I don't associate excessive overtime with a slave culture, when I was late teens/early twenties I regularly worked 40+hours overtime each week by choice. I had no ties family wise to get home to and I'm not someone who goes out drinking a lot so I found I was far more productive in the office early morning and late night. The Chinese are (stereo-typically) very driven and hard working so i don't believe they need much encouragement to do overtime if it is indeed mandatory.
Ha!!! I have to laugh at a lot of the comments on this article!! It clearly shows those people have NO IDEA what it's like to work in a factory on an assembly line anywhere including the US!! Jobs pay money, no job no money, no food, no housing no nothing!! We are trying to get plants back to the US, good paying jobs, no you probably won't buy a Bugatti with one but generally they pay pretty good.... Wise up kiddies, no work no money, no toys!
Ha!!! I have to laugh at a lot of the comments on this article!! It clearly shows those people have NO IDEA what it's like to work in a factory on an assembly line anywhere including the US!! Jobs pay money, no job no money, no food, no housing no nothing!! We are trying to get plants back to the US, good paying jobs, no you probably won't buy a Bugatti with one but generally they pay pretty good.... Wise up kiddies, no work no money, no toys!
That all sounds good until you realize that most of the industrial world has benefited from jobs which create and maintain a healthy middle class. These jobs barely keep people alive while the company that employs them creates billionaires. This is modern day serf labor which as history has shown eventually leads to revolution, death and ultimately is replaced with a tyranny.
As for well paying manufacturing jobs returning to the USA, that will never happen. America is now for the most part a country of low earning service people, and white collar management. Sitting at the top of that is a mess of international interest with fingers in just about any money making enterprise.
It is true that fortunes are being made with the low way labor of these people in China. All the tech companies are servant to their stock holders and investors so nothing will be changing and profits for the few will continue.
I used to work for Mercedes-benz, I could not and cannot afford a new one. Were they not paying me enough?
This is a china problem, not an Apple problem. I am not even sure Apple determines how much people can make at these factories, factories that make products for Samsung, Microsoft, google and the likes I might add.
I would sincerely like to know how much Oppo and Xiaomi, and Huawei pay their workers.
Disagree. This is a 'world' problem. I am not putting the blame squarely on Apple, nor on anyone else for that matter - I just don't know enough about it. But I do know that people being paid a pittance for mindless robotic work to build devices for super wealthy corporations is a problem to which we are all complicit in one way or the other. People having to work endless hours without any kind of security and at the end of which they are unable to afford proper housing for their families or to feed and school their children is not right, no matter in which part of the world it happens. It definitely is a China problem but it is also a world problem. It is a fucked up world where this is even possible when there is so much wealth around.
Margret Thatcher put it this way………. "The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
I had a job similar to this in the US once. It involved removing scaldingly hot plastic parts from an injection-molding machine, then punching holes in the parts. It was low-paying, occasionally dangerous, mindless work that made me feel like a robot and gave me horrible nightmares... but it also spurred me to save money so I could go to school. I swore I would never again get into a position to perform such terrible work.
Mindless factory work is a choice and millions of people all over the world can choose to do it to get a leg up. Doing work like this in China pays better than farm work and so many commit a small portion of their lives to performing an unpleasant task to save from doing more unpleasant work in the future.
Now I still work 60 hours and only get paid for 40, who is getting screw more...
This. this is what's wrong in the United States. Somehow mother culture convinced us that working many extra hours a week for no pay is okay and maybe even good. All it does is raise "productivity" numbers which is really just a measure of how much workers are getting screwed. If you look at U.S. worker purchasing power over the last century, the current day is little changed. Natch the top income earners have seen massive growth in their buying power. Something's gotta give.
That's Commie talk. One's life choices harm or help one's ability to earn more. Make bad choices and usually the pay reflects those decisions.
The thing with Manufacturing jobs is it's all Repetition. Right from the start when Henry Ford started the Production Line for the Model T. It brought costs down. The people on the line did the same thing over and over again day after day. This is how you keep quality up and costs down. In general the pay is pretty good.
