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Apple In Talks With India To Manufacture Locally (reuters.com)

Apple is in talks with India's government to explore making products locally, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, as the U.S. firm aims to make deeper inroads in the world's second-largest mobile phone market by users. From a report: India Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to boost technology manufacturing in the country through his 'Make in India' initiative. His government in June exempted foreign retailers for three years from a requirement to locally source 30 percent of goods sold in their stores. The Journal said Apple, in a letter to the federal government in November, outlined manufacturing plans and asked for financial incentives.

118 comments

  1. Financial Incentives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Journal said Apple, in a letter to the federal government in November, outlined manufacturing plans and asked for financial incentives.

    Translation; "We need another place where we can pay bugger all tax. Please fix us up, and we'll let you make a few phones. Thank you."

    1. Re:Financial Incentives by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      Further translation: "We need a place where we can bugger all in tax and wages, while we build the robots so we can fire our entire workforce."

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:Financial Incentives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Further translation: "We need a place where we can bugger all in tax and wages, while we build the robots so we can fire our entire workforce."

      In that case, Apple should change their name to BOHICA, and their logo to a giant middle finger.

  2. Imagine if Trump announced that by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >> His government in June exempted foreign retailers for three years from a requirement to locally source 30 percent of goods sold in their stores

    Imagine if Trump announced a requirement that foreign retailers locally source 30 percent of their goods. The Republicans would fight it because "free trade" and the Democrats would fight it because "Trump == Hilter". But the bulk of Americans would probably support it...and that's why our political parties have lost their moorings.

    1. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Make India Great Again" of course.

    2. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by peragrin · · Score: 0

      The American people should support it l up until the check out line when the price of their goods shot up 50% to cover the inflated costs of manufacturing in the USA.

      Not even Trump can afford to make clothes in the USA the cost is too high. In the end these costs will be meaningless as robotic factories will be designed to build package and ship what you want when you neeed it. As that happens manufacturing will go where the buyers are to lower transportation costs

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    3. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The American people should support it l up until the check out line when the price of their goods shot up 50% to cover the inflated costs of manufacturing in the USA.

      Not even Trump can afford to make clothes in the USA the cost is too high. In the end these costs will be meaningless as robotic factories will be designed to build package and ship what you want when you neeed it. As that happens manufacturing will go where the buyers are to lower transportation costs

      That you had to point this out shows what a dummy jonboy is.

    4. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Trade is beneficial. Trade lowers prices and increases wealth. Moving the manufacture of goods which have been offshored back to America would mean that those very factory workers would work longer hours to buy the same goods they're making. Above a certain factory worker wage, there would be fewer factory workers than lost American jobs; below a certain factory worker wage, we'd come up short, and so create American jobs to fill.

      So, we're talking about destroying American jobs and making all Americans poorer, or about creating a few American jobs and also making all Americans poorer.

      ...yeah, we should continue to strategically offshore work that's cheaper to offshore, slowly, at a rate that doesn't shock our economy with sudden spikes in unemployment. Obviously our economy tanks if we go 30% unemployed overnight; whereas if we lose 0.1% per month to trade, we end up rich enough to offset it, creating more American jobs by the time the next year's layoffs come, thus ending up with lower unemployment and a wealthier middle- and lower-class.

    5. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh come on! You're making sense and using proven examples... Please stop, as that only confuses Trump supporters who can only grasp binary "black/white", "on/off" answers.

    6. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Everyone who listened to economists would be against it because it's just a creative protectionist tariff. (And would be subject to retaliatory tariffs by trading partners)

      The Democrats since Clinton are fairly pro free trade. Business republicans would immediately know that this would raise costs and play hell with supply chains, and are also pro free trade.

      The public doesn't listen to economists. The "public" as a whole has trouble seeing beyond two layers of abstraction. The public doesn't understand crippling trade won't bring back enough jobs to make up for a sharp increase in the price of general goods.

      The Republicans would bite their tongues and smile nervously at Trump's theoretical tweet about shitty trade policy. The Democrats would point out that it's bad economic/trade policy.

      The Trump supporters would continue to repeat campaign slogans without any real reflection on the nature of trade or economics.

    7. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by ErichTheRed · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The only thing that matters to the macro-economy as a whole is employment. Unless you plan on replacing the entire "money as a store of value" system, you need a supply of all kinds of jobs across the employment spectrum to ensure money can flow. Otherwise, we see what's happening now -- the rich just hoard all the money and pull up the ladder behind them. The only measures of economic health that matter are employment and velocity of money. Trade is only beneficial when both countries are on the same economic footing.

      India's regulations may seem harsh, but they do ensure that manufacturing remains a viable career path. The fantasy of turning everyone in the US into intellectuals and forcing everyone to go to college has to stop at some point. You need a 2-track system -- one way to a comfortable living is education and professional work, and the other is high-paying factory and trade work with a similar career path guaranteed by unions or similar devices.

    8. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Won't be 50%. In fact, Motorola actually moved cellular manufacturing back to Texas to save money. This before they were bought by Lenovo and manufacturing was sent back overseas to please the new masters...

    9. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      no one called trump Hitler, well no one that matters. Trying to ignore or deny that he rose to power saying almost the exact same things, playing on the same base fears and using almost the same tactics Hitler used is just plain disingenuous.

      but anyways... I thought India was a country not a state in the USA so... what about forcing apple to produce in the US at a 400% markup? what that doesn't play anymore?

    10. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Trump can afford to make his clothes in the US, but he would have to make less profit so that's the end of that tune. They pretend like their hands are tied, but it's better than admitting their greed.

    11. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by slashrio · · Score: 1

      Trade makes products available and that's beneficial.
      But this comes at a price increase. Americans pay a multiple for the cotton from India compared to when it were produced locally, because of middlemen, traders and transportation. So here trade isn't beneficial because America can produce the cotton itself.
      The same goes for Apple products. Almost. The difference being that it would cost a bit more due to higher American taxes, but those taxes will be returned to the workers' wages through the purchase of weapons used to utterly destroy other nation states because... 'defend the homeland' and 'terrorissum'.

      --
      "Trump!!", the new Godwin.
    12. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "Make India Great British Again" of course.

      ...

    13. Re: Imagine if Trump announced that by slazzy · · Score: 1

      Trade is good overall, however areas with too low wages and piss poor enforced environmental regulations should have tarifs to encourage change and allow countries that have good conditions to compete.

      --
      Website Just Down For Me? Find out
    14. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by CrashNBrn · · Score: 1

      the rich just hoard all the money and pull up the ladder behind them.

