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Why America Doesn't Need More Tech Giants Like Apple
Hugh Pickens writes "Optimists says that if only America produced more companies like Apple and Amazon and Google and Facebook, the country's economic problems would be fixed — America could retrain its vast, idle construction-and-manufacturing workforce, and our unemployment and inequality problems would be solved. But Apple's $1 billion new data center in North Carolina has been a disappointing development for many residents, who can't comprehend how expensive facilities stretching across hundreds of acres can create only 50 new jobs, especially after thousands of positions in the region have been lost to cheaper foreign competition. In fact, Apple actually exemplifies some of the reasons why the U.S. has such huge unemployment and inequality problems: 'Digital' businesses like Apple employ far fewer people than traditional manufacturing businesses, Apple's 60,000+ jobs are not just in the U.S. — they're spread around the world. Companies like Apple 'create amazing products and vast shareholder wealth, but they don't spread this wealth around as much as earlier industrial giants did,' writes Henry Blodget. 'So, yes, we should celebrate the success of Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon. But we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking they're going to solve our unemployment or inequality problems.'"
What we need is small, independent, companies competing directly in the same way Linux distros compete with each other. That will encourage innovation.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Why won't APPLE build 100,000 new data centers ?
Who hurt you man, why so jaded?
Maybe that comes from the fact that Asians are not as lazy and against "stupid jobs" (when they are in fact the most useful ones) as Americans?
A quick google search reveals the average manufacturing job in China pays $134 per month. It has little to do with laziness or stupid jobs, its simple economics.
#Occupy Apple
Surprised we haven't seen it already.
It is interesting how many people seem to see big businesses and major corporations. They have huge advertising budgets, and thanks to that, you see their logo EVERYWHERE. And they do employ a lot of people, at home and abroad, and support the development of great products (be they actual tangible products like the iPhone or Kindle, or more of a service, like Facebook. That being said, the backbone of any modern economy still lies in small businesses. And the big ones do support the little guys. Look at Apple's App Store, for example. Of the thousands of apps on there, how many of those apps were created and marketed by a small company of less than 100-200 people (or even how many apps were put out by a one-man-shop)? Remember also, that many of these big corporate giants started as small businesses -- Apple and HP both started in a garage in silicon valley.
economic problems would be fixed
How would that stop the metastasis of government into all areas of life AND stop the central bank devaluing every dollar whilst bidding prices up with money made from thin air?
Those 50 jobs aren't the only benefits that came out of the data center.
If it costs $1billion to build that data center, then that's $1billion added to the economy, affecting a lot more people than 50 direct employees.
(How many people did it take to actually construct the place? to handle permits for construction? To deliver food for people that handle permits? To handle mail to deliver food to the people that handle permits for construction, etc..)
Jobs created don't provide the overall picture of an economic effect. Actual spending does.
who can't comprehend how expensive facilities stretching across hundreds of acres can create only 50 new jobs
Yup! Its amazing that the whole project was actually completed with only 50 local people... who now have posh jobs running the place. Actually, it would have taken far less people, but curious onlookers kept getting too close to the packed ACME Instant Data Center (tm), so Apple had to hire 49 more people to make sure the crowd stood back while a single drop of water was added to the ACME package and it expanded instantly into the glorious data center that stands there today.
The Admin and the Engineer
One way or another those that have wealth are forced to invest. Inflation and taxation will eat a large fortune that is not invested. Often huge business end up owning strip malls that employ a lot of people or they invest in companies that produce hard goods. One issue is that those labor providing investments are not made in the US. Investors seem to have few issues with slave labor or starvation wages in non- advanced nations. America could criminalise the investment in companies that use child labor, starvation wage labor or conscripted labor over seas. Yes, the idea is to put bad people out of business and into jails and lives of poverty. Show the rich that the fast lane to poverty is the bad treatment of people, anywhere.
Seriously? Buy stock. Wealth spreads to owners. It's that simple.
Even the "Traditional Manufacturing Businesses" aren't employing as many people as before. It all comes down to automation. If you do something routine, simple, and repetitive, you can and will be replaced by a machine.
All the talk of how manufacturing will create jobs is just that, talk. In case you haven't noticed modern day manufacturing is automated to a very high degree and requires a lot fewer people to do the job. Robots kill jobs not only in manufacturing, but in pretty much every other employment field. Even scientific research is affected heavily by this and requires fewer people to do the same job. In one week I can do experiments that 5 years ago would have taken 10 people a full year to perform. With such throughput it isn't necessary even to formulate a hypothesis. You just test every possible variation and let the data speak for itself. Machines are more consistent than people, don't get tired, if the make mistakes the mistakes are systematic and easy to troubleshoot. Oh and recently even advanced robots have become very affordable (way cheaper than hiring humans). It is the 19th century industrial revolution all over again but this time it is affecting everybody, except politicians. Although I suspect lying can also be automated. Now this rises the problem what to do when 30-50% of working age adults become unemployed. I can imagine how this will work in the much hated in the US 'welfare states', but the US society itself is in a lot of trouble the way it is set now.
let's see how smart the chinese will be once we pollute their country and people start dying of cancer, birth defects and other diseases
americans learned not to pollute decades ago
Maybe that comes from the fact that Asians are not as lazy and against "stupid jobs" (when they are in fact the most useful ones) as Americans?
So many citations needed here. Okay so you say "the fact" and I'm asking you where you get your "facts."
You say that Asians have this awesome work ethic and will do all the dirty work? How do you prove that? If you go by GDP per capita, I think the US is doing alright comparatively.
Could you please prove that Americans are against "stupid jobs?" I used to pick rock, bail hay, bus tables, work at a parking booth, etc. Now I code computers. There's my pitiful sample set of "one" please send me your numbers that prove it is applicable to all Americans. I think a lot of Americans working in the middle of nowhere get overlooked by people like you.
When you say "(when they are in fact the most useful ones)" I question how objective the superlative "most useful" is here. The factory worker, the quality control worker, the designer, the investors, etc. They all have a use. Which is "most useful" is totally a matter of opinion. The question I have for you is, do you think that Apple would just stop making iPhones if they were suddenly not allowed to import them from China? I highly doubt it.
I challenge you to grow up and to stop relying on tired stereotypes.
It applies to work, woman and everything. Everyone is selfish and looking for their own good, in a way or another.
So what you're saying is that you've learned that there is no place for love or satisfaction of a job well done? Just money? I'm really really sad you find yourself in that position ... keep manipulating your wife based on her greed. You know what else Americans are good at? Divorce.
My work here is dung.
Why is this one marked as "flamebait?" The previous poster does sound extremely bitter and jaded. Wrong too. There are plenty of people who are out of work or underemployed, despite the fact that they have useful job skills. Besides, especially since we're talking about Apple and I don't think everyone has forgotten about Foxconn, "stupid jobs" might be referring to ones that make you suicidal.
The markets have decided that iPhones and iPads sell really well, that's all there is to it. Whether there is a "need" for companies similar to Apple - it's up to the markets to decide.
However with every more the governments make sure that there will be no small competition to the large established businesses in any industry. Be it the food and drug industries, be it telcos or utilities (water/gas/sewer/roads/transportation/energy), be it entertainment, be it military, be it MS or Oracle or Apple or Google whatever.
The government implicitly that it wants only the large companies, that's why the interest rates for borrowing are pushed down, so no small business can get those loans and the credit is only available to the ever growing and ever and all consuming government.
The patent and copyright laws, the licensing by all these departments like SEC, FINRA, FDA, FCC, whatever. Everything is done so that there will be no competition.
Try and start your own investment business today, go ahead. Start it from scratch. If you are not already wealthy (like a millionaire), you won't even move past the first hurdles of licensing across all states and you CANNOT ADVERTISE your success, it's illegal in the investment business, it's a direct help to the established businesses.
Don't forget the added costs of things like the Patriot act, where you must be an unpaid spy for the IRS and CIA and FBI, spying on your own clients.
Try and start your own store chain. Try and cut through all the red tape of all the licensing and all the labor regulations. Good luck.
Sure, you can start a software company, your own 'Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net' from your house. Try and sell some of your software though, it's a tossup. You are probably going to be attacked by armies of lawyers based on anything, from patents to copyrights, it doesn't have to be true, but if you become successful enough, they'll "buy you out".
You can't handle the truth.
The problem here is the same thing that is effecting all our decisions. We look at the top 1% (people, companies, whatever) and get angry because they have everything, and then look at the bottom 1% and get angry because they have nothing and think one must cause the other. And we completely overlook the middle.
Its the middle thats important. Because from there you can fall to the bottom too easily. Only from there can you typically rise to the top. The middle is the backbone. As mentioned already, that $1 billion spent on Apple's data center employed thousands of people directly and indirectly for at least a period of time. And those people and companies are probably all from the middle.
You can argue that our economic system is broken (or flawed by design) but so is our society. We pay attention only to the top and bottom and ignore the middle. We have brains and brawn but no backbone. We have the tools but no wisdom to use them correctly.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
you are trolling again, aren't you ? Please go back to 4chan.
The US needs companies like JR and JP. They employ lots of people who seem to do nothing.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
One Jobs was far more than enough. The damage 50 would do is unfathomable.
Data centers have always created very few jobs due to the high level of automation in these facilities. As a result, they don't appear to be a compelling candidate for economic development incentives, which have traditionally been all about job creation. But there's a political component to this. Data centers represent far more than jobs or bricks & mortar. They have become symbols of the new economy, a tangible sign that a community is making a successful transition to the digital economy. Governors and local legislators understand the value of a press conference to announce a new project from Google, Facebook or Apple. That's why North Carolina has hit the data center trifecta with projects for all three of those companies, and continues to offer aggressive incentives for new projects. We've been tracking this trend for years, and there are more states than ever before offering incentives for data centers. That competition will intensify as the Internet continues to transform our economy, and ensure that tax incentives for data center projects are here to stay.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
Dude are you a troll or just retarded? America is the only country that DIDN'T sign the Kyoto protocol, because it wasn't economically convenient for them.
Apple's Jobs is dead.
Large companies at first look seem to employ a lot of people. But the amount of people they employ is much smaller than you'd expect.
If a small company needs a sysadmin, accountant and receptionist, then that's 3 people that are employed. If there are 3 such companies, then each needs their own, so that's 9 people employed.
But what if they merge? All those people are probably not working at their limit at the new company. The sysadmin that managed 10 servers probably can manage 30. The new company is not so huge as to have more than one door, so only one receptionist is needed. The accountant can handle a bit more work. And so it's quite likely that 6 people will be laid off.
If the objective is creating jobs then what you want is creating inefficiency: lots of small companies that employ people below their full capacity. Large companies are experts at employing as few people as possible. If there's one thing that would be counterproductive towards that goal, it's them.
Municipalities and state governments are MORONS. There is not one reason to spend a single cent of tax incentives on a data center. They hear "Google", "Apple", "Facebook", and they have visions of hundreds of highly-paid software engineers sitting in row upon row of cubicles, and then going home to their brand-new houses, spending all their millions in local stores, etc.
Not even the companies themselves promise much in the way of jobs, but the governments aren't paying attention.
If you have finite electrical generating and grid capacity, it's far better to lure in SOME kind of manufacturing facility (they do still exist) then a data center that will book a huge portion of the output while employing a tiny handful of people that really don't get paid that much.
Inequality is only a problem if you are a communist.
Increased automation was supposed to bring more leisure time and higher pay --- instead it's been used to prop up corporate profits:
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1345
I want a politician to stand up and demand a shorter work week --- force companies to either hire more workers or pay more overtime.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
How about if people crying about "there are no jobs for me" would either make new products or services people want or improve themselves to be more useful to employers? But nooo, now they're crying how no one is giving money for what they think they want to do.
Actually, the people Google sent be interviewed for the one article did just that, but unlike you, they recognize that asking a 50 year old guy who's been working in Furniture manufacturing to learn computers so he can get a new job is pretty futile. Most companies won't hire him because he's too old with too little experience.
It becomes an interesting question of what percentile of people do we allow to become permanently unemployed. Is it the bottom 10%? 20%? And what do we do with the least useful people? Do we give them enough money to survive or do we do as the Libertarians suggest and let them die from the crime of not being useful enough?
The point of the article is that the U.S. would need more Apples than it could possibly sustain to fix it's employment problems. The U.S. needs to have some manufacturing jobs because there a lot of people who are more suited to that work than to other jobs. This might seem like a problem of not adapting, but it's just a problem of numbers. Why would anyone want to hire someone from the bottom 50% of applicants for any job? The way to deal with this is to have a robust and diversified field of employers. The U.S. has failed to protect most of it's manufacturing industry from MBA idiocy that considers a hiring a Chinese company to do work inherently superior to employing Americans.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
The Foxconn suicide scare has been disproven. Given their large workforce, they're going to have suicides. When taken against the national average, it's actually lower.
