This might actually be the truth. We can’t tell simply because China hasn’t been honest with the death rate.
The other reality is people are likely too scared to return to work.
Today the Chinese government released its official numbers of those “recovered”. It’s 8% of all cases. With 2.5% dead, I wonder what is happening with the remaining 89%.
Apple doesn’t want to invest a couple hundred billion dollars in building real robots that can assemble iPhones.
so replacing people's jobs with robots is the great solution ? Apple providing jobs is why you don't want to buy Apple products or invest in aapl ?
Workers travel across the country to work at Foxconn. The wages there are way higher than what they could get at other jobs. Some according to reports earn 10 times their parents incomes.
(I belief in diversifying manufacturing and supply. But too often people's criticism of Apple's China operations is xenophobic racism masquerading as 'concern'. )
It’s not the responsibility of Apple or its shareholders to provide jobs to the poor Chinese citizens. It’s the responsibility of the Chinese government.
I’m gonna push back on the idea that it’s the Chinese government’s job to find jobs for poor citizen’s. Is that really true? Maybe as an authoritarian regime, it is. If so, should it be? Shouldn’t the government be creating a legal & regulatory environment that is conducive to doing business while protecting vulnerable worker & environmental resources and enforcing those policies fairly & transparently?
It’s a good argument, but that’s a totally different discussion. Normally, governments are responsible for making sure the citizens live in prosperity. How they do that is another thing. However, I agree with you that for us, as Americans, the whole concept of the government being concerned with the livelihoods of its citizens is a completely bizarre idea. It’s totally foreign to us that the government should devise a system where everyone has healthcare. I know.
That doesn’t change the fact that in all other developed countries governments, in fact, concern themselves with improving lives of their citizens and creating systems like universal healthcare that benefit everyone.
As for China, of course it’s a totalitarian country. So, be truthful with yourself why you are investing in AAPL: to benefit yourself by taking advantage of impoverished Chinese workers or to improve the lives of the impoverished Chinese workers by moving them from their villages into Foxconn barracks.
Those Europeans who invested in slave trading corporations in the 17th and 18th centuries may have also deluded themselves that they were helping to civilize primitive Africans by transporting them in slave ships from African rainforests to American plantations. The reality was quite different, though. They invested in slave trade to make tremendous profits by exploiting poor Africans.
You really bruised your points by bringing in universal health care. The fact of the matter is this universal health care only benefits the lazy! I’ve yet to see a good reason why we should make life easy for the welfare crowd. In fact it should be made even more difficult to the point of cutting all services for people not willing to work for the money. If that means giving people on welfare a 10 pound hammer, to crush rocks in a quarry, then that is what we should be doing.
In a nut shell there is no excuse for the current system that rewards the lack of doing. Instead we try to flood the lazy with freebies and hope nothing bad comes of their idle time after the playing of games expires. Then people seriously wonder about the violence, drug use and other issues the welfare crowd suffers from.
Apple doesn’t want to invest a couple hundred billion dollars in building real robots that can assemble iPhones.
so replacing people's jobs with robots is the great solution ? Apple providing jobs is why you don't want to buy Apple products or invest in aapl ?
Workers travel across the country to work at Foxconn. The wages there are way higher than what they could get at other jobs. Some according to reports earn 10 times their parents incomes.
(I belief in diversifying manufacturing and supply. But too often people's criticism of Apple's China operations is xenophobic racism masquerading as 'concern'. )
It’s not the responsibility of Apple or its shareholders to provide jobs to the poor Chinese citizens. It’s the responsibility of the Chinese government.
I’m gonna push back on the idea that it’s the Chinese government’s job to find jobs for poor citizen’s. Is that really true? Maybe as an authoritarian regime, it is. If so, should it be? Shouldn’t the government be creating a legal & regulatory environment that is conducive to doing business while protecting vulnerable worker & environmental resources and enforcing those policies fairly & transparently?
It’s a good argument, but that’s a totally different discussion. Normally, governments are responsible for making sure the citizens live in prosperity. How they do that is another thing. However, I agree with you that for us, as Americans, the whole concept of the government being concerned with the livelihoods of its citizens is a completely bizarre idea. It’s totally foreign to us that the government should devise a system where everyone has healthcare. I know.
