robaba

Absolutely no usecase at 2,000$

foregoneconclusion said:

flydog said:

genovelle said:

Bosa said:

cpsro said:

waveparticle said:

Maybe Cook can help India expand its local technology industry?

Maybe he can help the U.S. in this.

It will be hard but possible if the business environment such as taxes are made friendlier , but certainly not with current tax you to death  people in charge . 

Not a political statement but just stating a fact 

The issue is that our citizens haven’t made the $3.15 an hour they make to build iPhones in China in over 25 years as it went up up $4.75 in 1996 and then $5.15 in 1997. The last move was to $7.25 in 2009. Think about that. People working jobs that pay minimum wage with poor conditions and no benefits saw their worth increase by $4.10 over 25 years. That’s about a 16 cent raise per year. Trust me inflation was a lot more that 16 cents. 

You’re clueless.  Minimum wage in 1989 was $3.35, and you’d be lucky to find any fast food restaurant that would pay more. That $3.35 is equivalent to $7.69 in today’s dollars. The average minimum wage is now $12 per hour, and the average pay at a McDonalds is $15.

The average HOURLY WAGE for ALL WORKERS, not minimum wage workers, in the United States is $11.19. 

Correct, because the minimum federal tipped wage cash hourly rate* is just $2.13.  And how many people actually tip these days?

* https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped

Collective action exists for a reason, and surprise surprise, it’s not to please internet trolls.  I will always support workers standing up to the paternalistic contempt of their employers.  

tmay said:

Worth a read for those of us in the reality based world...

https://www.bakerinstitute.org/media/files/files/b63419af/ces-pub-china-competition-121321.pdf

...

The flexibility and resilience of America and its advanced-economy allies represent the polar opposite of China’s state-directed planning and implementation model. Their openness to people, ideas, and capital flows makes them creative dynamos, as well as fuels world-class research universities and yields demographic dividends by attracting talented and motivated people from all over the world. These qualities underpin their long-term comprehensive national power and the bloc’s global competitiveness. It also makes their responses to an assault formidable and favors their odds the longer a major cold or hot war continues. But free-wheeling systems also complicate near-term proactive preparation to head off conflicts.

Fortunately, Beijing’s belligerent behavior has helped solidify multiple allied diplomatic and military initiatives that, while presently insufficient to defend the rules-based order, nonetheless constitute a solid foundation on which to build. Diplomatic proofs of concept such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (“Quad”),81 security alignments such as AUKUS, and hard security actions such as the Pacific Deterrence Initiative82 are now falling into place. The stage is set for follow-up measures to comprehensively “peak” the non-authoritarian world’s protective actions to hold the line in the Indo-Pacific.83

Throughout this decade of danger, American policymakers must understand that under Xi’s strongman rule, personal political survival will dictate PRC behavior. For Washington and its allies, the struggle centers on preserving and expanding the type of human well-being yielded by a system oriented toward freedom and rules-based governance that emphasizes reason and fair process over coercion and force. Conversely, Xi (like fellow authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un) uses a totally different operating system: rule for life, non-transparency, a ruthless “ends-justify-any- means” mindset, and policies that ultimately tend to be one-way, high-leverage bets on continued successful (and lightly opposed) revisionist actions abroad and near- absolute control domestically.

...

Gauntlet over Gizmos: Protecting Taiwan from Peak PRC Pressure through Early 2030s

The flexibility and resilience of America and its advanced-economy allies represent the polar opposite of China’s state-directed planning and implementation model. Their openness to people, ideas, and capital flows makes them creative dynamos, as well as fuels world-class research universities and yields demographic dividends by attracting talented and motivated people from all over the world. These qualities underpin their long-term comprehensive national power and the bloc’s global competitiveness. It also makes their responses to an assault formidable and favors their odds the longer a major cold or hot war continues. But free-wheeling systems also complicate near-term proactive preparation to head off conflicts.

Fortunately, Beijing’s belligerent behavior has helped solidify multiple allied diplomatic and military initiatives that, while presently insufficient to defend the rules-based order, nonetheless constitute a solid foundation on which to build. Diplomatic proofs of concept such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (“Quad”),81 security alignments such as AUKUS, and hard security actions such as the Pacific Deterrence Initiative82 are now falling into place. The stage is set for follow-up measures to comprehensively “peak” the non-authoritarian world’s protective actions to hold the line in the Indo-Pacific.83

Throughout this decade of danger, American policymakers must understand that under Xi’s strongman rule, personal political survival will dictate PRC behavior. For Washington and its allies, the struggle centers on preserving and expanding the type of human well-being yielded by a system oriented toward freedom and rules-based governance that emphasizes reason and fair process over coercion and force. Conversely, Xi (like fellow authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un) uses a totally different operating system: rule for life, non-transparency, a ruthless “ends-justify-any- means” mindset, and policies that ultimately tend to be one-way, high-leverage bets on continued successful (and lightly opposed) revisionist actions abroad and near- absolute control domestically.