      What a perfect analogy.

      Reminds me of the Kennedy's. Get stinking rich by defrauding the stock market at the top of the 20th century. Then go work for the govt to regulate the stock market and prevent anyone else from doing the same. Seems like the status quo for capitalism in North America with corporate consolidation

    15. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 1

      >> shows what a dummy

      I didn't say _I_ supported it. But I'll bet the average American would.

      Let me know if you need any more help reading the printed word. :)

    16. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by unixisc · · Score: 1

      The American people should support it l up until the check out line when the price of their goods shot up 50% to cover the inflated costs of manufacturing in the USA.

      Not even Trump can afford to make clothes in the USA the cost is too high. In the end these costs will be meaningless as robotic factories will be designed to build package and ship what you want when you neeed it. As that happens manufacturing will go where the buyers are to lower transportation costs

      That's the point. If automation is gonna do the bulk of the manufacturing, which it has to to enable that sort of precision manufacturing of things like phones, then it makes most sense to manufacture locally. Apple seems to realize this as they make plans to manufacture in India for that market, and here for the US market.

      Philosophically, Trump seems to be on the same page as Modi, even though by temperament, Modi is more akin to a Ted Cruz than to a Trump

    17. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 1

      >>> (blather)

      Thank you - your post fit the mold of what I was trolling for perfectly! Here we have a Democrat-leaning supporter who: 1) said Trump and Hitler are pretty similar but 2) toes the Republican line on free trade. It's quite amusing to people my age (40's) to hear from people like you - something strange has indeed happened to the left in our country.

    18. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      One could argue they did citizens a favor by using their personal knowledge of slimebaggery to prevent future slimebaggery.

      Like the old saying: sometimes it takes an experienced criminal to catch an experienced criminal.

    19. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      The Kennedys got stinking rich by bootlegging. Anything after that was them 'going legit'.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    20. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by Jason1729 · · Score: 3

      This is why the system is so screwed up. Even if prices shot up 50%, every cent would go to boost the American economy, and everyone would win over the medium and long term. And so replace your iPhone every 3 years instead of every 2. Same money spent, plus 1 million Chinese jobs can move back to America. Using your phone a bit longer is a small price to pay.

      And how much of this dirt cheap Chinese manufacturing ends up costing so much more (sulphur drywall in florida homes, formaldehyde in wood flooring, poison pet food and baby formula, etc, etc, etc). And how much of it ends up in American landfills before the box it was shipped in does? Just buy less garbage, and manufacturer more expensive tech that you'll keep longer. Better for America, better for the average person even paying the higher price, and better for the planet.

      The problem is all the idiot voters who can't see past their next pay check until that pay check never comes again.

    21. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      the rich just hoard all the money and pull up the ladder behind them.

      I mean, I can buy roughly twice as much stuff with the median income today than I could with the median income in 1995. How many quad-core processors, gigabytes of RAM, satellite navigation systems, and high-end smart phones could you buy in 2002? What did 10GB of 4G data plan and streaming music and video cost you? How much did Comcast charge for 200Mb/s internet?

      It's true food has only gotten marginally cheaper, clothing has only dropped by some small fraction, and the housing market has been a mess. Utilities are cheaper in the same way housing is expensive: Speculation and new technology have disrupted the energy market, and the cheap prices we're seeing are not representative of long-term trends. In all, the cost of living has decreased, and the reach we have to purchase luxury goods at middle-class incomes has increased.

      The fantasy of turning everyone in the US into intellectuals and forcing everyone to go to college has to stop at some point.

      The truth is people will wind up like IT workers. IT workers are glorified burger flippers. You have your network engineers who can actually find their ass with both hands and an RJ-45 jack, and you have IT who answers the phone at the remote site and has to be talked through plugging in cables--oh, and we can now remotely make the switch port lights blink so they can actually identify "port 22" even if their dumb asses mount the fucking thing upside-down like they tend to do.

      That's right: IT workers are a bunch of morons who think they're in the same class as DBAs, network engineers, programmers, and systems architects. We'd replace them with robots, but actually getting robots to mount switches and servers in generic data centers is a really hard engineering job, and it's cheaper to pay retards some $50k and pat them on the head when they manage to not lose the screwdriver down their pants. Maybe we can train spider monkeys to do it for cheaper, but they shit all over the data center.

      So yeah, the retail workers, grocery baggers, and burger flippers of America? They're what an IT economy will bring us. Those factory workers you suggest are too stupid to make it through college? That's your IT staff. They even think they're important--like carrying a plastic box from one machine to the next is somehow hard, and not just something it'd cost millions of dollars to get a machine to do and peanuts to get a human to do.

      People think I'm a genius because I know things they don't. They don't seem to realize I've figured this shit out from a quick glance through a two-page listing of commands. I build systems from the ground up, I architect security solutions, I point out how to make things scalable, I figure out how to maintain enormous and critical systems that keep gigantic corporations running--and it's trivial. I'm surrounded by other IT workers who come to me to figure out how they should approach trivial things, and who think they're so much smarter than some guy in accounting whose job would make them shit their pants if they had a look over what's involved simply because he doesn't know what a "network router" is.

      We're not special. We're not the world's top minds--well, maybe James Mickens and that guy who wrote PaX are. We're grunt workers who get by on minimal thought and effort, and the smart ones among us write tools that require even less effort so that even stupider people can do our jobs.

    22. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      But this comes at a price increase. Americans pay a multiple for the cotton from India compared to when it were produced locally, because of middlemen, traders and transportation. So here trade isn't beneficial because America can produce the cotton itself

      But Americans can produce cotton for $500, whereas it's $125 from India.

      By the way, it costs under $1,300 to import a 40-foot shipping container from China to the United States. That container carries 20,000 pairs of trousers or 20,000 jackets. That's 6.5 cents per.

      Tell me again about how much it costs to bring cheap cotton from India instead of using expensive cotton from America.

    23. Re: Imagine if Trump announced that by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      Is that the Chinese slave labor argument?

      Chinese laborers's wages have gone up quite a bit in recent years. China also has lower poverty indicators than the United States--notably, less per-capita hunger (50,000,000 Americans go without enough food each day) but apparently higher homelessness (it's hard to find statistics on this; it's rumored to be 1.6 million in America and 12 million in China, or .49% in America and .88% in China).

      China's economy relies on a favorable export market for their manufacture base. This means Chinese families rely on the global market to live. Taking away their jobs because their jobs suck and hobbling their economy in that way to ensure the government can't provide welfare doesn't strike me as the best humanitarian argument one can make, especially while China is openly improving its social and environmental programs.

