sacto joe

The Democrats are like a herd of cats. I've been one long enough to know. They aren't "playing" this at all.

As regards China, thou doth protest too much, methinks. China is so very, very far from being a true competitor to the US and the "free world" it isn't even a joke. Yes, they're pirates. In the larger scheme of things, that's their main weakness, and the only way they can get out of that box is to free their people. Anyone see that about to happen?

(crickets)

(The following is Off Topic, and possibly this post will get removed by the editors. Hope you get to read it before that happens.)

You and I are both intelligent enough to know what I mean by long game versus short game, and the inherent problem with playing the short game.

I'm 73 years old. Once upon a time, I thought of Republicans as the Noble Opposition. That went by the wayside a while back, but never quite so deeply into the weeds as it now has. Why? Because they've played the short game, and then the even shorter game, and now the even shorter game, searching out any and all ways to get the votes to give them power. To do what? Give power to the crazies?

I don't say that all Republicans are unprincipled. I have too many Republican friends to think that. But their party has sold its soul to the devil for a mess of pottage, to the point where they are no longer even close to being the party of fiscal conservatism they once were and that I once admired. How bad is it? It's so bad that the Democrats are now the fiscal conservatives!

I call myself a Democrat and a liberal, but a few decades back I was a moderate. And I really haven't changed. Kind of says it all....

lkrupp said:

maciekskontakt said:

Well they should have control situatin and not to make themselves hostage of one place or one vendor. Smart decisions pay off. Also diversification is old school safe approach that someone forgot obviously.

There’s really nowhere else to manufacture other than India and that’s just getting started. Eventually the same issues will raise their heads there too. It’s about labor availability and labor costs. The developed economies of the western democracies simply cannot compete with the labor forces and costs in China. Unless and until Apple can invent an almost fully automated assembly line for iPhones they are stuck in China.

"There’s really nowhere else to manufacture other than India..."

North and South America?

lkrupp said:

DAalseth said:

Tariffs are not paid by the country they are applied against. They are paid by consumers in the form of higher prices. China has already been looking at other markets for its goods, and other suppliers for what it imports from the US. I've said from the beginning of this back and forth stupidity that China is in a better position to weather a trade war than the US. With its command economy and population that overall supports the government and views China as the victim, they are willing to tolerate more hardship than the US. China has more allies as well, The current administration has alienated most of those that would normally stand by it. Inflation, lost markets, and loss of jobs dependant on Chines imports. This will not end well for the US.

So we should simply capitulate to China and become subservient to their economic power? The trade balance between the two countries is about as lopsided as can be. I’d be interested in what solution those who oppose trade sanctions propose. More negotiations? That hasn’t worked at all. The Chinese are quite happy to continue negotiations ad infinitum while they go about decimating the U.S. Walk into any retail store and start looking at the merchandise. EVERYTHING is made in China. China is outright stealing IP and technology at an accelerating pace. Do we wait until they decimate our auto industry too. My oldest son is a structural engineer and his company’s board room is ordering engineering to buy Chinese steel no matter what.

It’s one thing to say trade sanctions aren’t working and are hurting consumers. Consumers have been suffering for years because their jobs have moved to China. What’s the solution?

It’s a tough nut. But the jobs moving to China claim is a bit of a red herring. Unemployment is at it’s lowest in decades. Any future job loss won’t be because of jobs moving to China; it’ll be due to a contracting economy.

The problem for Trump and the Republicans is that their jobs depend on the economy continuing to hum along. The Chinese know that. 

If I had to guess, I’d say the Trump administration is going to watch the economy like hawks, particularly in purple states. We may even see them pressuring the Fed to drop interest rates if things go south.

But tinkering with the economy is fraught with risk (deflation being the big one). Still, the Republicans are very much playing the short game, so I’d guess they’d take that chance if it came down to it. Heck, they’ve already stopped any more rate hikes....

corrections said:

gatorguy said:

corrections said.

given it’s wording, it’s likely that pixel units and revenues were both in the toilet. didn't meet investors expectations.

 
The statements by Porat need to put in context with the venue IMO. For instance when Apple addressed disappointing iPhone sales it did not mean sales were relatively speaking "in the toilet" even if investors might be displeased with a double-digit decrease. They both needed to address the decreases with their concerned investors, but internally might have been OK with it considering the overall market circumstances. 

Pixel isn’t selling 100k units in a month. 

Pixel is an extremely expensive project. Thousands of employees, +$1b acquihire, very expensive custom silicon efforts. Not selling 5M units is a huge problem. 

Apple would also like to sell another 10M iPhones above the +40M units it sold in Q1, but Apple is making tons of money and yet still paid for the A12 and all of the labor and R&D it’s invested, with tons of free cash flow funding the next years projects.

Google is losing tons of money in hardware and is achieving nothing. There isn’t an installed base of Pixels worth anything. It has no way to corral the herd of cats making androids to sell them any real services. It has to pay Apple billions to have  access to affluent customers. 

Equating 3 years of Pixel failure + 7 years of Nexus failure with Apple's 12 years of blockbuster iPhone profits that have temporarily dipped by 15% for a couple quarters of a trade war is absolutely stupid beyond words. 

Apple earned a trillion dollars while google dicked about squandering the opportunity of this generation, one that might never repeat. 

Spin on things all you like, but pixel is a horeshit boondoggle of epic proportions. For google to pretend it’s okay with that is just insulting to anyone who sits upright and has opposable thumbs. 

“Google is losing tons of money in hardware and is achieving nothing.”

Haven’t you heard, DED? Google has money to burn. /s

I suspect that the driver behind all these attempts by various companies to match Apple on the hardware front is a desire to achieve the atypical margins Apple is continuously making on that hardware.

Good luck with that....

racerhomie3 said:

I personally love how Ive bashed the Xoamis & Huaweis of the world ,by calling them thieves. 

Totalitarian authority and creativity are pretty much at odds with one another. Thievery can only get you so far. In a world that’s changing more quickly than ever, the free society is always going to be advantaged over the totalitarian society.