I bought the NY Times this morning just for this article. I finished reading it, and yeah, basically America can't compete even if it wants to.

FTFA:

"In China: Apple had redesigned the iPhone's screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plan 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."

The materials, chips, etc. used to make the iPhones are all overseas, so why wouldn't the assembly take place there too?

Asia is a huge market. America isn't the great consumer anymore.

TheGreatGazoo: If the Asian countries start to raise wages and enforce workers rights, the companies will probably move to Africa.

There are plenty of countries with wages as low as China. China has critical major advantages over them due to the overwhelming power of the state. And you get to partner with totalitarian power.

Workers start giving you trouble? They go to work camps. End of story. Just enough are left behind to tell future workers what happened to the old workers. Someone steals stuff from your factory? They are executed and their organs sold. Someone leaks factory footage to Dateline NBC? Executed. Simple. Infrastructure. Pay the right people in China and it happens. Overnight. The unpaid displaced residents shut up or go to work camps.

Now, it's not that African nations don't have jack-booted thugs. They do. But, the thugs mostly want to get paid and loot what they can. They're as likely as anything to go rogue against their command structure. And the top-end leaders in Africa are mostly into hedonism rather than power for power's sake (the regimes rarely last long enough to make major investments anyway). China? The thugs are mostly motivated by jack-booted thugs above them. Thugs all the way up.

Happy Hours: peasandcarrots: The thing that frightens me far more than what this forecasts for the American economy is the fact that American businesses are so fulsome in their praise for this...horrifying reality. The Daily Show had a story about FoxConn a few days ago detailing the grueling working conditions of these factory towns, and it sounded like a corporatist's wet dream - absolute, unfettered control over every inch of an employee's life, right down to who they can socialize with, all for thirty cents an hour.

Great. Someone else who thinks TDS is news.

NPR, BBC, Al-Jazeera are 3 of them.

SuperTramp: Happy Hours
Great. Someone else who thinks TDS is news.

Do share your trusted news source with us.

Well, "The Daily Show is news" is a mischaracterization; TDS gets its meat and potatoes in large part by showing clips of other news broadcasts. So you can either watch a CNN Special Report or a CNN Special Report underscored by Jon Stewart making faces, breaking things, or saying something pithy. Crediting Jon Stewart for the original information is like crediting Joel and the Bots for "Manos, the Hands of Fate." I probably should have said "skit" or "monologue" instead of "article." Even Stewart would be appalled at that characterization.

Flint Ironstag: Would you prefer they moved manufacturing to the US, then went bankrupt due to the huge costs

Given that it wouldn't happen.

Flint Ironstag: BullBearMS: TFA: "Companies once felt an obligation to support American workers, even when it wasn't the best financial choice," said Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Labor Department until last September. "That's disappeared. Profits and efficiency have trumped generosity."

It wasn't profitable to ship those jobs to other countries until the passage of the bipartisan free trade agreements that removed the financial penalties for shipping jobs out of the country.

You can tell you are about to be bent over without lube when both the Democrats and Republicans completely agree on free trade agreements.

However, it's worked out so well for their obscenely wealthy masters.

Without free trade how many phones would Apple have exported?

When a iPhone made in China is sold in Europe the profit comes back to the US. By all means put up a walled garden around the US, and watch the many American multinationals go bankrupt when their overseas business disappears.

Maybe this explains why productivity in China is higher than the US.

Not to mention they have 4 times the people to pool a workforce from...

Phony_Soldier: The materials, chips, etc. used to make the iPhones are all overseas, so why wouldn't the assembly take place there too?

The A5 chip in the new iPhones and iPads is made in Samsung's fab plant in Austin, Texas.

This biggest problem with this thread is it's a bunch of people griping that something is wrong because the world doesn't fit their preconceived notions of the (shall we say) "way things ought to be" which are themselves based on "news" articles such as this, which are anecdotal in nature, and pretend that anecdote is its plural form, data. It's a sort of perpetual cycle of reinforced ignorance and misconceptions that builds on itself. With each passing of the loop it's further and further removed from reality, until it's unrecognizable as reflecting the actual state of affairs. The article itself seems to be aware of this fate, and as sort of a sop to people who might actual understand what's going on includes the occasional "economists disagree, however...", trying to salvage some shred of credibility.

Fun fact: the U.S. Manufacturing sector is huge. How huge? If you took the economy of Germany (the world's fourth largest economy) it would roughly approximate the size of the U.S. manufacturing sector. And yet, the U.S. Manufacturing sector is only 3/10 of the entire U.S. Economy.

dforkus: Unless you're getting into Cal Tech, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, or Standford, don't even think about becoming Computer or Software Engineering as a major....

