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Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

asia.nikkei.com

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Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#181

Post by bigcat12345678 »

alephnerd wrote: post #116
eej71 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, the decline in needing cheap labor is going to be a problem for large countries like China. China needed those cheap labor factories to be the engine to help lift people out of rural poverty. Unfortunately that engine will now falter and many will be left behind. For an eye opening survey here, I highly recommend the book Invisible China.

+1 on Invisible China. Scott Rozelle's group at the FSI has been doing some good work on trying to alleviate the opportunity gap that exists in several prefectures in the PRC.

Xi Jinping know this problem all along. And his poverty eradication project is essentially siphoning embezzled fund from corrupted officials into rural areas.

I bet Xi Jinping knows research work in the similar lines of Invisible China.

https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l....

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#182

Post by bigcat12345678 »

yrgulation wrote: post #49

At some point we should outsource our armies and perhaps even governments. If a real war starts we can use the services industry, unless we outsource that too. We’ll send the lawyers and software engineers in, and power our cardboard tanks with wood and steam. I was hoping the pandemic and the war in europe would teach us that electronics, particularly high end, should be relocated to allied countries at the very lea…

> At some point we should outsource our armies and perhaps even governments.

Chuckled here.

Do you realized that normal American people are being outsourced and they don't have much say to determine the process?

Your words read like a slave joking with fellow slaves: one day our master will outsourcing to some other nations.

That's truly sad analogy.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#183

Post by willcipriano »

AYBABTME wrote: post #26

I don't really see what the problem is with offshoring. If other people elsewhere want to work for cheaper, then it's fair competition. It's not like protectionism would work long term anyways. And in this particular case, Vietnam is more aligned with the US than China, geopolitically, so this makes a lot of sense.

We offshore, but only the pleb stuff. God forbid you want to get a degree in a foreign country, or import medicine, or a doctor. Ask to do any of those and it's protectionism all day long.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#184

Post by nyolfen »

koheripbal wrote: post #38
mgraczyk wrote: post #19

A lot of comments here are criticizing Apple for chasing cheap labor. Ignoring for a second the fact that this has a lot more to do with geopolitics and hedging geopolitical risk, I think it's important to think more carefully about the impact of companies investing in developing economies. By and large, the factory work done by people in developing economies is dramatically better in terms of quality of life and saf…

There is a lot of dishonesty around Westerners complaining about foreign cheap labor. They claim to be championing labor rights, but they are often just angered at companies for stopping all manufacturing in the West. They see it as an obvious weakness in their ideology that companies can just walk away from their labor movement and go elsewhere. The obvious truth, and what literally all of these Vietnamese workers w…

> They see it as an obvious weakness in their ideology that companies can just walk away from their labor movement and go elsewhere.

it's true! we can't force anybody to use our labor. but we can control access to our markets.

you don't have to be a union activist to recognize that exporting american manufacturing jobs has been disastrous for our domestic working class.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#185

Post by [deleted] »

baybal2 wrote: post #60
koheripbal wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of dishonesty around Westerners complaining about foreign cheap labor. They claim to be championing labor rights, but they are often just angered at companies for stopping all manufacturing in the West. They see it as an obvious weakness in their ideology that companies can just walk away from their labor movement and go elsewhere. The obvious truth, and what literally all of these Vietnamese workers w…

95% of Vietnamese support capitalism: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/03/13/vietnam-... thus making it the most capitalist country in the world... Second in line is Bangladesh P.S. USA had a capitalism approval around 70% in the same survey.

[deleted]

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#186

Post by koheripbal »

fiftyfifty wrote: post #129
mgraczyk wrote: post #19

A lot of comments here are criticizing Apple for chasing cheap labor. Ignoring for a second the fact that this has a lot more to do with geopolitics and hedging geopolitical risk, I think it's important to think more carefully about the impact of companies investing in developing economies. By and large, the factory work done by people in developing economies is dramatically better in terms of quality of life and saf…

I think many of us would be more supportive of outsourcing manufacturing to developing countries if their government aligned more with Western ideals. The fact is many countries, like Vietnam, are still "developing" because they have authoritarian governments that have been oppressing their population to some extent keeping their labor cheap while stunting their economic potential. We see the problems with this situa…

It would be helpful to characterize them as "democratic" ideals - not "western" ideals. There is nothing intrinsically "western" about human rights.

In fact, calling them "western" ideas is exactly how autocracies belittle them to their people.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#187

Post by rowanG077 »

wbsss4412 wrote: post #178
atwood22 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? Most people's entire existence is predicated on unsustainable consumerism. There is literally too much to care about. If you require that people must care about all issues to care about any issue, then progress won't be made. Maybe that's your intention.

I don’t require everyone to care the same about all issues, that wasn’t my point. My point was people who care about labor rights, shipping jobs offshore, etc are selective about those specific issues. Never said they had to care about other issues.

That's the same thing. It's just an arbitrary line in the sand you have drawn where you say if care about these issues but not these you must be dishonest.

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#189

Post by erichocean »

upupandup wrote: post #147
surfpel wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a lot of dishonesty around Westerners complaining about foreign cheap labor. This is a strawman. You're conflating different groups of people with different interests. Some people complain about labor conditions, some people complain that jobs are leaving the country. Almost nobody is "dishonest" about this.

The people complaining on Twitter that foreign cheap labour is being used are writing on devices that were produced by that same labour. Those very same people are the ones that are demanding that we bring those labour back but unwilling to brunt the cost that companies will then pass on to those same customer. It's not a strawman its the reality of Western society, whatever feels wrong is totally and completely deta…

> but unwilling to brunt the cost that companies will then pass on to those same customer

HUGE "citation needed" here. Apple did a study years ago (when Obama was President) and the cost to manufacture iPhones in the US was well under 10% of the total cost, by their own calculations.

The cost of labor in China has only gotten worse since then (hence the move to Vietnam in the OP).

Re: Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook

#190

Post by xenospn »

upupandup wrote: post #151
dylan604 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long before Vietnam pulls a move from China's playbook where they start to manufacture things based on the plans foreign companies brought them and sell the product under Vietnamese company brands?

They've already pulled this on Samsung but it has nowhere to go. Where else can it find tens of millions of young workers?

SE Asia has plenty.
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