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Foxconn's Founder Opens Up About Making iPhones
eldavojohn writes "Bloomberg Businessweek has an article of interest resulting from a three-hour interview with Foxconn founder Terry Gou (single page), whose company manufactures 137,000 iPhones a day. The article profiles Gou's rise to Foxconn but also offers some interesting tidbits you might not know. On why he is not opening factories in the United States, Gou frankly states, 'If I can automate in the US and ship to China, cost-wise it can still be competitive. But I worry America has too many lawyers. I don't want to spend time having people sue me every day.' If you're interested in how a modern day Henry Ford thinks, you can read the rest about the man steering the ship of the world's largest producer of electronics components and China's largest exporter. This unprecedented transparency was part of an agreement Gou made with his customers during his delayed response to an increasing number of Foxconn suicides."
He's basically worried that if he tried to pull the same shit he gets away with in China, he would be shut down. This is undoubtedly a valid concern, but it does cast a depressing light on outsourcing. Basically the US is losing manufacturing jobs because we don't let business completely stomp all over the rights of the workers anymore.
I read the internet for the articles.
More likely tat he wants to exploit the worker
not to do business in the U.S. we have all those pesky organizations like OSHA, and those weird fair labor standards laws and anti child labor laws that get in the way of a really stellar profit margin. (Yes there was some sarcasm in there)
I'm still waiting for an iPhone manufacturer that pays its workers a decent wage and respects meaningful safety standards. I'm willing to pay an extra $100+ for my iPhone to not have a guilty conscience. C'mon invisible hand, supply my demand already.
"Anonymous Coward" is for whistleblowers, not unpopular opinions.
Ford wanted his workers to have a living wage, to be able to afford the products they made.
Foxconn doesn't even employ workers long-term, they hire on a week-by-week basis.
I actually don't even dislike Foxconn, but it's not the same as the middle-class building that Ford did.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
or....
Perhaps the US does have too many laws and lawyers. Perhaps it is more competitive to produce products somewhere else. Perhaps US workers think they are more valuable than they really are (so they erect laws to "enforce" that value). Did you ever consider that maybe it's not exploitation he is after but a better sense of balance? The world is not black and white. This is not a "workers of the world unite" vs "the evil business owners". You do recognize there is a middle ground, don't you?
This guy is telling you exactly what his risk/reward calculation is and you only look at one side of the equation.
Instead of responding with cries of exploitation, as yourself this: could he be right?
Too many lawyers?!? I find that to be slanderous, preposterous, and downright hippopotamus. I'll sue him for all the ipods in china! I'll sue china back into the stone age!
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
This just goes to PROVE that there is too much litigation and "workers rights" in the USA. We need to overhaul the system, and we should start by:
1. Making the LOSER pay for all lawsuit costs. This will, overnight, end all frivolus lawsuits.
2. Implement sweeping tort reform. If some stupid old lady spills lukewarm coffee into her lap, she should NOT get a billion dollars in damages. This is just COMMON SENSE. All damages should be capped at about $10,000, and there should not be any double dipping (ie: once a person sues for tort, they do not get to do so again, EVER).
3. Disband ALL unions *by force*. We should not sit idly by while fat cat union bosses live in luxury while jobs go overseas. Its time to put an end to the source for all of our labor troubles by outlawing unions once and for all.
Only by doing AT LEAST these three things can we ever expect jobs to return to the USA and for our position as leader in the world to return.
I am buying my new Dells for the express reason that they were built in a Foxconn plant.
The fact is that Foxconn has HALF the suicide rate of Italy, which has the LOWEST rate in Europe. Someone has decided to create a propaganda smear campaign against Foxconn. I am happily doing my part by buying Foxconn whenever I can.
Americans like to sue. That's one problem. There are trolls of all kinds and it's not good for business.
Novell and IBM have wasted too much time and too much treasure fighting SCO. It looks like Google will be distracted by Microsoft's sock puppets. RIM had to pay a patent troll a billion bucks for worthless patents.
The courts are a weapon that gets used way too much to stifle competition.
the US isn't a corrupt 3rd world country that you can bribe epople to get your way.
Yes, yes sometime it happens. But in the US if a public employee gets got with a few thousand dollars in his refrigerator, it's a big deal. I his country it's SOP.
He's just using the over blown everyone sues republican media crap as an excuse.
And Ford he is NOT.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Gou has a very good point about why manufacturing in the US is not feasible.