These people working in a Foxconn factory and doing the same thing, people were doing building that first Model T. Except they're in a much cleaner, temp controlled environment. It's also one of the BEST paying jobs in China for the education level. Most of these people want to work overtime!!! These are people that could have ended up working on the family farm for longer hours and a fraction of the pay.
By the way, Foxconn is already bringing in Robots to do some things. Don't worry, they'll price themselves out of the market like we did soon enough.
If you expect $15 a hour flipping a burger or taking a order, a job I was doing for $3.35 a hour, you're crazy. It's a job a monkey could almost do. It's a ZERO SKILL JOB!!! It's not a job to raise a family on. You also shouldn't be popping out kids working a crap minimum wage job with no real advancement.
Youtube Roboburger and that thing is primitive to what is really possible. You can easily take your own order and Robots can easily cook the food. You can easily have only a fraction of the people you would normally need. So instead of 12-16 people working at the place, you're down to 4? All they're doing is keeping the place clean and stocking up the machines. Those other people? No job and on welfare.
What do you think a Self Checkout machine is? 1 person watching 4 stations. That means 1 in 4 kept their job. If there's 2 shifts, 2 people kept their jobs and 6 others lost theirs. You are doing the work yourself with scanning and bagging instead of a employee. That's from supermarket Unions employee's demanding more and more. Pricing themselves right out of a job. If I can go and do it myself, it's a Zero Skill Job. Yet expecting the world in pay and benefits. A computer or a Robot becomes cheap enough once you cross a line to make it worth it more.
This guy should have also worked someplace else that is NOT under the Apple microscope and see how it really is. Maybe a textile factory for example!!! Or pretty much any factory job that doesn't make Apple products.
I used to work for Mercedes-benz, I could not and cannot afford a new one. Were they not paying me enough?
This is a china problem, not an Apple problem. I am not even sure Apple determines how much people can make at these factories, factories that make products for Samsung, Microsoft, google and the likes I might add.
I would sincerely like to know how much Oppo and Xiaomi, and Huawei pay their workers.
Disagree. This is a 'world' problem. I am not putting the blame squarely on Apple, nor on anyone else for that matter - I just don't know enough about it. But I do know that people being paid a pittance for mindless robotic work to build devices for super wealthy corporations is a problem to which we are all complicit in one way or the other. People having to work endless hours without any kind of security and at the end of which they are unable to afford proper housing for their families or to feed and school their children is not right, no matter in which part of the world it happens. It definitely is a China problem but it is also a world problem. It is a fucked up world where this is even possible when there is so much wealth around.
The trouble is that you are over estimating how much wealth there is in the World and way, way, under estimating how much poor (lack of wealth) there is in the World. The common figures they like to throw around is that the top 1% wealthiest people in the World owns 50% of the World's wealth and the the top 10% of the wealthiest people in the World owns 90% of the World wealth. What you never hear is how much wealth does one need to have, to be in the 1% or the 10%. Most people assume the top 1 must all be billionaires and the top 10% are all millionaires. That is so far from reality. To be in the 1% of the wealthiest people in the World, one only needs to have about $800,000 of wealth. To be in the top 10% of the wealthiest people in the World, one only needs to have about $80,000 of wealth. I doubt that any one with $80,000 of wealth, feels wealthy and yet they would be in the top 10% of the wealthiest people in the World.
This is because more than 3B people (half the adult World population) has less than $3,700 in wealth. 1% of the World adult population is 56M people and 10% of the World adult population is 560,000M people. There are only about 2500 billionaires in the World and only about 16M millionaires in the world. All the billionaires and millionaires and people with a least $1M in wealth, in the World, accounts for about 75% of the people in the wealthiest 1%. The other 25% (in the top 1%) are people with at least $800,000 in wealth. By that standard, I'm willing to bet over 50% of the people commenting here are in the 1% of wealthiest people in the World and nearly all are in the top 10% of the wealthiest people in the World.
It is no great feat for a dozen of the richest people in the World to have more wealth than the poorer 50% of the World adult population. Not when the 3B people that makes up the poorest 50% of the World adult population, have less than $3,600 per person, in wealth. A panhandler that makes $10 a day, is wealthier than 50% of the adults of the World's population.