That doesn’t change the fact that in all other developed countries governments, in fact, concern themselves with improving lives of their citizens and creating systems like universal healthcare that benefit everyone.
As for China, of course it’s a totalitarian country. So, be truthful with yourself why you are investing in AAPL: to benefit yourself by taking advantage of impoverished Chinese workers or to improve the lives of the impoverished Chinese workers by moving them from their villages into Foxconn barracks.
Those Europeans who invested in slave trading corporations in the 17th and 18th centuries may have also deluded themselves that they were helping to civilize primitive Africans by transporting them in slave ships from African rainforests to American plantations. The reality was quite different, though. They invested in slave trade to make tremendous profits by exploiting poor Africans.
You really bruised your points by bringing in universal health care. The fact of the matter is this universal health care only benefits the lazy! I’ve yet to see a good reason why we should make life easy for the welfare crowd. In fact it should be made even more difficult to the point of cutting all services for people not willing to work for the money. If that means giving people on welfare a 10 pound hammer, to crush rocks in a quarry, then that is what we should be doing.
In a nut shell there is no excuse for the current system that rewards the lack of doing. Instead we try to flood the lazy with freebies and hope nothing bad comes of their idle time after the playing of games expires. Then people seriously wonder about the violence, drug use and other issues the welfare crowd suffers from.
Speaking like a true brainwashed American. Are you insured against having a debilitating disease, losing your job, and losing your insurance? Are you aware of the millions of people in the US who go bankrupt because they had a sudden and unexpected health condition? Are you familiar with the percentage of people who get cancer and lose their job and insurance as a result? You think it will not happen to you, don’t you?
You are brainwashed worse than people in the Soviet Union were, and I lived in both countries long enough to know it.
However, it should be the responsibility of Apple to be an ethical corporation by not using slave labor, and Apple is failing badly at this responsibility, even though they promote themselves as an ethical corporation.
Foxconn is not Apple's company.
As a customer, Apple has no right to rule what Foxconn decides to do with their employee, legally and morally. However Apple has stated many times that they are working to improve the working conditions at Foxconn. A company in China has a different set of standards when it comes to working conditions, applying our own standards does not necessary mean better for them.
My son is studying the American Civil War in school, and it has been very enlightening to me.
Europe supported the South during the American Civil War not because Europe was in favor of slavery. In fact, they were anti-slavery, but they were getting a steady supply of cotton from the southern states, and they cared more about continuing to get cotton at the price that they liked than about the fact that the cotton was produced by slave labor.
@Sirozha, for eons, enterprise has always looked for cheaper labour. Heck, software outsourcing to India and now to places like Vietnam, Macedonia, Bulgaria, etc., is because developers are cheaper in those countries than in the US or UK.
The whole China scenario is very complex, even before the Coronavirus epidemic. I am in no position to pass moral judgement on Apple with respect to how Chinese factory workers are treated. But I am an optimist and think and hope that Apple is ensuring the safety of workers before declaring the factories open.
Of course, any business should strive to lower its costs. But, is there a line that an ethical business should not cross?
By outsourcing manufacturing to Foxconn, Apple distanced itself from the responsibility for how the manufacturing facilities are run.
You may notice that I’m not calling out Foxconn on this. That’s because I have no high expectations of Foxconn. They run sweatshops. These are rich Chinese (Taiwanese) exploiting poor Chinese. It’s too bad but not much can be done about it. However, I have high expectations of Apple as the premium American brand.
Apple doesn’t want to invest a couple hundred billion dollars in building real robots that can assemble iPhones.
so replacing people's jobs with robots is the great solution ? Apple providing jobs is why you don't want to buy Apple products or invest in aapl ?
Workers travel across the country to work at Foxconn. The wages there are way higher than what they could get at other jobs. Some according to reports earn 10 times their parents incomes.
(I belief in diversifying manufacturing and supply. But too often people's criticism of Apple's China operations is xenophobic racism masquerading as 'concern'. )
It’s not the responsibility of Apple or its shareholders to provide jobs to the poor Chinese citizens. It’s the responsibility of the Chinese government.