Even if you manage to get the hot skill, you'll burn out in a few years, and the business will be waiting for a reason to replace you.

Do you know how I know you don't know what the hell you're talking about?

Apple products come broken now. They are put together haphazardly.

My latest Apple products: My iPhone has a crooked bezel. The two before that shattered like wine glassed when I dropped them on a floor. My old laptop caught on fire. My new laptop shipped with a power supply that needed to be eventually recalled. The replaced power supply doesn't seat well into power supplies, and when it is connected the grounding is faulty forcing me to touch the the frame to ground the machine with my body to make the touch pad work properly. All four plastic feet cracked and fell off of my laptop after two years. The headphone jack on my laptop connects very poorly. Moving the laptop a little always results in a disconnection, and I have to re-wiggle it to reseat it. The Headphones that come with iPhones disintegrate within a month of use. I went through three sets before I decided to by nine dollars ones instead. The nine dollar set still work after two years.

My Mac from 1984: a little yellowed, but doing fine.

ZAZ: CitizensUnited

Germany's population is close to 3/10 of the United States'. Your figure says per capita manufacturing output is similar in the two countries.

I don't think that's right. Manufacturing is some fraction of the German economy. Manufacturing output per capita is probably higher in the U.S. But that's an irrelevant comparison. You probably want to compare manufacturing out put per manufacturing worker, or something like that. I have no idea what those numbers would be off the top of my head.

The point I was making was that articles like this overstate the demise of the U.S. manufacturing sector in a way that reinforces misconceptions held by people who base their perceptions off articles like this.

noit: Apple products come broken now. They are put together haphazardly.

My latest Apple products: My iPhone has a crooked bezel. The two before that shattered like wine glassed when I dropped them on a floor. My old laptop caught on fire. My new laptop shipped with a power supply that needed to be eventually recalled. The replaced power supply doesn't seat well into power supplies, and when it is connected the grounding is faulty forcing me to touch the the frame to ground the machine with my body to make the touch pad work properly. All four plastic feet cracked and fell off of my laptop after two years. The headphone jack on my laptop connects very poorly. Moving the laptop a little always results in a disconnection, and I have to re-wiggle it to reseat it. The Headphones that come with iPhones disintegrate within a month of use. I went through three sets before I decided to by nine dollars ones instead. The nine dollar set still work after two years.

My Mac from 1984: a little yellowed, but doing fine.

In all honesty, why do you keep buying Apple products?

noit: Apple products come broken now. They are put together haphazardly.

My latest Apple products: My iPhone has a crooked bezel. The two before that shattered like wine glassed when I dropped them on a floor. My old laptop caught on fire. My new laptop shipped with a power supply that needed to be eventually recalled. The replaced power supply doesn't seat well into power supplies, and when it is connected the grounding is faulty forcing me to touch the the frame to ground the machine with my body to make the touch pad work properly. All four plastic feet cracked and fell off of my laptop after two years. The headphone jack on my laptop connects very poorly. Moving the laptop a little always results in a disconnection, and I have to re-wiggle it to reseat it. The Headphones that come with iPhones disintegrate within a month of use. I went through three sets before I decided to by nine dollars ones instead. The nine dollar set still work after two years.

My Mac from 1984: a little yellowed, but doing fine.

You sound..... uncoordinated and unlucky.

noit: Apple products come broken now. They are put together haphazardly.

My latest Apple products: My iPhone has a crooked bezel. The two before that shattered like wine glassed when I dropped them on a floor. My old laptop caught on fire. My new laptop shipped with a power supply that needed to be eventually recalled. The replaced power supply doesn't seat well into power supplies, and when it is connected the grounding is faulty forcing me to touch the the frame to ground the machine with my body to make the touch pad work properly. All four plastic feet cracked and fell off of my laptop after two years. The headphone jack on my laptop connects very poorly. Moving the laptop a little always results in a disconnection, and I have to re-wiggle it to reseat it. The Headphones that come with iPhones disintegrate within a month of use. I went through three sets before I decided to by nine dollars ones instead. The nine dollar set still work after two years.

My Mac from 1984: a little yellowed, but doing fine.

Glad I am not the only one. We are iPod #4 this year, the previous three replaced due to device problems. One a manufacturing defect out the box. If it is up to me, that is the last Apple product we ever purchase.

Cubansaltyballs: This just in: Slaves work cheaper than non-slaves.

Also just in, "flexibility" is the PC term for slavery.

Apple should be ashamed, as should every other computer owner in the world, I mean all those other assholes, not me.....

wingnut396: Glad I am not the only one. We are iPod #4 this year, the previous three replaced due to device problems. One a manufacturing defect out the box. If it is up to me, that is the last Apple product we ever purchase.