And then we're taking about wealth not annual income. How much wealth one has is not just based on annual income. A life savings account is wealth. A college fund for your kids is wealth. A mortgage free home is wealth. So is a paid for auto or a Picasso or coin and stamp collection or an Apple 1 computer or an IRA or stock portfolio or a profitable business. Wealth is not necessarily something that can be replace every year, once it's gone.
Take away Gates $75B that he has amassed in wealth over the last 35 years and give it to the poorest 50% and it's only a one time deal. Gates will not earn another $75B for quite awhile. And it will only come to $22 per person in the bottom 50%. So how will the poorer 50% receive another $75B next year and the year after next? Redistribution of wealth, no matter how much of it is concentrated among the top 1% or 10% of the wealthiest people in the World, is not the answer you are looking for.
Margret Thatcher put it this way………. "The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
Plus the "wealth" of a corporation do not count. All of the corporation wealth belongs to it's shareholders and is counted as part of the shareholders wealth. You can't count it twice.
I get all that and I am not really in disagreement with any of it. My comment was more generally about what a fucked up world we have managed to create where the wealth and success of the few is reliant upon so many having to get screwed. I don't accept it as the only way. I am not certain that people generally want to deprive others of a reasonable standard of living in order to raise their own. It is true that not being physically face to face with the 'losers' in this 'deal' it is easier to turn a blind eye, but I really don't think the average level of happiness among the wealthy would change if we paid people a decent living wage. As for the Margaret Thatcher quote... it's cute but I am not sure why you brought it up. I wasn't talking about socialism. We are so far from Socialism it is hardly relevant.
In some ways China is where the U.S. was in late 19th century. Even with a democracy we had sweatshops, child labor, etc. it will be fascinating to see how China's political system will deal with the disparities between the aspirations of its people and its need to maintain political control
The same thing will happen. As the Chinese standard of living rises the labor force will price itself out of a job, just like U.S. manufacturing workers did. Manufacturing will then move to the next low cost labor zone, maybe India. Along the way the manufacturers will continue to move to automation as much as they can. Movements like the ‘raise the minimum wage’ campaigns will be snuffed out as McDonalds and others move to automated restaurants. Progressive socialist politicians have been harping for decades about a guaranteed income for every citizen, whether they work or not. I’m certainly not an economist but common sense tells me this is all heading for a huge train wreck.
Agreed. It'll be interesting to watch.
He's not super well-known, but an economic philosopher named Charles Hugh Smith is very much against a guaranteed income because while material needs might be provided for, social and intellectual ones aren't. Interesting reading if you like this kind of stuff:
You beat me to it. While I empathize there can be few expectations of a job that machines can do better, faster, and cheaper. Given enough pushback from employees, employers—in these cases—will simply turn to automation. At the same time, consumers can't criticize these labor practices while demanding lower and lower prices. For any item on a store shelf, the cost comes out of somebody's paycheck—either yours or the factory worker's.
But never the executive class' -- we must keep their average salary ratio in the 400:1 space, because best & brightest, dontcha know...
In some ways China is where the U.S. was in late 19th century. Even with a democracy we had sweatshops, child labor, etc. it will be fascinating to see how China's political system will deal with the disparities between the aspirations of its people and its need to maintain political control
The same thing will happen. As the Chinese standard of living rises the labor force will price itself out of a job, just like U.S. manufacturing workers did. Manufacturing will then move to the next low cost labor zone, maybe India. Along the way the manufacturers will continue to move to automation as much as they can. Movements like the ‘raise the minimum wage’ campaigns will be snuffed out as McDonalds and others move to automated restaurants. Progressive socialist politicians have been harping for decades about a guaranteed income for every citizen, whether they work or not. I’m certainly not an economist but common sense tells me this is all heading for a huge train wreck.
Who specifically has been harping for a guaranteed income for every citizen whether they work or not?
I used to work for Mercedes-benz, I could not and cannot afford a new one. Were they not paying me enough?
This is a china problem, not an Apple problem. I am not even sure Apple determines how much people can make at these factories, factories that make products for Samsung, Microsoft, google and the likes I might add.
I would sincerely like to know how much Oppo and Xiaomi, and Huawei pay their workers.