But no; everyone just looks at absolute numbers and not relative numbers.
No way Americans can compete against 3rd world wages. Software development is probably the easiest thing in the world to offshore - you don't even have to ship products. Less than 25% of IBM employees were born in the USA.
"In fact, Apple actually exemplifies some of the reasons why the U.S. has such huge unemployment and inequality problems: 'Digital' businesses like Apple employ far fewer people than traditional manufacturing businesses" That's quite a reach, to say Apple only needs X people, therefore this is a contributing factor to unemployment and inequality.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
How about if people crying about "there are no jobs for me" would either make new products or services people want or improve themselves to be more useful to employers? But nooo, now they're crying how no one is giving money for what they think they want to do.
I think you are missing the bigger picture. As technologies improve, employers and owners will need fewer and fewer people. That's what being more efficient and productive means - fewer people to pay $$$$ to. Where the humans are cheaper, the Owners will use humans. But if the tech keeps improving there may be a point where most humans become uncompetitive, and redundant.
You can give as much training as you like to a dog, but it's not going to be able to write decent software and/or create robots. The same goes for most humans.
AND even if you can improve, they'd still only need 50 people for that data center. And each data center can serve millions of customers.
Of course they may run low on customers since more and more customers have no jobs, but if robot technology improves to the point where robotic sentries and armies are good enough, the 1-2% ultra wealthy who own everything would have no need of customers. There's no need for all that if they own all the robotic factories, all the mines and farms, and have the armies to protect their assets. They may decide to instead keep worshippers, pets and "slaves", along with a few "tech priests" and "security robot" commanders (e.g. champion starcraft players).
That won't happen as long as voters still have say over stuff AND vote for leaders who won't herd them towards such a future.
But from what I see, most voters aren't very bright. Most voters might actually be convinced that going down the free market, low/no regulation path with a small/weak government is a good idea. In such a path, capital and power will concentrate to organizations and people do not have to answer to voters at all (unlike an elected government which at worst has to _pretend_ to listen to the voters).
I've heard a simple statement that captures much of the problem, "People have to be willing to pay more at Walmart". If they want stuff made in the US, or more correctly the tax base that underlies such things, they have to pay for it. They can do it implicitly or explicitly, via 1930's style economic protectionism. Granted, that stuff didn't turn out too well back then, but if people want their government benefits they're going to have to pony up their share for them. Unless the tax base is maintained, the benefits have to go down.
'Digital' businesses like Apple employ far fewer people than traditional manufacturing businesses, Apple's 60,000+ jobs are not just in the U.S. — they're spread around the world.
Maybe that comes from the fact that Asians are not as lazy and against "stupid jobs" (when they are in fact the most useful ones) as Americans?
Perhaps.
However, Americans also would not pay $700 for an iPod either, but that's likely how much it would cost if it were manufactured in the US. Kind of a double-edged sword here that's been going on for a long time. Create more US manufacturing and triple the costs(or more)...or continue to fabricate it overseas to appease the Wal-Mart price point masses. Choose.
Bridge Comes to San Francisco With a Made-in-China Label
Im no us citizen, but I wonder if it really is more economical in the long run to outsource everything to china.
Most companies won't hire him because he's too old
Such companies that hire an inexperienced young person but don't hire an equally inexperienced older person may find themselves in violation of the Age Discrimination Act of 1975 or foreign counterparts.
If you want to create jobs buy items made as close to you as possible.
Big companies won't tell you this because it will hit their profit margin
Government won't tell you this because they are lead by big companies and are restricted by trade agreements.
But this is what has to be done. As long as you are buying stuff made in China/Korea/Mexico Companies will continue to ship your jobs overseas. Buy local, sure you'll pay more but the person that got hired now has money to buy the stuff that you are making.
This is not rocket science. Made in means you are providing emplyment for someone who is keeping you employed!
It's arguable that Apple as a business might not directly create as many jobs as a traditional manufacturing business; however, Apple certainly fosters the creation of "collateral" jobs with myriads of developers working night and day to produce iOS apps. As of today, Apple has approved more than 500,000 of them (source).
Who hurt you man, why so jaded?
Maybe that comes from the fact that Asians are not as lazy and against "stupid jobs" (when they are in fact the most useful ones) as Americans?
A quick google search reveals the average manufacturing job in China pays $134 per month. It has little to do with laziness or stupid jobs, its simple economics.
Exactly. People are so quick to comment on "lazy" Americans, and yet fail to realize that unless you're willing to bring manufacturing to the US and increase the price of everything at least 300%, manufacturing will likely stay in parts of the world where it can be done the cheapest. Even if you found a willing worker, you'd be hard-pressed to survive anywhere in the US on $134 per month.
I think throwing words like "retarded" makes it hard to understand how someone else is a troll. There are plenty of countries that didn't sign the Kyoto protocol besides the US. The US just happens to be the most industrialized of those. This doesn't count the countries that get a free pass under Kyoto since it wasn't economically convenient for them.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Maybe with a not so quick Google search there is different data that comes up?
Career Entries Gross (USD) Average Gross Salary Average Net Salary
General Manager 8 $93,657 595,656 CNY 447,625 CNY
Director 5 $88,050 560,000 CNY 446,000 CNY
IT Manager 8 $69,055 439,187 CNY 348,081 CNY
Manager 7 $59,973 381,428 CNY 300,285 CNY
IT Project Manager 6 $51,834 329,666 CNY 252,666 CNY
Human Resources Manager 6 $43,606 277,333 CNY 209,166 CNY
Architect 6 $35,901 228,333 CNY 181,736 CNY
Manufacturing 11 $32,547 207,000 CNY 176,529 CNY
Engineering Manager 6 $32,128 204,333 CNY 167,500 CNY
Marketing Manager 7 $31,706 201,651 CNY 158,366 CNY
Sales Manager 8 $31,184 198,330 CNY 170,486 CNY
Software Engineer 6 $27,004 171,746 CNY 135,659 CNY
Mechanical Engineer 6 $24,552 156,150 CNY 113,333 CNY
Accountant 5 $18,624 118,450 CNY 86,800 CNY
University Professor 5 $18,006 114,515 CNY 101,800 CNY
Manufacturing Assembly Worker 5 $13,774 87,600 CNY 74,000 CNY
You can't handle the truth.
There is a difference between people being naturally suicidal, and people who feel it would be better to kill themselves, rather than go to a job that is so bad, they really would prefer to be dead. I've had the idle thought that due to things like leaks and corporate security, those Foxconn employees were killed for trying to sell secrets to others and were caught by security.
If there's simply not as much work to go around, perhaps this will actually lead to the decline of the American work week.
How could we set up a system that supports twice as many people working half as long?
you're a moron
30 years ago we had ozone and smog over our cities. manufacturers would dump their trash into our rivers and pollute our food supply in the process. i would look at manhattan and see a brownish smog cloud. there are still parts of NYC that are polluted from decades of manufacturing and uninhabitable due to all the chemicals in there. Jet Blue and Whole Foods had to spend tens of millions of $$$ in order to build on some of these polluted lands.
CO2 is bull sh1t compared to the pollution we had decades ago
Facebook is currently building a datacenter in my home town. Everyone I know mentions it to me "Apply so you can move back" They're surprised when I mention how few people the massive facility will staff.
What diseases and cancers does the pollution addresses by the Kyoto protocol cause?
None? So how is that applicable to the point in the slightest?
You underestimate how little money companies are prepared to save by betraying their countries.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Take away the patents and innovation will sprout once again. The small startups simply don't have the deep pockets required to defend against the private monopolies riding on patents.
Patents divide us. Free ideas unite us.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
the problem is not unemployment, it's employment. it's good to see machines doing all the work so we have to work less and less so we can focus on the fun things in life - the only problem is that the profit stays in the hand of fews instead of benefitting the people in a whole. :(
we can have better and better lifes and escape wage slavery with the help of the machines, but as always we're doing it wrong and let the thieves take the big piece of the cake.
Did they compare the rate to people with similar jobs? Any population is going to have the random people who just pop and decide to end it. But lots of suicides are based on circumstances. Even if the Foxconn suicides are at a similar rate, they might not be distributed the same way. If 25% of the suicides in the population as a whole are because people can't find work, then you have to correct those cases out when comparing to people who DO have work.
Nike Premium Shoes. Cost to make £4 materials $6 labour. Sale price (USA) $200.
Now how much more does labour cost in the USA than China? Tenfold increase? That'd be a $260 trainer, then. Or £60 less profit.
Meh. In common parlance, when one speaks of Americans, they are typically referring to citizens of the United States of America; calling them thus, or USAsians, doesn't really roll off the tongue, so Americans is chosen to simplify things.
tldr; Americans is fine for the country.
I am John Hurt.
from the mundane items like sewage and garbage, maintenance of roads to and from, proving electrical power, educating the children if any of the plant's workers, to providing police and fire protection.
It might be only fifty people in the facility but the support mechanism to allow such a vast process does involve hundreds if not more going forward.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If you find somewhere in the U.S. where you can live on $134 per month, you can save Social Security!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
is that many states have their own absurd regulatory systems. For example, in many states you have to be "certified" to be a "professional hair braider." Even most pro-government liberals are probably spitting up their coffee hearing that you have to get a license that says you're competent to braid hair and can get fined or locked up for not having it, but it's really there. Same with interior decorating. Yes, interior decorating, not design (which has some architectural components).
What is needed is a top-down audit with a prejudicial eye to remove regulations unless their absence would cause a clear and present danger to life, limb, property or the environment if removed. Virtually all professional licensing needs to be tossed, including for the legal profession. Part of the problem we have today with students bankrupting themselves at law school is because many states make it so that you can't sit for the bar unless you have a law degree (autodidacts need not apply!)
It's a little known fact that many of the southern states are actually as regulation happy as the northern states. The main difference is our taxes tend to be lower and we're (AFAIK) right to work across the board. North Carolina is struggling in no small part because they have long had a profligate political system and a peculiar good ol' boy style of being selectively hostile to economic freedom.
So you're saying that a murder was covered up AS a suicide?
If more people designed like Apple we would not have any many un-attractive poorly designed consumer products. ;) Though we need design as well as manufacturing. We also need less government restrictions on medical research. If we don't do it someone else well.
-Xen
The rate of suicides at Foxconn (14 in a year and a half out of 920,000) was lower than the country as a whole by an order of magnitude (19.5 per 100,000). The whole thing was blown way out of proportion by the media.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
You're the moron. The smog had a solution -- the CO2 doesn't.
bjd
USA alone is not "plenty of countries": http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Which_nations_have_not_signed_the_Kyoto_Protocol
You need to be useful to others to be successful yourself. It applies to work, woman and everything.
I'm so sorry you only set your goals for one woman.
Remember that America is a continent. I hate the use of those terms in reference to this country and its citizens. Calling this country “America” and those of us living in it “Americans” smacks of the most vile and despicable arrogance possible and a self-centeredness that is an underlying cause of the hatred that many of the people of the world have against this country.
We all benefit from technological progress and low low prices. Companies need to compete as well as make money. If they couldn't find cheaper labor overseas for certain functions then they would be motivated to automate. Thus the manufacturing jobs would go away regardless. If the companies don't reduce costs, and their competition does, then they won't be able to compete and surprise! the company closes down and all the employees get laid off. Automation has been increasing since henry ford's assembly line and should be considered a fact of life. Keep skills fresh and be ready to learn new ones should be our motto.
Small town, 1 billion dollar data center, and presumably those 50 employees includes all security guards. If the town just took the data center hostage the net profit would be huge, besides the fact that nobody would ever build another data center there again. 1 billion over 3000 residents is like, a profit of 300,000 a person? Shave off a percent or two to bribe the local cops and they've hit pay dirt
I absolutely agree.. Full disclosure: I am an Indian.
The management of businesses in the US and the first world make it seem like the Asians are all hardworking geniuses and that is why all the work is being outsourced to Asia - but the truth is that the work is only being farmed out because the salaries in Asia are much lower than in the first world.
The truth be told, for the most part, the Asians aren't as skilled or as educated as their western counterparts. Not to say that Asians don't have degrees - there may in fact be more Asians with postgraduate degrees than the first world.. and not that Asians are stupid or lazy either.
