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

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

#201
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Globalism is, and will continue to, happen no matter what the US does. The US needs to figure out how to make it work for the long term. Protectionism won't work. You might as well be a cooper or haberdasher trying to pass laws to keep people using barrels and hats. People keep trying to either spin globalism as evil or good, but it's neither. It's just something that was going to happen no matter what. The US does n…

Protectionism has proven to work well in some cases in history. You are also misunderstanding by conflating globalism with free trade. The two are related, but not the same. You can be for free trade of goods and services, but not for unelected central powers (i.e. an EU, a central bank). Mainstream academic economists are typically free trade, but we have no science to test this theory so just br careful about drink…

Globalism != Globalisation

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

#202
post #81

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.

I believe that in the 60s, Japan was the source of many of the kinds of imports that we're now getting from China.

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

#203
post #81

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.

[deleted]

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

#204
post #16

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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. Globalism didn't "accelerate" trends that would have happened anyhow, it created those trends. American labor is fucked because of globalism. You might argue the standard of living might have ended up the same under protectionist policies (e.g. poor because of high prices rather than low wages), but I doubt we'd se…

> You might argue the standard of living might have ended up the same under protectionist policies (e.g. poor because of high prices rather than low wages), but I doubt we'd see the same level of inequality under protectionism.

The inequality that you see today wasn't caused by globalism, but by tax cuts on the very rich, which incentivized and legitimized overblown executive pay. All that wealth was then funneled into influencing the govt. to fuck American labor (i.e. ridiculously low minimum wage, further tax cuts for rich, less benefits for the needy etc.).

Globalism is an easy straw man to blame for inequality, but its actually allowed people with stagnant incomes to maintain a certain standard of living (or not let it deteriorate too fast) via cheaper goods and services.

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

#205

I think "Advanced Manufacturing Jobs" are going to be roboticist, machine learning and mechanical engineer related. Foxconn is moving this direction and I'm betting Apple thinks they can do it as well as them. Plus possible tax breaks based on Trump's comments.

Apple isn't probably thinking about doing this themselves. Note that Cook is going to "support," not actually build themselves.

They are most likely to invest in Foxconn to help them open up shops in the US.

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

#206
post #192
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…

Since NAFTA and the opening up of China we in the USA have become far richer, in total GDP and per capita. The problem is that the gains have gone disproportionately to the 1%. I remember clearly during the 80s and 90s that the pro free trade argument from economists was that there would be winners and losers but since we would be richer overall we could use taxes to help out the losers via unemployment, retraining,…

You always pick between alternatives. Are lower income Americans better off with free trade compared to a closed economy? I think the answer is absolutely yes. An average American saves lot more money today buying cheap stuff from Walmart. Lot more than what he/she would have saved with protectionist regime.

More importantly a lot of services that were unaffordable 20 years ago are not trivial. This includes smartphones, flat screen TVs, better quality and safer cars etc. In closed economy you would have struggled for all these things. Just like my home country India.

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

#207
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The worst days are always going to be weather related everywhere, but clam days are really just magnifying the average impact not some weather pattern unique to china.

Perhaps I could give them more credit for real progress, but the root cause is still a disconnect from what's on the books being a long way from what's enforced.

Their smog problems largely relate to cars that would not pass US annual emissions standards from 20 years ago. Similarly coal is never 'clean' but it's not that expensive to dramatically reduce particulate emissions.

And yes, cheap labor etc plays a huge role in some types of manufacturing. But, by subsidizing the inputs and lax enforcement of regulations you see dramatic shifts in many types of production well past their less harmful competitive advantages.

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

#209
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just doing the numbers from a stat standpoint, assuming you need to be in the top 2 percent of intelligence to code, there is a latent pool of 42 million developers in China/India waiting for their "go" signal. Best thing to do imo is hoard and deploy money to investments, because capital is set up to clean labors clock in the coming decades.

> capital is set up to clean labors clock in the coming decades. I think this is true, and I think it will result in massive civil unrest. Economic landscape is not the only thing that will change.

It has already begun. I am eternally amused by the "shock" of self-proclaimed intelligent people at recent political developments. It is all quite rational, and quite predictable.

The true outrage comes from the super-rich, who are beginning to sense that their racket is about to be...disrupted. This is the roaring 20s all over again, except multiplied a thousandfold by technology.

Interesting times, indeed.

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

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same alarmist outcry that happened in the 90s... "India has a billion people who are educated and cheaper! Outsourcing will kill all the tech jobs!" I think the thing that folks keep missing is that technology isn't a zero sum game. So what if there are a shitload of people in the east doing programming cheaper? 9/10 of the 'type' of programming they're doing is grunt work that no one really wants to do a…

china is the most racist and nationalist country in the world and they are doing just fine. Why is the US and Europe the only places that have to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of globalism? Why do China and Japan get free passes while anything done in the west to protect citizens interests is decried as xenophobic?

Careful, you are exposing our dear cocooned friends to facts which may trigger immense cognitive dissonance.

Statements such as this are tantamount to heresy within the new religion of globalism that has plagued the minds of the masses for the past half century.

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