    24. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by thinkwaitfast · · Score: 1

      IT workers are glorified burger flippers.

      Exactly this. I had the same conclusion before IT was a thing and was called 'computers'. But thought auto mechanic because that was the looked down upon noskill job at the time that every guy did on the weekend for fun in their driveway hobby. How was my plugging in wires and flipping switches any different than someone plugging wires and hoses into their car?

    25. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The American people should support it l up until the check out line when the price of their goods shot up 50% to cover the inflated costs of manufacturing in the USA.

      Not even Trump can afford to make clothes in the USA the cost is too high. In the end these costs will be meaningless as robotic factories will be designed to build package and ship what you want when you neeed it. As that happens manufacturing will go where the buyers are to lower transportation costs

      You don't seem to understand economics. Or maybe you do but you, like too many, keep talking about the cost too high in the USA.

      Tell me this: how in blazes did people in the USA afford clothing before all this globalization? Were they mostly naked, or wore animal skins? Or maybe rags?

      The problem with global trade is that it is not a fair or level playing field. It is manipulated by very wealthy people who "invest" in money markets and other buying and selling of foreign currencies, all of which affect the prices of imports and exports. And of course you have people who work 100 hour weeks for pennies and live in squalor to make those cheap clothes, but of course it's not your fault for buying the stuff and creating a market for it. But any talk of some kind of uniform, controlled system (called government) that tries to apply import quotas and tariffs and people start whining about the cost of "goods".

      Meanwhile more and more people are being laid off of their reasonable pay jobs, only to work part-time in Amazon warehouses, and now they can't afford better-quality American-made goods, so to ChinaMart (Walmart, Target, etc.) we go. Do you see the vicious cycle?

      Meanwhile I'm getting more and more discouraged (and angry) at the horrifically poor quality of pretty much everything these days, and pretty much all of it comes from China or Mexico. I really want to see those giant shipping containers filled up with the crap that breaks far too soon, and the containers come back filled up with the dollars those things cost, plus replacement / repair costs.

      The whole economic system is hugely complex and dynamic, and too many people think they have the answer by looking at a narrow-minded snapshot of economics, society, etc. The 1 percenters are doing a great job of keeping the rest of us fighting, scrapping, theorizing, protesting, and chasing that shrinking carrot we see hanging out there somewhere.

    26. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is why the system is so screwed up. Even if prices shot up 50%, every cent would go to boost the American economy, and everyone would win over the medium and long term. And so replace your iPhone every 3 years instead of every 2. Same money spent, plus 1 million Chinese jobs can move back to America. Using your phone a bit longer is a small price to pay.

      And how much of this dirt cheap Chinese manufacturing ends up costing so much more (sulphur drywall in florida homes, formaldehyde in wood flooring, poison pet food and baby formula, etc, etc, etc). And how much of it ends up in American landfills before the box it was shipped in does? Just buy less garbage, and manufacturer more expensive tech that you'll keep longer. Better for America, better for the average person even paying the higher price, and better for the planet.

      The problem is all the idiot voters who can't see past their next pay check until that pay check never comes again.

      Here here!! Thank you!!! Sanity!! I agree 100%. I think one problem is that sheeple like new things so much that they don't care about quality, and when things break they usually go in the trash, even when they're fixable. I do some repair work- 3 years ago I grabbed a 46" Samsung LCD TV out of trash- just needed 4 power supply caps. Total repair time: less than 1 hour (no exaggeration). I'm happy, but instead of investing in cancer research, or energy research, or anything that would really move society forward, the money goes to another cheap TV that will end up in landfill before it really should (10-20 years IMHO).

      I don't know why so many people can't look back 20 or 30 years, see all the major changes, some very gradual, and see how we've ended up where we are- dollar stores and Walmarts and other ChinaMarts dominating the economy - and see that it's just getting worse and worse.

    27. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by wyHunter · · Score: 1

      You mean like American Apparel? The ones who make their clothes domestically?

    28. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 0

      But the bulk of Americans would probably support it...

      Until the price of their latest 4K TV doubled, then they'd scream blue murder.

      What people conveniently forget is how expensive US-made consumer goods used to be.

      Here's a 19" color TV from the 1977 Sears Catalog.

      https://www.flickr.com/photos/...

      $1700 in 2016 dollars.

    29. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by ghoul · · Score: 1

      If I could have a middle class life with high school education and a stress free manufacturing job why would I go into professions and deal with all the mental stress of college and professional career? One cannot expect to have the same standard of life by being less smart and less hardworking. No amount of Unions will ever change that.

      --
      **Life is too short to be serious**
    30. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and just like India people would suffer under various tariffs and trade restrictions placed on them from other countries. imposing a 30 percent local is fine as long as you are prepared to wear the economic consequences.

    31. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      I can buy roughly twice as much stuff with the median income today than I could with the median income in 1995.

      When robots have replaced [nearly] all the workers the median wage will be zero. What will you be able to buy with that?

      People think I'm a genius

      How nice. Are there any geniuses among them?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    32. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Has the price fallen due to globalization, or general technical progress?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    33. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 1

      For most consumer goods the largest 'sunk cost' is the labour to put it together. Prices on consumer goods have fallen due to -

      - Automation (= fewer labourers)

      - Outsourcing labour to put the thing together to lower-cost jurisdictions

      That applies to both the thing itself, and the components that make up the thing.

    34. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's a reason why Hillary's campaign logo was an arrow pointing to the right. She was bringing the Democratic party to the right along with her.

    35. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      When robots have replaced [nearly] all the workers the median wage will be zero. What will you be able to buy with that?

      You say that as if they haven't. 90% of the American labor force in 1870 were farm workers. Did you know nowhere near 90% of Americans aren't working on the farm or on anything which is consumed by the farm today? It's actually closer to 12%.

      Not a lot of rail workers today, either. The wooden shipping pallet eliminated a good 90% of dock worker jobs, too, along with anyone else whose job it was to load anything.

      When robots have replaced nearly all the workers, we'll pay 1/1000th as much wages to buy a product. Then, we can buy 1000 times as many products. There will be all these people providing tiny fractions of the work involved to build things we're buying--the same proportion of workers today, really--and a thousand times as much product. That of course will probably take centuries; in the next decades, we'll likely see a doubling or two.

      Do you like metal?

