North Carolina locals question benefits of Apple's $1 billion server farm - Page 3

The furniture does not get sold locally. They make furniture for the really big distributors in the urban centers. 50 bedroom sets is not going to make a difference. The reason their unemployment is so high is because the customers in the urban centers are not buying high quality handcrafted hardwood furniture. If they are buying furniture at all it is from the cheap sellers like Ikea who specialize in disposable press board, laminated, some assembly required, junk.

You ARE joking? As if nobody knew in advance that 50 jobs were what would be created.


Some people are just so negative! I don't think it is Apple's fault that (A) the furniture business is slumping, and (B) that furniture is all you know. And what about all the people who had work for a year or more on the construction? I bet they are really unhappy about those jobs.

Besides, if 50 more people move into the area, then that will be 50 more people needing homes, and 50 more people eating at the local diner, and who know, some of them may even buy some furniture,

So this is Apple's fault?

Let's see. What is the total site? 100 acres? Farmland in NC was probably worth a few thousand dollars an acre. Let's be generous and call it $1 M. Apple increased the value to $1,000 M. So, even with a 50% reduction in taxes, Apple's paying far more than the previous owners did. And farmland is generally taxed at a lower rate than industrial land, so the difference may be even greater.


I'm not sure where electricity comes into the equation. Apple plans to generate their own power, so it shouldn't have any impact.


So? Does that mean there's no value to the community? They bought enough materials for a $1 B data center - some of that would have been purchased locally. They hired enough people to build a $1 B data center. Most of them would have been local. There would have been a significant impact.


I love the way outsiders who know nothing about the situation think they know enough to judge the community's leaders.

"Only" 50 employees is a lot in an impoverished town of 3400 people. Plus the 200 indirect jobs being created.

The city obviously thought it was a good enough deal to do it. Note that there are no civic leaders or business owners complaining. The only ones complaining are a few whiners who expected million dollar checks to magically appear in their mailboxes.


As you've been told (several times), even with the discount, Apple's efforts here will INCREASE taxes available to the city, not decrease them.


How do you come up with this nonsense? The city will end up with $46 M in NEW tax revenues (minus the small amount that they were previously collecting on the land) based on the fact that Apple is getting a 50% break worth $46 M. The city will immensely benefit from $46 M in new tex revenues.


It's not much? 200 new jobs in an impoverished city of 3400 people (probably 1500 workers) with 13% unemployment? It's HUGE.

And I'm curious where you came up with the claim that Apple implied that there would be thousands of jobs. No one who knows anything about data centers would ever suggest such a thing.

What about the construction jobs created to build the facility, the trucking to move items in and out, etc. If, once built, only 50 are required, good for Apple, but maybe those fifty will inspirer some S/C kids to get into Computer Science in college instead of Sociology.

Do have a reading comprehension problem or did you accidentally reply to the wrong post?

Apple likely didn't promise them some set quota of jobs so there is no promise that wasn't kept. They agreed to more than fair prices for the land, they are paying property taxes etc. But get off the high horse because they don't owe that area the answer to anyone being unemployed simply because they built there

Most of these folks that are disappointed probably never bothered to do any research into what exactly was going on. They heard Apple was building something and made assumptions without actual facts. Or they did some googling and read on some rumor site an article that implied that the center could provide hundreds of jobs and didn't understand that that was a rumor and said site had zero factual info. So their hopes were raised foolishly and were dashed when reality arrived

Just the ratings of an irritational sociialist. It's how their minds work.

In a town of a reported 3,400 adults, 50 jobs represents a potential employment increase of 1.47%. Every little bit helps, do the math.

And if the doubting and unemployed Maiden resident who stated: “People from around here don’t get those jobs, furniture is the only thing I know", he can move to High Point and secure work in the furniture trade.

On the blogs sure. Because disappointment gets more page hits. Apple does something great and you get the Apple fans coming to crow about it. But Apple does something bad and you get the haters coming to bring the hate and the fans coming to tell them to shut up and go away. And the blogs etc page hits and thus $$$$ from Adsense or whatever

Hate to say this firstly goods assembled in the US is uncompetitive otherwise they wouldn't have use Asian companies to do so. Secondly the actions by unions will make many think twice to set up shops in the US.

And it is kind of funny to blame the company for not offering employment when it is not necessary to do so and these people should read Atlas Shrugged. And it damned funny to hear over the BBC someone saying the 1% of the richest should share their wealth with the have nots.

Yup, I'm sure a small town in North Carolina has a bunch of liberal thinking constituents. Please don't try to reduce the real estate bubble down to an ignorant simplification of what actually happened. I also wonder how this benefits the area in an indirect way.

