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Apple commits $430B in US investments over five years

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Re: Apple commits $430B in US investments over five years

#161

Post by warkdarrior »

RhodoGSA wrote: post #144
imtringued wrote: post #38

I don't care why they are doing this, but it should have happened a long time ago. The cynism here is disappointing. If companies start investing their money domestically then excess savings will fall, deflationary pressures will be gone and the economy will start growing quickly again and that means wages will grow too.

My money SHOULD be worth more tomorrow than it is today. Tomorrow the economy is just a tad bit more productive, so my dollar should go further... Why is deflation a curse word nowadays? I feel one of governments only role is to ensure that the dollar is not being debased and slowly losing value of time or atleast at a rate that is known. When the FED prints an unlimited supply of money, it breaks down the social con…

> My money SHOULD be worth more tomorrow than it is today.

It is very simple why this is not a good policy.

Let's say you are a software engineer working on some software product/service. You are working hard on that software, adding features, fixing issues, maintaining it, etc. The buyer pays you $100 today for that software.

Tomorrow you release a new version, with lots of upgrades and new capabilities. The buyer for this software says "my money should be worth more tomorrow than it is today" so they offer only $80 for the new version. Boom -- your work is worth less every day!

Re: Apple commits $430B in US investments over five years

#162

Post by sosborn »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #138
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If crazy tax schemes are legal, that's the politicians' fault for not fixing them, not Apple's (who has a duty to shareholders to, you know, not pay more taxes than they have to).

> If crazy tax schemes are legal, that's the politicians' fault for not fixing them, not Apple's 100% agreed. > who has a duty to shareholders to, you know, not pay more taxes than they have to I don't believe they have any such duty. Corporate charitable giving is a really big thing.

Corporate charitable giving is also a means to stay in the public's good graces. It is a long-term play for profit. (I'm not arguing that it is a bad thing).

Re: Apple commits $430B in US investments over five years

#163

Post by Angostura »

delfinom wrote: post #52
jacobr1 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4. Apple was planning to do these things anyway as part of normal operations, and is just spinning them as "investment in the country"

Yep, all tech companies have seen the writing on the wall for overconcentrating their operations in California. People in general have become more and more hesitant to move there for a wide platitude of reasons from absurd cost of living to issues such as mass wildfires. They've realized that perhaps, just perhaps, they could afford to have more than one large corporate campus at their scale of fuck you money. Which…

Just an FYI - I'm not sure what word you were reaching for, but it wasn't 'platitude' in this context.

Perhaps 'plethora' or 'multitude'.

Re: Apple commits $430B in US investments over five years

#164

Post by throwaway2037 »

rllearneratwork wrote: post #158
RhodoGSA wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - we do and are seeing rapid inflation. We see rapid asset inflation across the board. Check recent commodity prices across copper, lumber, food, water etc. Everything has been rising dramatically during the period that the world has been practicing what you call 'Quantitative easing'. Inflation isn't just related to Forex if all the worlds currency's are inflating, albet just maybe faster than the USD. And the o…

This. peoples see that the prices of a dozen of eggs or meals don't go up and say: "No inflation! See!". All this while all assets are getting more expensive, the prices of housing, healthcare, education, retirement and even top of the line electronics (flagship iPhone price now vs 10 years ago) are getting more expensive.

But entry-point Xiaomi and Huawei phones are much cheaper than 10 years ago. How do you explain that? That feels like deflation. Using the Apple iPhone as a proxy of inflation felt by middle class (and below) is dubious. That product is essentially a Veblen good (Wiki says: "a type of luxury good for which the demand for a good increases as the price increases, in apparent contradiction of the law of demand"). Look at the price of desktop computers, laptops, Raspberry Pi-equivalents, and flat-screen TVs: It is shocking how much prices have fallen (vis-a-vis price/performance) over the last 10 years.

"The price of eggs." What next: Will you talk about low interest rates "punishes savers"? What portion of wages do highly developed countries spend on food? (Exclude [South] Korea and Japan, which are extreme outliers.) The answer: Vanishingly small amounts. And, it continues to fall each decade.

"[P]rices of housing, healthcare, education, retirement" -- is this true in socialist market economies in Continental Europe, like Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Finland, Denmark? No, it is not. I will admit: Life for middle class (and below) in the UK is surely worse in the last decade for all of the above that you mention.

Re: Apple commits $430B in US investments over five years

#165

Post by RhodoGSA »

warkdarrior wrote: post #161
RhodoGSA wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My money SHOULD be worth more tomorrow than it is today. Tomorrow the economy is just a tad bit more productive, so my dollar should go further... Why is deflation a curse word nowadays? I feel one of governments only role is to ensure that the dollar is not being debased and slowly losing value of time or atleast at a rate that is known. When the FED prints an unlimited supply of money, it breaks down the social con…

> My money SHOULD be worth more tomorrow than it is today. It is very simple why this is not a good policy. Let's say you are a software engineer working on some software product/service. You are working hard on that software, adding features, fixing issues, maintaining it, etc. The buyer pays you $100 today for that software. Tomorrow you release a new version, with lots of upgrades and new capabilities. The buyer f…

Very good point and I think your right. Maybe deflationary pressures on the economy would only lead to more centralization of assets than we already have today. One pedantic point to make though; Technically, that $80 is worth more today so it's not like "Your work is worth less every day". it's the same exact thing in your example.