It is just that the educational institutions in most Asian nations are there simply to hand out degrees not an education. In the west, a lot of students take up courses because they enjoy the subject - but most Asian students take up courses with a view of getting a high paying job - with very little interest in the subject. And this impacts the quality of their skill and also their overall understanding of the subject.
By the way, when I say Asians, I am also including Indians into this - we are also part of Asia.
Obviously, both extremes didn't work out in terms of spreading the wealth equally.
Maybe it comes from the fact that Asian leaders don't care that their people are living in bio-hazard waste zones with polluted water. Maybe it's because American people don't want to work 18+ hours a day. Maybe because American people refuse to work for $100 a month. Maybe it's because American people don't want to work for slave wages and slave conditions so some $big_company can turn a huge profit for their share holders.
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
Germany, France, Japan, gee... all of them industrialized.
Here's a map for you which clearly shows those who signed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kyoto_Protocol_participation_map_2010.png
You're just the ignorant kind of white trash that watches fox news and thinks the 99% are just lazy idiots who want money for nothing.
They'd be far more likely to buy a $700 iPod if they had a job that afforded them that kind of disposable income.
The whole "we can't afford to manufacture in the United States" idea is completely contrary to our own history. For decades we made most of our shit here, and consequently there were decent paying jobs to be had by most anyone with any skill level. Those jobs afforded those employees to buy the shit they were making, which is the fundamental problem we have today...wages have completely stagnated. People can't afford to buy the shit, even when it's made in China for pennies on the dollar. The race to the bottom has finally trickled up to the point where they're killing off their own customers.
Back in then 60's, my grandfather drove a truck for a living and supported himself, his wife, their four children, paid off a modest home for them to live in, had a new car in the driveway every few years, had enough scratch to pile the kids into said car every year to take them around the country on vacation, as well as put money aside for retirement and the kids college fund. The man barely had a high school education due to running off to fight in Korea and do his duty like those that had just a few years earlier in World War II.
This was possible because he wasn't competing with people on the other side of the world living in 3rd world conditions for his job. This was also possible because his boss was also a vet, as were all of his co-workers, and they would not tolerate one of their own being fucked over that way. He brought the boss home for dinner, the boss came to visit him when he was in the hospital. Point is, they actually gave a shit about each other beyond their ability to profit off of the labors of each other.
That $700 iPod isn't scary to someone that has a decent job. Paying the guys on the factory floor a decent wage allows them to buy the shit they're making, which leads to more demand for the product, which leads to more decent-paying jobs. This leads to a stronger economy, which increases the value of a dollar, which leads to lower prices. What it doesn't lead to, though, is ridiculous lopsided bonuses and salaries for the handful of people running things at the top.
In our grandfather's day, if their employer had brought in illegals or foreigners to work their line, paying them less in order to pad their own paychecks, there would have been a shit storm. They would have been shunned in the community, their products boycotted, and they likely would have had investigations into their business practices. But more importantly, most of those employers wouldn't have done it anyway, because they cared just as much about their country as their employees. That's something we lost in the drive for globalization and ever increasing profit margins.
The fallacy of trickle-down economics is why our country is sitting on the edge of a cliff right now. It took 30 years to fully flower, but we're finally hitting the point where even making shit in China isn't cheap enough due to inflation and the ridiculously stagnated wages we've been suffering under since this voodoo economics bullshit started. When less and less of us are able to justify the expense of an iPod at any price, where does that leave Apple (or any other manufacturer)?
Out of work == "That job is beneath my station."
Plenty of jobs out there if one takes the blinders off.
A quick google search reveals the average manufacturing job in China pays $134 per month. It has little to do with laziness or stupid jobs, its simple economics.
I think it's important to point out how US-centric this article is. People in China need jobs too. They apparently need them so badly, they are willing to work for $134 per month. The jobs go to those that need them the most, those that will take the lowest pay. Americans simply don't need those jobs bad enough, even if they are unemployed. Our standard of living is too high.
I only see a few ways out of this situation:
1. Return to protectionist policies.
2. Create enough growth to saturate the economies of the third world and raise their standard of living. (The ultimate goal IMHO)
3. Reduce the standard of living in the US to remain competitive with the third world. (Hint: this plan will not be popular)
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Jobs created don't provide the overall picture of an economic effect. Actual spending does.
The main benefit of the data center is the very existence of the data center, which is of value to many people (to varying degrees).
Professional "economists" would have a much harder time trying to pull the wool over people's eyes if everyone just learned the meanings of and the differences between four simple concepts: production, consumption, spending and saving.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
As I recall, when automation started getting big in manufacturing, there was an outcry that businesses were killing jobs. This is just an extension of the same old argument. Apple needed to build a data center. It had to go somewhere. They shopped for locations, and the best deal was in NC. Simple economics. I am sure that Apple decision makers took into account that they would have costs to relocate and/or train people for the positions created by this center. Companies like Apple don't exist to create jobs. They exist to create and sell products, and the jobs that are created are those necessary to produce and sell the product. If the local residents can't or won't do the type of work that Apple needs in that area, they need to find appropriate people to fill those positions.
You underestimate how little money companies are prepared to save by betraying their countries.
You underestimate how well placed bribes and rarely enforced regulations save companies money. For instance, I've heard no outcry in China about Foxconn suicides. The government largely waved its hand over it and stated that young workers have mental problems unrelated to their jobs. But the real headlines was that Apple sent Tim Cook to investigate because it was bad PR.
It's not just the wages that are low. The workers themselves are largely expendable. Or do you really believe no child labor went into your electronic devices?
I8-D
You wouldn't happen to be a fan of Larry Winget or read his book Shut up stop whinning and go get a life?
I think people modded you down because they didn't like your answer. I wish it were not true, but after reading the link above book and seeing how in Alabama that no American would bother picking vegetables at $10/hr (not minimum wage!) when unemployment is over 9% shocked me! I assumed people even with college degrees would be linning up if they had student loans to pay or rent.
For the moderators yes, it is true that Asians work for much cheaper, but my neighbor who does I.T. management outsourced to India because they were willing to work 70 hour work weeks and say Yes Sir with a smile when something needed to get done. It angered my other neighbor who used to do I.T. work but businesses are just trying to cut costs to make their shareholders happy and they love the dedication in case a project is failing that the workers are happy to do overtime.
I wish what you said about women being selfish was not true, but I am a product of divorce over money. All I could make was $15/hr after school and her dreams of having a nice house with a pool like what she had with her exhusband caused the divorce. Her new boyfriend is a doctor. Coincidence? Come to think of it she was right and has a right to be happy like everyone else.
If you want to make money you have to get other people to pay you. That comes through not only work, but by serving and giving people/society the most value. You will get paid more
http://saveie6.com/
Tech giants do not exclude manufacturing or other industries.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Note: What I am about to say remains true even for other companies, I just present things specific to Apple....
You only see 50 jobs from Apple for a data center. But what about:
* All of the construction jobs when building out the center.
* All of the revenue from shippers going through nearby towns to and from the data center with supplies and equipment.
* More abstractly, the side benefits of helping Apple grow. If you are helping a large company like Apple gain something, leverage that - you could put together incentives to convince iOS app developers to live in your town, or offer free training to those interested to learn iPhone development. Then you can help ride the tide of a rising Apple.
* Also did they bargain to have Apple put in an Apple store locally (don't know if they have one already or not). That helps local revenue and residents alike.
Basically I think it's short-sighted to complain about a low number of jobs when you can derive other benefits, plus as noted get the one-time benefits of construction related revenue.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What?! Plants ceased to exist?
No, America is TWO continents.
NORTH America is a continent.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
That's not an apples-to-apples comparison, though (hardy-har), You would have to compare Foxconn suicides to suicides in similar manufacturing jobs. Comparing across the whole country only says that being employed is less depressing than being a homeless bum.
"unless you're willing to bring manufacturing to the US"
Continental and Bridgestone and other FOREIGN manufacturers bringing manufacturing to the US to the tune of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars invested. BMW make cars in the US and sell them in MAINLAND CHINA. Caterpillar has massive export sales.
"manufacturing will likely stay in parts of the world where it can be done the cheapest"
Tiny (compared to the US and China) GERMANY is the WORLDS SECOND LARGEST EXPORTER.
Hello, that's with high wages, UNIONS, socialized medical care, and Autobahns as contrasted with US practice. They also have more sexual freedom, real beer, and much less superstition/religion.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Apple’s data center is also supposed to create 250 indirect contracting jobs for maintenance and security. But many in this close-knit town of about 3,400 people — it essentially shuts down Friday nights for high school football — do not know anyone working at Apple.
This part struck me because we moved into a small town when I was in 7th grade. Small towns are weary of 'outsiders'. I bet that most of the people they hired were IT people that were shipped from elsewhere. (I doubt that a town that small had 50 IT people just sitting around). They were probably young and highly mobile. Give them a chance to settle, make a family, etc.
I'm wondering exactly what "naturally suicidal" means, and if it wouldn't include a variety of reasons for wanting to kill oneself, including a bad job.
OT WARNING
I was as ignorant as the GP - never bothered to look & its not like the US media went out of it's way to make sure we were aware. Thank you for the link.
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
Untold numbers of high paying jobs in the US disappeared as the US lost it's manufacturing base primarily because the leaders of US companies discovered they could vastly increase their profits by manufacturing their products in low wage countries.
The Apple facility only needs 50 highly specialized engineers and techs. Other than some of the admin, security, maintenance and other misc. personnel, that's pretty much all they need. It is unlikely many of the technical people will be found locally.
It is unrealistic to expect US unemployment/underemployment problems to be solved or even significantly mitigated building facilities like this. It is also unrealistic to expect all these displaced manufacturing workers to retrain to become technical workers or medical workers. Even if they did, there's only so many of those jobs to go around.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
People whose skills are not needed need not be employed. Inequality is a fact not something changeable. A Negative Income Tax sending money to those with less than whatever the minimum is supposed to be could avoid penury for the large group unlikely to do better (not as yet a majority but with techhnology that will come too).
This is why I'm so amused when people say the reason jobs are moving to Chine is because of "the unions". As if a union bringing wages from $16/hr to $19/hr is going to matter when you've got people in China making $134/month.
Plus, in China nobody's going to mind if you pour the toxic waste from your fabricating plant into the water supply.
It's going to be interesting to see what China looks like as it becomes the ultimate corporate state. Let's see what they look like after all the "John Galts" have their way with it for another decade.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There is no point in competition for any business. None.
Businesses are FORCED by antitrust laws to maintain a certain level of competition instead of simply eliminating it with any means possible.
If they could get away with it they'd divide the pie into various noncompeting monopolies and live happily ever after.
Perhaps buying off, or taking over or selling a monopoly or two here and there.
And when you have an undisputed monopoly, you don't need to innovate or do research - so even friendly competition through research is simply a drain on your bottom line.
Competition has a point ONLY to the consumer.
So, it is not "to sell your goods or services for less than it costs you to supply them" but for the customer to have the widest choice possible.
Whether they choose according to price, quality, availability, variety, service, color... that is up to the (potential) customer.
All 7 billion and counting of them.
Corporations, companies, businesses are not there "to create profit".
Oh sure. Profit IS the motivation for the owner of the capital to create a business/company - through PROVIDING A PRODUCT OR SERVICE NEEDED BY THE SOCIETY.
If there is no need for the product/service they are providing, there is no need for that kind of a company.
And there is no motivation to create it as there is no profit to be made in things that nobody will buy.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
And it took my family from middle class to a one percenter. Seriously, for as smart as the people on Slashdot are, they seem to fail to understand who owns corporations, or that the way to help close income inequality isn't robbing Peter to pay Paul, it's lifting Peter and Paul.
You don't get rich from a paycheck, people. It's what you do with that paycheck that makes you rich.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Stockholders! As an APPL stockholder, I love it. Stop complaining and buy stocks. You won't get rich getting a paycheck from someone else.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
So what do you propose we do about this? The only idea I can think of is to artificially make our economy less efficient- similar to Japan. In Japan, there are many regulations and practices which add jobs, but are inefficient.
For example- in Japan many (most?) private homes are demolished after 20-30 years and rebuilt on the same spot. Certainly a boon to the construction industry, but not very efficient and very costly for the homeowner. There are similar practices in Engineering and Industry- power generation facilities are required to do huge maintenance on their steam turbines every 4 years (by law). In the US, the standard is 6-10 years. The result for Japan is more jobs, the electrical grid is one of the most stable in the world (2011 Tsunami issues aside), and a much higher price for electricity. Cars are usually sold and transferred out of the country before 100,000km (~62,000 miles) because the taxation and maintenance requirements (some maintenance is required by law) increase based on age. In the US, taxation generally decreases dramatically based on age and maintenance is up the car owner. There are similar practices and laws in other areas such as accounting, law, car ownership, etc. which are inefficient but create work for people to do.
