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Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

washingtonpost.com

31–40 of 288 posts

Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#31
post #3

So.. 0.3% of their cash pile?

It's probably a decent idea to start "small" (if a billion dollars can be called that) and evaluate how well it works.

Apple's got enough money to experiment with multiple approaches and pour lots into the ones that work down the line.

Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#32

> Cook told "60 Minutes” in 2015. “I mean, you can take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room that we’re currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have multiple football fields.” In that interview he also said that the jobs weren't coming back. This is one of the most powerful statements uttered on American labor and employment trends in recent memory. I have shared thi…

Here's something else that should shake US and UK highly skilled workers. Our time will soon come as well. In China, they are racing to match and surpass western standards. I would say, they have already matched in some cases. But unlike the west where companies export out to save costs. Companies in China do everything in-house. There will be a time where these 6 figure jobs that some HN users have, will go down by…

[deleted]

Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#33
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South China Sea.

Debt. Look at the financials in China and you'll see a huge bubble that's just beginning to burst. Going to take a year to fully materialize but it will be ugly.

People have been making that same claim for a couple of decades already [0], and it still hasn't happened.

I mean, I'm sure it will happen eventually and then all the naysayers will be 'right', but not really (broken clock, twice a day, yadda, yadda, yadda).

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_Collapse_of_China

Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#34

> Cook told "60 Minutes” in 2015. “I mean, you can take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room that we’re currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have multiple football fields.” In that interview he also said that the jobs weren't coming back. This is one of the most powerful statements uttered on American labor and employment trends in recent memory. I have shared thi…

What's the answer? Protectionism?

That's the thing I don't get, so many people will advocate "fewer regulations", yet are perfectly content with prohibitive tariffs from the place that allows people living in section 8 to afford iPhones.

You're 100% right, but i just don't see a good answer other than coming to terms with the fact that cheap labour overseas and automation WILL back us into UBI in the very near future. It's the cost of doing business. No different than the argument that it's more economical to work an extra 30 minutes and pay someone else to cook for you.

Why such a large percentage of the middle class thinks that THEIR livelihoods are threatened by having the rich pay up, I don't know.

Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#35
post #2

There is also geopolitical reasons for this. There is a high chance that east asia will be embroiled with some war coming soon, which will disrupt both manufacturing (either in china or Taiwan), or transports of goods. Even if the North Korea problem gets solved, the China problem is still there and it wont be solved anytime soon. If you have some streamlined manufacturing here, it is easier to fork it in case the ma…

I don't understand why this is being so heavily down voted. It's a major risk theme amongst asset managers: what happens if a major war in the South China Sea disrupts ASEAN and Chinese supply chains and/or trade relations.

Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#36

It's so incredibly obvious that the best course of action is to let all these companies bring home all those foreign revenues so long as a significant portion of it is reinvested in the US is a reasonable period of time, excluding investments in financial instruments (stocks and bonds) and non-productive assets like land. Any money that is stuck abroad will be reinvested abroad, making foreign economies more competit…

> It's so incredibly obvious that the best course of action is to let all these companies bring home all those foreign revenues so long as a significant portion of it is reinvested

It is very easy to bring back foreign revenue and spend it in the US. The issue companies have is that they already are making a profit in the US. They would spend down their US profit first.

If your company is losing $1B/year in the US, you can use that to repatriate $1B already.

Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#37

> Cook told "60 Minutes” in 2015. “I mean, you can take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room that we’re currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have multiple football fields.” In that interview he also said that the jobs weren't coming back. This is one of the most powerful statements uttered on American labor and employment trends in recent memory. I have shared thi…

So what _can_ the US do about getting more hi-tech manufacturing here? I realized that won't employ a ton of people, but it will keep a lot more money in the US.

Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#38
post #16

> Cook told "60 Minutes” in 2015. “I mean, you can take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room that we’re currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have multiple football fields.” In that interview he also said that the jobs weren't coming back. This is one of the most powerful statements uttered on American labor and employment trends in recent memory. I have shared thi…

American labor was fucked anyways, Globalism only accelerated trends that would have happened anyhow. From a long term perspective, its absolutely amazing that the US has managed to export all the factory level jobs to other countries and yet managed to keep the better paying jobs back here in the states. The current lack of (low skilled) jobs in manufacturing has made it clear to those Americans willing to listen: t…

> American labor was fucked anyways, Globalism only accelerated trends that would have happened anyhow

This is an important and underrated idea that so often gets lost thanks to politics. Much like the drug war, people think that market trends and phenomenons can be controlled somehow, that they are simply choices that people make, and those choices can be controlled - people can simply just choose not to make that choice or face consequences from the state. Rather than a whole new paradigm, something that generates real value that taps into a raw supply/demand, even if it means taking big risks, and that will exist whether or not we ignore it. This is how many ineffective government policies get made.