They pay what is needed to retain skilled employees and offer average wages for the rest. That's my guess. What Pegatron pays its workers probably follows a similar pattern.
Now I still work 60 hours and only get paid for 40, who is getting screw more...
This. this is what's wrong in the United States. Somehow mother culture convinced us that working many extra hours a week for no pay is okay and maybe even good. All it does is raise "productivity" numbers which is really just a measure of how much workers are getting screwed. If you look at U.S. worker purchasing power over the last century, the current day is little changed. Natch the top income earners have seen massive growth in their buying power. Something's gotta give.
That's Commie talk. One's life choices harm or help one's ability to earn more. Make bad choices and usually the pay reflects those decisions.
That's the bootstrapper myth talk. Birth lotto is biggest factor in ability to earn more. Depending on where you're born and to what social strata, it very well may be that your life choices make no significant impact on ability to earn. A woman born to a war-torn village in the congo may in fact be unable to make any meaningful choices, and will not be opening a boutique clothing shop, ever. Extreme example but it's sound reality to varying degrees all over the planet. White males born in the US are big winners in the birth lottery.
The thing with Manufacturing jobs is it's all Repetition. Right from the start when Henry Ford started the Production Line for the Model T. It brought costs down. The people on the line did the same thing over and over again day after day. This is how you keep quality up and costs down. In general the pay is pretty good.
These people working in a Foxconn factory and doing the same thing, people were doing building that first Model T.
Er, you do realize the whole thing touted about Ford and the Model T was the fact that his auto workers could afford the product they produced with the wages they earned, right? Origins of the blue collar middle class... That sure ain't the same thing as this.
I used to work for Mercedes-benz, I could not and cannot afford a new one. Were they not paying me enough?
This is a china problem, not an Apple problem. I am not even sure Apple determines how much people can make at these factories, factories that make products for Samsung, Microsoft, google and the likes I might add.
I would sincerely like to know how much Oppo and Xiaomi, and Huawei pay their workers.
Disagree. This is a 'world' problem. I am not putting the blame squarely on Apple, nor on anyone else for that matter - I just don't know enough about it. But I do know that people being paid a pittance for mindless robotic work to build devices for super wealthy corporations is a problem to which we are all complicit in one way or the other. People having to work endless hours without any kind of security and at the end of which they are unable to afford proper housing for their families or to feed and school their children is not right, no matter in which part of the world it happens. It definitely is a China problem but it is also a world problem. It is a fucked up world where this is even possible when there is so much wealth around.
The trouble is that you are over estimating how much wealth there is in the World and way, way, under estimating how much poor (lack of wealth) there is in the World. The common figures they like to throw around is that the top 1% wealthiest people in the World owns 50% of the World's wealth and the the top 10% of the wealthiest people in the World owns 90% of the World wealth. What you never hear is how much wealth does one need to have, to be in the 1% or the 10%. Most people assume the top 1 must all be billionaires and the top 10% are all millionaires. That is so far from reality. To be in the 1% of the wealthiest people in the World, one only needs to have about $800,000 of wealth. To be in the top 10% of the wealthiest people in the World, one only needs to have about $80,000 of wealth. I doubt that any one with $80,000 of wealth, feels wealthy and yet they would be in the top 10% of the wealthiest people in the World.
This is because more than 3B people (half the adult World population) has less than $3,700 in wealth. 1% of the World adult population is 56M people and 10% of the World adult population is 560,000M people. There are only about 2500 billionaires in the World and only about 16M millionaires in the world. All the billionaires and millionaires and people with a least $1M in wealth, in the World, accounts for about 75% of the people in the wealthiest 1%. The other 25% (in the top 1%) are people with at least $800,000 in wealth. By that standard, I'm willing to bet over 50% of the people commenting here are in the 1% of wealthiest people in the World and nearly all are in the top 10% of the wealthiest people in the World.
It is no great feat for a dozen of the richest people in the World to have more wealth than the poorer 50% of the World adult population. Not when the 3B people that makes up the poorest 50% of the World adult population, have less than $3,600 per person, in wealth. A panhandler that makes $10 a day, is wealthier than 50% of the adults of the World's population.