You could argue that all of these practices in Japan have made living costs very expensive, and one of the reasons that Japan can't shake their 20-year recession. Or you could argue that many more people in Japan have jobs (building houses, doing maintenance, etc) than otherwise would have. Japan's unemployment is in officially under 5% while the US's figure is around 9%. Take that as you will- both countries cook the unemployment figures to make them seem lower.
Is Japan better because they are less efficient? Maybe, or maybe not. It is a different way of doing things.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I keep hearing how poor people are, and yet they drive late model cars and have $100/mo cell and cable bills or live in more house than they can afford.
A few hundred a month from one's paycheck would be better spent on an IRA than those material goods. And people with college degrees have like a 5% unemployment rate right now.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
"Do we give them enough money to survive or do we do as the Libertarians suggest and let them die from the crime of not being useful enough?"
In your example, I think Libertarians would suggest he start his own business of hand-made furniture and charge 100x the standard IKEA rate for hand-quality work, also they would have suggested, if possible, he did something to save for retirement (or have his house paid off so minimal expenses.. so on)... note the 'if possible' part.. it's not possible for everyone.. this I know.
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
"Take away the patents and innovation will sprout once again"
Do you not remember where the cellphone world was before Apple came along? We all had dumbphones. And yes, Android owners, thank Apple for mainstreaming smartphones and tablets with their patents and innovation. No company would have made the enormous investment to mainstream those types of products without some IP protections. And no small little startup could have taken on the cellcos and monetize handsets like big, bad monopolist Apple did.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
...that's exactly what we need. Another huge tech company to outsource manufacturing overseas. Why didn't I think of that?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
"The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots."
Increase pay but reduce working hours? If most jobs are set for 20 hours a week but pay twice what they are now, can employ more people but then employment costs go up twice as much for businesses.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Why is there no progress on diminishing Green House gases, world wide then? Blame the US for that too?
1) Kyoto is a feel good measure and a "FUCK THE US" treaty. It doesn't mean anything, never did, never will.
2) Just because the US hasn't signed it, doesn't mean anything about US commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions (or lack thereof).
3) Much of the treaty is about who is impacted by the Treaty and wealth transfers to third world nations. The treaty calls for higher standards in places where they are needed the least, and lower or no standards where they are needed the most.
Just keep believing the hype about why the US wants to pollute the world with CO2, and ignore places like China that are much worse. There are a couple of Chinese exchange teachers in my city, and the thing they have remarked is how clear the air is. Guess what, the US isn't the problem, and Kyoto is no fixing the problems where they exist.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Fuck you, bigoted sack of shit.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2464050&cid=37638428
Oh please.
The 'creative class', the 'innovation economy' was a hail Mary pass created by people to try and keep anything going. We've created a system dependent on growth (pensions, public debt...)
Do you what the key component of the 'innovation' age is? It doesn't need a lot of people to service the world.
A few thousands engineers/marketting/sales people can handle all the digital distribution for the entire world. Contrast that against all the jobs in local communities that used to be there when each neighborhood had its own blockbuster.
Computing, automation, and globalization mean there really aren't that many jobs to do. Especially with software, once something is built, that's it. There's no manufacturing cost or labor for additional people serviced.
Oh I'm sure there will be huge advancements in technology. The problem... they won't create that many jobs.
The 'creative class' and its advocates are ignorant progressives who live in a bubble. They live in silicon valley or at university campuses. It doesn't occur to them that there are 300 million Americans. Over 6 billion people in the world. There aren't enough innovative 'good' jobs available because design oriented jobs DO NOT SCALE with the population.
The innovation economy bares a good resemblance to Hollywood. And it pulls in plenty of suckers it seems. You might laugh at young people wanting to become actors or musicians... thinking their chances of making it big are 1 in a million. Yet, looking at it in scale, that one movie or big musicians services a large population and gets very wealthy. That's what makes it such a dynamic field.
Yet, that is exactly what the innovation economy is... and they've managed to actually pull the drapes over the entire American population... if not the world.
It's a world where innovation ensures rapid change, few jobs. It has nothing to do with patents or copyright.
As a matter of reality, in the eyes of politicians and economists, these are probably one of the few tools to create jobs. Whether or not you agree with it or not, it is what they think.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/intellectual-property-a-new-kind-of-arms-race-with-patents-as-ammo/article2190761/
Anyone who thinks innovation will 'power' the American economy is an idiot who doesn't understand scale. Innovation might be enough for a really small country... of a few million. Maybe Singapore or Sweden... think if Silicon Valley was its own country. We'd all be in awe. Yet they only make it rich by being a small population with massive exports. Not every country can be an exporter.
So next time someone talks about the innovation economy... try and think of the 300 million Americans and 6 billion people on Earth... and see how they fit into your 'innovation economy'. The reality is this
1. There will be a few innovative creative class jobs as there have always been.
2. Most people will be in regular jobs doing regular things
Currently it is impossible to make another Apple. The current business model is to think of something unique, patent it, and get bought by Apple/Microsoft/Google/Samsung/IBM/Someone Big. Reason being, patents.
You need a patent "war chest" to fight off these big guys and survive in their ecosystem. Typically by buying smaller companies that have patent portfolios already. To get that you need cash. And to get that kind of cash, you already have to be gigantic.
This is why none of these large players are pushing for patent reform. If software patents were to go away the ecosystem would open up and the big companies would have to face new competition.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
You can't retrain most construction and manufacturing line workers to do something like programming. It is more than a matter of IQ although that is not an inconsiderable part of it. I don't know any decent programmers that are less than 1 sigma from the mean and the majority are 2 sigma or more how the IQ curve. But even with the raw intelligence there are plenty of people that just can't program. It is a bit of a mystery as to what that something is that is required.
It is not the job of a company to "spread the wealth". It is the job of a company to create value, things that are valued much more than the value consumed to produce them. That is all. It is not there job to employ people just for the sake of employing them. If the people cannot add to producing more value in the sole judgment of the company then they will not and should not be hired. Until we learn that we will see more companies move more of their operations offshore.
Why on earth would anybody get out their pom-poms for some corporation who isn't paying them jack? Maybe a moron. I really don't care how successful Apple, Google and Facebook are. I'm not a shareholder, not an employee, just one of the schmucks they harvest data from to sell to "advertisers". That's how 90% of the country should feel. Celebrate their success. Yeah, let's have a party......Maybe at one of the occupy encampments....
Not as retarded as the shithead (that would be *YOU*) who responds to a pollution comment with Kyoto. The US has made great strides in the area of general pollution over the past few decades.
You are a total and complete idiot. Seriously, you are dumber than a brick.
+1 Insightful. Wish things were different, and they're getting worse.
There's a lot more nuance to the vegetable picking than laziness. First, the farms are not always close to the people. So sometimes you're throwing away a bunch of that wage (and time) just to get to the job. Second, and much more importantly, is that it is actually piecework, not a true hourly wage. It only works out to $10/hr if you can meet the rate that they specify. And the expected rate is very high because they're used to migrant labor that they can just abuse without repercussion. It's nearly impossible to meet the rate without experience and even with experience it's backbreaking to maintain it for a 8-12 hour day in the sun.
If you don't make the rate, you get paid a pittance.. an inexperienced group in Alabama got $24 for a day's work.
As an aside i drink real beer here.
Funny thing about Germans is most of them speak at least passable english, unlike the U.S.
Americans simply don't need those jobs bad enough, even if they are unemployed.
The Federal Minimum Wage is $7.25 per hour, or about $1256 per month. It is illegal to pay someone in the U.S. less than that (with some exceptions), so the game is already stacked in China's favor.
The US has *much* better beer than Germany (or anywhere in the world for that matter, with the possible exception of Belgium).
If you're from India, then you may have a very pessimistic view of the education system. My experience with students coming from India to the UK for their degree is that, while the locals arrive at university not having been taught to think, the Indians arrive having been taught not to think. I don't know what you do in schools, but intelligent people seem to end up conditioned to believe that thinking is an absolute last resort.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Why are we developing robots, solar panels, wind power, nuclear power plants, coal power plants, massive control networks to produce reprogrammable, powered locomotion to produce products?
I once saw a self-powered, fully 6-axis able, reprogrammable machine that can perform all of the functions of these technologies at a fraction of the cost in infrastructure.
It's called a human-being.
All you have to do is feed them, and they produce their own power. You talk to them, and they can change their output. The down-side that business sees is that people have free-will and are self-interested; whereas robots are easily controlled and gladly donate their entire life to the corporation.
I thus make a small logical leap to say that Apple fucked the local residents over because the human-beings (residents) don't dedicate their entire existence to Apple, and that hurts their bottom-line more than paying a crap-ton for prefabricated structures that can be assembled by 50 persons.
The same can be said for the so-called "Green economy." The green economy is also going to be highly automated. Obama is doing disservice by preaching job creation through green jobs. In fact, I'd wager much of the manufacturing behind green products will eventually go overseas to save money. My guess is we will never really see low unemployment again. The US population is too large for the economy and resources to really handle. As more and more industries automate, the baseline unemployment figures will continue to rise.
The rest who seek employment, please consider migrating to places with plenty of jobs. Mature markets like U.S. and Europe require more entrepreneurs than workers.
They apparently need them so badly, they are willing to work for $134 per month.
More likely, $134 will on average buy as much stuff in China as $1,340 in the US. If your rent is $500 and rent in China is $50, a meal at a nice restaurant there is $5 while it's $50 here, the Chinese worker is doing well indeed and it's not exactly "I'm taking this shitty $134 a month job" it's "Wow! $134 a month! Honey, lets but a new couch!"
Free Martian Whores!
With regard to Way Out #2, this is not possible with existing resources (by which I mean Earth - we'd need to start farming land and mining resources somewhere else). I suspect that a combination of 2 and 3 will be necessary to solve that problem long term, although I don't think it will actually happen.
China and India had no trouble with the Kyoto protocol, because it exempted them from any of the requirements.
"I don't have facts to back this up"
The premise of the article seems basically stupid. We don't need more tech giants like Apple because they don't create as many jobs as the manufacturing work which is mostly no longer done in this country? Apple did not cause manufacturing jobs to move overseas; that's a consequence of the economics--basically the availability of overseas semiskilled labor at much lower costs than in the US.
The key point is that Apple's data center created 50 jobs that wouldn't be there if not for Apple, not to mention all of the jobs in Apple stores, all of the people working for Apple in Cupertino, all of the people developing apps, all of the people working on developing, marketing, and selling peripherals for Apple devices, etc., etc. Does the author somehow imagine that the existence of those 50 jobs is preventing other companies from opening factories in North Carolina?
So while it would be wonderful to have some new business that in some magical way makes large scale manual assembly-line work once again economical in the US, it seems like we could use a lot more companies like Apple.
The economics of the situation extends far beyond wages. Taxes, energy, distribution, and construction costs name a few. But perhaps the greatest cost to manufacture in America is the opportunity-lost-cost. If environmental regulations mean you have to wait months or even years to build a factory in America when you can break ground in China tomorrow, the decision on where manufacturing jobs go has already been made.
Want to know why people with jobs kill themselves in China, look at this video http://www.wimp.com/packingcards/. Machines were doing this job is western countries for decades but human labour is cheaper than a machine in China.
Want to compete, than shut the door on inflated corporate profits and bring the jobs back home, Want trade, then fine countries providing equal quality of life for their citizens can trade amongst themselves.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Well, people in the USA want fair wages for their jobs. In countries with no minimum wage or extremely low or unenforceable minimums exist, people will do whatever they can to survive. People are not crying for jobs they don't want. They just want the money they spend going to American workers, not to Asian and South American governments and conglomerates who do not pay their workers fair wages.
Germany's economic strength comes from having a most of the banking system's profits being reinvested in the country, according to Ellen Brown:
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
people who feel it would be better to kill themselves, rather than go to a job that is so bad, they really would prefer to be dead
I don't know, I would imagine that someone's options at this point would be 1) find a different job 2) become unemployed 3) kill yourself, no? I think the "whacking" by overzealous corporate loss prevention team theory is indeed more likely here.
Bow before me, for I am root.
The US has *much* better beer than Germany (or anywhere in the world for that matter, with the possible exception of Belgium).
Long live the microbrewery.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Maybe some of the smaller breweries ... but Budweiser and Miller aren't "better" beers than ... well, thousands of beers, actually.