Hard to believe that only 50 jobs were created. However potential is there for more jobs.
Perhaps North Carolina residents weren't aware that this was basically a high tech venture and that the average person in NC would not have the qualifications to obtain these jobs.
On the other hand, once the tax abatement is finished NC will derive nice revenue that it wouldn't have had otherwise.
Bottom Line: Perhaps this wasn't the biggest boom to NC in terms of jobs and revenue. On the other hand the potential is there and having Apple as a responsible, caring corporation in their state is a big plus.

It's not your taxes that are getting cut. It's the taxes that Apple is paying on the property where the building was built. Your taxes are exactly the same.

The reason for such a cut is that property taxes are based on the perceived value of the land. Before that was private residential land and forest, value is rather low. Now it's a high tech office park type commercial land, high value. Very high value in fact. So the taxes would be several times what the original owners were paying. And some of it might have been state or local owned and exempt from taxes at all. So whereas before all that land might have be taxed at say $10k a year, now it could be like $1mil or more. So even cutting it in fact for a few years, they are getting way more money than before.

Same with the personal taxes. it's not your taxes that are being cut but rather what the state and local income tax would be for the 50 folks Apple brought in to run the place. Those 50 folks are still paying their full share but Apple's pay into the system is lower. But given that it is likely that all 50 of those folks are at least new to the area of not the state, it's still an increase in local tax money, plus they had to buy or rent a home, they buy food etc.

So what's your plan? What's a reasonable wage to raise a family on? Maybe we should all work for minimum wage. You probably don't believe in that either. How much does a person in the US need to make to buy these products. I love these race to the bottom arguments.

Until we know how much Apple is paying in taxes etc we can't really say that the reduction is a problem


There's no data to support that notion. No one said that Maiden can't get jobs there cause they can't run their schools etc. Heck for all we know, all the folks in the data center are childless and thus not benefiting from the taxes they are paying which fund such services (remember the breaks on only on corporate taxes, not individual taxes for the employees)

Many wealthy people end up giving huge fortunes to charity, not because they should but because they choose to. Same with ecological preservation. Animals have few rights but some people choose to protect them anyway, at their own expense. Morality and selfless acts of kindness are some of the things that makes being an intelligent specie different than one that is dependent on the survival of the fittest.

Contrary to what you may have been taught, greed is not good.

Me thinks that North Carolinians should stop whining. They voted for unemployment and that's exactly what they got. They're also going to vote for unemployment again, so too bad for them.

And as many people have already pointed out, 50 is better than 0, and it's a server farm, vast numbers of employees are not needed.

I don't care where Apple has their server farms as long as my iPad automatically uploads to the cloud every time that I plug it into the wall.

Apple should build their next server farms in someplace like Alaska and they can get cheap cooling for all their gear and probably also less whining from ignorant locals.

I'm glad that Americans don't build my Macs. Can you imagine the whining and what would happen when the nasty and corrupt Unions get involved?

Besides the 50 jobs some construction workers sure got paid well to build the center. Eventually the tax breaks will run out and the city will have a nice income. A server center needs delivered goods on a daily basis so the town should see a rise in delivery service jobs. In other words, the trickle down effect makes the 50 jobs able to support several times as many jobs that would not have been available if that data center weren't located there.

Besides the fact that the publicity alone was well worth all the tax breaks etc for the the city and state. Other firms may follow Apple's lead.

Apple should hire people to provide power to the data center with bicycles. 1000s of them of course.

Liberals in NC? That's like Eskimos in Hawaii.

I actually agree with that to a point. Many of the richest people end up paying pennies in taxes because of tax cuts etc that aren't given to the lower levels. And to me that is unfair. they should receive the same basic cost of living cuts as the folks that make low 5 figures and should pay the same % in taxes. They can afford to cut a check for $1 million dollars out of their $1 billion dollar bank accounts a lot more than Joe Public can cut for $2000 out of his $50k account.

That excessive tax cutting for the rich is part of why I'm inclined to support dropping income tax for a high flat rate sales tax or some combo of the two. Sure the rich will gripe about having to pay 20% sales tax for their new car but come on, it's a $200k car. If you can afford that then you can likely afford the sales tax a few times over.

I don't understand what the local expected. If you own a furniture store, a gas station, or some other local business, Apple is not going to hire you, and put you to work in their data center, but wouldn't the people they did hire need furniture, gas, food, etc? Wouldn't that money go back to the local economy?

I'm amazed at the Post's article. The reporter certainly didn't ask the right questions. For example, did you see any benefit from the construction that has occurred? Do you anticipate any from the additional construction planned? Did you receive indirect benefits, i.e. people who were directly paid for working on the construction or at the operating facility spending their wages in a way that benefited you?