And then we're taking about wealth not annual income. How much wealth one has is not just based on annual income. A life savings account is wealth. A college fund for your kids is wealth. A mortgage free home is wealth. So is a paid for auto or a Picasso or coin and stamp collection or an Apple 1 computer or an IRA or stock portfolio or a profitable business. Wealth is not necessarily something that can be replace every year, once it's gone.
Take away Gates $75B that he has amassed in wealth over the last 35 years and give it to the poorest 50% and it's only a one time deal. Gates will not earn another $75B for quite awhile. And it will only come to $22 per person in the bottom 50%. So how will the poorer 50% receive another $75B next year and the year after next? Redistribution of wealth, no matter how much of it is concentrated among the top 1% or 10% of the wealthiest people in the World, is not the answer you are looking for.
Margret Thatcher put it this way………. "The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
Plus the "wealth" of a corporation do not count. All of the corporation wealth belongs to it's shareholders and is counted as part of the shareholders wealth. You can't count it twice.
I get all that and I am not really in disagreement with any of it. My comment was more generally about what a fucked up world we have managed to create where the wealth and success of the few is reliant upon so many having to get screwed. I don't accept it as the only way. I am not certain that people generally want to deprive others of a reasonable standard of living in order to raise their own. It is true that not being physically face to face with the 'losers' in this 'deal' it is easier to turn a blind eye, but I really don't think the average level of happiness among the wealthy would change if we paid people a decent living wage. As for the Margaret Thatcher quote... it's cute but I am not sure why you brought it up. I wasn't talking about socialism. We are so far from Socialism it is hardly relevant.
You are looking at the distribution of wealth like how most people see it, as a pyramid with the few very wealthy that makes up the tip and the very wide base is composed of people of little wealth. And to you, it looks like the people of little wealth, that forms the base, are supporting the more wealthy and very wealthy on top of them. That is not how it works. You need to look at how wealth is created and you will end up with an upside down pyramid.
Take Apple,Inc for instance. With a right side up pyramid, Tim Cook is sitting at the top making $100M + a year. Below him are senior management workers making in the $10's of millions a year. Below them are other management people making about a $1 million a year. Then below that you have programers and designers making in the $100 of thousands a year. Below that you have other Apple workers making in the $10's of thousands a year. And disburse through out are all the other people that are making money because of Apple. People like shareholders, other manufacturers that Apple pay for licensing their tech, companies contracted to make Apple products, shippers of Apple products, people selling Apple products and then finally the 100's of thousands of workers that assemble Apple products at the base. And people look at the this pyramid and assume the lowest paid workers, forming the bottom of the pyramid, are supporting all the more wealthy people above them, and thus they are getting screwed by the system.
But that's not how wealth distribution works when you consider how it's created. Turn the pyramid upside down so that it is balancing on its tip, where Tim Cook is. You will now see that it's Tim Cook running Apple that is supporting all above him (looking at it as an upside down pyramid) The $100M+ a year Tim Cook earns a year pales compared to the $100's of billions of wealth that was made by all the people above him. Its Tim Cook leadership that have allowed for 100's of thousands of workers assembling Apple products to earn a living, even though they may not be getting rich or be able to accumulate as much wealth as all the others. There are over 3 billion people in the World, that can do what the workers that assemble Apple products do for Apple but there may only be a dozen people that can do what Tim Cook does for Apple. It is not the low paid workers that are creating the wealth. The wealth is created starting with Tim Cook running Apple. The 100's of thousands of workers assembling Apple products exist because of Tim Cook and Apple. Tim Cook (or who ever is running Apple) and Apple doesn't exist because of the 100's of thousand of workers assembling Apple products.
Bill Gates $75B and Warren Buffet $50B of wealth are but a sliver of the total wealth they created for others over the decades, with Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway. It is a stretch to say that the people that made the least amount of wealth were "screwed", in order for Gates and Buffet to obtain the wealth they have now. It is also a stretch to say that only a few benefited from so many getting "screwed".
