But I thought Mac users were the ones who kept saying they were willing to pay higher prices for Apple computers, and anybody who complains about Mac prices are a bunch of cheap idiots who should buy a PC.
On the one hand it seems silly to even dignify Trumps ridiculous ravings with a serious consideration such as this. But I agree with Tralala that it would be better if we did get serious about technical education in this country and re- start manufacturing.
That should be Tim Cook's response... "Hey, Trump! We'll start thinking about moving manufacturing back to the US, when this fucking government starts thinking (and doing something) about the failing public education system in this country!"
This is nonsense.
Articles like this one prove that it isn't about training. It is about profit and a race to the bottom. Tech companies have been the worst offenders of this problem. When foreign labor illegally comes into the country and a farmer wants to exploit that, we excuse it by saying they are jobs that Americans won't do. When they send the labor abroad, we blame the wages that would be paid here and declare that they were bad jobs no one wanted and now people have to be trained better for the good jobs. Now we see these corporations bringing actual people into the country under H1b visas, demanding the well-educated and well trained American workforce train their replacements and then firing the Americans.
At some point the excuses have to stop and people have to be employed. At every level Americans lose out and are told they don't need to be employed or they are the problem for their own lack of employment at all levels of effort and education. The techs have been the worst at this by far.
It wouldn't just be Apple. ALL manufacturing would have to be brought home. You can't single out one company. It would essentially be the end of the USA as all nations would become economic protectionists, buying only those goods they manufacture. Which is why we have a congress that is very business-oriented, and why we will never have to worry about Trump being elected.
And a little tip to Tralala...the last thing in the world the Republican party wants is full employment. Unemployment in 8% range is most desirable as it keeps wages down. You anti-Democrat stance is a evidence of your ignorance about world economies.
The robotics solution will play out eventually, regardless of mandates.
So true. They have already been used for years to produce (assemble) basic phones, auto components and many other products.
I don't see a smaller 4" iPhone being any lower assembly cost, but I would prefer it to replace my 5c, unless my eyesight requires a larger iPhone at 5c replacement time.
Apple will be kicked out of China and lose its most important (future) market.
Apple will not be able to sell to other future markets like Brazil and possibly India.
In short it will be the end of Apple.
Of course to totally leave manufacturing in other countries would be far too stupid a move. Apple would only need production in the USA to equal the value of Apple products sold in the USA.
How many Apple employees are employed in the US? How much money from foreign sales help pay for that?
The days of manufacturing anything in one country (or even tracking that sort of thing) are over. Your customers are worldwide. Your supply chain is worldwide. Your manufacturing is worldwide. This is the world today.
Have a look at countries with protectionist rules like the ones Trump is suggesting: Brazil, Argentina, etc... How are they doing? Do they have a healthy middle class? No, they have worse rich/poor distribution than we do.
Right on. Of course Trump is making a very emotional political statement. He'd probably forget what he said, if "by accident" he became president.
Or we could actually make multibillion dollar corps actually pay taxes, living wages, keep jobs in America, and make BUYING that allows all these illegal.
So...communism then. Or fascism. At any rate, the government would control everything.
We conservatives are doing our best to stop this maniac, but we're probably going to have to destroy the GOP to do it, so...buckle up.
Im not sure you know what the term fascism means as it typically applies to far right ideology.
What we have now is an oligarchy or as I like to call it, CORPORATE SOCIALISM, and it's caused by billionaires BUYING our government, taking it all and screwing everyone else. You conservatives are selling our country to the highest bidder (see Citizen's United as one proof) and throwing the middle class into the ocean. I AM buckled up.
If you're so anti-government and want the poor, who take FAR LESS in welfare than the rich do, to be able to afford to live, pay Federal taxes, and not rely on gov't subsidies, than make the rich pay for once.
How many Apple employees are employed in the US? How much money from foreign sales help pay for that?
The days of manufacturing anything in one country (or even tracking that sort of thing) are over. Your customers are worldwide. Your supply chain is worldwide. Your manufacturing is worldwide. This is the world today.
