Todd Allcock

At 20 Jan 2012 15:48:56 -0500 Kurt Ullman wrote:
> In article <michelle-2FA521.10041320012012@news.eternal-september.org>,
> Michelle Steiner <michelle@michelle.org> wrote:
>
> > In article <aIGdnSkxJMAxpYTSnZ2dnUVZ_gudnZ2d@earthlink.com> ,
> > Kurt Ullman <kurtullman@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > > You were doing fine until you got here. We shouldn't be criticising
the
> > > mfrs who have exported jobs. We SHOULD be criticising all of the
> > > CONSUMERS who demand paying the absolute least amount possible. We
have
> > > met the enemy and he is us.
> >
> > "You made me do it." is no excuse. No one forced those companies to
> > outsource or to move anything out of country.
>
> Of course they had to. Heck Walmart used to tout their Made in the
> USA stuff until they realized that nobody was willing to pay extra
money
> that was needed because of the higher costs here. Then they threw in
the
> towel, started giving their customers what they wanted and started to
> make money hand over fist again.

Fairly accurate, except for the assumption that somewhere along the way
they somehow stopped "making money hand over fist" in the interim.

The "Made In USA" promotion is/was mostly just a feel-good sham- it's not
like they stopped importing crap and offered US-made products instead,
they just threw a few carefully selected "Made in USA" products in the
aisles so customers thought they were dealing with the issue.

JF Mezei

Kurt Ullman wrote:

> that was needed because of the higher costs here. Then they threw in the
> towel, started giving their customers what they wanted and started to
> make money hand over fist again.

Micro economics. Wallmart does well killing jobs in the USA. But the
rest of the USA doesn't do so well.

The thing is that because Wallmart is low cost, the first to feel the
pinch are the more expensive stores that sell USA products. When thsoe
go, even more jobs go and there are more poor people working at wallmart.

By the time Wallmart feels the pich due to the decline in the economy,
it will have killed off all other retailers.

Interenational trade is fine when it is balanced. It is not fine when it
is one sided.

If the Chinese currency could float based on supply/demand, then you
would see it rise to a point where it woudl be cheaper to make iphones
in te USA creating many job in the USA.

But as long as China is able to use its currency to make its products
dirt cheap (preventing the USD from going down against the Yuan), then
jobs will continue to flow to China as does economic power and
sovereignty of the USA.


When a bank has your mortgage, they dictate terms and conditions. When
China holds the USA govt debt, they dictate terms and conditions. And
they have all this money because americans buy chinese made iphones
and chinese made clothing etc.

BreadWithSpam@fractious.net

JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> writes:

> If the Chinese currency could float based on supply/demand, then you
> would see it rise to a point where it woudl be cheaper to make iphones
> in te USA creating many job in the USA.

See my earlier post. That's very likely not true. Approx. 2%
of the cost of the iPhone is Chinese labor. The yuan could
double and it wouldn't increase Apple's costs for the iPhone
by very much (though they might reasonably start to look for
another source of similarly cheap labor). Labor (and the
costs of lots of other things) would make jumping back to the
US very much more expensive for the assembly we're talking
about.

> they have all this money because americans buy chinese made iphones
> and chinese made clothing etc.

More so from the clothing than from the iPhones. Again, see
my earlier note with the link to the story in The Economist.

--
Plain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed.

Wes Groleau

On 01-20-2012 02:56, DevilsPGD wrote:
> someone claiming to be Michelle Steiner<michelle@michelle.org> typed:
>> In other words, screw them because
>> a. they're wogs, so who cares?
>> b. if they get paid more, the price of our goodies will increase.
>> c. all of the above.
>
> No, that's not what I said at all. My point is simply that sweat-shop
> jobs are often better than no jobs at all.

Someone claimed Apple had put some pressure on them to improve and that
they were having slight success. Now, suppose that's true and further
imagine that Apple execs aren't 100% heartless. Is it possible one of
them is thinking, "If we tell these people we're pulling out because of
their practices, they'll have no shortage of other customers. But if we
stay, maybe we can get them to improve."

It ain't easy changing another country's culture. Plenty of evidence of
that everywhere any one has tried.

--
Wes Groleau

ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI

Wes Groleau

On 01-20-2012 16:16, Michelle Steiner wrote:
> They were still charging less than their competitors, so their customers
> weren't deserting them. And paying less for their cost of goods did not
> result in lower prices, those savings went into the Wall family coffers.

Sam Walton founded WalMart. Although the changes were economically
motivated, part of the reason they didn't happen earlier was that Sam
Walton was still alive.

--
Wes Groleau

ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI

Michelle Steiner

In article <jfdbe6$an4$2@dont-email.me>,
Wes Groleau <Groleau+news@FreeShell.org> wrote:

> > They were still charging less than their competitors, so their
> > customers weren't deserting them. And paying less for their cost of
> > goods did not result in lower prices, those savings went into the Wall
> > family coffers.
>
> Sam Walton founded WalMart. Although the changes were economically
> motivated, part of the reason they didn't happen earlier was that Sam
> Walton was still alive.

I meant the Walton family; I had a brain fart. And I agree with your last
sentence.

--
Tea Party Patriots is to Patriotism as
People's Democratic Republic is to Democracy.