I’m gonna push back on the idea that it’s the Chinese government’s job to find jobs for poor citizen’s. Is that really true? Maybe as an authoritarian regime, it is. If so, should it be? Shouldn’t the government be creating a legal & regulatory environment that is conducive to doing business while protecting vulnerable worker & environmental resources and enforcing those policies fairly & transparently?
It’s a good argument, but that’s a totally different discussion. Normally, governments are responsible for making sure the citizens live in prosperity. How they do that is another thing. However, I agree with you that for us, as Americans, the whole concept of the government being concerned with the livelihoods of its citizens is a completely bizarre idea. It’s totally foreign to us that the government should devise a system where everyone has healthcare. I know.
That doesn’t change the fact that in all other developed countries governments, in fact, concern themselves with improving lives of their citizens and creating systems like universal healthcare that benefit everyone.
As for China, of course it’s a totalitarian country. So, be truthful with yourself why you are investing in AAPL: to benefit yourself by taking advantage of impoverished Chinese workers or to improve the lives of the impoverished Chinese workers by moving them from their villages into Foxconn barracks.
Those Europeans who invested in slave trading corporations in the 17th and 18th centuries may have also deluded themselves that they were helping to civilize primitive Africans by transporting them in slave ships from African rainforests to American plantations. The reality was quite different, though. They invested in slave trade to make tremendous profits by exploiting poor Africans.
I see where you are going, and perhaps your original point that I focused on "It’s not the responsibility of Apple or its shareholders to provide jobs to the poor Chinese citizens. It’s the responsibility of the Chinese government. " wasn't exactly what you meant to say. I'm in full agreement that healthcare is an appropriate thing for government to provide (falls under "protect vulnerable workers" in my comment. I'm an American, so I don't take it for granted that the government will provide me healthcare, I'm also a business owner, so I actually write the check out every month for my family's insurance.
Sticking with my original point, I don't think it should be the Chinese government's responsibility to find better jobs for individuals. This is the kind of thing that happened in Soviet-style communist countries and it didn't work out too well. The Chinese government, if they are not satisfied with the current job prospects of the Chinese industrial worker (not something I suspect they spend much time worrying about in their currently booming economy), should enact policies to protect their workers/environment. Then companies like Apple will have to decide if the higher cost of doing business in China is worth it. Maybe they will? At the same time, China should probably also work on encouraging other kinds of businesses to replace the type of industry that will likely exit the country since India, Thailand, Vietnam, etc would probably be overjoyed to take over the sweatshop device gadget assembly work if China was no longer interested/viable.
I happen to also be a business owner and also write a check for my insurance every month. Starting in April, my family monthly insurance premiums are going up to $1500/month, which is 12% higher than now. I also lived in the Soviet Union and later Russia half of my life, so I know what happened there. I can tell you that with all the downsides of a government-owned economy, everyone at least had free medical care and free education, including higher education (university/college level), and free graduate schools (master/doctorate level). But, I'm not speaking of the Chinese government as a pure communist government. Even though their ideology is communist, their economy is capitalist with a higher government control than in the US. It is absolutely the job of the Chinese government to pull their poor into the middle class. In fact, it's not I who is saying this; it's the Chinese government itself who made this one of their goals. They have achieved tremendous success in that regard. The Chinese middle class now well exceeds the entire population of the US. China has created a tremendous amount of wealth in the past 25-30 years since America and other Western countries started outsourcing manufacturing to China. The Chinese were able to copy and steal so much technology from the West that they are now able to invent new things without having to steal intellectual property anymore. At the same time, they acquired a tremendous amount of knowledge in manufacturing processes, while we, in the United States, have lost all of our ability to manufacture things domestically.
The Chinese government has done well for the Chinese citizens. They will continue to improve the livelihoods of the Chinese citizens. It's not the responsibility of Apple or any other US corporation to create jobs for the Chinese citizens, thus justifying having ridiculously low manufacturing costs. However, it should be the responsibility of Apple to be an ethical corporation by not using slave labor, and Apple is failing badly at this responsibility, even though they promote themselves as an ethical corporation.