Have a look at countries with protectionist rules like the ones Trump is suggesting: Brazil, Argentina, etc... How are they doing? Do they have a healthy middle class? No, they have worse rich/poor distribution than we do.
Right on. Of course Trump is making a very emotional political statement. He'd probably forget what he said, if "by accident" he became president.
Yes, very poor memory and dementia is no obstacle to presidency as Reagan's second mandate proves (the more I read on it, the more I'm amazed how much people covered his ass).
Or we could actually make multibillion dollar corps actually pay taxes, living wages, keep jobs in America, and make BUYING that allows all these illegal.
Communist/Socialist drivel.
Wanna know the real socialists are?
The multi-billion $ companies who the government subsidizes with our middle class tax dollars because they don't pay enough for their workers to survive, who ship the jobs overseas, who don't pay taxes ass they pretend to be based in Caymans or Ireland, and then use the extra billions BUY our government.
That’s what he have right now and it's called CORPORATE SOCIALISM.
Right now profits have never been higher compared to wages lower in ALL OF US HISTORY. EVER.
Right now 99% of ALL the money being given to the candidates for the 2016 election is given by 158 families. BILLIONS upon BILLIONS.
And if it wasn't worth it for Billionaires to donate and BUY our politicians (BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS of DOLLARS) they wouldn't be doing it.
Right on. Of course Trump is making a very emotional political statement. He'd probably forget what he said, if "by accident" he became president.
Yes, very poor memory and dementia is no obstacle to presidency as Reagan's second mandate proves (the more I read on it, the more I'm amazed how much people covered his ass).
The rule more than the exception: look at Kennedy. Juiced to his eyebrows on steroids for his back injuries.... screwing anything with a pulse. Guy was an American Prince all right.
The multi-billion $ companies who the government subsidizes with our middle class tax dollars because they don't pay enough for their workers to survive, who ship the jobs overseas, who don't pay taxes ass they pretend to be based in Caymans or Ireland, and then use the extra billions BUY our government.
That’s what he have right now and it's called CORPORATE SOCIALISM.
And if it wasn't worth it for Billionaires to donate and BUY our politicians (BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS of DOLLARS) they wouldn't be doing it.
Period.
It's even worse, the government BORROWS TO GIVE THE COMPANIES AND TOP 5% tax breaks.
When you cut revenues and give tax breaks at the same time while owing a shitload of money, well this money has to be borrowed. That's the whole fallacy of trickle down; cut taxes now and eventually this money will be reinvested to produce a lot more in the future (because the crux of this fallacy is private leverage is better than government leverage). That has been proven 100% wrong 100% of the time. The money is not reinvested and those tax revenues are gone forever while you're spending stay the same, but now you're taxing the part of the economy that grows the slowest! Result, deficits and big debt that everyone has to pay.
So, 5% gets 90% of tax break, and 100% pays this tax break 2 times over (because of borrowing costs)... Seems fair isn't it. Just like profits belong to banks and risk of bad loans belong to society... (sic). Good ol' "market forced" (sic).
Those that make enough to pay taxes, but not enough to benefit from the largesse (those much bandied about middle class) are those that are screwed the most. But, those at the bottom are also screwed because government leverage is used to balance out opportunity and enable them to have a chance to reach the middle class. The disinvestment at the bottom of government, and the lack of investment in productive assets (instead of stocks and fixed assets) leads to little opportunity, little spending beyond basic needs and thus a crippling long term of the economy. Because the middle class gets screwed, more and more slip into this bottom rung over time. That's the legacy of 35 years of trickle down economics; the GOP's legacy.
While the GOP has been the main proponent of trickle down; the democrat have not mounted a proper defense against it (often because they didn't control the house) so it's hard to trust entirely that they were 100% against what happened.
BTW, If anyone thinks Trump wants to change this they're properly demented. I don't trust anyone in the US (GOP, Democrat, some Unicorn third way) to change this, there is no much money greasing the wheels for anything to be done in the short to mid term. Things like citizen's united just made this even worse.