The moment a company becomes successful, there are lawyers lined up to look for any way they can sue to get a piece of the pie without working for it. If the lawyers fail, the government is next in line to punish the success of the company in the name of "economic justice."
America used to be the land of opportunity, but now there are so many barriers to success, one almost has to go to another country to have any chance.
In one part of the article it talks about him involved in a libel suit over the suicide reports and then he talks about being scared of lawsuits. Hmmm.
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
"Finally, Gou's company hired the New York firm Burson-Marsteller to help devise a formal public-relations strategy, its first in more than 35 years of existence."
The concept of a company with almost 1M people without a PR strategy is refreshing, but reflecting a little bit more, what that also means is: now anything that we say about the employee suicides, even this, is being carefully managed.
"He is very aggressive and always on your tail".
Compared to Mr. Ivy League or Oxford primo that calls up his buddies with cash and makes deals on trust than a legit sale. Gou is the real business guy: guts, sweat, thought is spelled out in thru TFA.
I worry America has too many lawyers. I don't want to spend time having people sue me every day.
99% of what goes on in those lawsuits is righteous protection of workers and customers from the bad or evil decisions of managers.
The other 1% is still covered by your insurance, Terry.
Your problem isn't too many lawyers (you just get your own lawyers and then it doesn't take up your time), your problem is there are laws that will keep you from doing things in ways that you deserve to be sued for.
But I'm sure your deployment of nets to catch suicidal employees is a tacit expression of your understanding that your company is somehow culpable for its own behavior and the culture it engenders in the people it aggregates to perform work that makes you an impressively rich man, hyper-impressively considering China's supposed to be a communist country... So you know that you're either doing something very right, or many things very wrong.
More likely tat he wants to exploit the worker
What workers? He said "'If I can *automate* in the US and ship to China, cost-wise it can still be competitive." He seems to be talking about replacing a manual assembly line in China with an automated/robotic assembly line in the US. You might be able to suggest that he wants to avoid environmental issues but labor issues do not seem to be relevant. As far as the US being an overly litigious environment, you will find few US citizens who would disagree.
If you mean that in the US (as opposed to, say, France) we maintain the right to fire workers who don't produce, to NOT have the entire work force take one and a half months' vacation every year paid, and that the companies, not the labor unions, are in charge of their own premesies? Yes, that's largely true.
He seems to be talking about replacing a manual assembly line in China with an automated/robotic assembly line in the US.
And this is exactly what we've been seeing. US manufacturing production (in terms of dollars of product produced) was at an all-time high in 2008. However the number of manufacturing workers was at its 80-year low point. US manufacturing workers, armed with machines and robots, are becoming more and productive per worker.
This mirrors what we saw in agriculture, from most of the country working in agriculture in the late 1800's, to only 2% of Americans working in agriculture today, while producing more food overall! Powered tractors, plows, GPS aided fertilizer treatment, herbicides and pesticides dramatically increased agricultural productivity.
Paying lawyers or paying government officials off? Is there some kind of a formula for this? How do quantify gov't graft and whim?
-rt
Foxconn is a new age company/coal Town. They own everything including the police. I bet that they even have their own money. US universities are doing the something similar.
not to do business in the U.S. we have all those pesky organizations like OSHA, and those weird fair labor standards laws and anti child labor laws that get in the way of a really stellar profit margin.
'If I can *automate* in the US ..."
;-)
Minimum wage, child labor and other regulations now apply to automated/robotic assembly lines? I think the "Futurama" society may be arriving before the year 3000.
This person is no Henry Ford.
Reason is Henry Ford did the unthinkable he gave a raise to his employees so they could purchase the Model T they were making. This then allowed Henry to hire people from the other manufactures and sell more cars.
This person and the others like him do not understand long term economics. He needs to improve quality and the working environment is one area. Also he needs to pay a wage which will allow his workers to purchase the products he manufactures. Reason is the US economy is going in the direction where there will be little if any consumer purchasing IPhones or any other products other then Food, Clothing and Shelter.
Choice is sell in the United States you need to Manufacture in the United States or sell in China then manufacture in China. But in both places you need to pay a wage which an employee has enough money to in the end purchase the product. If your worker can't be your consumer then you will loose in the end because you will not have any consumers.
US manufacturing production (in terms of dollars of product produced) was at an all-time high in 2008. However the number of manufacturing workers was at its 80-year low point. US manufacturing workers, armed with machines and robots, are becoming more and productive per worker.
