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

washingtonpost.com

231–240 of 288 posts

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

#231
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU is unelected? Member countries send their own representatives to the EU Parliament; they send council members to the European Council. The ECB is nominated by the EC. The U.S. Federal Reserve commissioners and chairman are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

Many would consider that unelected. I'm sure you draw the line somewhere too: I doubt you consider every government employee elected just because you can draw a chain of responsibility back to some elected official.

Please don't backpedal by going into the definition of the word. The rhetorical value of "unelected" was to paint the EU and Federal Reserve as unrepresentative.

Hell, by your logic, the U.S. Senate before the 20th Century wasn't elected because they were elected by state legislatures instead of popular elections.

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

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. I've always thought that improving the economies of other nations is in our own ultimate self-interest.

Sure and in the cases where it is in our self-interest then go ahead, but the whole reason we've got this "populist uprising" is because people are looking around and seeing a lot things being done that aren't in their interest.

A change can be very bad for a group within a country, but better for the long-term self-interest of the country as a whole, though.

If a globalization measure pushes a large number of Americans out of jobs temporarily, it could be the basis of such a "populist uprise", but couldn't it be better for the country as a whole if it opens up new areas for economic growth, even on a purely self-interested level?

And couldn't part of the gain for America be in building up a prosperous nation with trading ties? Not to mention the lower risk of conflict with another nation with whom America has such ties?

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

#233
post #147

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> 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…

> The way both Liberals and Conservatives speak as if USA is marred with some wide scale unemployment. Are you unaware of the steadily declining Labor-force Participation Rate? [1] [2] 1. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=dBkS 2. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/03/the-disappea...

I think you're correct to highlight the labor force participation rate but there doesn't appear to be an upper age cutoff on these stats, which is going to skew things.

"16 years and older employed or looking for work..."

Shouldn't it be something like 16 years to 66 years old? The boomers are getting older. Or even better, 20 to 70. I'm not really worried if people are delaying entry to work because they're still full time students or stopping work after they become eligible for full Social Security benefits.

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

#234
post #206
post #192

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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 smartpho…

Sure TV's and chinese electronics are cheaper. Houses, healthcare, and education are not. Instead of making 55k a year at the GM plant, they're making 22k as a cashier at Dollar General.

The flood of cheap goods destroyed communities that depended on manufacturing work

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

#235

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> The deal went south It wasn't that the deal went south, it was that the company was unable to produce & deliver the product that they said they could, at the price they agreed to. GT bet the company on being able to fulfill their contract with Apple, and failed.

> it was that the company was unable to produce & deliver the product that they said they could, at the price they agreed to How is that not the deal going south?

Maybe it's not, but I think of "the deal went south" more as "negotiations broke down", instead of "it cost more to make the things than one party agreed to pay for them."

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

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people seem worried about the number of factory workers in a way in which they do not worry about number of architects. That's because millions of people were factory workers living a cozy life back until a few decades ago and now they (and their kids and communities) are struggling to make ends meet. Millions of people weren't architects. Not much "glamorizing of factory jobs" is needed to explain their complains.…

Is that really true though? Is the unemployment rate higher now than it was in some golden age in cultural memory? http://cdn.tradingeconomics.com/charts/united-states-unemplo...

You can have a job making 55k and a job making 20k, you're employed but your material condition declined

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

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The way both Liberals and Conservatives speak as if USA is marred with some wide scale unemployment. Are you unaware of the steadily declining Labor-force Participation Rate? [1] [2] 1. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=dBkS 2. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/09/03/the-disappea...

I think you're correct to highlight the labor force participation rate but there doesn't appear to be an upper age cutoff on these stats, which is going to skew things. "16 years and older employed or looking for work..." Shouldn't it be something like 16 years to 66 years old? The boomers are getting older. Or even better, 20 to 70. I'm not really worried if people are delaying entry to work because they're still fu…

Interestingly enough, it's incidental to prime-age men (25-54) and more correlated with marital status than race or age: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/the-mis...

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

#238
post #137

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>sort of original sin that must be atoned for by self-flagellation. whether it's original sin aside (though i do believe it is) where do you see self-flagellation? i'm simply saying i'm okay with china becoming more competitive and market forces taking their natural course.

You're okay with a communist state one-party dictatorship that creates massive pollution and has poor human rights standards becoming the world superpower?

lol wut. talk about strawman

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

#239

> 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…

It's not like it wouldn't have happened anyway. That aside, globalism _is_ a good thing (the flipside is that some items are just cheaper), but it's not been as good for everyone. Specific jobs appear and disappear all the time. It's just the natural flow of things in a developing society.

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

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If there is a 35% tax on profits in the US and a 0% tax in Europe and the cost of customer acquisition is similar, the obvious conclusion is to invest in your European branches until cost of acquisition becomes so high that it makes sense to invest in the US again. So yes, you cannot immediately trade out American customers for customer abroad, but it makes foreign investments more profitable than domestic ones. Lead…

If this was actually a real concern and not a strawman argument, these businesses wouldn't even bother with having any business in the US at all.

From a purely theoretical position, your argument may not make sense, but the already have all this money earned abroad and staying abroad paying low taxes there.

Basically all companies that are in this position are those that are so large that they are looking for returns on investment wherever they can find them, domestically and abroad. A smaller company with less profits to reinvest would likely perform the calculation you made, but then again they'd be small enough that this wouldn't even matter.

These companies want to bring these profits back to the US. What is worth barring is the ability to pay them back out as dividends in exchange for the tax break. Basically, just structure the tax break to make sure that they only get it if the money is funneled into investments in the US only.

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