Unless American, I meant US American, not Mexican are okay with $20/day assembly jobs, then bring these jobs back home. Otherwise, Fck Trump's proposal. I want an affordable iPhone.
I don't know if Trump actually believes he'll get elected. But he most certainly knows he'll not be able to make Apple "make all their damned computers and things" be manufactured it the US. He.knows.that.
This is typical campaign stumping saying things people want to hear, promises that are not meant to be kept, to the very demographic that he'd forget the second it got into office. Until he deduced to make a bid for a second term. Wash, rinse, repeat. Fortunately, none of that will happen.
Or we could actually make multibillion dollar corps actually pay taxes, living wages, keep jobs in America, and make BUYING that allows all these illegal.
So...communism then. Or fascism. At any rate, the government would control everything.
We conservatives are doing our best to stop this maniac, but we're probably going to have to destroy the GOP to do it, so...buckle up.
Mod remove this if not acceptable.
I rarely agree with anything you say outside of Apple tech talk but I do agree the GOP needs to rid itself of the loonies, both the Tea Party and Entertainers and get back to being the sensible, willing to negotiate party of past years.
As morbidly entertaining as it is to consider the implications of a Trump presidency the reality is that even if he did get elected he'd be powerless to enact or enforce such a mandate against Apple or any other company.
The President of the US is not the king, czar, dictator, or führer of the country. The separation of power ensures that a nut ball in the White House isn't able to run amok and destroy the country for their own personal or their affiliated party's pleasure. The actual powers afforded to the president in the constitution are actually quite limited. Yeah, he could severely mess with the Post Office or send a battle group to the South China Sea. But mess with Apple, or Dell, or Microsoft, or GM, or any other American company, no way.
I'll assume the Mexican made Chevy pickups and Chinese made Buick SUVs are no more at risk than are the Chinese made iPhones.
from the Christian Science Monitor: "But the report... the ACA gives workers more freedom to work fewer hours – which could cause a reduction in labor force participation, the CBO report says.
This sounds like a Nancy Pelosi justification for the cut back of hours "workers more freedom" to pursue their "dreams." IMHO, that doesn't fly. Cutting back your hours means less cash -- which means less money to pursue "more freedom."
there is no way we are going to, or should, try to become some isolated, protectionist, country.
Aren’t you in for a wild ride.
It is ridiculous at best to suggest we do so
Nah.
just pandering to an un-educated populace who are "mad" about things they don't even understand.
lol
One of my business partners complained about the ACA, yet recognizes that without it, he wouldn't be able to afford or get health insurance. And because he feels betrayed by this fact, then he complains that it's not really affordable - because you know it's "Obama's fault that he couldn't make insurance cost less".
So you associate with one idiot, therefore America shouldn’t be isolationist.
…a great America, one from the 1950’s, where women participated in society by staying home to raise the kids…
Do you want to start that argument, because I’m more than willing to end it.
Many other posters before me have covered most of the other things, so I'll just say to the rest of the group: good job ferreting out the truth of the matter on those issues! There's no technological issue that's a problem, just logistics and regulations.
Now, I'd like to point out a flaw that nobody else has posted, as referenced in the article: the statement that robots aren't nimble/dexterous enough to replace the humans used in China (or anywhere else).
My background: I'm formally trained in robotics/automation and the related industrial technology, and I'm in the process of designing my own 3D printer, with a notably different design for the mechanics.
There's a specific generalized 3D printer design known as the delta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_robot that has been adapted to 3D printing. As you can see from the wikipedia page, one of its uses is in electronic component placement. If you look at a modern circuit board for any computing device, the parts are tiny to the point where the most nimble of human beings would be slow, at best, handling them while doing assembly. The pick-and-place robots can place several hundred of those in a minute. They're absurdly precise for their costs, as well as being far faster than any human.