      The hot blast furnace, when it came out, could produce 82,400 tonnes of iron from ore using the same labor that the previous ironworks employed to produce merely 400 tonnes. That means for every 200 workers involved in ironworks to make some tonnes of metal (about 200) before the hot blast furnace, there was only a need for 1 worker. That's a 99.5% elimination rate. They eliminated 99.5% of ironworks jobs. Even the furnace itself was iron and took less labor to produce than a cold-blast furnace.

      Do you know what they did with the hot blast furnace?

      They produced rolled iron for rails. This eliminated a hell of a lot of labor in transportation, marginalizing the overseas shipping market. You see, it took a lot of labor to carry things overseas, but a lot more to carry them overland. With the sharp reduction in labor to make iron, however, it took less labor in total to make iron furnaces, make iron, refine that iron into steel, roll that steel into steel rail, construct railways, maintain the railways, construct rail cars, operate the rail cars, load the rail cars, and unload the rail cars than it did in total to do all the stuff involved in shipping overseas. Overland shipping was cheaper than overseas shipping where overseas shipping wasn't convenient, so overseas shipping became marginalized to longer travel where rails wouldn't go (especially around mountains, since building a tunnel was still hard). This reduced the jobs involved in shipping any given number of goods.

      The very definition of technology is reducing labor. Computers were designed to reduce the jobs needed to accomplish some tasks. Machines. Power tools. New scientific methods of synthesizing chemicals. Mass manufacture. Interchangeable parts. The engine. The plow. The cotton gin. Everything we take up is taken up to reduce jobs. That's how it gets cheaper.

      How the hell did we increase from a stable 58%-59% labor force participation rate to a desperate and ludicrous 69% in the United States when all the jobs were getting destroyed by all this automation?

    36. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      brilliant! if this were reddit, I'd give you gold. Folks need to look at this and stop buying into thr "we're dying. the aliens are taking our jobs" song. Nobody has bet against technology and won over the long term. The rail, the cotton gin, the internal combustion engine -- why even mundane things like a functioning sewage system? they all eliminated a class of job and replaced it with others.

    37. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by slashrio · · Score: 1

      Ok, you convinced me about the transportation costs.
      You left out the middlemen and traders though.

      --
      "Trump!!", the new Godwin.
    38. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      Middlemen and traders are subject to market pressure. If I want to sell you a $20 shirt but the next guy can sell you the exact same shirt for $15, I've got a problem. I can find another supplier who will sell me the cotton for $4 instead of $9, and I'm all set.

      If my suppliers are all losing business, they might just cut back the cost of cotton to match. Likewise, if my suppliers can't supply with the same risk--if they're bringing from halfway around the world and the next guy is coming from my back yard and thus not going to have customs issues or backlogs that might take shipping across half the world to correct--then maybe it's worth a bit more than a 10 cent discount for me to stay with someone more-reliable. They'll have to give me a sufficient discount.

      Finally, in practice, profit margins for highly-available, fungible goods tend to move to a stable minimum in a market. A global market brings this in concert across the globe--that is, Indian cotton tends to have the same profit margin as American cotton, so the middleman mark-up tends to be the same. The implication is actually the same as when buying direct: if I bought straight from the factory, they might want to make $125 cotton and charge me $450 versus the $500 cotton over here; they won't because I'm bringing them a steady, long-term, multi-hundred-million-dollar cotton purchasing deal, and they don't want me to go to another Indian competitor.

      Large purchases don't always go to factories. Middleman suppliers are also competing with each other, and will source your cotton as-required. That means you can buy from a middleman who sources cotton from several Indian supply houses, or pulls it from India and China, or wherever, so long as it meets the specifications you set forth. This costs a little more outflow spending because you're paying the middleman to do the logistics work, whereas in-house you would pay salaries of your own logistics people and a potentially-lower price for the material itself. The middleman reduces your risk.

      Interestingly, because the middleman is doing logistics work for hundreds or thousands of customers and taking enormous contracts with multiple competing suppliers, he devotes less work (and cost) to your needs than you would yourself, and so the total cost of sourcing the material through a middleman can actually be lower than sourcing factory-direct when you factor in your own logistics people's work. You also might not source the cheapest cotton; nor might you have the negotiating power to get the best deals--10% profit margin may be fairly universal, but a multi-billion-dollar contract might negotiate 0.1% whereas your multi-million-dollar contract got to pay a 1.5% margin.

      So it's actually quite possible for the middleman to save you money; and, in general, the middleman is competing with the cost of material as you can negotiate factory-direct, plus the cost of paying your logistics people to ensure a stable supply chain and find the best prices. The cost of the middleman is in competition with the cost of cutting out the middleman.

    39. Re: Imagine if Trump announced that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For the kids here, India's constitution says the country is a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic. Whilst socialism is relative, it doesn't say the country is 'capitalist' - a key requirement to promote free trade.

    40. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by slashrio · · Score: 1

      Currently, I've heard, for the amount of cotton needed for one shirt, the Indian farmer gets $0.5, the middleman $5 and the seller of the shirt $15-$20.
      Here the middleman clearly increases the price with a factor 10, not 1.1.

      --
      "Trump!!", the new Godwin.
    41. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      The thing is international shipping (and shipping in general) is cheap; but there's a large chain between the farmer and the store.

      In America, farmers hardly ever get more than a 10% margin (they want 20% by convention, and consider it a decades-long crisis they can't get it). The average profit margin across the entire chain from farm to retail is 10%--and the supermarket has a 2% margin. That means nearly 90% of the cost of oranges is actually the cost of oranges, not some major profiteering.

      Oranges cost under $11 per box (90lb) at the farm.

      5 pounds of oranges costs $8 at the super market.

      About half of the supply chain cost goes to shipping. That means $66 to ship a 90 pound crate of oranges. Note we're talking about domestic shipping: a truck driver in America puts a 90 pound crate of oranges on his truck, drives from Florida to a central warehouse, and unloads, after which point the crates are loaded on another truck and taken to regional distribution centers and supermarkets.

      I've seen a 1,000 pound pallet shipped from AZ to AK (about 1,200 miles) for $955. We're talking about a 40,000 pound truckload of oranges being shipped between 1,000 and 4,000 miles, in multiple loads (to/from warehouse). If you could get that shipping rate for around $725 per 1,000 pounds, that would make sense; a pallet box of oranges should hold about 900 pounds. Note that $725 per 1,000 pounds would have to account for all miles, total, meaning if a truck took it to a warehouse, then another truck took those oranges to a regional distribution center, then another truck took them to the super market, that would have to cost $725 in total for shipping to make half the price of oranges.