I guess I don’t understand your argument then. Now you say the government HAS found their citizens jobs? Originally you said they SHOULD provide jobs. So they have done what they should?
i don’t really think manufacturers setting up shop is their government providing jobs, more like the government not stopping Apple (and e everyone else) from setting up shop. The Soviets provided jobs to their citizens building poorly designed soviet cars, not by letting Ford setup an F150 factory. but we can agree to disagree.
im not arguing with what you think Apple should or shouldn’t do. I’m not a huge fan of the final assembly process as executed by Foxconn & Friends.
Apple doesn’t want to invest a couple hundred billion dollars in building real robots that can assemble iPhones.
so replacing people's jobs with robots is the great solution ? Apple providing jobs is why you don't want to buy Apple products or invest in aapl ?
Workers travel across the country to work at Foxconn. The wages there are way higher than what they could get at other jobs. Some according to reports earn 10 times their parents incomes.
(I belief in diversifying manufacturing and supply. But too often people's criticism of Apple's China operations is xenophobic racism masquerading as 'concern'. )
It’s not the responsibility of Apple or its shareholders to provide jobs to the poor Chinese citizens. It’s the responsibility of the Chinese government.
I’m gonna push back on the idea that it’s the Chinese government’s job to find jobs for poor citizen’s. Is that really true? Maybe as an authoritarian regime, it is. If so, should it be? Shouldn’t the government be creating a legal & regulatory environment that is conducive to doing business while protecting vulnerable worker & environmental resources and enforcing those policies fairly & transparently?
It’s a good argument, but that’s a totally different discussion. Normally, governments are responsible for making sure the citizens live in prosperity. How they do that is another thing. However, I agree with you that for us, as Americans, the whole concept of the government being concerned with the livelihoods of its citizens is a completely bizarre idea. It’s totally foreign to us that the government should devise a system where everyone has healthcare. I know.
That doesn’t change the fact that in all other developed countries governments, in fact, concern themselves with improving lives of their citizens and creating systems like universal healthcare that benefit everyone.
As for China, of course it’s a totalitarian country. So, be truthful with yourself why you are investing in AAPL: to benefit yourself by taking advantage of impoverished Chinese workers or to improve the lives of the impoverished Chinese workers by moving them from their villages into Foxconn barracks.
Those Europeans who invested in slave trading corporations in the 17th and 18th centuries may have also deluded themselves that they were helping to civilize primitive Africans by transporting them in slave ships from African rainforests to American plantations. The reality was quite different, though. They invested in slave trade to make tremendous profits by exploiting poor Africans.
I see where you are going, and perhaps your original point that I focused on "It’s not the responsibility of Apple or its shareholders to provide jobs to the poor Chinese citizens. It’s the responsibility of the Chinese government. " wasn't exactly what you meant to say. I'm in full agreement that healthcare is an appropriate thing for government to provide (falls under "protect vulnerable workers" in my comment. I'm an American, so I don't take it for granted that the government will provide me healthcare, I'm also a business owner, so I actually write the check out every month for my family's insurance.
Sticking with my original point, I don't think it should be the Chinese government's responsibility to find better jobs for individuals. This is the kind of thing that happened in Soviet-style communist countries and it didn't work out too well. The Chinese government, if they are not satisfied with the current job prospects of the Chinese industrial worker (not something I suspect they spend much time worrying about in their currently booming economy), should enact policies to protect their workers/environment. Then companies like Apple will have to decide if the higher cost of doing business in China is worth it. Maybe they will? At the same time, China should probably also work on encouraging other kinds of businesses to replace the type of industry that will likely exit the country since India, Thailand, Vietnam, etc would probably be overjoyed to take over the sweatshop device gadget assembly work if China was no longer interested/viable.
I happen to also be a business owner and also write a check for my insurance every month. Starting in April, my family monthly insurance premiums are going up to $1500/month, which is 12% higher than now. I also lived in the Soviet Union and later Russia half of my life, so I know what happened there. I can tell you that with all the downsides of a government-owned economy, everyone at least had free medical care and free education, including higher education (university/college level), and free graduate schools (master/doctorate level). But, I'm not speaking of the Chinese government as a pure communist government. Even though their ideology is communist, their economy is capitalist with a higher government control than in the US. It is absolutely the job of the Chinese government to pull their poor into the middle class. In fact, it's not I who is saying this; it's the Chinese government itself who made this one of their goals. They have achieved tremendous success in that regard. The Chinese middle class now well exceeds the entire population of the US. China has created a tremendous amount of wealth in the past 25-30 years since America and other Western countries started outsourcing manufacturing to China. The Chinese were able to copy and steal so much technology from the West that they are now able to invent new things without having to steal intellectual property anymore. At the same time, they acquired a tremendous amount of knowledge in manufacturing processes, while we, in the United States, have lost all of our ability to manufacture things domestically.