Where humans are going to be more useful in comparison to the robots is in being able to be rapidly trained to make common sense decisions as applicable to whole-phone assembly: it's not a technical limitation of automation at all, and the needed customization for assembly is rather limited and cheap: it just takes time to program and reprogram and test automated assembly lines to get exactly what you want out of them, but once you do, if you've managed to get all the right testing into the assembly process, it'd be faster and more consistent than using humans.
And here comes the next part of that equation: now that you've got all these robots, you need people to maintain and program them, and they're a bit more expensive and harder to find: once there's enough demand for them long enough with the requisite pay, that'll correct itself. One person can maintain and program a very large number of robots/hard automation (not all automation needs to be as flexible as a robot: the distinction between what's a robot and what's not is that a robot can be reprogrammed, that's all: "BattleBots" on TV uses merely weaponized remote control toys, but there's not a single thing that makes them a robot ).
Comments
Articles like this one prove that it isn't about training. It is about profit and a race to the bottom. Tech companies have been the worst offenders of this problem. When foreign labor illegally comes into the country and a farmer wants to exploit that, we excuse it by saying they are jobs that Americans won't do. When they send the labor abroad, we blame the wages that would be paid here and declare that they were bad jobs no one wanted and now people have to be trained better for the good jobs. Now we see these corporations bringing actual people into the country under H1b visas, demanding the well-educated and well trained American workforce train their replacements and then firing the Americans.
At some point the excuses have to stop and people have to be employed. At every level Americans lose out and are told they don't need to be employed or they are the problem for their own lack of employment at all levels of effort and education. The techs have been the worst at this by far.
They have already been used for years to produce (assemble) basic phones, auto components and many other products.
I don't see a smaller 4" iPhone being any lower assembly cost,
but I would prefer it to replace my 5c,
unless my eyesight requires a larger iPhone at 5c replacement time.
Apple would only need production in the USA to equal the value of Apple products sold in the USA.
Of course Trump is making a very emotional political statement.
He'd probably forget what he said, if "by accident" he became president.
What we have now is an oligarchy or as I like to call it, CORPORATE SOCIALISM, and it's caused by billionaires BUYING our government, taking it all and screwing everyone else. You conservatives are selling our country to the highest bidder (see Citizen's United as one proof) and throwing the middle class into the ocean. I AM buckled up.
If you're so anti-government and want the poor, who take FAR LESS in welfare than the rich do, to be able to afford to live, pay Federal taxes, and not rely on gov't subsidies, than make the rich pay for once.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/most-americans-have-less-than-1000-in-savings-2015-10-06
Wanna know the real socialists are?
The multi-billion $ companies who the government subsidizes with our middle class tax dollars because they don't pay enough for their workers to survive, who ship the jobs overseas, who don't pay taxes ass they pretend to be based in Caymans or Ireland, and then use the extra billions BUY our government.
That’s what he have right now and it's called CORPORATE SOCIALISM.
Right now profits have never been higher compared to wages lower in ALL OF US HISTORY. EVER.
Right now 99% of ALL the money being given to the candidates for the 2016 election is given by 158 families. BILLIONS upon BILLIONS.
And if it wasn't worth it for Billionaires to donate and BUY our politicians (BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS of DOLLARS) they wouldn't be doing it.
Period.
When you cut revenues and give tax breaks at the same time while owing a shitload of money, well this money has to be borrowed.
That's the whole fallacy of trickle down; cut taxes now and eventually this money will be reinvested to produce a lot more in the future
(because the crux of this fallacy is private leverage is better than government leverage). That has been proven 100% wrong 100% of the time.
The money is not reinvested and those tax revenues are gone forever while you're spending stay the same, but now you're taxing the part of the economy that grows the slowest! Result, deficits and big debt that everyone has to pay.
So, 5% gets 90% of tax break, and 100% pays this tax break 2 times over (because of borrowing costs)... Seems fair isn't it.
Just like profits belong to banks and risk of bad loans belong to society... (sic). Good ol' "market forced" (sic).