They're pretty much the most boring, generic beers you can get.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I'm wondering exactly what "bad job" means, and if it includes a variety of tasks such as sifting through human excrement or removing road kill.
The 3 largest US owned breweries are Sam Adams, Yuengling and Sierra Nevada - all perfectly acceptable brews. The swill is all made by foreigners.
And Germany has nothing even approaching Dogfishhead, Russian River, Rogue, Shipyard, Brooklyn or hundreds of other microbrews. For quality and variety, nothing comes close to the US beer market
Sam Adams' Oktoberfest bested the German Oktoberfest beers in a competition in Germany. That says something.
Hogwash. The cost portion of a given manufactured item that goes toward manufacturing labor is typically only about 1/3 of the product price. The rest is shipping, distribution, storage, marketing, stocking, transfer markups, etc.
Thus, if the factory workers' wages in the US were twice what they are in China, then the store price of a $3 item would be about $4.
It may be worth to pay a little more to employ America again and get our economy going.
Table-ized A.I.
I think it's important to point out how US-centric this article is. People in China need jobs too. They apparently need them so badly, they are willing to work for $134 per month. The jobs go to those that need them the most, those that will take the lowest pay. Americans simply don't need those jobs bad enough, even if they are unemployed.
Why should U.S. be in the business of providing jobs to citizens of China?
Our standard of living is too high.
No, your standard of living is fine. Theirs is too low.
One of the reasons Germany is the second largest exporter is that it is surrounded by lots of countries with lots of consumers that share its currency. This is a huge advantage. It is also currently pissing alot of those neighbors off, because they see Germany become rich while they go into debt.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
In our grandfather's day, if their employer had brought in illegals or foreigners to work their line, paying them less in order to pad their own paychecks, there would have been a shit storm. They would have been shunned in the community, their products boycotted, and they likely would have had investigations into their business practices. But more importantly, most of those employers wouldn't have done it anyway, because they cared just as much about their country as their employees. That's something we lost in the drive for globalization and ever increasing profit margins.
There would have been a shitstorm....that quickly blew over as people ignored it to stand in line at WalMart.
For incontrovertible proof and to head off the obligatory "citation required", read the summary.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Would you take $10 an hour to drive to a different walmart every week or two and cashier. Bonus, the people training you, and your coworkers don't speak english and are probably hazing you to see if you will stick around.
Cheap storage VM.
I'd say the bigger problem is what to do with all the people now that capitalism has nearly run its course and will simply no longer function as a system except for the top 10%.
Think about it: What IS capitalism? At its core it is trading labor for capital, simple right? But what if your labor is simply no longer required? What do you do then? Are you gonna pack all the manual laborers up and ship them to China and India? I doubt very much they'd take them. What we have here now is something simply never before seen in our history. With each previous technological advance we we empowering the workers to make more with less, now we are REPLACING workers and unlike in previous leaps there simply isn't new jobs being created to give those workers thrown out of a job. What we have is a giant game of IQ musical chairs and more and more simply won't have a seat. What do you do with them? do you put them in camps? Take away their reproductive rights? what?
I truly believe capitalism like every other ism before it has simply run its course. the depression we are starting in will simply get worse because in the end all these millions of workers simply are no longer required. the machines never get sick or tired, don't need medical care or insurance and increasingly they don't even need skilled workers to maintain them, they simply need a few "parts monkeys" that can do what the machines tell them to do. I got a nice view of what it is like helping a neighbor who is computer illiterate. Most likely he will end up homeless simply because he can't compete, even if I give him computer skills at 47 frankly his odds of finding a job are virtually non-existent now. What do we do with all these people?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I agree. I think our standard of living in the US is quite nice, but I don't think anyone is willing to give up that standard to be competitive with China in manufacturing.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Increasing wages by 18.75% can easily be the straw that breaks the camel's back when a company is deciding if it's going to do business here or elsewhere. That $3/hr adds up to $6240/yr ($3 x 40 x 52), plus additional benefits and taxes (likely over $10k total per person).
How did things change in Japan and Korea (I witnessed this one first hand...living there for six yrs) when they went through the same sort of process?
As for John Galt, I think you need to go back and read the book if you think this is what Ayn meant.
Just another day in Paradise
I read about something called broken window fallacy in wikipedia. Taking inefficiencies out of a system is always good. For example, suppose a hamburger costs $50 because some guy makes it. If we fire him and create a machine that automates hamburger making, we can make hamburgers for $5. When we do that people can enjoy hamburgers for $5 and spend the rest $45 on a nice book, which means the publishing industry prosper and more jobs are created in publishing field.
Automation might mean that unskilled labour is valued less but that might not be a problem in the long run (picture a world like in the movie WallE) where people are free to sit around and pursue any interest of their own because all the pressing needs like food, water, cloathing etc are provided for us by a swarm of automated robots!!!
I see, my thanks, my knowledge was out of date.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
The same also applies to software engineers, developers, project managers, and eventually lawyers and doctors. It's a race between the robots and the Asians to see who completely decimates the white collar workforce in the US too.
We are the 198 proof..
You were right on about everything, except that now it's 7 billion :-(
China has managed to combine the evilest parts of both communism and capitalism: wage-slave working conditions under dog-eat-dog competition, plus no citizen say-so in how things are done.
Table-ized A.I.
(or is that "more cowbell") We may not need more tech giants, but we do need as many companies as possible trying to become tech giants.
We are the 198 proof..
Note though that American productivity is quite high which means that a factory is highly automated and requires far fewer workers. The US has some great manufacturing but those looking to it for jobs are doomed to be disappointed as competition comes precisely from that extremely high productivity. (i.e. fewer employees needed to do the same thing compared to say 30 years ago)
See: http://siakhenn.tripod.com/capita.html
Nothing like having a good exchange of information. Thanks for being so polite and informative.
Just another day in Paradise
Oh, it's going to take more then "proper" tax policy. To see manufacturing return you'd have to out-compete with Chinese manufacturing, and other third world locations that don't particularly care about worker's health or environmental impact. Or see the price of oil rise so the transportation costs from Chinese ports is prohibitive. But if/when that happens, you're also going to lose customers since, well, you can't afford to ship to them.
The USA still manufactures quite a bit, but it's not a hot industry right now. Our first world economy has moved on. Deal with it, and stop trying to sell buggy whips.
The current low wages and high unemployment are caused by an oversupply of low skilled labor. In an economy in which the employed are normally working many more than 40 hours a week the labor supply can be artificially reduced by implementing penalties for requiring overtime work. In this economy where many hours are cut the only solution is fewer workers. We need effective, free contraception and a people willing to use it and we needed it 30 years ago!
Gee Apple's datacenter doesn't employ large numbers of people... what a surprise. Guess what, GM's storage warehouses don't employ all that many people either. That's not because it isn't manufacturing it's because of the type of facility. Maybe software development houses don't employ as many bodies as manufacturing, but that's not really supported by only looking at a datacenter. If you want a realistic comparison look at all the in country facilities in different industries and then take an average or a scaled average based on market cap or something.
Thank you for you opinions Mt Gloom. Here are some thoughts to cheer you, and everyone else:
Construction jobs like this go to a massive construction company
But usually they employ many people from the area, even if the firm is remote. Also a lot of local supplies are usually used because of expense of shipping. Also they had to eat, and live while there.... etc.
Shipping goes through UPS or FedEx or a dedicated shipping company that will just send a truck from their warehouse in the nearest big city.
They still buy gas, drivers have to eat.
Numerous articles have pointed out that only a couple of iOS developers take home the lion share of the revenues.
And what you totally miss in that equation is that yes, only a handful are millionaires BUT a LOT of developers are bringing in reasonable side income - say a few thousand to tens of thousands a year. And those could be local developers.
Locals pay more for computers and that funnels right back into Apple.
Of which the sales tax on the supposed higher cost of the computers funnels back into the community. Even people purchasing online from Apple in the region.
As you can see, your miscalculation was severe.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
!
Developers? They do their work on a computer. They probably don't access the data center directly at all, and if they do it's over the network. They can live anywhere that's got Internet connectivity.
YES. EXACTLY.
Why should they pack up and move to a small town in North Carolina?
Why NOT!?
The cost of living is far lower and quality of life far HIGHER in a small town. Why NOT this place? Why not leverage the tax break or whatever deal they brokered with Apple to help locals develop apps? It's probably too late for that of course, by why not lure developers to live there by saying they will help support them moving next to the giant Appel Data Center?
And if that's the case then they wouldn't be worried about needing to create more jobs in the area.
Who said they are? All the article says is that they don't get many jobs from it. How do YOU know they are desperate for jobs to start with?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Big warehouse-like data centers aren't that expensive to construct as buildings. They're big hollow concrete boxes with extra power and HVAC. All the equipment comes from elsewhere, as do the installers. The construction job is usually handled by an outside contractor with access to their own work force of people who know how to put up big-box buildings fast.
The local employees get to mow the lawn.
When this machine learns your job, what are you going to do? - 1970s bus poster
This game you mention isn't new. As any industry matures, the industry leaders find that buying the competition brings better success than continuing to try to out-compete them. And the non-leaders are often eager to get bought because this greatly benefits the company's decision-makers a lot more quickly and safely than trying to continue taking on the well-established industry leaders in a well-established industry.
Very few people compete for the sake of competing. They compete for the sake of making money. The most effective way to do that produces this very situation.
This is one of many fundamental paradoxes of capitalism: in order for the economy to benefit, everyone must compete, but no one must ever win.
Maybe that comes from the fact that Asians are not as lazy and against "stupid jobs" (when they are in fact the most useful ones) as Americans?
Not in the least. I'm gonna go with the fact that companies who offer those jobs would want to pay Americans the same amount of money they pay the Asians, which is not nearly enough to get by on in this country, let alone raise a family.
There are five times as many unemployed as there are job openings of any type. If that's your idea of "plenty" I'd hate to see your idea of few.
You're making two very poor assumptions; one, that factory worker's wages in the US are merely twice that of such wages in China. In fact, they are far more than that; an electronics assembler at Foxconn in China now makes $290 a _month_, whereas a US assembler would make about $11 an hour. And you can bet the Foxconn assembler is working more than 40 hours a week. Until recently that assembler in China made $130/month.
Two, that the percentage of cost which goes towards labor remains stable as costs change. A product made in China has much lower labor costs as a percentage of total costs than a similar product made in the US. This means a small increase in US wages will have a greater impact in the total cost of the product than a small increase (or sometimes, even a large one) in Chinese wages.
They also have ...real beer
The US has plenty of "real beer". Look for beer brewed locally, or regionally, instead of the "light" macrobrews found everywhere on TV.
In fact, the US now has more small breweries than it did back near the turn of the century, before prohibition, and before national breweries.
“Furniture went overseas, and now there’s no future in that.”
Quote from the article. A man far smarter than I once said something along the lines of 'That sound you hear is the giant sucking sound of jobs going out of the country'. And here we are, years later. Sad its not getting any better.
Who the fuck was talking about Budweiser and Miller? Why the fuck would you even bring them up in a discussion about 'real beer'?
What about cost of living, though? I would imagine it is a good deal lower.
Increasing wages by 18.75% can easily be the straw that breaks the camel's back when a company is deciding if it's going to do business here or elsewhere.
Not when that elsewhere has wages of a tiny fraction of what you're currently paying.
And regarding the John Galts, it's definitely what they interpret the book to mean.
If you think beer should taste like Chapstick and cost $5/bottle on one hand, or on the other hand $10/bottle for sour-armpit beer made with yeast carefully cultured on the feet of leprous bums, then yeah it's hard to beat Belgian beer.
Americans simply don't need those jobs bad enough, even if they are unemployed. Our standard of living is too high.
That's a completely absurd statement. It has nothing to do with needing the job more or not. It has everything to do with the idea that the job simply does not pay enough. Hell, a job like that wouldn't even pay enough to cover transportation costs to and from the job.
Nah.
While I like microbrewed beers and ales, a Sierra Nevada pale ale tastes about like a Red Hook pale ale which tastes about like a Deschutes Brewery pale ale which... same for porters, stouts, hefeweizens, etc...
Granted, they are all far more enjoyable to drink than BudCoorsMiller or TecateSolCorona dreck.
But I'm amazed every time I drink a different German (or Czech or Belgian) beer or ale. Even amongst the same style of beer or ale, they each taste...unique.
Only 50 people to manage a huge center like that ... that's amazing levels of productivity. We need more business that can work that efficiently not less!
“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.”
-Murray N. Rothbard
Why should U.S. be in the business of providing jobs to citizens of China?
