Posted on 06/24/2006 1:43:00 PM PDT by wagglebee
Does your kid have an iPod?
Does he or she want one?
Don't even answer that question. Every kid in America either has one or wants one.
The demand for these little devices is amazing – and so is the price, between $200-$300.
"What's wrong with that?" you ask. "Commerce is good for America. It creates jobs and stimulates the economy."
Jobs? Stimulated economy?
Do you know where your iPod was made? Do you know by whom?
The London Sunday Mail wanted to find out. It sent reporters to "iPod City," where most of the Apple music players are made.
"iPod City" is not in the Silicon Valley, by the way. It's not in the USA. It's not in the United Kingdom. It's in Longhua, China.
That's where some 200,000 Chinese laborers work to make those iPods. That's more people than live in the city of Little Rock, Ark., for example.
What are the conditions like? How about the pay?
You might think a high-tech company like Apple might care about such matters. You might think the politically correct geeks who founded the company and run it would want to ensure foreign workers were not being exploited.
Here's what the Sunday Mail found:
The iPod shuffles are made in Suzhou, Shanghai, where workers earn $100 a month. Sounds better doesn't it? Except these laborers must pay for their own food and accommodations – requiring about half their salary.
Remember all this when your kid asks you for an iPod.
And remember it the next time you go shopping at Wal-Mart or some other bargain center where all the goods are made in these virtual Chinese gulags for pay just above slave wages.
And remember that Apple is just one of thousands of companies using Chinese sweatshops like those described here to manufacture expensive goods designed for the Western consumer who remains blissfully ignorant about the conditions that created that product.
Why is it that we don't tolerate the exploitation of workers in our own country but turn a blind eye to exploitation 10 times worse elsewhere?
What is happening to the American conscience and psyche that allows this kind of abuse?
How is it that the U.S. government could continue to encourage the kind of corporate greed that results in manufacturing agreements with the fascists in Beijing?
Why is it that we see no screaming headlines about the conditions of "iPod City" in the U.S. corporate establishment press?
Where is our sense of right and wrong?
Would we have so glibly accepting of imports from Nazi Germany as we are of those made in the virtual slave labor conditions of the so-called "workers paradise" in China?
No, there's a double standard that permits China, a totalitarian socialist country, to get away with abuses that would not be tolerated anywhere else in the world.
Welcome to the New World Order – where we're OK with the worst kind of oppression, as long as we can't see it taking place.
Both my kids own ipods that they purchased with their own money.......it's da Momma that wants one! I'm waiting for the price to come down! I will not pay full price for anything........... :)
LOL! My Hubby still calls CD's.....tapes. Geesh!
The price will NEVER come down, Apple just introduces newer models with different features to keep price and demand up.
And how many of those factories have you personally visited? I'm curious because I have.
Study details Chinese workers' salary
So the workers at this Apple plant are making close to wages, contrary to Joeworld belief, and if the survey is to believed are more than likely happy with their jobs. But what the hey, let's force Apple to pay them $2000-$3000 per month. That will really help the local economy....Who's with me for setting up the boycott?
The bottom line is you have to start somewhere. In the case of the Chinese it is the bottom.
I haven't visited any of them. Are you trying to imply that Chinese workers enjoy the same freedoms that American workers do?
However, if one is only making 400 yuan a month, while it's certainly going to stretch further than it would in the developed world, it leaves very little left over for savings, and hence upward mobility, or any kind of mobility at all for that matter. If you need healthcare you are at the mercy of the limited facilities provided by the government, and if you end up in the hospital you'll be getting your own food (unless you have relatives or friends who will bring it to you). Your health-care will probably be something along the lines of 'injections' which they will give you for a while and hope you get better. If you get worse you can't afford decent health care (from a private provider or by greasing the right palms) so you either stay sick or die.
The average salary of urban workers (according to government statistics) is 18,000 yuan. These people are making considerably less, and, it should be mentioned, many of them are doing it outside of traditional safety zones of family and community. Many of these workers are migrant workers (who may not even 'exist' legally) from the provinces who have very little contact with family, and in the event of an emergency- such as a hospital stay- cannot fall back upon normal means of coping.
Sorry, I meant Mozart.
Well I guess I'll never own one then. :(
Oh! THAT Mozard.
I thought it was the defenseman for the Maple Leafs.
I generally skip the Farah articles these days.
Just a waste of time.
This just reconfirms that...
Who's he?
Michael Palin - First Yorkshireman;
Graham Chapman - Second Yorkshireman;
Terry Jones - Third Yorkshireman;
Eric Idle - Fourth Yorkshireman;
The Scene:
Four well-dressed men are sitting together at a vacation resort.
'Farewell to Thee' is played in the background on Hawaiian guitar.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, very passable, that, very passable bit of risotto.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Nothing like a good glass of Château de Chasselas, eh, Josiah?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You're right there, Obadiah.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Who'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Château de Chasselas, eh?
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
A cup o' cold tea.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Without milk or sugar.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Or tea.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In a cracked cup, an' all.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Because we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness, son".
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was right.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Cardboard box?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.
ALL:
They won't!
Frankly, the thought that my iPod (5G 60 Gig Video) was made by Chinese slave labor makes me all the happier with the device.
Go here....to see a big selection of "podcasts" from all over the world that you can listen to on your computer or download onto an iPod - which is sort of a walkman but with computer chips inside instead of a tape or a CD. There are old time radio shows that you might enjoy, I happen to know...
www.podomatic.com
In the interest of full disclosure, this is my son's site and I happen to know freepers go there..one that I know of has a show hosted there.
Sounded great but you burned the hell out of your fingers!
G. F. Mozard played defense for the Maple Leafs but got traded to Edmonton. (He didn't know what iPods were either.)
If they live in a dorm, don't they already have room and board?
What sort of job were these people working before they made iPods?
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