The Chinese government has done well for the Chinese citizens. They will continue to improve the livelihoods of the Chinese citizens. It's not the responsibility of Apple or any other US corporation to create jobs for the Chinese citizens, thus justifying having ridiculously low manufacturing costs. However, it should be the responsibility of Apple to be an ethical corporation by not using slave labor, and Apple is failing badly at this responsibility, even though they promote themselves as an ethical corporation.
I guess I don’t understand your argument then. Now you say the government HAS found their citizens jobs? Originally you said they SHOULD provide jobs. So they have done what they should?
i don’t really think manufacturers setting up shop is their government providing jobs, more like the government not stopping Apple (and e everyone else) from setting up shop. The Soviets provided jobs to their citizens building poorly designed soviet cars, not by letting Ford setup an F150 factory. but we can agree to disagree.
im not arguing with what you think Apple should or shouldn’t do. I’m not a huge fan of the final assembly process as executed by Foxconn & Friends.
There are always two sides to a story. After running their own economy into the ground in the 1950s-1960s during their “Cultural Revolution”, China decided to reverse their course and open up their economy to Western investments. They thought they could carve out their own course by remaining communist ideologically while deviating from the orthodox communism and allowing private businesses and foreign investments contrary to the course that the Soviet communists were taking. There was a big rift between the Soviet style communism and the Chinese style communism that developed by then. Many developing countries had two communist parties: one pro-Soviet and one pro-Chinese. The Soviet Union and China even had several armed conflicts along the border, which was unheard of among communist counties that were supposed to confront the West but not each other. China also fought a bloody war with Vietnam in the 1980s, with Vietnam being a satellite of the Soviet Union.
China always had aspirations of a superpower, and it challenged the Soviet Union for the status of the communist superpower in the second half of the 20th century. Once China created a thriving capitalist style economy by the end of the second decade of the 21st century, it decided the time had come to challenge the United Stated, which was the only remaining superpower.
The Chinese knew back in 1970s that they would have to be humble for decades, while agreeing to become a cheap manufacturer for the prime American brands. Because of the government control over the capitalist style economy, they were able to divert tremendous resources to building their own infrastructure and acquiring the know how from their Western “partners”. They also sponsored millions of Chinese citizens to study in Western universities and acquire both the knowledge in various fields as well as steal the IP and bring it back to China.
Over the course of 30-40 years, China completely transformed itself from being one of the poorest countries to the second largest economy in the world with modern cities and civilian infrastructure (airports, trains, roads, etc.) that make American civilian infrastructure look like a third-world country. In the process, China also created a sizable middle class with tremendous purchasing power, which exceeds the entire population of the US. The Chinese military is so advanced that even the US doesn’t dare challenge it.
What China did for their citizens and their country could only be compared to the speed of development in Israel, but Israel is a tiny country with a population of less than 10 million people, whereas China is 150 times as large.
China would never have been able to achieve what they did if it were not for the stupidity of the US governments that was effected by the pressure applied on both the executive and the legislative branches of the US government by large corporate interests. In the pursuit of profits, the corporations lobbied the government to allow the outsourcing of almost all US manufacturing to China. As a result, tens of millions of jobs left the US and landed in China, thus impoverishing the American workers and bringing China and its workers out of poverty. The trade imbalance between the US and China reaching $600 billion per year is not a coincidence. As the US corporate profits grew exponentially, so did the annual US budget deficits and the US national debt, which basically bankrolled the corporate profits.
As an American, I cannot remain impartial here. Even though I recognize that what the Chinese government achieved for their citizens is nothing short of miraculous, I also recognize that it happened at the expense of the working people in the US. The outsourcing of manufacturing to China created all sorts of social and economic problems in the former US manufacturing areas, which were left with abandoned factories and no jobs. The drug crisis and the poverty that we are now witnessing in those areas is the direct effect of the corporate greed and the corruption at all levels of the state and federal governments that allowed the corporations to shift their manufacturing oversees and didn’t impose proper tariffs to make such outsourcing unprofitable.