I'm not amazed at the responses of the NC people interviewed but astounded at the ones I see here. It's a data center, not a manufacturing facility. I'm in an industry that has spent years developing the software and services needed for unattended operation. What else did anyone expect from Apple?

I suspect that a lot of those fifty jobs are relatively unskilled, e.g. guards, cleaning, maintenance. Those jobs were likely filled from locals and their wages help the economy there.

I guess that locals envisioned large rows of filing cabinets and huge numbers of people to pick up the files in carts to be run to another location where football field sized offices were filled with people who would type it into the 'internet' for all the users.

These comments - Wow.....

Everyone keeps talking about ridiculous tax breaks. Please tell us what those ridiculous tax breaks are. If property taxes were reduced in this small town, it looks like it worked out for them.

Oh and by the way, have you been to China lately? I was there in April. I can assure you that the Chinese Central government is all about ridiculous tax breaks to spur local growth. If anything the U.S. needs more of these "ridiculous tax breaks" if we want to keep jobs in the U.S.

LOL. That's how they do it in China.

Unfortunately they depend on mostly coal fired electricity generation. Because the power grid in China is so unreliable, it is quite common for factories to build their own coal fired generators on site thus contributing to the awful air quality. I believe I read that they bring something like 50 new coal fired generators online every week in China.

Did they think there would be hundreds of laborers to maintain a server farm? If so, then they are truly ignorant of technology. It takes a lot to build a place that is designed to be automated, but once it's operational it's a small team.

There's very little information in this article. What do you know that leads you to call this a disgrace?

Do modern data centers require much in the way of on-site bodies? Were the residents of the town deceived? Did Apple's reps lead them to expect more than they've gotten? Were there bribes or other unethical tactics leading to the locating of the facility to begin with? How predatory or irresponsible are Apple's practices relative to other companies?

If your objection is to corporations in general, so long as we permit such legal quasi-people to exist as such, it makes no more sense to condemn them for profiteering than it does to attack a knife for being sharp. Just as Americans have the government we permit, we have the corporations we deserve.

There are probably 50 more gardening, maintenance and janitorial jobs that are not Apple employees. Of course those duties are provided by a crew of Latin American immigrants.

Because 50 workers with good jobs buy groceries. Buy homes. Buy furniture and appliances to go in them. Buy clothes. Eat out. Buy gasoline. Go to the movies. Pay sales tax.

And those local businesses, in turn, spend the money that THEY received on the same things.


On what was FARM LAND. Different zoning, different rates.

Try using your head for something other than a hat rack...

Ya, N. Carolina is a real hot bed of liberalism.

I live in Newton. Next town over from Maiden. We are all not furniture builders here. I'm an IT pro who works for a well established company.The skilled laborers for the tech industry are here also. Sure it isn't silicon valley here but the tech folks are here. And i can say that when Apple built the data center, they did not post any job openings here. I checked. When they built the building, alot was outsourced to the lowest bidder. Not from this area. I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing but...
Get your facts straight and not just speculate.

BTW....it sure does look like Fort Knox when you drive by it though.....They made sure you can't even see it from the highway anymore..

you can also read this. Hickory paper next town over.

http://www2.hickoryrecord.com/busine...den-ar-441096/

It is indeed. The facts speak for themselves. And the liberals there got what they wanted, so they have no right to whine about any jobs or lack of jobs.

If they have a 50% tax break, and that break equals $46 million, then the amount of taxes that Apple will be paying is also $46 M. That is $46 M that the local government did not have before Apple moved in - not to mention the 50 new jobs and scores of construction jobs. Would the county rather not have that income? $46M pays for a lot of teachers.

A. So what? Good for the landowners. That's why you buy land. whats with this "if everybody in the commune doesn't benefit then nobody should" attitude?

B. based on NC property taxes http://www.dornc.com/publications/20...tytaxrates.pdf the land will be worth more with Apple on it than as farmland. Even at Apple's tax discount, they are contributing more tax revenue to NC than the land was generating before.


What do you mean?


Again, good for them. They were a zero-time deal without Apple, weren't they?


The onus to qualify for the jobs at the new-fangled tech place is on the residents. And, yes, there will be landscaping, maintenance, and other miscellaneous jobs to come. Again, 50 jobs is better than no jobs last time I checked.


umm, never? Since there apparently aren't any legitimate ones to be considered? Since you specify "all" the residents of the town and state, and spend so much time seeing this glass as half full, you sound like you espouse "all" or nothing thinking. Defaulting to education and social services suggests that your first thought is for those with their hands out.