Not just in the US. My understanding is that Germany has remained competitive in manufacturing by investing heavily in robotics. Manufacturing may return to the west but jobs won't be.
"says the deaths at Foxconn exhibit the characteristics of a suicide cluster, the copycat phenomenon first observed during Europe's industrialization a couple of centuries ago. "
We've been here before, (1880's and 1670's).. Foxconn is nothing different, well maybe to this generation.
In fact, you almost have to bribe someone to get a job interview!
There isn't really multi-week training, you are put on easier lines first and work up to your aptitude.
But just because there's a line to get in doesn't mean there's any job security. When things slow down, you simply aren't brought back next week.
When you get too old for the dextrous work or your fingers grow to be too large to do some work (because their lines are virtually all 16-20 year old women) or merely when someone else will do the job cheaper because they are younger, you are out on your ear.
Like I said, I don't hate Foxconn. But it's not the same as Ford where he employed workers long term and invested in their development.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
You'll notice that even though by western standards Foxconn has a terrible work environment, they're actually the best option for Chinese workers, who queue to work there.
Even though the salaries seem low by western standards, Foxconn pays the higher salaries in China. The article mentions several people who are there only to earn some money for a while and then go to work on a lower-paying less-stressful business.
The man himself started his huge empire with a $7500 loan. Hell, I live in Brazil and you can't even begin an auto repairshop with this money here, let alone a small manufacturing plant.
By Chinese standards, Foxconn is great and they actually seem to care about their employees more than the other Chinese companies do. None of the workers are afraid to complain and lose their jobs or anything like that and even strikes happen (and people continue employed).
Honestly, you should just enjoy your cheap electronics while you can because this isn't going to last forever as a newer generation of Chinese people is growing up (also mentioned in the article) and they will want better standards of living - no one needs to take care of them, there's more than a billion of them and they can take care of themselves.
They have more applicants than they need.
And what do you think happens when they get their new plant near Chongqing up and running?
Line workers will not be transferred to the new location, they will simply lose their jobs.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Actually Terry Gou must have read Made in Japan" written by the founder of Sony Akio Morita. There is a section were Akio Morita talks about Sony setting up manufacturing facilities in the USA and how Sony was sued by competing (and in some cases companies Sony had a close business relationship with ie suing their own customer) for the most insane reasons. The view that Akio left me was when dealing with the USA have a large legal dept because everyone will try to sue you to stop you competing in the market. Akio also compares the the US legal system with Japans and explains how most of the cases being bought forward in the US would never have got of the ground as the lawyers would lose to much money if they lost. So I can see were Terry Gou from Foxcon gets the view that the USA is not a good place to manufacture, not good news for the US manufacturing industry now that unemployment is heading past the 10% mark. On another note, for those who think this is all about wages and conditions, explain to me why South Korea has a huge ship building industry that leaves the US in their dust but the workers actually have higher wages!! Simple, South Korean workers are dedicated to their job and the bosses dont get multi million dollar kick backs and unlike US CEO's dont just see the stock price but also the products they are making today and in the future. This is why the USA is failing, to many directors looking at the stock ticker and ignoring the "product" that is being made now and what they will be producing in 10 years. Go to Toyota and they will happily show you products they have slated to be made in the next 2, 5 ,10 and 20 years.
I'm still waiting for an iPhone manufacturer that pays its workers a decent wage and respects meaningful safety standards. I'm willing to pay an extra $100+ for my iPhone to not have a guilty conscience. C'mon invisible hand, supply my demand already.
The invisible hand has already spoken, such companies were driven out of business in the 1970s and 80s as *consumers* chose to purchase the less expensive imports from regions with questionable practices rather than US, Canadian and other regions with more developed legal, labor and environmental practices.
Technology may partially help remedy the situation. Automation and robotics could level the field, well at least for companies involved in manufacturing, not the factory / assembly line workers.
You can't wait for the invisible hand to do something. You, your family and your friends are the invisible hand. Get everyone to start paying attention to "made in" labels. It took some searching but I was able to find a screwdriver set made in the US at a Home Depot. I had to leave the tools section of the store and go to the "professional" section. It seems that union guys buying tools kept a couple of US based manufacturers alive.