We have now found ourselves in the situation when Tim Cook simply states that bringing assembly of Apple products back to the US is not feasible because there are no industrial engineers left in the US who know how to set up manufacturing facilities here. Those engineers who taught the Chinese how to set up favorites back 30 years ago are either retired or dead. If we were to start building manufacturing facilities here, we would have to hire Chinese engineers to teach us how to do it.
This is a result of corrupt government practices that cave to corporate interests and abandon national interests. Unfortunately, Tim Cook is one of the most high-profile proponents of outsourcing manufacturing to China, who doesn’t give a damn about how ethical his polices are in regard to both American and Chinese workers. Apple demonstrated how successful a corporation can be when it has no ethical qualms. Apple is not the only US corporation that behaved like that; far from it! But Apple is one of the most vocal entities that speaks of ethics in business while employing most unethical ways to achieve high profits.
Apple doesn’t want to invest a couple hundred billion dollars in building real robots that can assemble iPhones.
so replacing people's jobs with robots is the great solution ? Apple providing jobs is why you don't want to buy Apple products or invest in aapl ?
Workers travel across the country to work at Foxconn. The wages there are way higher than what they could get at other jobs. Some according to reports earn 10 times their parents incomes.
(I belief in diversifying manufacturing and supply. But too often people's criticism of Apple's China operations is xenophobic racism masquerading as 'concern'. )
It’s not the responsibility of Apple or its shareholders to provide jobs to the poor Chinese citizens. It’s the responsibility of the Chinese government.
I’m gonna push back on the idea that it’s the Chinese government’s job to find jobs for poor citizen’s. Is that really true? Maybe as an authoritarian regime, it is. If so, should it be? Shouldn’t the government be creating a legal & regulatory environment that is conducive to doing business while protecting vulnerable worker & environmental resources and enforcing those policies fairly & transparently?
It’s a good argument, but that’s a totally different discussion. Normally, governments are responsible for making sure the citizens live in prosperity. How they do that is another thing. However, I agree with you that for us, as Americans, the whole concept of the government being concerned with the livelihoods of its citizens is a completely bizarre idea. It’s totally foreign to us that the government should devise a system where everyone has healthcare. I know.
That doesn’t change the fact that in all other developed countries governments, in fact, concern themselves with improving lives of their citizens and creating systems like universal healthcare that benefit everyone.
As for China, of course it’s a totalitarian country. So, be truthful with yourself why you are investing in AAPL: to benefit yourself by taking advantage of impoverished Chinese workers or to improve the lives of the impoverished Chinese workers by moving them from their villages into Foxconn barracks.
Those Europeans who invested in slave trading corporations in the 17th and 18th centuries may have also deluded themselves that they were helping to civilize primitive Africans by transporting them in slave ships from African rainforests to American plantations. The reality was quite different, though. They invested in slave trade to make tremendous profits by exploiting poor Africans.
I see where you are going, and perhaps your original point that I focused on "It’s not the responsibility of Apple or its shareholders to provide jobs to the poor Chinese citizens. It’s the responsibility of the Chinese government. " wasn't exactly what you meant to say. I'm in full agreement that healthcare is an appropriate thing for government to provide (falls under "protect vulnerable workers" in my comment. I'm an American, so I don't take it for granted that the government will provide me healthcare, I'm also a business owner, so I actually write the check out every month for my family's insurance.
Sticking with my original point, I don't think it should be the Chinese government's responsibility to find better jobs for individuals. This is the kind of thing that happened in Soviet-style communist countries and it didn't work out too well. The Chinese government, if they are not satisfied with the current job prospects of the Chinese industrial worker (not something I suspect they spend much time worrying about in their currently booming economy), should enact policies to protect their workers/environment. Then companies like Apple will have to decide if the higher cost of doing business in China is worth it. Maybe they will? At the same time, China should probably also work on encouraging other kinds of businesses to replace the type of industry that will likely exit the country since India, Thailand, Vietnam, etc would probably be overjoyed to take over the sweatshop device gadget assembly work if China was no longer interested/viable.