The vast majority of the wealth that Apple creates is going to the 10's of thousands of AAPL shareholders, not to a few. Even though we mainly hear about how Tim Cook got over $350M of AAPL and the $10's of millions of AAPL shares that went to Apple senior managers. Apple had paid to its shareholders over $10B in dividends, every year, for the past 4 years. They have used over $100B in the past 4 years to buy back shares and the over $200B of cash Apple have amassed is part of AAPL share price. All increasing the wealth of 10's of thousands of AAPL shareholders. Without AAPL shareholders investing in Apple, there would be no Apple to contract out to Foxconn, who pays the workers that assemble Apple products. No way should AAPL shareholders feel as though they "screwed" the workers that assembles Apple products, for what wealth they got from investing their own money in AAPL. And no way should AAPL shareholders collectively feel they "screwed" anyone, for the over $10B worth of wealth they got, in the form of a dividend, for each of the last 4 years and most likely again for this year. AAPL shareholders are not just a few people getting wealthy because of Apple.
The thing with Manufacturing jobs is it's all Repetition. Right from the start when Henry Ford started the Production Line for the Model T. It brought costs down. The people on the line did the same thing over and over again day after day. This is how you keep quality up and costs down. In general the pay is pretty good.
These people working in a Foxconn factory and doing the same thing, people were doing building that first Model T.
Er, you do realize the whole thing touted about Ford and the Model T was the fact that his auto workers could afford the product they produced with the wages they earned, right? Origins of the blue collar middle class... That sure ain't the same thing as this.
But Ford paid his auto workers well because he wanted to hire the best auto workers away from his competitors, to work on assemble his autos. Most auto workers were not unskilled labor, by any stretch of the imagination. And Ford was not practicing any form of socialism, he was capitalistic. His workers could only afford to buy his Fords because his production assembly line method of making autos enabled him to sell his Model T for less than 50% of what his competitors could sell autos for. At the time, $800 vs $350 for a Ford Model T. Thus Ford captured over 40% of the auto market at the time. Ford did not pay his workers so well that they could afford to buy a competitors auto at $800.
By this token, it's no different than Apple paying their programers 6 figure wages so they can hire the best programers to design Apple products. I'm sure Apple programers can afford the Apple products they work on.
Unlike back in the days of the Ford Model T, where all the material needed to build a car were made in the US, the material that goes into making Apple products are mainly from Asia. Apple is not a manufacturer. Apple do not operate the factories that assemble their products (except their joint adventure with Flextronics in assembling Mac Pros in Texas). Apple do not hire nor pay the mostly unskilled workers that assemble their products. Which are the real reasons why it's not the same as when Ford was building his Model T.
But where they are similar is that robotics has taken over more and more of the assembly process.
Comments
As for well paying manufacturing jobs returning to the USA, that will never happen. America is now for the most part a country of low earning service people, and white collar management. Sitting at the top of that is a mess of international interest with fingers in just about any money making enterprise.
It is true that fortunes are being made with the low way labor of these people in China. All the tech companies are servant to their stock holders and investors so nothing will be changing and profits for the few will continue.
Mindless factory work is a choice and millions of people all over the world can choose to do it to get a leg up. Doing work like this in China pays better than farm work and so many commit a small portion of their lives to performing an unpleasant task to save from doing more unpleasant work in the future.
He's not super well-known, but an economic philosopher named Charles Hugh Smith is very much against a guaranteed income because while material needs might be provided for, social and intellectual ones aren't. Interesting reading if you like this kind of stuff:
http://www.oftwominds.com/blognov15/serfdom-hell11-15.html
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec15/basic-income12-15.html
Who specifically has been harping for a guaranteed income for every citizen whether they work or not?
Er, you do realize the whole thing touted about Ford and the Model T was the fact that his auto workers could afford the product they produced with the wages they earned, right? Origins of the blue collar middle class... That sure ain't the same thing as this.
You are looking at the distribution of wealth like how most people see it, as a pyramid with the few very wealthy that makes up the tip and the very wide base is composed of people of little wealth. And to you, it looks like the people of little wealth, that forms the base, are supporting the more wealthy and very wealthy on top of them. That is not how it works. You need to look at how wealth is created and you will end up with an upside down pyramid.