      Bear in mind we're talking about shipping domestically--trucks, over land. Carrying 30,000 pounds of those same oranges in a 40-foot shipping container would apparently cost $1,300 from China to the U.S, and then you have domestic shipping hell; but don't forget some Chinese truck drivers got paid to drive their trucks, too. The truck drivers aren't even rich; they have to maintain their trucks (ONE TIRE costs $2,000 and may last 100k miles or so, which is what trucker drive in a year--18 wheels, $36,000 in tires per 1-2 years), buy fuel, and so forth. The big win for overland shipping is it costs more to put something on a boat in Florida and sail it to Texas, then truck it up 3,000 miles to load it on a barge on the Mississippi river, then unload that and truck it to Nevada; and besides, we don't have the shipping bandwidth to do that. The biggest win is we don't truck things 200 miles to the coast, sail them around through Panama, unload them in California, and truck them 500 miles inland--because just trucking them 5,000 miles across the country is cheaper (yes, it's strange, since the Atlantic is huge and floating shit across that is apparently cheap).

      So you have a manufacturer in India making $0.5. Then some combination of transportation, logistics, warehousing, grading, and other costs coming to $5; and we haven't established if that includes dying and weaving the cotton (is the shirt maker sourcing cloth or raw fiber?). Then we have the shirt maker (who may be getting the cotton dyed and woven, or may be sourcing the cloth?) using a lot of industrial equipment and labor to make a shirt.

      Your "middleman" is about a hundred people along the way, you know.

      Men and Boys's Cotton Trousers and Shorts land in America from China for $6.12 per pair. They retail on average for $14.97. $8.85 of that store shelf cost is transportation, logistics, and retail. This involves people making fuel (trucks, power plants), electricity (retail building), running water (retail building), building maintenance, inventory specialists (stocking shelves), loss prevention (security at retail), cashiers (retail), accountants, managers, logistics bookkeepers. That $8.85 pays hundreds of Americans--not by some economic management of "Every dollar spent is $6 in the economy" (that's a giant l

    42. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by slashrio · · Score: 1

      The main difference between cotton (which I was talking about) and oranges (which seems to be your favourite subject, is that oranges are >90% water, cotton barely 15%.
      Hats off for your detailed cost break-down though.
      I think we should agree that the transportation costs/value-ratio is highly product-dependent.
      I learned by chance that on the Philippines, rice farming has a margin of more than 100%, so maybe some farmers should consider to relocate? :)

      --
      "Trump!!", the new Godwin.
    43. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      Rice farming has a margin of over 100%? What, is it just that damned cheap? Maybe we should import rice from the Philippines; then our rice farmers can go out of business, and that portion of the labor market can instead produce streaming media or high-end cars or whatever (or else--or in part--just the labor force growth slows as those jobs trickle away--many of which are import labor, anyway, so fewer H1B Visas--and our population adapts to the size of the job market; either way, we'll be buying more things per person, and living more-wealthy lives).

    44. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by slashrio · · Score: 1

      Calm down man. I wrote on the Philippines the margin is >100%.
      That is because the market is protected, so it's the other way around than where you were galloping: If the importation were free, Philippine farmers would go out of business. That would lead to uproar and revolution and therefore government doesn't allow it.
      Or maybe it's because the 10 or so families that are in control of the Philippines are too heavily invested in rice farms.

      --
      "Trump!!", the new Godwin.
    45. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      Ah okay, so rice is expensive in the Philippines, not ridiculously-cheap. I guess that's good for the farmers and bad for the poor and middle-class.

    46. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by slashrio · · Score: 1

      The salary of 'the poor' can afford to buy up to 4 kg rice per day... if they manage to find something to do for that day.
      Don't worry about the middle class, they're doing just fine and ever better.

      --
      "Trump!!", the new Godwin.
    47. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      I'd expect India isn't entirely without homeless and hungry, although I guess that's what you meant by finding something to do for that day. On the other hand, can they afford 4kg of rice, plus rent, and all the other stuff they need?

      When the middle class can buy more, it means they can create more jobs. In the long-run, job creation doesn't affect unemployment, due to population (and labor force) growth to fit availability; although the ability of the consumer base to buy many things means they can adapt rapidly to changes in the market, and that such changes don't eliminate as many jobs. Imagine if people bought 5 different things and then one day moved their attention from fancy shoes to fancy pants--so 20% of the market (shoes) goes unemployed, and has to shift over to the production of pants (which becomes 20% of the market). That'd be incredibly unstable. When the market makes many things with little human labor each, any single impact to any single product's demand is smaller--and, of course, everyone gets to be wealthy because they can use tiny bits of their income to buy lots and lots of things.

      Anyway my point was that such protectionism just takes from many people and gives to fewer, creating a class of rich elites (rice farmers, in this case). It harms and weakens the economy, but a few powerful individuals benefit from it.

    48. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by slashrio · · Score: 1

      On the other hand, can they afford 4kg of rice, plus rent, and all the other stuff they need?

      No. No rental, squatters live in their own little bamboo houses in the middle of rice fields or dirty sewer-less overpopulated areas in the cities.
      They can afford to pay their monthly water and electricity bills at the equivalent of 1 kg rice each and that's it for the periodical expenses.
      Health care is 'free', as long as you're admitted in the public hospital and don't need anything else than their limited pharmacy can supply.
      Schooling is 'free' as long as you can pay the extra fees the school governing body requires you (illegally if you ask me) to pay nonetheless.

      --
      "Trump!!", the new Godwin.
    49. Re:Imagine if Trump announced that by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      Nod. Protectionism is bad for the economy at large for reasons I've mentioned; but this is ... well, India has problems not caused by their economic gaffes. That's a long list of pure corruption and poor technical progress, right down to waving around a political talking point of public healthcare while providing nothing of the sort once you get in the door.

      Seriously, though, education that's free after you pay for it? That's called "buying something".

  3. Outsourcing has come full circle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Insourcing?

  4. What the by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't you want to Make America Great Again?
    This is not how you Make America Great Again...