I happen to also be a business owner and also write a check for my insurance every month. Starting in April, my family monthly insurance premiums are going up to $1500/month, which is 12% higher than now. I also lived in the Soviet Union and later Russia half of my life, so I know what happened there. I can tell you that with all the downsides of a government-owned economy, everyone at least had free medical care and free education, including higher education (university/college level), and free graduate schools (master/doctorate level). But, I'm not speaking of the Chinese government as a pure communist government. Even though their ideology is communist, their economy is capitalist with a higher government control than in the US. It is absolutely the job of the Chinese government to pull their poor into the middle class. In fact, it's not I who is saying this; it's the Chinese government itself who made this one of their goals. They have achieved tremendous success in that regard. The Chinese middle class now well exceeds the entire population of the US. China has created a tremendous amount of wealth in the past 25-30 years since America and other Western countries started outsourcing manufacturing to China. The Chinese were able to copy and steal so much technology from the West that they are now able to invent new things without having to steal intellectual property anymore. At the same time, they acquired a tremendous amount of knowledge in manufacturing processes, while we, in the United States, have lost all of our ability to manufacture things domestically.
The Chinese government has done well for the Chinese citizens. They will continue to improve the livelihoods of the Chinese citizens. It's not the responsibility of Apple or any other US corporation to create jobs for the Chinese citizens, thus justifying having ridiculously low manufacturing costs. However, it should be the responsibility of Apple to be an ethical corporation by not using slave labor, and Apple is failing badly at this responsibility, even though they promote themselves as an ethical corporation.
I guess I don’t understand your argument then. Now you say the government HAS found their citizens jobs? Originally you said they SHOULD provide jobs. So they have done what they should?
i don’t really think manufacturers setting up shop is their government providing jobs, more like the government not stopping Apple (and e everyone else) from setting up shop. The Soviets provided jobs to their citizens building poorly designed soviet cars, not by letting Ford setup an F150 factory. but we can agree to disagree.
im not arguing with what you think Apple should or shouldn’t do. I’m not a huge fan of the final assembly process as executed by Foxconn & Friends.
There are always two sides to a story. After running their own economy into the ground in the 1950s-1960s during their “Cultural Revolution”, China decided to reverse their course and open up their economy to Western investments. They thought they could carve out their own course by remaining communist ideologically while deviating from the orthodox communism and allowing private businesses and foreign investments contrary to the course that the Soviet communists were taking. There was a big rift between the Soviet style communism and the Chinese style communism that developed by then. Many developing countries had two communist parties: one pro-Soviet and one pro-Chinese. The Soviet Union and China even had several armed conflicts along the border, which was unheard of among communist counties that were supposed to confront the West but not each other. China also fought a bloody war with Vietnam in the 1980s, with Vietnam being a satellite of the Soviet Union.
China always had aspirations of a superpower, and it challenged the Soviet Union for the status of the communist superpower in the second half of the 20th century. Once China created a thriving capitalist style economy by the end of the second decade of the 21st century, it decided the time had come to challenge the United Stated, which was the only remaining superpower.
The Chinese knew back in 1970s that they would have to be humble for decades, while agreeing to become a cheap manufacturer for the prime American brands. Because of the government control over the capitalist style economy, they were able to divert tremendous resources to building their own infrastructure and acquiring the know how from their Western “partners”. They also sponsored millions of Chinese citizens to study in Western universities and acquire both the knowledge in various fields as well as steal the IP and bring it back to China.
Over the course of 30-40 years, China completely transformed itself from being one of the poorest countries to the second largest economy in the world with modern cities and civilian infrastructure (airports, trains, roads, etc.) that make American civilian infrastructure look like a third-world country. In the process, China also created a sizable middle class with tremendous purchasing power, which exceeds the entire population of the US. The Chinese military is so advanced that even the US doesn’t dare challenge it.
What China did for their citizens and their country could only be compared to the speed of development in Israel, but Israel is a tiny country with a population of less than 10 million people, whereas China is 150 times as large.