Who says we are? We aren't in the business of providing anyone jobs. We're in the business to make money.
Would you rather pay a premium to buy American products and watch news stories about starving children in third world countries (you do donate to those children...don't you?), or would you rather put those children's parents to work making your iProduct?
People tend not to care about other people an ocean away because we don't see them every day. However, they are people too. Just because they don't live next door, they live in another country, or they don't look like you, doesn't mean you shouldn't care about them. We may have high unemployment in the US right now, but being unemployed in the US is not like being unemployed in a third world country. Buying goods made overseas isn't only economically sound, it's morally sound as well.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
What about giving a shit about the worker living in the 3rd world conditions? The 3rd world people have been fucked over for decades and they get a small break and a way to make a living and you're bitching there isn't a new car in the driveway and a vacation every year. I guess you're comfortable when you'd hear of famines and dying third world babies on TV than thinking I don't mind spreading the wealth around a little bit to the rest of the world.
It all comes down to my country and your country bullshit. Maybe the companies now care about the world not just the country - their employees in China as well as the US. You're unhappy shit isn't tricking down fast enough for you but some trickles down to China and you're going batshiat crazy.
When I arrived at Sembach AB in 1981, the Luftwaffe officer speaking during newcomers orientation spoke English flawlessly and much more clearly than the American who preceded him.
US primary education is shit because the public LIKE it that way so they won't feel threatened by their offspring turning out more capable than they are. Forget the charges of manipulation by the elites who supposedly want an ignorant public. The PUBLIC want to be ignorant.
Ignorance is COMFORTABLE. See "religion".
I'd rant longer but Jersey Shore is on and I need to fap...
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
You'd get a point from me too, if I had mod points.
Remembered life in the 1970's. Every TV program for all ages seemed to emphasize looking out for each other.
But around 1975, an agreement called the Lima Declaration of 1975 seemed to promise that we should share 30% of our manufacturing ability with developing countries. That was when the downfall started.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I think the Libertarians would simply not care, and decide that he should just off himself, and decrease the surplus population.
but after reading the link above book and seeing how in Alabama that no American would bother picking vegetables at $10/hr (not minimum wage!) when unemployment is over 9% shocked me!
No, what should shock you is how the farmers there would rather bitch and moan about not being able to find workers, rather than simply increase the wage like they need to. Apparently workers need to take "lower end jobs", but when employers can't find people, they don't need to increase the wage they're paying.
say Yes Sir with a smile when something needed to get done.
That's because over there, they're trained not to think. They're trained to promise whatever you need to do, regardless of whether it can actually be done or not. Being able to say "Yes, Sir!" with a smile is NOT some kind of virtue or ideal. It's simply pure stupidity.
and they love the dedication in case a project is failing that the workers are happy to do overtime.
Maybe if these same companies actually showed an ounce of dedication to their employees, they'd get some back?
Come to think of it she was right and has a right to be happy like everyone else.
She is not right. She is nothing but a bitch. And you are pussy whipped. Grow a pair. You have a right to be happy too.
The other thing the southern states do is take ~$1.50 from the Fed for every $1.00 they pay in taxes.
They have been living off the teat of the blue states for decades.
They are the welfare states and I'm sick of them dominating the political landscape when it is they that have caused our budget problems.
Both directly by taking more than their fair share, as well as by giving us G.W. Bush's political career.
Because, by volume, American's are drinking the crap that you don't think should be mentioned in a discussion with real beer.
And, quite frankly, if you look at the top beers of 2011, other than Sam Adams, I'm not recognizing a lot of American breweries ... enough to make me refute the assertion that America has better beer than Germany, starting with pointing out Budweiser and Miller as counter examples. And with a Bavarian beer being the best overall.
I'm sure there are some good American beers ... I've had some. But overwhelmingly, the rest of the world things of Budweiser out of the gate.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The education is shit because the parties that want to strangle this country do the best to undermine it.
I mean, is an evil socialist institution~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The US as thousands of beers, so lets judge them all be the big chains.
For the record, I like a cheap beer at certain times. Like when it's 120 and We are water skying, and the beer is ice cold.
And lets not for get the coors and Bud are the top selling beers throughout the world.
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Yeah, subtract the average cost for health care out of the 47,000 and suddenly it's not so significant.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The more familiar you become with Rand's work, the more you realize that she wasn't really sure what she meant, either.
Trade policy.
You are welcome on my lawn.
NB: I'm not an American; just living here for the time being.
We're in the business to make money.
"We" as in "Americans in general", no. You don't make money on all those cheap iPads and other stuff. It feels like you do, because they'd be more expensive if manufactured locally. But if they were manufactured locally, the money spent buying that iPad would go to another American, making his life that much better. And then he goes and buys something extra that, similarly, send the money your way.
The only people who're actually making money on outsourcing manufacturing are owners of businesses that do it - they can sell goods to you for what looks cheap (because it is, say, 2x cheaper than local manufacture), while the actual cost is more like 10x cheaper - and the difference is fully pocketed.
Would you rather pay a premium to buy American products
Yes. That way, I would at least know that my money goes to workers who work decent hours, get a decent pay, and aren't otherwise abused. You can call it a "healthy economy tax" if you want.
and watch news stories about starving children in third world countries (you do donate to those children...don't you?), or would you rather put those children's parents to work making your iProduct?
I don't see why it's an either-or. I would rather see citizens of those countries working in jobs that supply their own, domestic market with goods that it needs - and it surely needs a lot. Nothing wrong with international trade, either - so long as it's beneficial to both sides of the deal.
People tend not to care about other people an ocean away because we don't see them every day. However, they are people too. Just because they don't live next door, they live in another country, or they don't look like you, doesn't mean you shouldn't care about them. We may have high unemployment in the US right now, but being unemployed in the US is not like being unemployed in a third world country. Buying goods made overseas isn't only economically sound, it's morally sound as well.
What you're describing is, essentially, charity under the guise of a commercial operation. As noted above, such trade is not beneficial to the average American citizen in long term. All it does is reduce their wage bargaining power, partly compensate the resulting lower wages with cheaper goods, and transfers the remainder of the difference to China. I wonder, how many people would voluntarily sign up for such an arrangement if they knew how much, exactly, are they sponsoring?
I do find it disturbing that so many seemingly-intelligent people have fantastic idealistic notions about how the world works.
All (non mentally-ill) people have the same basic motivations. They also respond to the same basic incentives. People don't work for the sake of working, don't compete for the sake of competing, and don't produce for the sake of having such products in the world. People do stuff to get money (and rightly so, since we need money to eat).
Maximizing one's earning potential provides maximum security and luxury, so it is perfectly rational to do so. However, doing so often requires people to do things that are a little less than noble...like, you know, forcing all competitors out of business and setting up barriers-to-entry so one can rent-seek without fear. The gravy-train is a very sweet ride. Only morons think people avoid it when the opportunity presents itself.
Another decade? look at it now. Vast tracts of land destroyed, open pits burning toxic waste into the air. and as a reminder, the air doesn't care about borders.
Many rivers are now useless. More and more children born with birth defects.
But hay, according to Ayn Rand, corporation will take care of the people.
See her interview with Phil Donahue. Clearly her ideals aren't flawed, they are wrong.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
So fucking what? We're not talking about the most popular, we're talking about whether or not there is "real beer" here in America. And the fact of the matter is, there's quite a lot of it. It's just not advertised during the Super Bowl.
It's a race between the robots and the Asians
Sounds like a standard anime to me.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
shut the door on inflated corporate profits and bring the jobs back home,
How do you think this should be done? Not trolling, genuinely curious.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
It is the repercussions of what she meant i.e. the repercussions of laissez-faire capitalism.
We see those repercussion all throughout history.
Her philosophy has been proven wrong, shown to not work. Yet, greedy people use her as an excuse to do whatever they want regardless of who it harms.
People who follow her philosophy are the 'flat earthers' of the economic world.
Other then her wrong, not flawed, but wrong, economic philosophy, and her idea that the corporation will respect the rights of the people, I am a fan.
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I'm not disputing that ... I am saying that it's a bit of a stretch to say that America has better beer than the Germans.
Like it or not, the beer of America will always be tainted by the mass-market crap perception that American's don't know anything about beer (which is likely unfair, but very real nonetheless).
And, are you incapable of saying anything without saying fuck? Or should I be impressed somehow?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
There are several solutions for taking care of CO2, but most of them are not economically viable.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
One of the things the US needs to start doing is paying for its imports. What 'the average manufacturing job in China pays $134 per month' means is that US citizens can exchange a small amount of their own output for the results of a very large amount of Chinese labour, which is very advantageous to them as a whole. However, the US doesn't even send that small amount in exchange....it hands over assets and promises of future exports instead (ie, the Chinese are buying US debt and companies). That's going to mean the US producing more but consuming a smaller proportion of that output, which won't be directly popular but might help with the equity (and joblessness) problem. That's going to imply that the incomes of those currently working will rise more slowly than output, quite possibly more slowly than inflation.
The more removed someone is, the less we care. Otherwise, we would go mad.
I would rather Americans had good jobs then any other country..
well, that's not correct. I would rather Americans had a higher standard of living.
SO American needs to build robots, license them and collect a royalty check from the rest of the world.
Robots are changing the was economies work, and we need to think about the lowering of available jobs vs the increase in populations. I would rather an orderly transition occurs, and not millions of Americans starving to death in the streets.
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And yet we have cleaned up more then any country that did sign it.
We didn't sign it because it gave China a substantial advantage. And we shouldn't ahve signed it.
When China gives up there bogus 3rd world status, we can revisit it.
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hmm, an out of context map, how helpful~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Correction, unpaid taxes!!!
The problem with big corporations that make multi billions, have the law and accounting firms to back them up so they end up paying almost nothing in taxes, yet if we had a straight across the board tax fee for companies, say 15%, that would be undeniable and the law, no matter how many lawyers or accountants you had, nothing would keep you from owing the government.
I am wondering why the government has not adopted this yet???
How about if people crying about "there are no jobs for me" would either make new products or services people want or improve themselves to be more useful to employers? But nooo, now they're crying how no one is giving money for what they think they want to do.
That's a bit of a catch 22. In this day and age, if they did manage to come up with a new product or service that people want, then odds are, before they have a chance to be successful in their endeavour, some troll will either sue them into oblivion or force them into a settlement that wipes them out because they somehow managed to infringe some little b.s. patent that should never have been awarded in the first place and which they had no way to reasonably know about.
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Another teensy problem: whenever America creates another Amazon or Apple, (or Dell) the second thing that happens is the people in suits quickly get into "trim costs" mode in order at all costs to maximize profits. So they 1) export all manufacturing jobs overseas. They get a 1% premium by exporting manufacturing --sure you have higher shipping costs, but 12% is 12%. Note that along with it does all of the supply chain management and logistical support jobs. Next, 2) Export all the design and engineering jobs overseas. You save 4-5% there. Next 3) All the software jobs must go to Bangalore. Long hours and low pay (at least compared to domestic workers) makes for a better bottom line. Next 4) send all of the help desk/call center jobs there. Just train them to speak with a 'suthin' accent and no one will know the difference. At that point you have a head office 'shell' somewhere in North America. Clearly moving the accounting and junior management to an outsourced country with a lower labor rate is best, likewise you can route income through a tropical "Cayman Islands" country where exact profits are hidden. Take this entire article, apply to Apple, Amazon, Dell, and hundreds of other companies and you get what we have now. Asus thanks Dell for doing it.
But you think that "Americans" are the container that matters. Here's the truth: the wealthy want American labor to get cheaper. The idea that national unity can be relied upon to constrain the predatory instincts of capital (that's what we're talking about - capital) is a delusion.
Essentially, the economy is now global, and there is no sign of that going away. Trying to think you can retreat into Fortress America as if it were a magical, self-reliant, middle-class bio-dome is wishful thinking. For many Americans, thinking about the best interests of some Chinese, Indian, Brazilian and other peoples may be a lot more productive than thinking about the best interests of their wealthiest fellow Americans.
The only people who're actually making money on outsourcing manufacturing are owners of businesses that do it.
If you have a retirement plan, you own a business.
I would at least know that my money goes to workers who work decent hours, get a decent pay, and aren't otherwise abused.
Yes, you will know the workers weren't abused in a traditional sense. However, workers in the US didn't always have the rights they do today. I doubt workers in the 3rd world will remain abused as well. These kinds of reform take time, and we are already seeing conditions improve.
I don't see why it's an either-or. I would rather see citizens of those countries working in jobs that supply their own, domestic market with goods that it needs - and it surely needs a lot.
