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

washingtonpost.com

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

#181

Post by xienze »

komali2 wrote: post #81
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seems like a wild bet to make when the region has been embroiled in conflict far worse. People were still manufacturing in China during the American (Vietnam) war.

Yeah I think just a bit more stuff is being manufactured in China today versus 50ish years ago.

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

#182

Post by philipkglass »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #160
lowtolerance wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been hearing people say that there are signs that the bubble is bursting in China for the last several years now. This time it's for real, though, right? edit: I had a hunch you'd be the kind of person who would cite a zerohedge article as a source on this. They have been gleefully predicting the collapse of China's economy since the site's inception. No doubt, they will gleefully take credit for "predicting" it…

Not to support zerohedge citations but isn't it totally expected that people who see a collapse coming wouldn't be able to time it exactly? You know the common refrain, the markets can stay irrational longer than you stay solvent, doesn't that go both ways? That if I see the markets are being irrational, it may take quite a long time for the bust to actually happen? But that doesn't mean they weren't irrational and i…

Market economies go through boom-bust cycles. Predicting timing for the next bust is much more impressive than predicting that there will be a bust, eventually.

If you predict in 2016 that an apparently healthy economy will suffer a severe downturn, and it happens in 2017, that's impressive.

If you predict a severe downturn in 2009 and it only happens in 2017, that's significantly less impressive.

If you predict a severe downturn every year since 2009, that's zerohedge.

It reminds me of the peak oil prophets who went from predicting collapse by 2012 to predicting collapse, uh... eventually. Remaining pessimistic in the face of contrary data doesn't make them any smarter than being irrationally optimistic.

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

#183

Post by jdmichal »

notlefthanded wrote: post #151
jdmichal wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who will buy all the neat gadgets that they're producing? It won't be the US; no middle class means no disposable income. It won't be the Chinese; they make everything in house. It probably won't be anyone else in Asia because they'll just buy it from China instead. Devastation of the middle class is about equivalent to devastation of the entire US economy. After we've willingly and successfully transferred all o…

What about Hollywood? And reputation via ivy league education? Also a legal landscape conducive to doing business?

> What about Hollywood?

https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm

Movie and music industry is in the "Information" labor category, which accounts for a whopping 1.8% of total employment... Oh, and Bollywood is already bigger than Hollywood. I don't see such trends reversing as we continue outsourcing CGI and other movie-making magic. There's nothing special about Hollywood that isn't able to be duplicated somewhere else.

> And reputation via ivy league education? Also a legal landscape conducive to doing business?

These both almost solely benefit upper-class, and no one is arguing that they'll be just fine -- at least, for a longer period of time than everyone else.

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

#184

Post by thefalcon »

Akkuma wrote: post #69
no1youknowz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think this is overestimating how qualified the coders are in the east compared to their western peers. Everyone I've known from Hong Kong decried the education of mainland China. They said the education comes down to repeating book knowledge, so just memorization, and the inability to handle scenarios not covered by that. I'll be more concerned once leading technologies that are used by the rest of the world come o…

"Finally, I said that I couldn’t see how anyone could be educated by this self-propagating system in which people pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything."[1]

Sounds a lot like Feynman decrying the Brazilian education system in Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman.

[1] http://v.cx/2010/04/feynman-brazil-education

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

#185

Post by ar15saveslives »

notlefthanded wrote: post #151
jdmichal wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who will buy all the neat gadgets that they're producing? It won't be the US; no middle class means no disposable income. It won't be the Chinese; they make everything in house. It probably won't be anyone else in Asia because they'll just buy it from China instead. Devastation of the middle class is about equivalent to devastation of the entire US economy. After we've willingly and successfully transferred all o…

What about Hollywood? And reputation via ivy league education? Also a legal landscape conducive to doing business?

Legal landscape in the US is just bad. Sue-happy country with convoluted taxes, horribly slow customs with crazy policies ("General Order warehouse", fml), 50 different states with different laws, taxes and regulations.

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

#186

Post by threeseed »

Retric wrote: post #129
naravara wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor, starving, and desperate people don't have the luxury to worry about environmental protections. Their governments are going to work to improve their standards of living one way or another. If they do it with our cooperation, with our more efficient technology, and with our more efficient production practices they will be able to grow in a way that is less environmentally damaging than the Industrial revolution w…

Pollution related annual deaths in China have gotten bad enough the government does not have much of a choice. Much like how London dealt with 'Killer Fogs' hundreds of years ago when not enough wind was clearing the air; China can't completely ignore the environment because the costs are simply getting to high. However, it's going to be a long time before they embrace western style pollution controls, because there…

China hasn't been ignoring the environment though and have had Western style pollution controls for years. Unfortunately it's a complicated issue:

http://fortune.com/2017/01/10/china-red-alert-pollution-pm2-...

Anyone who thinks the environment is even remotely a reason for China's success in manufacturing is frankly ignorant.

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

#187

Post by elefanten »

okreallywtf wrote: post #170
tn135 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Financial interests convinced liberals and conservatives alike that globalism was a good thing (for altruistic or selfish reasons respectively). Instead it just gave Capital access to cheap labor and totally fucked the American worker. Lump of Labour fallacy. The way both Liberals and Conservatives speak as if USA is marred with some wide scale unemployment. It is as if Americans would love to have sweatshops where…

I think a lot of us thought that economic indicators would make it hard for the republicans to make the case that things were bad and they could make things good but we forgot unfortunately that perception is all and the actual numbers don't mean anything. Under 5% unemployment doesn't mean anything if you can find enough salt-of-the-earth middle class white people who are struggling, because that is enough to convin…

But the policies of this administration and the Republican Capitol Hill have been the opposite of what you describe. They've stayed away from a strong protectionist turn so far. And they're definitely not enacting policies to address income inequality... the healthcare bill passed in the House today is quite the opposite.

edit - I agree with your point that voter perception matters a lot. But I think the Republicans just lied to exploit that perception. They're not actually changing their ideology and agenda to do any of it though.

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

#188

Post by xapata »

malandrew wrote: post #87
alexbeloi wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reducing/removing taxes from abroad just incentivizes the firm to move as much of their profit abroad as possible, leaving nothing but domestic holding companies that report losses on behalf of their profitable overseas subsidiaries.

Huh? These customers will sell wherever there are customers. They can't just move their American customers abroad so they earn money from them outside the country.

There's such a thing as internal charges. The customer buys from the domestic subsidiary at low margin, the domestic subsidiary sources from the foreign subsidiary at a tremendous margin.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-16/the-insid...

"The investigators say the company channeled profits from dozens of countries through two Ireland-based units. In a system at least tacitly endorsed by Irish authorities, earnings were split, with the vast majority attributed to a “head office” with no employees and no specific home base -- and therefore liable to no tax on any profits from sales outside Ireland. The U.S., meanwhile, didn't tax the units because they’re incorporated in Ireland."

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

#189

Post by LiweiZ »

ardit33 wrote: 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…

In that case, the market demand would sink. Everything needs recalculated.

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

#190

Post by specialist »

tn135 wrote: post #147
ryanmarsh wrote: post #9

> 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…

> Financial interests convinced liberals and conservatives alike that globalism was a good thing (for altruistic or selfish reasons respectively). Instead it just gave Capital access to cheap labor and totally fucked the American worker. Lump of Labour fallacy. The way both Liberals and Conservatives speak as if USA is marred with some wide scale unemployment. It is as if Americans would love to have sweatshops where…

"USA continues to enjoy very good employment..."

Measured how? Labor participation rate? Average household income? GDP per capita?

"better than most developed countries..."

Better than the 2000s? Better than the 80s? The 60s?

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