Take Apple,Inc for instance. With a right side up pyramid, Tim Cook is sitting at the top making $100M + a year. Below him are senior management workers making in the $10's of millions a year. Below them are other management people making about a $1 million a year. Then below that you have programers and designers making in the $100 of thousands a year. Below that you have other Apple workers making in the $10's of thousands a year. And disburse through out are all the other people that are making money because of Apple. People like shareholders, other manufacturers that Apple pay for licensing their tech, companies contracted to make Apple products, shippers of Apple products, people selling Apple products and then finally the 100's of thousands of workers that assemble Apple products at the base. And people look at the this pyramid and assume the lowest paid workers, forming the bottom of the pyramid, are supporting all the more wealthy people above them, and thus they are getting screwed by the system.
But that's not how wealth distribution works when you consider how it's created. Turn the pyramid upside down so that it is balancing on its tip, where Tim Cook is. You will now see that it's Tim Cook running Apple that is supporting all above him (looking at it as an upside down pyramid) The $100M+ a year Tim Cook earns a year pales compared to the $100's of billions of wealth that was made by all the people above him. Its Tim Cook leadership that have allowed for 100's of thousands of workers assembling Apple products to earn a living, even though they may not be getting rich or be able to accumulate as much wealth as all the others. There are over 3 billion people in the World, that can do what the workers that assemble Apple products do for Apple but there may only be a dozen people that can do what Tim Cook does for Apple. It is not the low paid workers that are creating the wealth. The wealth is created starting with Tim Cook running Apple. The 100's of thousands of workers assembling Apple products exist because of Tim Cook and Apple. Tim Cook (or who ever is running Apple) and Apple doesn't exist because of the 100's of thousand of workers assembling Apple products.
Bill Gates $75B and Warren Buffet $50B of wealth are but a sliver of the total wealth they created for others over the decades, with Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway. It is a stretch to say that the people that made the least amount of wealth were "screwed", in order for Gates and Buffet to obtain the wealth they have now. It is also a stretch to say that only a few benefited from so many getting "screwed".
The vast majority of the wealth that Apple creates is going to the 10's of thousands of AAPL shareholders, not to a few. Even though we mainly hear about how Tim Cook got over $350M of AAPL and the $10's of millions of AAPL shares that went to Apple senior managers. Apple had paid to its shareholders over $10B in dividends, every year, for the past 4 years. They have used over $100B in the past 4 years to buy back shares and the over $200B of cash Apple have amassed is part of AAPL share price. All increasing the wealth of 10's of thousands of AAPL shareholders. Without AAPL shareholders investing in Apple, there would be no Apple to contract out to Foxconn, who pays the workers that assemble Apple products. No way should AAPL shareholders feel as though they "screwed" the workers that assembles Apple products, for what wealth they got from investing their own money in AAPL. And no way should AAPL shareholders collectively feel they "screwed" anyone, for the over $10B worth of wealth they got, in the form of a dividend, for each of the last 4 years and most likely again for this year. AAPL shareholders are not just a few people getting wealthy because of Apple.
But Ford paid his auto workers well because he wanted to hire the best auto workers away from his competitors, to work on assemble his autos. Most auto workers were not unskilled labor, by any stretch of the imagination. And Ford was not practicing any form of socialism, he was capitalistic. His workers could only afford to buy his Fords because his production assembly line method of making autos enabled him to sell his Model T for less than 50% of what his competitors could sell autos for. At the time, $800 vs $350 for a Ford Model T. Thus Ford captured over 40% of the auto market at the time. Ford did not pay his workers so well that they could afford to buy a competitors auto at $800.
By this token, it's no different than Apple paying their programers 6 figure wages so they can hire the best programers to design Apple products. I'm sure Apple programers can afford the Apple products they work on.
Unlike back in the days of the Ford Model T, where all the material needed to build a car were made in the US, the material that goes into making Apple products are mainly from Asia. Apple is not a manufacturer. Apple do not operate the factories that assemble their products (except their joint adventure with Flextronics in assembling Mac Pros in Texas). Apple do not hire nor pay the mostly unskilled workers that assemble their products. Which are the real reasons why it's not the same as when Ford was building his Model T.
But where they are similar is that robotics has taken over more and more of the assembly process.