When Barack Obama joined Silicon Valley’s top luminaries for dinner in California last February, each guest was asked to come with a question for the president.
But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?
Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.
Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.
Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.
The president’s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.
Apple has become one of the best-known, most admired and most imitated companies on earth, in part through an unrelenting mastery of global operations. Last year, it earned over $400,000 in profit per employee, more than Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or Google.
However, what has vexed Mr. Obama as well as economists and policy makers is that Apple — and many of its high-technology peers — are not nearly as avid in creating American jobs as other famous companies were in their heydays.
Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States and 20,000 overseas, a small fraction of the over 400,000 American workers at General Motors in the 1950s, or the hundreds of thousands at General Electric in the 1980s. Many more people work for Apple’s contractors: an additional 700,000 people engineer, build and assemble iPads, iPhones and Apple’s other products. But almost none of them work in the United States. Instead, they work for foreign companies in Asia, Europe and elsewhere, at factories that almost all electronics designers rely upon to build their wares.
“Apple’s an example of why it’s so hard to create middle-class jobs in the U.S. now,” said Jared Bernstein, who until last year was an economic adviser to the White House.
“If it’s the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried.”
Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
via Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class – NYTimes.com.
If you have the attention span to read the long article above go for it. If not, I’ll save you the trouble.
Your iPhone is made in a work camp in China mostly, by wage slaves who live in dormitories, are forced to wake up in the middle of the night, are feed bread and tea and told to go make fucking iPods as fast as they can. They work for so little money, that they have no way out of the work camp. They are slaves.
But don’t worry about them, just be glad that you have an iPhone and they made it so cheaply that you can afford it.
Fuck those Chinese workers. God loves you more than them. They are Chinese wage slaves, and you have an iPhone. Fuck those faceless sub human turds. Don’t give it another thought. You won. They lost.
But that sword cuts both ways you inconsiderate, overweight, touchscreen junky. Because if you haven’t noticed, your life is slowly drifting you towards wage slavery. You might even already be there.
And although you don’t live in a dormitory, you probably live in a house that you don’t own, and maybe even owe the bank more than you could sell it for.
No one gives a shit about your slide to poverty. In fact it is being engineered by your friends in the Brotherhood of Darkness so they can use your life for their profit just like they are using the Chinese slaves right now.
Or if you have a job, you could lose it any minute for any reason. You should be very grateful for whatever money you have coming in.
And guess what dummy. No one gives a shit about you. Just like you don’t give a shit about the Chinese wage slaves.
I don’t blame you for not caring about the slaves. Fuck, I don’t.
You probably didn’t know about them. You were too busy friending all your asshole friends. You were too busy posting innocuous bile and commenting on bullshit. You didn’t even think about where your iPhone came from. Why would you? It magically appeared one day and you were super happy.
Be happy you have the latest and greatest. You are in the moment and nothing else matters.
Do not think about the fact that you are a poor little frog in a pot of slowly boiling water. Right now the pot feels like bathwater. It is awesome. It’s been nice and warm for so long, that you can never imagine it getting hotter. It’s been so nice for so long that everyone you know is in the pot and loving it.
Enjoy the swim. Don’t think about the fact that someday you’ll be pushing someone under so you can stay above the water. Don’t ever imagine that someday someone will push you under.
Look at these jokers running for President. Do you really think they give a shit about you? Do you think they give a shit about all the American jobs lost to Chinese wage slaves? They don’t care at all. In fact they are making more money because of it.
They all have jobs. Even if they don’t get elected, they’ll still have more money than they can spend. They don’t have to worry about money like you do.
But they do have to worry about you worrying about money. If you aren’t fed and warm, you may make things a little more challenging for them. But since you are an overweight, undereducated complacent pet, they can talk to you like a child. They can tell you they are going to help you and make it all better.
And you fucking believe them. Because you have an iPhone.
Have fun in the water asshole.