All anecdotal, but...

A friend's iPad started randomly rebooting 2 months after it went out of its 1 year warranty. A reinstall didn't help.

An old Mac Book Duo 2 I have is still running strong(if sluggish with the latest OS).

Mac laptop and desktops cost a pretty penny more than their Windows counter parts. For the mobile space they compete neck and neck in price. I wonder if that comes at the cost of build quality.

steve jobs may have been quote-liberal-unquote in his private life but he was anything but in his professional life, he was more determined to make the personal computer successful than he was to lay down for everybody's whim at every step of the way

steamingpile: Also just in, "flexibility" is the PC term for slavery.

Apple should be ashamed, as should every other computer owner in the world, I mean all those other assholes, not me.....

THIS.

Good to see that plenty of others see the light and truth.

If there's a case for shareholder activism, to force Apple to abandon its secrecy and global nature, no better time than now.

ZAZ: CitizensUnited

I was wrong. The economy per capita is similar in the two countries. The figures don't say whether American and German manufacturing output are similar. But only 30% of the U.S. economy is making stuff.

That really doesn't matter. The real money these days is in services. And when you get down to it, the line between manufacturing and service is pretty arbitrary. If you took a guy in a Ford Factory painting a door, that's a manufacturing job. If he does it in a warehouse, that's a service sector job. It's the same guy, same door, same color, different location, and different sector of the economy.

CitizensUnited: ZAZ: CitizensUnited

I was wrong. The economy per capita is similar in the two countries. The figures don't say whether American and German manufacturing output are similar. But only 30% of the U.S. economy is making stuff.

That really doesn't matter. The real money these days is in services.

In other words, treating workers like chattel.

Much more important to make $400,000 per employee than $370,000 per. All those
stockholders would surly starve to death if that happened.

sparkeyjames: Much more important to make $400,000 per employee than $370,000 per. All those
stockholders would surly starve to death if that happened.

surely. not surly. fingers-> brain connection seems intermittent.

dforkus: Advice to young Americans..

Unless you're getting into Cal Tech, MIT, Carnegie Mellon Melon, or Standford, don't even think about becoming Computer or Software Engineering ...

FTFY, you moran!

BullBearMS: TFA: "Companies once felt an obligation to support American workers, even when it wasn't the best financial choice," said Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Labor Department until last September. "That's disappeared. Profits and efficiency have trumped generosity."

It wasn't profitable to ship those jobs to other countries until the passage of the bipartisan free trade agreements that removed the financial penalties for shipping jobs out of the country.

You can tell you are about to be bent over without lube when both the Democrats and Republicans completely agree on free trade agreements.

However, it's worked out so well for their obscenely wealthy masters.

the United States does not have a free trade deal with China. or India.

dumbobruni: the United States does not have a free trade deal with China.

Most Favored Nation status, converted to PNTR in the late 90's.

wingnut396: Glad I am not the only one. We are iPod #4 this year, the previous three replaced due to device problems. One a manufacturing defect out the box. If it is up to me, that is the last Apple product we ever purchase.

It took you 4 tries to figure that out? I spent $30 on my Sansa Fuze. It's infinitely expandable, it's got a ton of available accessories, it requires no special software, plays more formats than iOS, and if it breaks or I lose it, big whoop, $30.

wait. A, I really supposed to give a damn if a company makes 10 billion instead of 20 billion when the net result is a many, MANY more American jobs? Go die in a fire.

sethstorm: steamingpile: Also just in, "flexibility" is the PC term for slavery.

Apple should be ashamed, as should every other computer owner in the world, I mean all those other assholes, not me.....

THIS.

Good to see that plenty of others see the light and truth.

If there's a case for shareholder activism, to force Apple to abandon its secrecy and global nature, no better time than now.

Maybe all the other electronic device companies will follow, otherwise it's a losing battle

Look, guys, I've got this one all sorted out. All we need to do, see, is kill everyone in China. Problem solved.

We shouldn't be surprised by this, we've raised generation after generation of dumb, entitled brats - of course you tech companies can't find skilled workers to fill their factories. They're begging for programs that would train more workers here, hell even technical schools short of college would do. Even though manufacturing is an ever more minor part of the economy, Germany has somehow managed to keep manufacturing around despite labor cost disadvantages, so those that want to hide behind protectionism and blame free trade have no ground to stand on. We need to compete better.

The farking tech is developed here and takes advantage of the science from the best universities in the world, funded by the US taxpayer - why the hell isn't more of the work done here? We need a law that says if you, as a union, agree to higher flexibility, we do something for you, for example mandate that a higher share of company stock pockets don't go to overpaid executives but to workers and have a really social safety net if something happens to your job.