It is a serious question. Take a look at the things you buy. Why isn't that item "Made in America"? Can you find a class of goods that are primarily "Made in America" anymore? I would have a tough time doing so, "software" (if we could call it a good) would probably be one of our biggest "Made in America" products, but most of the items on my person or in my home will not be made in this country.
American businesses will just make their factories in other countries as long as it is vastly cheaper to do so. And since there are exceedingly few American manufacturers, even if you or I wanted to consider and give preference to American made items, we just simply don't have that option most of the time.
All things being equal, I can't really blame the guys who open up the factories in foreign countries for cheap labor. There's simply no downside. They can get away with paying their workers crap wages and dealing with fewer laws. What is the incentive for such people to open a plant/factory/shop here in the US instead of somewhere else? Is there any? How could we give them one?
I'm really asking out of ignorance. I do not know the answers to the above.
Really???
Fascism much?
No brain, no pain.
Everyone is leaving the US for jobs in Mexico.
No brain, no pain.
so you want a unsafe factory where the worker loses it all. So you get hurt on the job not only is your job gone you have pay to fix what there unsafe thing the broke you also have to pay for the doctor as well.
over seas the work place does not need to pay for worker health-care. That what the USA needs no more Health care tied to the work place.
China is your example of 'unregulated capitalism'?
Really???
Fascism much?
With regard to what companies can and cannot do, yes. It's been a long time since China was communist in anything but name.
Also, please don't put the first half of your comment in the title. It makes the comment text itself hard to make sense of.
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
Reading these "OMG exploitation" posts makes me wonder what land of Unicorns and Ponies some of you live in, and how I can arrange travel to visit such a place.
Let's start with the premise that these poor workers are abused and exploited and work back to a solution to the problem. And I mean "problem" in a way similar to how gravity is a problem because when I throw a knife in the air it can land pointy side down in my eyeball.
First, let's just say he pays them "fair" wages. Say...75% of what a US employee would make. Suddenly he can't compete because his prices are higher than his competitors'. Also, at that point why wouldn't he just open a factory in the US? Much more reliable infrastructure, huge local market, etc... Once he does that these "poor workers" are worse off. Now instead of shitty job they have _no_ job and are farming dirt on a shit farm.
OK, so we can't trust this exploiter. So maybe we argue China should enforce fair labor laws. So China goes and does this, now it costs 5X as much to make stuff as it does in India, or Pakistan, or any other hellhole. Companies leave. Or maybe at that point, again, it's more profitable now to build in the US or Europe. Net effect is those poor oppressed Chinese laborers are making $0 an hour instead of $1.20 an hour. You sure helped them out!
Really, come back to reality. People in overpopulated, developing countries have shit lives and even shitty, underpaid jobs increase their standard of living greatly. The more you bleeding hard idiots try to "help" them the more fucked they will be.
The fact of the matter is that corporations helped write the bills that allowed them to take their stuff overseas. The politicians were right there along with them.
The idea that the same government that let corporations write the laws will reign in those same corporations is lunacy. I'm sure the megacorps are just salivating at the idea of more regulation that they can help write....
Manufacturing may return to the west but jobs won't be.
You got it - which is why we should be happy that we have "service jobs" in Cupertino designing iPhones!
High end service jobs are in jeopardy too. No nation is satisfied doing all the low end manufacturing or service work Those doing it today plan to move up to higher end manufacturing and services. The general plan is to follow Japan's post war model. Start with the low quality products, upgrade infrastructure and capabilities, move up the ladder to higher quality products, repeat. The main difference is that the current players want to do it much faster than Japan.
Seriously, I don't hear any of the "thousands of iPhone buyers complaining about bad working conditions".
I have heard lots of complaints about the excessive cost of iPhones and for a brief period Antennagate. But, nary a whimper about Foxconn working conditions.
Perhaps you should expand your horizons and get a better grasp of the world around you. Which is almost precisely what Guo meant when he said "New York bankers who see the Hudson River and say, 'I'm a king of the world.'"
Cue the replies of 'the irony of my post'...
America was founded by people who studied and practiced law. They had a profession to protect, and they formed a government that protects and values litigation above anything else. If you think America is too litigious, I would argue that you are unamerican.
America was founded by people who studied and practiced law. They had a profession to protect, and they formed a government that protects and values litigation above anything else. If you think America is too litigious, I would argue that you are unamerican.
Actually I think America was founded by smugglers, tax evaders, vandals, vigilantes and provocateurs. Royal tax collectors were tarred and feathered not sued; British soldiers were confronted in the streets not in a courtroom; ...