Dillon Pyron

Thus spake salgud <spamboy6547@comcast.net> :

>There is a very complete discussion on NPR's "This American Life" this week
>concerning the treatment and mistreatment of Foxconn laborers who build,
>among others, Apple products. It is called "Mr Daisey and the Apple
>Factory". You can find the article by going to their website
>thisamericanlife.org and going to the archives for 2012.
>
>Briefly, it's about a stand up comedian/Apple fanboi who decided to go to
>China to a major Foxconn factory to find out if the stories he's heard
>about mistreatment of laborers is true. He hires an interpreter, and
>interviews over a hundred Foxconn employees, and pretty much verifies that
>most of the horrific stories we've heard about incredibly long hours and
>terrible, harsh conditions, are all true. It's a sad situation.
>
>In the second segment, the "This American Life" people do a detailed fact
>check of Mr. Daisy's story. They verify that virtually everything he was
>told by the Foxconn employees is true.

Okay, I'll skip over all ot the discussion with a totally new line.

The January 2012 (Vol 55, No 1) of the Communications of the ACM has
an interesting article. "Analyzing Apple Products", A couple of
excerpts from Alex Wright:

"The team's analysis reveal that while most Apple compenents are
indeed manufactured abroad - pre-dominanatly in Korea, Japan and
Taiewan - the economic beneift accrues Overwhelmingly to Apple"

"While the devices may be assembled in China, that country accures
surprisingly little economic benefit. NoiPad or iPhone components are
actually manufactured in China, and as little as $10 from each sale
goes to Chinese firms, primarly by wages paid to workers on the
assembly line."

"... Apple probably retains about 58% of the sales price of a typical
iPhone 4 smartphone. That margin drops considerably for the
lowest-end iPad, where Apple holds on to roughly 30% of the $499 sales
price."

The study found that it's not manufacturing, but design, marketing and
product management provide the high-value jobs.

"'Those who decry the decline of U.S. manufacturing too often point at
the offshoring of assembly for electronic goods like the iPone,'the
authors <of the original study> conclude. 'There is simply little
value in electronics manufacturing.'"

The original study (for which I only have an extended absctract,
anyone willing to pay the $1200 for the study is more than welcome)
finds that, even applying prevailing pay for US based jobs similar in
nature, the price of a typical iPad would raise about 14%. Let's face
it, as has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, "hands-on"
production is really small. Consider that the typical semiconductor
line, regardless of where it is produced, may only have 10 to 12
people with direct "contact" with the product. Who will produce, in
the case of the Intel i7 processors, 1000 or more processor an hour.
And smaller, commodity chips (memory, gates, etc) will be in the tens
of thousands with the same number of workers. But the plant will cost
in the $3-$4B range. I have no idea what the NRE on the i7 is, but
there are probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 people in the
line.

You can build the <name it>, I'll take the design and sales side.

You may find the entire study in "Capturing Value in Global Networks:
Apple's iPad and iPhone"
>
>Finally, they talk with experts about this situation, and the conditions
>these people endure. They are in fact, by our standards, terrible. But,
>they are much better than most of these people have endured in the poverty
>stricken rural lives they lived before coming to Foxconn. And, partially
>because of Apple's urging, and party because of the high turnover rate (as
>high as 20%/month), Foxconn is raising wages and improving working
>conditions. Slowly.

Let's face it, Foxconn sucks GBDD. And has for a long time and will
for a long time. But "everybody" (not just Apple) uses them, but
Apple seems to collect the most flack.

>
>So, overall, the situation is not as bad, from the high level POV, as it
>might at first appear. The conditions are terrible, by our standards, but
>not easily or quickly rectified. Apple is being urged to press harder on
>Foxconn, and has started publishing the reports they do in their audits of
>the factories, but they aren't releasing the factory names so that those
>factories that offend the worst can be pressured even more to improve
>conditions. That needs to happen.

They recently released some of the factory names. And are pushing on
others to do that same. But this is mostly in response to so called
"Green Initiative" complaints rather that textile workers throwing
themselves off the tops of their 10 story dormatories. Oh, you think
electronics are bad, look at textiles.

>
>Personally, I have to admit that Apple is doing more than I realized to
>help these workers, and that the situation is not simple or easily
>remedied. I will continue to urge Apple, when I can, to fully publish the
>results of their audits and to press Foxconn, and others, to improve
>conditions for these poor people.
>
>It's a very enlightening article, and I urge anyone curious enough and
>willing to hear both sides of this story, to listen the this episode of
>"This American Life".

We don't usually get a chance to listen since we're usually involved
in "the remainder of life" by the time it comes on KUT.
--

- dillon I am not invalid

So Kim Jung Ill shows up at the barbecue. "Wait,"
says Qadaffi, "you don't have any peircings." "If you
starve your people enough they'll be too weak to rebbel."
"You have the same number of holes in your head as when
you were born," says bin Laden. "My compound had radar
and antiacraft misslles." "Your neck," shouted Hussein,
"it's the same length." "I didn't piss on W's father."
"Then what happened?" the three asked. "Damned counterfiet
Lipitor and insulin!"

Howard Brazee

It will be interesting to see what US politicians say about Apple's
strategy. I expect Republicans will say we need to cut the
paperwork, and Democrats will say we need to support better public
education.

--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."

- James Madison