Those that make enough to pay taxes, but not enough to benefit from the largesse (those much bandied about middle class) are those that are screwed the most.
But, those at the bottom are also screwed because government leverage is used to balance out opportunity and enable them to have a chance to reach the middle class.
The disinvestment at the bottom of government, and the lack of investment in productive assets (instead of stocks and fixed assets)
leads to little opportunity, little spending beyond basic needs and thus a crippling long term of the economy.
Because the middle class gets screwed, more and more slip into this bottom rung over time.
That's the legacy of 35 years of trickle down economics; the GOP's legacy.
While the GOP has been the main proponent of trickle down; the democrat have not mounted a proper defense against it (often because they didn't control the house) so it's hard to trust entirely that they were 100% against what happened.
BTW, If anyone thinks Trump wants to change this they're properly demented.
I don't trust anyone in the US (GOP, Democrat, some Unicorn third way) to change this,
there is no much money greasing the wheels for anything to be done in the short to mid term.
Things like citizen's united just made this even worse.
This is typical campaign stumping saying things people want to hear, promises that are not meant to be kept, to the very demographic that he'd forget the second it got into office. Until he deduced to make a bid for a second term. Wash, rinse, repeat. Fortunately, none of that will happen.
I rarely agree with anything you say outside of Apple tech talk but I do agree the GOP needs to rid itself of the loonies, both the Tea Party and Entertainers and get back to being the sensible, willing to negotiate party of past years.
I didn't realize you'd be so upset over all this...
The President of the US is not the king, czar, dictator, or führer of the country. The separation of power ensures that a nut ball in the White House isn't able to run amok and destroy the country for their own personal or their affiliated party's pleasure. The actual powers afforded to the president in the constitution are actually quite limited. Yeah, he could severely mess with the Post Office or send a battle group to the South China Sea. But mess with Apple, or Dell, or Microsoft, or GM, or any other American company, no way.
I'll assume the Mexican made Chevy pickups and Chinese made Buick SUVs are no more at risk than are the Chinese made iPhones.
Nah.
lol
So you associate with one idiot, therefore America shouldn’t be isolationist.
Do you want to start that argument, because I’m more than willing to end it.
Genetic fallacy. Try again.
I notice you still refuse to back your earlier claims. I guess I shouldn’t expect you to back these.
Single payer is absolutely delusional. It’s definitely not the solution to this.
Now, I'd like to point out a flaw that nobody else has posted, as referenced in the article: the statement that robots aren't nimble/dexterous enough to replace the humans used in China (or anywhere else).
My background: I'm formally trained in robotics/automation and the related industrial technology, and I'm in the process of designing my own 3D printer, with a notably different design for the mechanics.
There's a specific generalized 3D printer design known as the delta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_robot that has been adapted to 3D printing. As you can see from the wikipedia page, one of its uses is in electronic component placement. If you look at a modern circuit board for any computing device, the parts are tiny to the point where the most nimble of human beings would be slow, at best, handling them while doing assembly. The pick-and-place robots can place several hundred of those in a minute. They're absurdly precise for their costs, as well as being far faster than any human.
Where humans are going to be more useful in comparison to the robots is in being able to be rapidly trained to make common sense decisions as applicable to whole-phone assembly: it's not a technical limitation of automation at all, and the needed customization for assembly is rather limited and cheap: it just takes time to program and reprogram and test automated assembly lines to get exactly what you want out of them, but once you do, if you've managed to get all the right testing into the assembly process, it'd be faster and more consistent than using humans.
And here comes the next part of that equation: now that you've got all these robots, you need people to maintain and program them, and they're a bit more expensive and harder to find: once there's enough demand for them long enough with the requisite pay, that'll correct itself. One person can maintain and program a very large number of robots/hard automation (not all automation needs to be as flexible as a robot: the distinction between what's a robot and what's not is that a robot can be reprogrammed, that's all: "BattleBots" on TV uses merely weaponized remote control toys, but there's not a single thing that makes them a robot ).