"Is that really too much to ask of a nation that has been touted as the best on Earth?"
Touted by who?
You really need to get out of your country more.
"Why should give them the benefit of our trade when they do not behave in a fair manner?"
Because they have you by the curly short ones.
China holds tons of US treasury debt.
CHina does lots of the manufacturing of products the US uses.
China is subsidizing US consumerism with their savings.
That is why you will not do anything.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Oracle sues Google.
Netapp sues Sun,
Apple sues Nokia.
Nokia sues Apple.
SCO sues IBM, Novell, my aunt and your granny.
And lets not forget Amazon's "one click"....
and that is only IT for starters.
Almost daily we have news about frivolous lawsuits related to patents (software patents!) and copyright.
You may want to say whatever you want about this guy, but please don't tell me he does not have a point to make .....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In the interview he's saying: ... and I'm thinking: yeah, he's going to improve working conditions and wages. No. Instead he hires one of the world's largest PR firms. Those suicides were making him look bad!
"The first one, second one, and third one, I did not see this as a serious problem... After the fifth suicide, in March, Gou says, "I decided to do something different."
The guy is the modern day equivalent of the old robber barons. He is an actual slave driver, with blood on his hands. Pure scum.
But, as evil as he is, he does have a point about the overly litigious USA. Look at what is going on, on the bogus IP lawsuits. Scox's bogus lawsuit is, technically, still alive, and well into it's 8th year. Paul Allan is suing everybody over BS IP. Oracle is suing Google over BS. Nuisance lawsuits, patent trolling, submarine patents, professional litigants, software patents, business method patents, and the like is everywhere. It's practically all US business does anymore.
Technical innovation? How could there be? Tech companies in the USA are in a desperate race to offshore, or inshore, every tech job, including R&D.
So what's left in the USA? You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Make some campaign contributions to get favorable treatment. Spend enough on advertising to influence the media. We have all that, and lawsuits. It's all we do anymore. In the USA everybody will make their living by suing everybody else.
Plot those numbers year over year
More interesting than the dollar amounts is the type of exports; the vast majority of US exports to China are agricultural comodities; wheat, beef, etc. This drives up prices for essential commodities in the US.
We'd be hurting if prices on, well, almost everything went up e.g. 10%.
What if that 10% stopped the slide of the US worker into government subsistence? Over 10% of the US is being fed by the federal government via food stamps. Which of those two 10% figures to you think has more consequence for the fate of the US?
The real world doesn't obey naive models such as ours; a resurgence of US industry would be met by vigorous opposition employing hordes of the aforementioned lawyers. 10% might ultimately seem a great bargain.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Hierarchy is a perverse and disgusting addiction. Having power over others does get you high, yes. But it is a debilitating and destructive high. It destroys a person's empathy. It destroys their ability to be real with other people. It destroys their ability to have real friendships. It makes them paranoid. It destroys any intrinsic motivations they might have had for doing anything, all they want is that high they can get from power, and things that used to be enjoyable for their own sake now become all about chasing that dragon.
But we can gain power by honestly sharing our power with others, giving them some dominion over us and us over them. That is interdependence and it is a much more sustainable high. Power shared is power multiplied. An individual may accumulate more personal power by stealing other people's power through hierarchy games, but in the end, total human power is reduced because power is expended in the struggle and theft.
The owning class are terrified of the rest of us, of what we will do to them if they ever stopped playing dominance games and let us see them as fellow humans with imperfections. It's gotten pretty ugly in the past. What has been done to many humans world wide by the dominance addicts is unjust, to say the least. But blame, guilt and punishment have a lousy track record as a method of curing addiction.
Really getting the upper class to realize these facts will take care of ninety five percent of the problem. The other five percent we shoot in the head. They aren't human, they are sociopathic predators wearing human skins.
That's a joke. We aren't omniscient, so "killing off all sociopaths" is a really bad idea.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
OK, the guy had nine suicides with 900,000 employees. Let's look at other suicide rates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
Note, the above are rates for only 100,000 people. Looks to me like his organization, as large as a decent sized city, beats the snot out of any nation out there with such a low suicide rate.