    1. Re:What the by sit1963nz · · Score: 1

      America was NEVER great.
      Its was lucky, thats all.
      Find me another highly populated, industrialised country with good natural resources and infrastructure that was not bombed to hell in WWII. So while the US made money selling weapons during WWII, the made even more money selling stuff to rebuild infrastructure to Europe and Asia, etc. This bought significant wealth to the US, allowed US firms to pick up technologies developed during the war and make consumer items from the technologies rather than spend time rebuilding schools, hospitals, roads, power, water, houses, rail, etc etc etc etc etc. This meant they were able to ride the crest of the consumerism that happened in the 50s through to the late 70's. This is where US wages peaked, and has in real terms been shrinking since. The world no longer NEEDs the US, they have rebuilt, they are developing new technologies, their economies have caught up. Anything they dont have they can buy from other countries, not just the US. China will soon be the biggest economy if it isn't already. If Brexit had not happened the EU would have been second with the US 3rd and falling. Times have changed, the US needs the world for its resources, its people, its ideas. It needs to trade, without that trade the US economy collapses. Trump is NOT going to negotiate "better deals", most are already skewed in favour of the US anyway. There is growing resistance to the US around the world and it policies . What if the world reduced patent and copyright ? What would happen if the world no longer cared about US regulatory bodies, CAA, FDA, etc etc and set international standards instead ? What would happen if trade was done in Euros ? What would happen if a "new" UN was set up and no one had "veto" powers ? What is the US were excluded from most of the worlds free trade trade agreements ? The US has much more to loose than gain these days, and it was NEVER great.

    2. Re:What the by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Making paragraphs great again

    3. Re:What the by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      So, we need another war?

      OK, looks like we're gonna try that approach, doesn't it?

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    4. Re:What the by wyHunter · · Score: 1

      You are an idiot. The US is a nation that was born with the idea that rationality matters and that enlightened self interest matters. The US did sell weapons to our allies during WWII - and GAVE a lot more to them. If the US is so terrible why is American technology running an awful lot of the world? Yes, other nations compete, quite vigorously. But your anti USA bravo sierra is just garbage. Trade deals are NOT skewed in favor of the US, they are skewed in favor of US corporations who, last I noted, employed more people OUTSIDE the US than INSIDE the US.

    5. Re:What the by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Says the twat who can't type out words in full.

  5. Locally? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How do you manufacture in India non-locally?

    1. Re:Locally? by unixisc · · Score: 1

      By doing what they do now - manufacturing in China and then shipping to India

  6. This will not be popular by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    with President Trump. America has a trade deficit. Turncoat deals like this from 'American' companies make it worse.

    1. Re:This will not be popular by unixisc · · Score: 1

      But the US is not there in this equation, aside from Apple being an US company. It's the question of shipping phones made in China to India. With this proposal, Apple would have to make it in India, and sell it there. The incentives offered here are investments in Apple if Apple agrees to do that.

  7. They don't want to lose a potential market by ErichTheRed · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A lot of people might not know that India has a very protectionist policy regarding manufactured goods. It's very difficult to get items into the country from outside if there's any chance they will be used to conduct business. The company I work for is currently engaged in a love affair with India and Brazil for offshore development. Some of the stuff they're writing requires local access to hardware they can't just buy off the shelf from a distributor...there are only a few manufacturers out there and they're not making it in India. Getting anything into both of these countries that wasn't made there doesn't just involve paying a duty -- there's a byzantine maze of regulations, forms, local officials to pay, special assessments, personal visits to Government Agency X for stamps and signatures, etc. Last time this happened it took 4 months to ship the offshore company hardware -- and that's with our company having connections in the form of logistics specialists who know what actually needs to happen.

    Apple just doesn't want to lose a potential market of over a billion people. They'd rather take the short term "loss" manufacturing at slightly above slave labor rates to ensure their products can be sold domestically. This is also happening to a lesser extent in Brazil, for the same reasons.

    It's very ironic that a country whose major export seems to be IT "services" to the US and Europe has such a protectionist policy regarding manufacturing. Maybe they see what's happening in their customers' countries and don't want to have a rebellion on their hands when wages start going up inside their country. Personally, I'm for protectionism. It's a balance against the power of companies. Growing up in the Rust Belt and watching whole cities get hollowed out as companies chased cheap Southern, then foreign labor, was not fun. I seriously doubt Trump is going to follow through on his tariffs and protectionist platform...his buddies are going to demand that he put a stop to it, and they have more power than the working class types who helped vote him in.

    1. Re:They don't want to lose a potential market by Hognoxious · · Score: 0

      A lot of people might not know that India has a very protectionist policy regarding manufactured goods.

      India has a very protectionist policy regarding everything. Why everybody doesn't just tell them to do the needful and fuck off is a mystery.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    2. Re:They don't want to lose a potential market by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I bet you can probably think of 1.25 billion reasons why if you try hard enough.

    3. Re:They don't want to lose a potential market by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      apple is desperate enough for new sales markets it will bend over for any country at this point.

    4. Re:They don't want to lose a potential market by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because it would obviously seem like the usual hypocrisy coming from the West. "Do as I say not as I did". The economies of all of the western powers were built upon protectionism. Not to mention polluting the atmosphere during the industrial revolution. Now that they've climbed that ladder, its time to kick it down and preach from the top.

      But practically speaking, Nestle and Coke and Unilever and GE and P&G would rather prefer it if they were allowed continued access to the billion-person market. Playing chicken with trade is going to plunge the world into a global recession.

    5. Re:They don't want to lose a potential market by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Apple is pretty late to the Indian market. There, it is perceived as a company whose products cater only to the elite: it's only the richest of Indians who prefer going w/ iPhones. That country is a pretty safe market for the Galaxy, and in India, companies don't lose marketshare overnight unless they really screw up. Note that Blackberry was still popular in India long after RIM had lost marketshare in the West. Apple would also have to have a shitload of local apps: currently, one has to access the US Apple store in order to buy anything. Not to mention - unlike in Android and Windows Phone, very few of the useful Apple apps are free.

    6. Re:They don't want to lose a potential market by wyHunter · · Score: 1

      Why is it ironic? They're trying to protect domestic industries. That used to be called 'strategic self interest' in the USA until we decided to commit national suicide.

    7. Re:They don't want to lose a potential market by ghoul · · Score: 1

      First of all India's major expot is not IT services. It is people. India exports people and the people send back remittances for their families which is the largest fraction of incoming foreign exchange into India.
      India has a large and young population and needs mass manufacturing to move from a developing to a newly developed country like China has. The total size of the software industry is 1 million people in India. That cannot be the solution when you need to find jobs for a 100 million. Manufacturing is the only solution so it would be national suicide to allow imports of stuff that can be manufactured locally.

      --
      **Life is too short to be serious**
    8. Re:They don't want to lose a potential market by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      If I can't sell to them because of wanky protectionist policies they might as well not exist.

      I don't own a body shop in the US so I can't employ them as H1-Bs.