Xi’s personalist leadership and nearly comprehensive suppression of dissenting voices in the Party’s senior ranks simultaneously raises the chances of making policy mistakes while reducing the flexibility to deal with them early. In such an embrittled system, the proverbial “leverage” that would have left Xi with outsized returns on a successful bet instead amplifies the downside, all for which he personally and exclusively signed. The “best-case” scenario entails continued stagnation and rot within the Party along the lines of what Minxin Pei has articulated.84 The “intermediate case” is an accelerated version of that, with Xi suffering a loss of status and authority on the heels of a policy disaster, internal challengers rising within the PRC, and internecine strife leading to accelerated weakening of the Party. The “bad case” scenario—which, in practice, would likely be interrelated with the intermediate one—is that Xi would double down on a mistaken course of action to prioritize political self-preservation. If such mistakes led to—or were made in the course of—a kinetic conflict, personal survival measures could rapidly transmute into regional or even global (i.e., nuclear, space, cyber) threats.

If Xi triggered a “margin call” on his personal political account through a failed high-stakes gamble, it would likely be paid in blood. Washington must thus prepare the American electorate and its institutional and physical infrastructure, as well as that of allies and partners abroad, for the likelihood that tensions will periodically ratchet up to uncomfortable levels—and that, despite the promise of determined deterrence, actual conflict cannot be ruled out. Si vis pacem, para bellum (“If you want peace, prepare for war”) must unfortunately serve as a central organizing principle for a range of U.S. and allied decisions during the next decade with respect to China under Xi.85

Given these unforgiving dynamics, the implications for U.S. leaders and planners are stark:

1. Do whatever remains possible to reach “peak” preparedness for deterrent competition against China by the mid-to-late 2020s and accept the tradeoffs.86

2. Nothing the U.S and its allies might theoretically achieve after 2035 is worth pursuing at the expense of capabilities that might be “better” than those in service now, but that could not be realistically fielded at scale until five years or more from now.

3. Much will be decided by the end of this decade. If America falters at this critical time—whether through creeping corrosion of the rules-based order at Beijing’s hands or the shocking impact of failing to defend Taiwan against military attack— many aspects of the world and future will be determined at the expense of U.S. interests and values.

The decade of danger is upon us. With existential stakes for American interests and values looming, there is no time left to waste. Washington and its allies must push to maximize their competitive edge as rapidly as possible to avoid an outcome they cannot afford—“losing the 2020s.” At what point the PRC reaches its peak may ultimately defy precise prediction, but the strong possibility of it occurring over the next few years should front-load America’s bottom-line planning and preparations, given the potential for irreversible linchpin effects. Near-term preparation to run this decade’s unforgiving gauntlet justifies any corresponding long-term tradeoffs and risks: “losing the 2020s” would also mean losing the 2030s and beyond. Ultimately, the best achievements in coming decades will matter little if we lose Taiwan on our watch. More broadly, allowing PRC revisionism to run as rampant in the 2020s as it did in the 2010s would risk negatively reshaping the world order for decades to come and could actually set the stage for even worse conflicts by destabilizing the planet’s most populous region. Alternatively, proactive deterrence actions now can sow the seeds for a more peaceful and prosperous future that would benefit all Indo-Pacific countries, China included. The mission is vital, the stakes are high, and the clock is ticking.

I guess agreeing with the above make me a China "hater"...

I wouldn’t take anything from the Baker Institute at face value.  Over the years they’ve proven themselves to be heavily involved in the creation of far-right propaganda.  Not saying the above is wrong, just that you should probably look to an ideologically diverse source for validation. YMMV.

I only bought my iPhone because I needed better texting than my flip-phone could provide.  I ended up choosing Apple over Android due to the history of shoddy support from Android bundlers, and I don’t like the idea of somebody browsing through my data.  If there were a third option that cost less than an iPhone—don’t need all these apps on my phone—but that still offered years worth of support and had decent texting capabilities, I would have bought that.