Re: Apple commits $430B in US investments over five years

#166

Post by throwaway2037 »

RhodoGSA wrote: post #150
throwaway2037 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am confused by this comment. "[M]any trillion dollars of money printed recently" -- are you talking about the US Federal Reserve? That isn't money printing; it is quantitative easing -- now also practiced by European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, and Bank of England. It does not cause inflation. If anything, weirdly, it appears to cause deflation. Money printing is Weimar Republic (~1920s) or Zimbabwe (2000-2010). I…

Yes - we do and are seeing rapid inflation. We see rapid asset inflation across the board. Check recent commodity prices across copper, lumber, food, water etc. Everything has been rising dramatically during the period that the world has been practicing what you call 'Quantitative easing'. Inflation isn't just related to Forex if all the worlds currency's are inflating, albet just maybe faster than the USD. And the o…

To be clear, you wrote "rapid asset inflation". For middle class and below, that can only mean buying a house. There are no other economically significant assets they own. (Cars are a stretch!) For all other items, is there significant inflation? No.

"IMF is based in USD" -- Are you not familiar with special drawing rights (SDR)? Please explain if I do not understand your comment.

Re: Apple commits $430B in US investments over five years

#167

Post by RhodoGSA »

dragonwriter wrote: post #157
RhodoGSA wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - we do and are seeing rapid inflation. We see rapid asset inflation across the board. Check recent commodity prices across copper, lumber, food, water etc. Everything has been rising dramatically during the period that the world has been practicing what you call 'Quantitative easing'. Inflation isn't just related to Forex if all the worlds currency's are inflating, albet just maybe faster than the USD. And the o…

> Yes - we do and are seeing rapid inflation. No, we aren’t. > We see rapid asset inflation across the board. “Inflation”, without modifiers, refers to consumer price inflation (final goods and services). Asset inflation is a different thing, as is monetary inflation. Monetary inflation can contribute to both asset inflation and consumer price inflation, but those two outcomes are somewhat in tension; asset inflation…

Well, yes - You're right. Consumer price inflation does lag behind raw material prices by a couple years since most companies have pricing agreements in place. Just because this lag isn't happening yet, doesn't meant it's not happening and will continue to happen in the future.

Re: Apple commits $430B in US investments over five years

#168

Post by dragonwriter »

rllearneratwork wrote: post #159
dragonwriter wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes - we do and are seeing rapid inflation. No, we aren’t. > We see rapid asset inflation across the board. “Inflation”, without modifiers, refers to consumer price inflation (final goods and services). Asset inflation is a different thing, as is monetary inflation. Monetary inflation can contribute to both asset inflation and consumer price inflation, but those two outcomes are somewhat in tension; asset inflation…

have you seen the prices of housing, healthcare, childcare, education and retirement for over the last 5 years?

> have you seen the prices of housing, healthcare, childcare, education and retirement for over the last 5 years?

“retirement” isn’t a good or service.

Childcare has inflated slightly faster than general inflation over the last 5 yeara (2.22%/yr vs. 1.86%/yr).

Healthcare has inflated a bit faster (medical care @ 2.46%/yr, hospital and related services @ 3.89%); health insurance, has been notably higher (in large parts due to the federal government failure to follow the law on the ACA) @ 5.98%/yr.

Education has inflated much more rapidly than general inflation, @ 29.15%/yr.

So, what? That’s how aggregates work. Obviously, we could just as easily find a list of consumer goods and services where inflation is lower than general inflation. That wouldn’t prove that inflation is even lower than reported, and neither does higher inflation in some sectors prove that inflation is higher than reported.

Re: Apple commits $430B in US investments over five years

#170

Post by Covzire »

simonh wrote: post #116
gruez wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Owning your own fabs is a great way to end up being stuck on a node, like intel.

This is almost right, but TSMC is a fab operator yet they seem to have transitioned to 5nm just fine. However you are correct in that TSMC still owns and operates its older node fabs. Today's cutting edge fab is tomorrow's legacy fab producing no-longer cutting edge commodity parts. This is why Apple won't buy any fabs or fab operators themselves.

Still they could sell foundry services for any spare capacity, or sell them to another company when it's no longer using them for cutting edge. I'm sure there's a very good reason they're not going that route but I can't help but think the whole world would be better off if the players that can afford it would operate their own fabs.

I guess as long as Apple thinks they can remain the highest bidder at TSMC and China doesn't invade there is no reason to think their supply is threatened.

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