 times that.
Apple is FOS and I like their products I am using one right now.
Apple lists an unlocked 16GB iPhone 5S on its site at $649 and an iPhone 5C at $549 Manufacturing, including freight, to equal $18-20 per unit.
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