America needs to embrace globalism as an unhappy reality. The problem is that they have been operating for two decades as if it didn't come with a big downside - that globalism is this great new thing that will make everyone richer. Trump and Bernie have been feeding off this ignored reality without addressing the real consequence. Rather globalism being sold as something that is all good, it should have been sold as a tough new evolution of the marketplace, much like a recession correcting an imbalanced investment bubble. It doesn't need to be rejected by an outsider strongman politician but embraced by an outsider who is willing to face the reality that the consequences extend well beyond the influential class in Washington and they aren't all good.

You can't force your way back to the old reality as if the market phenomenon didn't exist, but you can minimize the downside as you transition to the new reality and do what you can to stay on top of it.

Sadly, hard medicine and politics don't go together. Even if it's the best (and only) medicine.

To continue the drug war analogy, the goal should be minimizing the harms of peoples addictions rather than trying to pretend the addictions won't happen. Likewise the economy needs to either a) compete with the globe in manufacturing and/or b) develop new industries.

I'm not as convinced as many people are that a) is not possible, Apple clearly thinks there's plenty of potential there and so do I. But I'm quite confident that that US is failing to do b) properly. In my business class they called it a new "service-based economy" but clearly that has been insufficient to keep employment and wages high. To develop new industries in place of manufacturing they need to rekindle entrepreneurship and small businesses to give life to new industries. I get the impression the US government is obsessed with appeasing existing BigCos (just look at TPP or Obama's policies during the financial crisis) rather than developing the next generation of industry that functions well in a global marketplace. Silicon Valley is a big piece of the puzzle, but even then it's treated as a sideshow in Washington (even more so now, which is a big fault of Trump) but in the same vein it can't be the only one moving forward.

I really hope Trump's liberal tax and regulatory policy helps boost b). The risk of course is that the usual Washington backroom dealings by legacy BigCos and special interests will guide policy even further towards tired old ideas (like making Wall St even more money) over helping develop new business. At a minimum we know that Trump is motivated to help with a)... so that's something.

(I purposefully ignored social policy consequences here as this comment is getting long enough)

Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#39

> Cook told "60 Minutes” in 2015. “I mean, you can take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room that we’re currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have multiple football fields.” In that interview he also said that the jobs weren't coming back. This is one of the most powerful statements uttered on American labor and employment trends in recent memory. I have shared thi…

Here's something else that should shake US and UK highly skilled workers. Our time will soon come as well. In China, they are racing to match and surpass western standards. I would say, they have already matched in some cases. But unlike the west where companies export out to save costs. Companies in China do everything in-house. There will be a time where these 6 figure jobs that some HN users have, will go down by…

Yes an intelligent JavaScript developer. Who could imagine.

I would wager the front end developer will continue to be a high paying job longer than the backend developer. You can outsource API creation but any product company can't risk not having a UX friendly and well designed front end.

Re: Apple plans to spend $1B to support advanced manufacturing jobs in the U.S

#40

> Cook told "60 Minutes” in 2015. “I mean, you can take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room that we’re currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have multiple football fields.” In that interview he also said that the jobs weren't coming back. This is one of the most powerful statements uttered on American labor and employment trends in recent memory. I have shared thi…

What's the answer? Protectionism? That's the thing I don't get, so many people will advocate "fewer regulations", yet are perfectly content with prohibitive tariffs from the place that allows people living in section 8 to afford iPhones. You're 100% right, but i just don't see a good answer other than coming to terms with the fact that cheap labour overseas and automation WILL back us into UBI in the very near future…

Well because they were brainwashed through propaganda into thinking that a free lunch is threatening to the economy. And there may be some justification for that. The old rules no longer apply. It will take some time for the masses to catch up. However going forward I do see trouble in that business is ritual warfare. If you can settle distribution of resources problems with business based competition then it breaks out into real warfare. Why should American nonworkers get a bigger paycheck than Chinese nonworkers? Why should they be allowed to consume more?
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