If undeveloped countries could produce all of the goods they need, they would be called developed countries. They have goods they can't produce economically, so they produce the goods they can in exchange. Believe it or not, China does buy things from the US, despite the huge trade deficit.
What you're describing is, essentially, charity under the guise of a commercial operation.
It's not charity, it's economics. Why give away money in aid, when you can trade goods and services to benefit everyone? In the long run, it reduces costs to everyone, with a temporary loss in wages to the US. The Chinese economy will grow, and increase its demand for goods and services. This increase in demand will be met through importing goods from the rest of the world. The U.S. will have a massive new market to sell it's goods and services and the trade imbalance will vanish or even reverse!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Maybe some of the smaller breweries ... but Budweiser and Miller aren't "better" beers than ... well, thousands of beers, actually.
They're pretty much the most boring, generic beers you can get.
Those are more appropriately designated beer flavored water actually (and probably even barely that).
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When I read the Blackshear article, I'm reminded of the adage that one can help another person, but one shouldn't expect gratitude for doing so. Here's a company that has employed tens of thousands of people for a long time, improved the lot of many more, and he slams it because it's not exercising enough "moral responsibility" for his tastes. Instead, Apple is perceived as an expensive luxury, like a yacht or cabin in the woods.
My view is that a healthy economy needs both large and small. For this story, the relevant advantage of large business is that they have the resources to do large projects. A small business wouldn't have the capability to launch huge projects like the iPhone or iPod. A country that consists solely of small businesses would have to outsource these large projects to big businesses in other countries.
Big businesses also can exploit economies of scale and other tricks (such as selective integration of markets). But here, this author wishes to do away with these advantages (or at least move them to more business-friendly countries) because big business is the villain of the day.
Allegedly, it's all about "moral responsibility". But that means whatever the writer intends it to mean at the moment. There's no obvious moral responsibility, for example, for employing US workers over Chinese workers. The company is still providing the same benefits, jobs for people who want and perhaps need them. Nor is there an obvious responsibility to ensure that a certain class of people can afford your product or to employ a certain number of people in North Carolina.
Finally, since the author mentioned the North Carolina data center, it's worth noting that the tax incentive that led to construction of the data center, probably directly created ("or saved") more jobs per dollar spent than federal-level stimulus spending on the same over the last few years.
According to the Washington Post story, the data center has 50 long term jobs plus probably many hundreds of construction jobs for $46 million in tax incentives. If you count that tax break as "spending", that alone probably puts spending per job in the $100k or so range, which is better than the $200k spent per job of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. But given that the taxes probably wouldn't have been collected, if they hadn't made the tax cut, this just means that actual revenue lost/spending per job is probably much less even when one counts the public infrastructure needed to support the data center. And that's very generously assuming you should even consider tax revenue lost as spending, which I don't.
In that light, the cost to government of data centers are remarkably light. They require electricity and real estate, but they don't have any other large demands on public infrastructure. You don't need to build more schools, police departments, etc. They just need electricity and modest facilities. So my view is that North Carolina got a lot for its efforts. 50 permanent jobs might not sound like a lot, but it comes with very few strings attached.
I don't know what makes up good jobs creation efforts, but I think money spent up per job created is a fair place to start looking. And these projects look pretty good to me.
I remember here an economist talk about this issue. Imagine that you were going to dig a trench. A business doing this, would hire a few people and rent a backhoe. They would probably create very few jobs. If your goal was to create jobs, you would instead hire a lot of people, and have them dig the trench with shovels or with tea spoons or something. That would be a huge waste of money. If I specialized in digging holes with tea spoons, I would strongly consider learning a new trade.
In the US, a company can expect to pay an employee $22.87/hour for labor that they can get for $0.45/hour in China. See http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2007/jan/wk1/art03.htm . Companies shouldn't seek to get ripped off. They ought to seek to minimize their costs.
Back in the day the expected standard of living was a lot less too.
Growing up it was two kids to a room, only the eldest received new clothes and everyone else got hand-me-downs. I can only remember one bathroom in our house for a family of 6. Eating out? Maybe once every two months if you were lucky.
Color TV? Computers? More than one car? Hahahaha.
These days, young people and those my age (mid 30s) expect, after getting married, to move into a larger and nicer place than my parents ever had even after working a lifetime for it.
While I agree with much your sentiment, I think it's also true that small businesses that manage to become/stay profitable are often "brass rings" in their own right, for their owners. Sure, they don't make the kind of money the big guys do. But there's a lot of wisdom to the old recommendation to pursue work that you truly enjoy, vs. working "to make money". Most of the time, profits will result as a byproduct. If and when they do, you've found yourself in a great situation, where you're getting paid to do something you actually like doing. You may not get truly rich off of it, but you very well may be living a richer lifestyle in the process, with less stress and more gratification.
The OWS 99% problem is a problem, but I don't think it's quite as much of one as the protestors make it out to be. That's why you have FAR fewer than 99% of the general population out there joining them in protesting. The aspects of their protest I can easily get behind include such topics as the U.S. Federal Reserve cheating all of us out of the "buying power" our currency should otherwise have with fractional reserve banking methods and their insistence on "billing" the government interest on the money it elects to print. The argument that "big businesses are evil because they crush all the small guys who try to get started" is far less accurate, IMO. How many of the protestors actually gave running their own business an honest try? If they haven't, I don't think they're even experienced enough to argue the topic.
Have you actually been to Germany?? There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of regional beers. There are monasteries that have unique brews. There are many brands that are found only in a single city! There are more styles of beer than you can possibly name.
There are definitely some great beers in the US and there is a lot more choice than there used to be. I'd still say that if you walked into a bar and ordered a beer at random that the odds of getting something really enjoyable are much higher in Germany than in the US.
That being said, my favorite beer is from Denmark.
I *just* got back home from a trip to Memphis from St. Louis, and drove through a lot of small towns down I-55 in the process. I stopped at a few along the way, too, for food and gas. (Thanks to apps like "Gas Buddy" for my phone, I quickly learned that it's easy to save at least 10-15 cents per gallon on gas by driving a few miles into town, vs. stopping at any of the gas stations right off the exits.)
I won't argue your assertion that the jails are among the "nicest buildings" in some of these towns. As many people as we imprison in the U.S. today, that would certainly not be a surprise, unfortunately.
I'd say the most immediately noticeable "big/nice structures" in the places I visited were mid-sized businesses. For example, one place I stopped had a couple of big buildings in a row, right off the exit. One was a spark plug manufacturer and the other a plastic molding company.
Interestingly, another trend I noticed in the small farm towns was a tax prep service having a nice, new building (H&R Block, for example). I suppose all the complexities of doing Federal and State taxes when you're involved in farming makes that a lucrative business.
Yes, there were often big Wal-Mart stores to be found too -- but that's been the case for as long as I can remember (especially since that WAS the entire point of Wal-Mart's original business model - to go to all the small towns and outlying areas). What I *also* noticed, though, was a tendency for those big Wal-Mart stores to draw in other retailers, forming a whole shopping center with a shared parking lot. The stand-alone Wal-Mart in the middle of nowhere doesn't seem as prevalent as it once was. There seems to be a synergy effect, where places like restaurants or home improvement stores do well next to a Wal-Mart, for example.
All in all, yeah - you can drive through one of these towns and get "super depressed" by what you see. But it's also easy to forget how few people actually live in many of these places. Only so much industry is sustainable when your total population is only several thousand. You actually get a little bit better picture of how much business is really taking place in some of these towns with a look through their local phone book (although even that is becoming less useful as people turn to the internet more and more). Still, you'll usually see everything from on-site computer services to hair stylists running business out of their homes, even when a drive down the street gives an impression that it's nothing but collapsing structures that once were businesses.
So true... it's strange to see migrant farm workers counted as the "unskilled immigrants" that we supposedly don't want, when it actually takes experience and skill to make a wage from farm work.
NC is just mad that they didn't make all their tax breaks contingent on ACTUAL LOCAL JOBS being created. Shame on them for just assuming that a big complex would create local jobs without making them put it in writing. Hell, I'm not a commerce expert and even I know that Apple just doesn't do domestic U.S. manufacturing. Did NC really think that was going to change because of a few lousy tax breaks? That's like giving Walmart tax breaks with the logic of "Well, if we get a Walmart in here, they'll buy our local goods." Dumb, dumb, dumb.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I'm sure you're smart enough to know this and you're just trying to make a snarky comment.....
But wealth spreads to the "chosen" people actually working for the business in some capacity, first and foremost. Stock allows people (with enough money to be able to afford it) to RISK some of their money by purchasing a company's stock and HOPING some of its wealth will spread to them.
The buying of stock isn't even a level playing field, for that matter. For example, one of my co-workers, back in the 90's, was VERY intent on buying as much stock as possible in RedHat when they first announced an IPO. He was a BIG believer in Linux and the fact that they'd be very successful going commercial with their distro.
Guess how much stock he managed to buy on opening day? 0 shares! Why? Because he discovered he was just another peon in the marketplace. Only "preferred" traders who did large volumes of annual business with a broker got "first dibs" on hot IPOs like that. There was no way a trader was going to sell HIM some primo stock like that on the first day of trading, when he had all his millionaire clients clamoring for some of it A.S.A.P.
I'd appreciate some examples of where laissez-faire capitalism has been proven wrong...
I don't believe she ever said that public corporations would respect the rights of anyone. She viewed them as just another form of collectivism and she believed that ALL forms of collectivism could be perverted and destructive. The core of her philosophy was individualism, self determination, and the objective assessment of the actual result of actions instead of the intent of the actor.
but they don't spread this wealth around as much as earlier industrial giants did
Isn't the problem they spread the wealth too far from home?
If you have a retirement plan, you own a business.
I should have just used the word that I originally intended to use: capitalist. Owning a few shares in a company doesn't make you a capitalist - you need to exercise control over the means of production for that.
I doubt workers in the 3rd world will remain abused as well. These kinds of reform take time, and we are already seeing conditions improve.
These kinds of reforms will never complete in fullest so long as those countries remain autocratic. When you have guns and tanks at your disposal, and some point it just becomes cheaper to use them instead of bargaining when you're dealing with a striking union.
And yes, I know that labor movement in U.S. also had its share of violent confrontations. But not on that scale.
If undeveloped countries could produce all of the goods they need, they would be called developed countries.
"Developed" is a relative thing. China today is where many European countries were less than a century ago - and they were certainly "developed" back then, and quite self-sufficient in manufacturing sense.
Anyway, I'm not talking about autarky here. For sure, when it makes sense, let's trade. But let's not ruin our economies while doing so.
Why give away money in aid, when you can trade goods and services to benefit everyone? In the long run, it reduces costs to everyone, with a temporary loss in wages to the US. The Chinese economy will grow, and increase its demand for goods and services. This increase in demand will be met through importing goods from the rest of the world.
This model has one flaw: it assumes that you can get the rest of the world to the same (or close) standard of living that First World enjoys, and that it will be a stable, sustainable condition. It's not - we simply don't have enough resources to support that kind of lifestyle for all 7 billion.
So, all you'll end up with, at best, is evening out the conditions - which still means that your average Westerner will be quite a bit worse off than he is today; and that would be a permanent state. More importantly, your model assumes a truly free global market, which implies that all countries playing this game actually play fair - but they don't. China, for example, controls its markets by manipulating their currency. Then also there are corporations, which are also quite eager to exploit the global market - by freely shifting manufacturing and labor to where it's cheapest, but then trying to control the flow of produced goods to milk every region of everything that it is able to pay, no matter how big the profit margin.
If you try to play fair with a guy who's determined to skim you by any fair or unfair means at his disposal (because, as far as he's concerned, you're undeservedly rich and he is undeservedly poor - and by sheer luck at that!), you won't win.
It's posts like this that make me realize that "+5" isn't enough! Great Post!
Awesome!
We used to hear that American workers priced themselves out of jobs because of high wages and benefits. Now I'm hearing that we can't build a factory because there are no trained workers OR because the competing factories in China are huge and can make multiple kinds of products. You can't possible build anything like that in the US (apparently). Sigh.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
How does taking away patents change anything then in favor of small startups? and what's stopping those "private monopolies" from copying the good ideas and marketing the small starups out of business and why would then anyone give small startups money to begin with if suc scenario was very likely? You didn't think that one through.
America might even be three continents, or two continents and a subcontinent.
North, Central and South America, corresponding to the North American, Caribbean and South American plate (respectively).