      Are you suggesting I make fertilizer out of them?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  8. Oh, snap! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 0

    Trump has already lost Apple for manufacturing jobs in flyover country. So much for that campaign promise.

    1. Re:Oh, snap! by unixisc · · Score: 1

      How?

    2. Re:Oh, snap! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      How?

      According to various Trump supporters on Slashdot, the election of Trump has caused the stock market to boom, turned back job-killing regulations and jobs are flooding back into the country. If Apple goes to India for manufacturing, Trump had obviously failed to keep his campaign promise. Never mind that Trump haven't been sworn into office and many of his policies won't go into effect until the 2018 fiscal year.

    3. Re:Oh, snap! by unixisc · · Score: 1

      But this is a separate deal that Apple signed w/ India regarding phones that get sold in India. In short, instead of shipping phones from Chinese warehouses to Apple stores in India, they will manufacture them in India and sell them there. That doesn't affect anything in the US: if Apple does decide to make phones in the US, it'll still happen, and if they don't, then they'll continue to ship Chinese made phones to the US. Unless Trump totally blows up all trade links w/ China, forcing Apple to move their manufacturing elsewhere

    4. Re:Oh, snap! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      But this is a separate deal that Apple signed w/ India regarding phones that get sold in India.

      No, no, no. All manufacturing must be done in the U.S. to bring jobs back and make America great again. If Apple isn't doing that, it will get penalized or put out of business. Trump! Trump! Trump!

    5. Re:Oh, snap! by HornWumpus · · Score: 2

      If you keep this up, you assuring a Trump second term. Did you learn anything?

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    6. Re:Oh, snap! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Did you learn anything?

      Of course, not. I voted for Hillary. ;)

    7. Re:Oh, snap! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      America in the world market is not sufficient to justify manufacturing just for that market in the US unless you want to pay even higher prices. If Apple establishes cost effective manufacturing there then they will also manufacture for a lot of other regional places in the world out of their making the US manufacturing option even less viable.

  9. Maybe they can build new desktops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    or macbook pro's with more than 1 crappy type of port.

  10. WTF! by DaMattster · · Score: 0

    Makes me glad that I am absolutely Apple-free! Open source all of the way. Make your shit in the US!

    1. Re:WTF! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you think that your hardware is manufactured in the USA? No way in hell.

    2. Re:WTF! by SeaFox · · Score: 1

      Tell us more about this "Open Source" "US-made" hardware you own.

  11. No surprises here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Asia has 60% of the worlds population, and is the largest potential growth market in the world.

    The USA is 4% of the worlds population and is pretty much a saturated market.

    The majority of Apples profits come from outside the USA

    India/China/Taiwan/etc are able to manufacture cheaper and faster than the USA, so its more profitable for all companies to do so (not just Apple).

    Asia is build a trade alliance among themselves, the US is excluded (just like china was excluded from the TPPA), just watch MORE US companies build manufacturing capability in Asia based on exactly the same promises as Trump... build it here or be taxed. All trump has done it put US$2 Trillion of exports at risk as other countries seek "a better deal". The EU if it plays its cards right stands to do very well out of this as Trump stirs up anti-us feelings.

    If ir comes to the crunch, US companies will exit the US market to retain access to the 96% of the world that is not the USA, or at the very least they will split to an "international" and "USA" version. The USA needs the world more than the world needs the USA.

    1. Re:No surprises here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Umm, okay.... As a US citizen, I am fine with that. You and the rest of the world have everything in control and have no need for a measly 4%. Good Bye!!!

    2. Re:No surprises here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You do understand that this collapses the US economy and makes us all dirt poor.

    3. Re:No surprises here by sit1963nz · · Score: 1

      So long as you keep your drones, missiles, warships, military back within your own boarders.
      Stop interfering with the politics of other nations, US interest stop at the US boarder.
      You give up your "veto" rights in the UN (along with the other countries that have veto rights).

    4. Re:No surprises here by sit1963nz · · Score: 1

      No, they don't understand that.

    5. Re:No surprises here by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Actually, the US should quit the UN and NATO too. Issue an advisory to Americans not to travel to Europe or the Middle East (aside from Israel), and then everything will be fine

    6. Re:No surprises here by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      The UN without the security council is the general assembly. The UN general assembly is a useless money pit full of terrible ideas from failed states.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    7. Re:No surprises here by sit1963nz · · Score: 1

      Where as the security council is equally useless because the veto power get exercised by the big 3 to allow other countries to commit crimes against humanity because they are their "friend". The right to veto is the right to deny democracy.

    8. Re:No surprises here by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Thank dog we don't have world democracy. Especially a democracy made up of corrupt leadership appointed bullshitters from failed tiny states.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    9. Re:No surprises here by sit1963nz · · Score: 1

      Looking at who the US has elected, its not just tiny states.

    10. Re:No surprises here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not if we start annexing other countries and turn their population into slaves. There's nothing you pussies could do to stop us.

    11. Re:No surprises here by wyHunter · · Score: 1

      Big 5. US, UK, Russia, China, Fraance.

    12. Re:No surprises here by sit1963nz · · Score: 1

      Its Russia, USA and UK the use the veto most. Perhaps what is needed is if any country uses a "veto" their security council voting rights are suspended for 3-6 months. It will force them to assess what they are doing.

    13. Re:No surprises here by gravewax · · Score: 1

      The problem is the Veto rights are both evil and necessary. Sadly ALL the countries with Veto rights absue them atrociously, but without the veto rights the security council would become just a popularity contest with everyone voting in their blocks and whoever has numbers would simply vote on sanctions etc against those they disagree with and the end result is a pointless mess (kinda like what we have now), can't really think of any system that would be effective though unless somehow a council of truly independent people could be found to have some overriding votes (fat chance of that).

    14. Re:No surprises here by wyHunter · · Score: 1

      Russia (then, the USSR), the US, and UK were the true victors of WWII, and the architects of the postwar order. So this isn't surprising.

    15. Re:No surprises here by sit1963nz · · Score: 1

      Yes, but the world is different now, those powers of veto are outdated and should be revoked. None of those countries have shown they are responsible with that kind of power, huge wads of humans rights abuse goes unchecked because one of those countries veto any action/sanction against the perpetrators .

    16. Re:No surprises here by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Be fair, the USA once had an honest president. At least that's what the grade school history books say.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    17. Re:No surprises here by wyHunter · · Score: 1

      Who knows? At this point I'd argue the entire UN can go away with no loss.

  12. Is this local? by thebullshitpatrol · · Score: 1

    I'll ask just one more time, this is local?

