This appeared at Insty’s place yesterday:
I understand the sentiment, and anything that helps drain the fucking swamp that is China is a Good Thing.
However, I would have felt SO much better had the headline read:
Six Apple production lines moving from China to Mississippi*.
Instead of helping the Asian Third World, how about first helping our own local Third World (using Mississippi as an example)? I mean, in Mississippi they vote and everything, plus BONUS!!! the principal beneficiaries of such production relocation would mostly be Black because manufacturing jobs.
Getting out of China: good
Getting into Mississippi: doubleplusgood
Those woke assholes at Apple probably prefer to help the Pore & Starvin in other countries because it makes them feel virtuous; helping the rubes in flyover country? eeeeeew.
*Yes, in English we say “from… to…” e.g. “from left to right” and “from A to Z”, and not “to right from left” or “to Z from A”. We even read from left to right, in English.
And since the heat and humidity in Mississippi are pretty approximate to what you can find in India….. Only place I’ve ever lived where I walked outside in August and my lungs refused to work.
The locals don’t seem to mind. Ditto Houston (for me).
Not a fan of Apple. From the sanctimonious, hypocritical A**holes running it, to the captive nature of their products. Ditto Nike, and all the other wokescold companies out there. But the issue with moving manufacturing back onshore is supply chain. All the raw materials and components that go into an IPHONE are already made in the pacific rim. So to bring a manufacturing facility for one element of this back onshore involves a lot of extra shipping costs back & forth. Not that I think it would be a bad thing to have everything made onshore like we used to, it would be an all or nothing proposition.
The dirty little secret here is that we are assuming woke Americans would actually show up to work in an Apple factory and not use chinkvirus as an excuse to stay home and cash their unemployment check.
I saw an article a month or 3 back saying that Apple actually doesn’t sell well in India. The comments were flooded with Indians saying it’s way too expensive for them, especially as far as mobile phones are concerned. they can get a perfectly serviceable non-Apple device for under $150 equivalent, but all the iPhones are $800+ with no appreciable benefit for the extra cost.
Form, meet function.
Didn’t that evil capitalist Henry Ford once say that to be successful, your employees had to be able to buy your product? Certainly that was the case when his cars were selling for about $800 in 1920 sized dollars. Even Daimler Benz wants their employees to buy what they build, which is why a friend, after spending two years at Cologne University said that the discounts were so good for the employees they could hardly afford NOT to drive a Mercedes.
But Apple must not consider selling to their own employees to have any long term benefit, and after all, they don’t want to encourage gray market telephones moving from India to Europe and America – they’d lose sales .
That’s because Apple is mainly in the high end market, not the budget market.
Your average worker in the Rolls Royce also can’t afford the product he’s building, he’ll have to come to work in a Vauxhall Corsa.
Big problem for Apple (and indeed almost any company) to move production (back) to the US is the steep cost of manpower.
A factory worker in India, getting a decent wage there that’s above average for his profession, still gets paid less than half what his equivalent in the US would get working for minimum wage.
The lower cost of shipping the product overseas doesn’t nearly compensate for the difference.
And US customers aren’t willing to pay twice as much for their smartphones or tablets simply for the “made in America” text printed on the box.
Just googled minimum wage in India:
“India’s minimum wage is 176 Indian rupees ($3) for an eight-hour work day, but local authorities can set their own lower rate and at least six states do so.”
The latest iteration of the iphone is what – north of a grand? I just bought a bundle of socks at Walmart for right around a buck a pair. Didn’t bother to look at where they were manufactured but we all know it wasn’t ‘Murica.
Couldn’t agree more re: the woke totalitarians at Apple/Nike et al, but the reality is much more banal: follow the money. The profit motive from which we all benefit.