China would never have been able to achieve what they did if it were not for the stupidity of the US governments that was effected by the pressure applied on both the executive and the legislative branches of the US government by large corporate interests. In the pursuit of profits, the corporations lobbied the government to allow the outsourcing of almost all US manufacturing to China. As a result, tens of millions of jobs left the US and landed in China, thus impoverishing the American workers and bringing China and its workers out of poverty. The trade imbalance between the US and China reaching $600 billion per year is not a coincidence. As the US corporate profits grew exponentially, so did the annual US budget deficits and the US national debt, which basically bankrolled the corporate profits.
As an American, I cannot remain impartial here. Even though I recognize that what the Chinese government achieved for their citizens is nothing short of miraculous, I also recognize that it happened at the expense of the working people in the US. The outsourcing of manufacturing to China created all sorts of social and economic problems in the former US manufacturing areas, which were left with abandoned factories and no jobs. The drug crisis and the poverty that we are now witnessing in those areas is the direct effect of the corporate greed and the corruption at all levels of the state and federal governments that allowed the corporations to shift their manufacturing oversees and didn’t impose proper tariffs to make such outsourcing unprofitable.
We have now found ourselves in the situation when Tim Cook simply states that bringing assembly of Apple products back to the US is not feasible because there are no industrial engineers left in the US who know how to set up manufacturing facilities here. Those engineers who taught the Chinese how to set up favorites back 30 years ago are either retired or dead. If we were to start building manufacturing facilities here, we would have to hire Chinese engineers to teach us how to do it.
This is a result of corrupt government practices that cave to corporate interests and abandon national interests. Unfortunately, Tim Cook is one of the most high-profile proponents of outsourcing manufacturing to China, who doesn’t give a damn about how ethical his polices are in regard to both American and Chinese workers. Apple demonstrated how successful a corporation can be when it has no ethical qualms. Apple is not the only US corporation that behaved like that; far from it! But Apple is one of the most vocal entities that speaks of ethics in business while employing most unethical ways to achieve high profits.
Got it, you are upset that China has found success. We (the United States) dropped the ball there, didn't we? Should have kept the boot firmly on their throats so they wouldn't have a chance to climb up into industrial relevance. And they stole our American ideas right from our own industrial revolution: Busting unions, forced overtime, unsafe living/working conditions, questionable compensation, company towns. You seem to be quite a history buff, please consider looking back a little further at how the US industrialized. It wasn't pretty here either. But we came out on the other side better for it.
Anyway, my effort to lead you back to my original point that its not the Chinese government's responsibility to find jobs for its people hasn't worked out so well, therefore I'll bow out, as it seems everyone else already has.
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Speaking like a true brainwashed American. Are you insured against having a debilitating disease, losing your job, and losing your insurance? Are you aware of the millions of people in the US who go bankrupt because they had a sudden and unexpected health condition? Are you familiar with the percentage of people who get cancer and lose their job and insurance as a result? You think it will not happen to you, don’t you?
As a customer, Apple has no right to rule what Foxconn decides to do with their employee, legally and morally. However Apple has stated many times that they are working to improve the working conditions at Foxconn. A company in China has a different set of standards when it comes to working conditions, applying our own standards does not necessary mean better for them.
@Sirozha, for eons, enterprise has always looked for cheaper labour. Heck, software outsourcing to India and now to places like Vietnam, Macedonia, Bulgaria, etc., is because developers are cheaper in those countries than in the US or UK.
The whole China scenario is very complex, even before the Coronavirus epidemic. I am in no position to pass moral judgement on Apple with respect to how Chinese factory workers are treated. But I am an optimist and think and hope that Apple is ensuring the safety of workers before declaring the factories open.
i don’t really think manufacturers setting up shop is their government providing jobs, more like the government not stopping Apple (and e everyone else) from setting up shop. The Soviets provided jobs to their citizens building poorly designed soviet cars, not by letting Ford setup an F150 factory. but we can agree to disagree.
im not arguing with what you think Apple should or shouldn’t do. I’m not a huge fan of the final assembly process as executed by Foxconn & Friends.
challenge the United Stated, which was the only remaining superpower.
What China did for their citizens and their country could only be compared to the speed of development in Israel, but Israel is a tiny country with a population of less than 10 million people, whereas China is 150 times as large.
Anyway, my effort to lead you back to my original point that its not the Chinese government's responsibility to find jobs for its people hasn't worked out so well, therefore I'll bow out, as it seems everyone else already has.