A few selected, the ultimate, we'll take care of you full workers paradise, full control, many employee favored laws, etc, Sweden 13.2 self-offings per 100,000. Multiplied by 9 = 118.8, call it 119 humans. Fail
Canuckistan 11.6 times 9=104.4 more fail
The great united snakes of murika 11.1 x 9 = 99.9 call it an even hundred per 900,000 population, per year suicided
Looks to me like you'd be happier and safer and less chance of being dead working at foxconn
Thank you for the tip leromarinvit.
No brain, no pain.
What Mr. Gou doesn't realize is that in his region, all I have to do is be of the right family and he is toast.
Kill him, his family, his associates, his business partners, the guards, and anyone associated with Foxconn that isn't a mere worker. Put it on CNN, and say I was merely complying with local law, just like any other international business would. Give him a taste of his own medicine and show him how fake his company's Potemkin Village is.
That's how it usually goes in a business-friendly Third World country. Looks heavenly if you're a business or the government, looks like hell if you are not.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
If iPhones had been around when my kids were home I'd have had so much ammunition to get them to do more! "Hey, 5 years old kids are making iPhones in China! And you can't do the dishes!?"
His comment about the uselessness of business degrees is spot on. I'm convinced that American corporate over-reliance on business degrees, and marketing, are amongst the biggest problems facing American corporations.
American corporations are saddled with a bunch of business majors who, for whatever reason, have been deemed to be the best suited to manage despite the fact that they barely understand the details of what their company actually does. They haven't worked in the trenches, they haven't actually been directly involved in the product or service but they're first in line to run things. This is a far cry from Asia where engineers and designers routinely are the ones who get promoted to management positions. It ensures they can make informed decisions and employees can't get away with BS. Managers in Asia can be just as self-centered, just as concerned about the next Mercedes they're going to buy. But they're also more likely to make the best choices for the company.
The second disaster is marketing. American companies seem to have adopted the attitude that you don't actually need a good product, you simply need to convince consumers you offer one. By the time the consumer realizes they've been had you have their money. And they've risen to have such power because of stupid suits who don't have enough confidence in the strength of their product. And marketing is entirely self-serving. It doesn't matter how wasteful a marketing campaign is a marketing department/agency will find a way to skew the data to claim it was actually a success. It's rather shocking how much money companies dump into marketing especially considering how low the response rate actually is.
This is not to say there aren't other issues. The cost of labor in the US is exceedingly high, and work ethic is crap. Couple that with entitlement culture and you've got real problems. And topping it all off we've got a government that mismanages and misdirects regulation. Instead of making decisions that are best for the well-being of the nation their policies almost always seem intended to pander to special interests or push certain agendas.
I'd pay twice as much for products made in the US but I doubt most consumers feel the same way. People would rather get cheap stuff now than worry that it's destroying American jobs, weakening America (a country without it's own manufacturing industry is at the whims of others), and is of course allowing foreign workers to be treated badly (worse than not having a job?)
Seriously be the time I got done adding protective screen cover, an extra power adapter, wireless keyboard, etc to my iPad it was at least $1100 and people seem to have a problem with that but if it comes marked 'Made in the USA.' I already pay a premium for Apple products because, in my experience, they are better made and last longer.
I keep looking for a HDTV that is built in the US. So far no luck. I really don't want to spend a lot on a tv and have it break within six months like the last one I bought. I'd rather pay more and have it last a few years.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Largely we could still make things cheap in the US but we'd have to rely more on technology instead of slave labor. So along with more jobs for labororers we'd also be providing more jobs for people to design, build, run, and maintain all that technology. It's absurd that we're draining the US economy out so Walmart can make short term profits and consumers can get things cheap in the short term.
This Walmart effect is directly responsible for part of our economic woes and I've yet to see any politician even mention it let alone make any effort to fix it. I really don't see the benefit of globalization if we're not working with equal peers or purchasing resources not available here (such as minerals, plants, etc). All we're doing is sending American jobs and skills overseas in exchange for cheap crap. Unemployed people don't have a lot of buying power and industries that don't exist here aren't spurring innovation here.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
China is not the root of all evil, and things are getting better there. This is article not an excuse to justify the "3rd world working conditions of Chinese" workers. North America is full of bullshit legal ramifications. Chinese people still may not have same rights as the cushy selfish North Americans enjoy, but that will come in time after being on top for long enough.
Wake the fuck up.
North America is being surpassed and it's people are whining in desperate denial. Get ready to live like the rest of the "2nd" world does. It's really not that bad. You'll get used to it and maybe your children will hope to move to prosperous China, where everyone is rich.
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