Flint Ironstag: So once again, Steve Jobs, and every other CEO, just didn't know what they were talking about?

They know what they're talking about but human misery doesn't factor into their spreadsheet. In the US you can't have workers pulling 12 hour shifts, six days a week, living in the factory dormitory and eating a biscuit with weak tea before their shift every day. Their manufacturing model requires a workforce of what are effectively slaves or at least indentured servants. That is why the jobs are not coming home.

If we're not going to bring manufacturing jobs home or otherwise find a way to strengthen the middle class then we will need to find some way to address the issue of a significant fraction of the US population being persistently unemployed.

Google Fordlândia. I would link the wiki article, but international characters seem to be a problem.

theflatline: bhcompy: wingnut396: Glad I am not the only one. We are iPod #4 this year, the previous three replaced due to device problems. One a manufacturing defect out the box. If it is up to me, that is the last Apple product we ever purchase.

It took you 4 tries to figure that out? I spent $30 on my Sansa Fuze. It's infinitely expandable, it's got a ton of available accessories, it requires no special software, plays more formats than iOS, and if it breaks or I lose it, big whoop, $30.

I have a sanza e260 that I bought for 20 bucks, that i put rockbox on and added a 32 gig card, and it is 5 years old and still gives me 5 hours of battery life.... with memory and cost of the thing i am only out 50 bucks....

Those don't play Fruit Ninja, display LolCats and make my son keep up to date on his gmail calendar.

I have a Zen V for vanilla MP3 playing that works great.

I think it is the duty of Americans to not buy Apple products, simple as that.

/never owned and never will own an Apple product

silvervial: I think it is the duty of Americans to not buy Apple products, simple as that.

/never owned and never will own an Apple product

be sure to not also buy products from:

-Amazon
-Barnes & Noble
-Cisco
-Dell
-EVGA
-HP
-Intel
-IBM
-Microsoft
-Motorola
-Netgear
-Vizio

all American companies that use the same Chinese manufacturing company as Apple to build their products

wingnut396: Those don't play Fruit Ninja, display LolCats and make my son keep up to date on his gmail calendar.

And 99% of people that want that just get an iPhone

Actually, if other CEOs were as honest as Steve Jobs was to Obama in public, that would go a long way towards trying to determine a viable long term solution. If they were forced to admit this, they wouldn't continue to get away with their sleight of hand and dangling carrots on a stick to fool people into thinking they are ready to increase the workforce.

Instead, they fool politicians of both parties by telling them "we need x, y, and z to add jobs", all the while knowing that the types of jobs they are telling the politicians they will provide won't be coming back.

Meanwhile, the higher paying jobs - which will require more skill than those they pretend will be returning - are increasingly being staffed by H1B Visa holders, who they know are willing to come to America and work for far less than Americans.

I've yet to see anyone - media or politician - ask the large companies the tough questions about how they play both sides against the middle. Or how the very companies whose CEOs they seek for ideas on job growth are the ones continuing to move jobs overseas, while requesting more H1B VIsas. Or actually measuring a companies claim that they will add jobs to see if it is really net additional or just moving existing jobs from another state.

BTW, I don't mean to main H1B Visas... but one idea might be to tie it to the employment rate. For a simple example: employment rate under 4%, H1B Visa quotas go up. unemployment rises above 6%, H1B Visa quotas go down.

But, as was said earlier, as long as they continue to fund (directly and through lobbying) the politicians, and folks are focused on having the latest trinket now, the death spiral will continue.

AdamK: silvervial: I think it is the duty of Americans to not buy Apple products, simple as that.

/never owned and never will own an Apple product

be sure to not also buy products from:

-Amazon
-Barnes & Noble
-Cisco
-Dell
-EVGA
-HP
-Intel
-IBM
-Microsoft
-Motorola
-Netgear
-Vizio

all American companies that use the same Chinese manufacturing company as Apple to build their products

Buy samsung products. The chips are made in the usa. And the quality is better.

AdamK: sethstorm: steamingpile: Also just in, "flexibility" is the PC term for slavery.

Apple should be ashamed, as should every other computer owner in the world, I mean all those other assholes, not me.....

THIS.

Good to see that plenty of others see the light and truth.

If there's a case for shareholder activism, to force Apple to abandon its secrecy and global nature, no better time than now.

Maybe all the other electronic device companies will follow, otherwise it's a losing battle

The only way to win this battle is to force our governments to only have trade agreements that guarantee simple human rights, Im not saying everyone gets to order hookers of the internet or get free pot but........what was I saying?

Oh yeah free hookers and pot for all workers!!!!!!