Oh, another idiot who can't be fucked to read~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~
Right below the image: "Kyoto Protocol participation map 2010.Green indicates countries that have ratified the treaty; Dark green are Annex I and II countries that have ratified the treaty; Grey is not yet decided; Brown is no intention of ratifying."
These kinds of reforms will never complete in fullest so long as those countries remain autocratic.
It's up to the people in those countries to promote reform. No one can do it for them.
we simply don't have enough resources to support that kind of lifestyle for all 7 billion.
At some point, that will be an issue. However, birth rates tend to go down as countries develop, and this fact may prevent such resource scarcity.
China, for example, controls its markets by manipulating their currency.
Now you are at the crux of the problem!
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
GM is now selling more cars in Asia than the US. Your argument is good but your thinking is small.
and before you get a big'ol boner saying I just proved your point, I'm trying to say that the world has 7 billion consumers while we have a measly 300 millionish. We as a country need to think bigger.
Manufacturing will ONLY come back after they take to the streets and destroy the robots now doing that work. The US still makes one fifth of everything made in the world, but the thing is that instead of a hundred guys in an assembly line, it's now ten guys minding the machines. If a manufacturing center did show up in NC, it would probably only hire 50 people too.
You're missing the point. Sure wages are one factor. Quality, transportation, taxes, overhead, culture, etc. are just a few of the others. Owners take the big picture into consideration, not just wages. If you extend my example to a small 100 person company, it becomes about a million dollar change in expense. I've dealt with multi-million dollar budgets in my job...if you don't think it's enough to make a tipping point, you're mistaken.
Just another day in Paradise
Trade policy
Counter offer: Oversimplification
I arrived in Korea in the mid 80s, when the average annual wage was about $800. By the time the Olympics were over ('88), the standard of living had increased dramatically. By the early 90s, they were importing workers from other countries to do jobs they didn't want to do.
Just another day in Paradise
Like it or not, the beer of America will always be tainted by the mass-market crap perception that American's don't know anything about beer (which is likely unfair, but very real nonetheless).
And with that statement, you continue to show your ignorance. Either actually learn something, or shut up and let people who know what they're talking about talk.
And, are you incapable of saying anything without saying fuck? Or should I be impressed somehow?
You're not supposed to do shit. But if you can't handle colorful language, I suggest you get off the internet.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
To what? And is the difference between those incomes and the income of American workers bigger than the difference between American union and non-union workers?
You are welcome on my lawn.
"Companies like Apple 'create amazing products and vast shareholder wealth, but they don't spread this wealth around as much as earlier industrial giants did"
It's not their job to spread the wealth. Wealth has to be earned and created. EGADS what's a frightening statement!
Back while Sam Walton was still running WalMart most if not all of the products he sold were made in America and he proudly advertised that fact. All his descendents care about is getting filthy rich.
"Only 60,000 workers" worldwide, but how many pieces of automated machinery/robots? It is not 1951 anymore people.
I'm guessing "Naturally Suicidal" is the condition of having a profound sensitivity in the presence of an overwhelming affront to that sense. For example... having an preternaturally developed sense of smell and being forced to function for extended periods on the floor of the Congress... the unfathomable stench of our laws being made (or unmade as some suggest) would almost certainly induce the state of being "Naturally Suicidal".
Canada learned this a long time ago, and has special government incentives for small business startups. Small businesses can be as large as one person.
My partner and I are two, we received 12 months of unemployment insurance while we were starting up our business. Our obligation was to follow a 9 months of courses (1 day per week), to learn marketing research, doing and presenting a business plan, understanding legal contracts, accounting, Income and business taxes and HR.
What a fantastic deal that we had three years ago. We are in a growing small business. We are up to 3 employees and ourselves.
And, quite frankly, if you look at the top beers of 2011, other than Sam Adams, I'm not recognizing a lot of American breweries ..
Here are a list of all the American Beers on that list. So you can educate yourself.
World Best Category Winners (2-5)
Deschutes Hop Henge, Deschutes Brewery, Bend OR (Won both best Pale Ale and Best Imperial IPA)
Samuel Adams Double Bock, Boston Beer Company, Boston MA (Won Best Doppel Bock and Best Lager)
Best Lagers (2-10)
Chatoe Rogue Dirtouir Black Lager, Rogue Brewery, Newport OR
Best Pale Ales (6-18)
Rogue Brutal IPA, Rogue Brewery, Newport OR (Also on Americas Best Best Bitter IPA)
Samuel Adams Longshot Lemon Pepper Saison, Boston Beer Company, Boston MA (Recipe created by an American Homebrewer)
Deschutes Hop Trip, Deschutes Brewery, Bend OR
Kentucky Light, Alltech Inc., Nicholasville KY
Deschutes Red Chair NWPA, Deschutes Brewery, Bend OR
Best Stouts and Porters (3-7)
Rogue Mocha Porter, Rogue Brewery, Newport OR
Deschutes Obsidian Stout, Deschutes Brewery, Bend OR
Rogue Chocolate Stout, Rogue Brewery, Newport OR
The Americas Best (Not listed Above) (23 - 40)
Samuel Adams Boston Ale, Boston Beer Company, Boston MA
Deschutes Mirror Mirror, Deschutes Brewery, Bend OR
Samuel Adams Brown Ale, Boston Beer Company, Boston MA
Samuel Adams Black Lager, Boston Beer Company, Boston MA
Samuel Adams Dunkel Weizen, Boston Beer Company, Boston MA
Deschutes Inversion IPA, Deschutes Brewery, Bend OR
Samuel Adams Sam Light, Boston Beer Company, Boston MA
Samuel Adams Long Shot Old Ben Ale, Boston Beer Company, Boston MA (Recipe created by an American Homebrewer)
Samuel Adams Holiday Porter, Boston Beer Company, Boston MA
Samuel Adams Stony Brook Red, Boston Beer Company, Boston MA
Samuel Adams Utopias 2011, Boston Beer Company, Boston MA
Deschutes The Abyss, Deschutes Brewery, Bend OR
You will notice that American craft breweries tend to brew every type of style and won in multiple categories. Of course that's only a small fraction of American breweries that even bothered to enter.
American Brewers tend to enter the World Beer Cup instead. (66-90 winners) And of the best brewers won (4-5).
We've also got much worse.
Have you actually been to Germany?? There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of regional beers.
Who all brew the same three beers; Wheat, Ale or Dark.
So fucking what? We're not talking about the most popular, we're talking about whether or not there is "real beer" here in America. And the fact of the matter is, there's quite a lot of it. It's just not advertised during the Super Bowl.
It should also be noted A lot of traditional European breweries and going out of business because the younger generations are choosing to drink stuff the mega brewers.
http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/travel/16beer-journeys.html?pagewanted=all
Aww, does someone need a nap? Go fuck yourself.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Have you actually been to Germany?? There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of regional beers. There are monasteries that have unique brews. There are many brands that are found only in a single city! There are more styles of beer than you can possibly name
... yet they're all still yeast piss, and taste accordingly.
I already get more vacation than I use each year (but my boss is kind enough to file the paperwork to roll it over), and I've missed work for being sick exactly once in my life (caught a nasty flu bug a couple of years ago and chose to stay home so as to hopefully not infect any co-workers).
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Mr.Henry Blodget the famous Equity Analyst who jacked up equity prices on tech stocks and later paid steep fines for his 'mischief'. And he is waxing eloquent on tech companies ? Seriously ?
3. Reduce the standard of living in the US to remain competitive with the third world. (Hint: this plan will not be popular)
Sure thing. So that we know you are serious, how about we start with your standard of living first?
I have worked for a couple of Walmart suppliers doing RFID projects. To be a supplier you have to use RFID on your products and pallets by a certain date (the date has changed a number of times). This is how the UPC symbol was adopted, Walmart required anyone doing business with them to have a UPC symbol, now it is used everywhere.
OK where am I going with this? Well once pallets and products are RFID enabled, the next step is to replace the people who place products on the shelves with robots.
Much more of society is going to be marginalized. Keep yourself relevant to the requirements and demands of today’s and the future landscape.
May I present the answer: Social Credit. Not socialism. Not capitalism. Something much better than either one: Social credit eliminates poverty and, at the same time, does a better job of supporting entrepreneurial innovation than capitalism. My sig has a link...
Social Credit would solve everything...
To the point where calling them 3rd world was no longer applicable. And to answer your second question...yes, so where are you going with it?
Just another day in Paradise
Wrong answer. The difference between union and non-union employees is not larger than the difference between American worker incomes and Chinese worker incomes.
Now I'm done with you. I don't believe you are interested in a good faith discussion. Or, our ideologies are so different that they have caused a rent in space-time and we are no longer discussing the same reality.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Oh wait. I've got the answers backwards.
So, we are still in the same reality.
"Where I'm going with this" is that if there's a Chinese worker willing to work for a dollar an hour, then it won't make a difference to a corporation if there's a union worker in Chicago making $18/hr or a non-union worker in South Carolina making $/16/hr.
Point being, unions are not the reason jobs are moving overseas. Germany has the most pro-labor laws of any developed country. They make a lot of money. Lots of time off. They retire young. And their economy is perennially strong despite universal health care and government social programs galore.
It appears that a combination of socialistic programs and a regulated free market is the best system for a developed country. Especially if they have an enlightened trade policy. What is often called "free market capitalism", the kind of laissez-faire lunacy that is pushed by the Right in America, is a disaster. There is no scenario where it creates a good outcome.
The laissez-faire market was slapped down hard by FDR and the most prosperous and successful decades across the board for Americans followed. Now it's time to do it again. We need stronger (not more) regulations on the marketplace. We need stronger (not more) tax laws. And we have to never, ever allow a corporate entity to become too big to fail. So that means corporations from banks to oil companies to telecoms and more have to be broken into little pieces. And we have to bring back the kind of tariffs we had in this country from the very beginning until the '70s and '80s. The end of those tariffs coincides perfectly with the decline of the American middle and working class and the exploding, unsustainable income disparities that are now eroding our society.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That was not the question you asked...go back and read what you wrote. Maybe that's why I didn't understand where you were going with your line of though. Please don't jump to conclusions about my intentions.
Just another day in Paradise
Who built the datacenter? Who installed the computers? Who built the computers inside it? Who will build the spare parts that will keep it running in the years to come? Who hooked it up to the grid? Who supplies it? Who will repair it? Where will the money Apple pays in taxes for it go?
The US as thousands of beers, so lets judge them all be the big chains.
Germany has over 5000 beers, and that's neither counting seasonal nor micro brewed let alone flavored or pre-mixed.
Fandroids hate facts.
German salaries are also significantly lower than in the US. The per capita GDP in Germany is $34,800 (in USD) while the per capita GDP in the US is $47,000.
See: http://siakhenn.tripod.com/capita.html
What the hell does GDP have to do with salaries?
Fandroids hate facts.
"You're an idiot "
Since you set the uncivil tone, fuck you and your Marxist shit, asshole!
Another decade? look at it now. Vast tracts of land destroyed, open pits burning toxic waste into the air.
Frankly, how is that different from the US, just with actual production?
Fandroids hate facts.
Part and parcel with these deals is essentially a waiver from property tax. These are not minor discounts.
Try to know the facts (or lack thereof) behind your arguments; they'll be more sound.
How glad I am to hear an American opinion like this of Bud like beer, which even compared to Finnish beers are IMHO more of alcoholic water than beer - no offense to anyone, just my opinion :)
Our beers are boring compared to German, Tsech, etc. beer, but at least they have taste :) Still in comparison the original Budweiser (sold as Budvar in countries where the USA Budweiser came first, like here in Finland - the original one actually really has one an award of best beer in world) is the one with actual taste :)
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
Citation Needed
When people are saying the US has 1000 beers they mean 1000 breweries. Each brewery is making multiple beers.
http://www.brewersassociation.org/pages/business-tools/craft-brewing-statistics/number-of-breweries
Let's see what they look like after all the "John Galts" have their way with it for another decade.
Who is John Galt?
*ba-da-dum*
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
One of the issues with the article is that the "50 jobs" quote is while on the surface is true but you need to look at more than the surface of the quote.
When you add in the the other jobs that are created as a by product of the data center like the electricians and the other people that are not directly employed by the installation the number adds up. Granted its not hundreds but there are additional employment numbers. As to the 100's or more that were some how imagined this is not a high number of people employee company. It is simply a highly automated facility. The other people that will service the company will be brought in as needs dictate.
And all his descendant's customers care about is price rollbacks (and getting filthy rich).
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
When cheap Asian labor took the place of US-based firms starting around 1970, the product prices at the market fell by roughly 30%.
Table-ized A.I.