    1. Re:Is this local? by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 1

      For someone.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  13. An Offer you can't refuse? by CrashNBrn · · Score: 1

    [Apple] outlined manufacturing plans and asked for financial incentives.

    Apple: We'd like to make more money selling iCrap to India.
    India: That sounds great!
    Apple: Give us money first.

    ... 3 years later ...
    India: It appears you owe 3% taxes on the locally sourced 30% hardware. If you would kindly remit payment...
    Apple: According to our Irish subsidiary, we don't have any sales in India.

    1. Re:An Offer you can't refuse? by ghoul · · Score: 1

      India: It appears that your entire IT workforce has not paid their Indian taxes on their Apple salaries. We are attaching their Indian properties. (Cue: Entire Apple IT workforce flies to India to file legal injuction cases. Apple grinds to a halt)
      Apple: To whom do I make out the cheque?

      --
      **Life is too short to be serious**
  14. Yet the same all but doesn't happen in the US. by sethstorm · · Score: 1

    Perhaps Apple might want to consider doing that for the US and turning on Jobs' word.

    --
    Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
  15. Huge [Citation Needed] for that by sethstorm · · Score: 2

    price of their goods shot up 50%

    Non-hyperbolic [citation needed] for that.

    --
    Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
  16. ...and destroys faster than it replaces. by sethstorm · · Score: 2

    Trade is beneficial.

    Trade lowers prices and increases wealth.

    Only when it's not destroying entire regions.

    It's easy to write off entire regions and wait for the displaced to die, which is your solution.

    It's harder, but more proper and prosperous to continuously re-integrate the displaced, even if it means forsaking certain trade policies.

    --
    Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
    1. Re:...and destroys faster than it replaces. by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      You mean like

      Obviously our economy tanks if we go 30% unemployed overnight

      Because I covered that.

      It's harder, but more proper and prosperous to continuously re-integrate the displaced, even if it means forsaking certain trade policies.

      So, as we've outsourced more jobs, as we've progressed in technology, and as we've continued to lay off Americans in these processes, we've added more population; and we've added more jobs than labor force. Even if you account for our "labor force" by counting the peak labor force participation rate out of the current population over age 16, we end up with more total employed, fewer total unemployed, and fewer underemployed over the past half-decade, decade, and two decades.

      So, without "bringing any jobs back from China," we'e actually re-integrated the displaced--or at least, we've re-integrated that portion of America.

      Let me spell out the argument for the benefit of everyone: Parts of America that used to be poor and destroyed have become wealthy; and, meanwhile, other parts of America that used to be wealthy have become obsolete and poor. Through all of this, a greater total proportion of Americans enjoy a higher position in society, and the standard-of-living across the American population has increased greatly.

      Trade has made Americans richer. Middle-class Americans. Lower-class Americans. America has not slowly created a growing class of unemployed, of poor, of abused, of beaten, of destroyed; Americans as a whole have enjoyed less poverty and more wealth thanks to trade and technical progress.

      You're being butthurt because Cupertino has become a wealthy, prosperous city, while Detroit has become an unmitigated shithole. You argue that Cupertino should have been left an unmitigated shithole while Detroit was protected from its fall, even though the current situation is much better for enormously more Americans.

      What you describe isn't more-prosperous; it's a rebellion against change. You want the world to stay the same as it's been in the past--rather, in the point in history you're comfortable with as some sort of reference. You don't care how many people suffer so long as you're personally comfortable with it: if literally hundreds of millions of Americans suffer so that tens of thousands can be more-prosperous as they've always been, then fine, fuck everyone but those tens of thousands.

      It's the same mentality as the RIAA desperately trying to cling to their old business models, striking down digital distribution so that the CD remains the common currency of their industry. The new is bad and the old is good.

  17. Techies not immune by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    The only thing that matters to the macro-economy as a whole is employment.

    Not necessarily. Some value "stuff" more than employment. It depends on the person. Being unemployed carries a nasty stigma, especially for males. But some may be okay with robots and commie slaves doing all the work as long as they still get stuff.

    The fantasy of turning everyone in the US into intellectuals and forcing everyone to go to college has to stop at some point.

    Another approach for our economy is to have fewer jobs-protection measures to unleash the economy to produce more goods and services, but tax the well-to-do more and distribute the money to those who would otherwise be blue-collar workers. It's essentially semi-socialism where those in valued careers subsidize those in obsolete careers.

    Thus, fewer labor regulations may boost our total GDP compared to high-labor-regulation countries, but we'd have to redistribute a good portion of that extra wealth to the obsolete workers.

    Which is "better" is a subjective political decision. It's a tricky trade-off.

    Also, "intellectual" work is potentially at risk of being made obsolete as remoting and language translation technologies improve. There are smart people in low-wage countries that could more easily do brainy work for US companies as remoting technology improves. There are a lot of smart untapped people around the world. After all, look at all the hacking done by those who get small rewards for doing it in terms of US cost of living. US hackers are too expensive to rent. Could be the same for any technical endeavor, not just hacking.

    Thus, us techies are not immune to obsolescence. We may be in the same boat as blue-collar workers soon. It's yet another reason not to throw the blue-collared under the bus; change will add more space under that bus.

  18. Translation: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Apple asks Indian government if they can set up a sweat-shop where they pay small change to Indian workers, while paying jack shit in taxes for the crazy revenue they will be making. What a fucking shit company.

  19. The Roundfile-System by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

    Further translation: "Would you people like a computer using years-old tech that looks like a garbage can and is almost guaranteed to litter your workspace with wall warts and desk cancers? Because we can totally do that for you. Because we have courage."

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  20. Am not phibian about this by fyngyrz · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Even if prices shot up 50%, every cent would go to boost the American economy

    Purchases would decline sharply in many market segments, because the perception of value (such as it is) would evaporate in very short order.

    Which would not boost the American economy.

    And so replace your iPhone every 3 years instead of every 2. Same money spent,

    How about the attitudes that change to "I don't think I need another iPhone"? Do you think that's a factor that should be ignored?

    You want to boil the froggies, you better turn the heat up very slowly. Or those uncooperative little #00FF00 bastards will hop right the hell away.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  21. Re:As long as it is not toilet technology by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    MOD PARENT UP!

  22. Re: buying something by slashrio · · Score: 1

    The government decides education should be free, teachers and principals however want a little higher salary.
    Or the government simply doesn't provide a budget for school materials because they know the money will not be used for that and so skip it altogether.
    You have no idea what levels of abuse are common practise over there...

    --
    "Trump!!", the new Godwin.