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Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

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Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#181

Post by Symbiote »

awinder wrote: post #148
Symbiote wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, that every manufacturer in the USA has a recycling program, as required by law. Why does Apple's press release get published as news?

Because one way of making new things is to take two existing things and combining them into some new arrangement. It's pretty much humanity in a nutshell. So they took "the us govt requires companies of a certain size to set up recycling programs", combine it with "Apple sells a lot of stuff", and bingo, you've got "apple recycles a ton of stuff" as a new story. It's kinda lazy, but it's low hanging fruit.

So, can we expect "Dell recycles a lot of stuff" next week, and HP the week after, followed by Sony?

Dell have an equivalent page: http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/id/corp-comm/us-goodwill-rec...

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#182

Post by kissickas »

coldtea wrote: post #177
addicted wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1.65 % is not much when Apple makes up such a significant percentage of the phone market. But even out of that 1.65%, iPhones themselves probably make a small percentage because macs are so much heavier. The point of this article is that the media has implied that Apple is getting x pounds of gold by recycling iPhones and macs. In reality Apple is eating about 1.5% of x pounds of gold by recycling iPhones and macs. T…

> 1.65 % is not much when Apple makes up such a significant percentage of the phone market. The excerpt is not about phones though -- it's the 1.65 of total consumer electronics waste in the state. And as far as consumer electronics go, phones are hardly the biggest... > And only a very minuscule percent of the recycling is done by Apple. He vast majority of it was Apple paying 3rd party recyclers to get credit for t…

I would imagine that more phones and computers get recycled (per product bought) than other consumer electronics. If I've spent $400 on a phone, I won't throw it away - if I can't resell it, I'll find out how to properly recycle it.

On the other hand, most other products probably just get thrown out - broken or working chargers, cables, old telephones, etc.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#183

Post by nitrogen »

oldmanjay wrote: post #160
nitrogen wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would bet the median taxpayer would see their costs go up. This is likely true, but I also expect it would be worth it in terms of social stability and progress. It's okay if your costs go up if you also get better health and education out of the deal, so earning power also goes up.

Every voter gets to decide if they find that okay. Your opinion isn't really operative.

I was raised in a very conservative environment. I now hold progressive opinions because I find the arguments compelling. It seems insane to me to deny large segments of the population access to the things everyone else uses to succeed (education and healthcare), and then expect those outcast people not to commit crimes or drain welfare or break down civil society.

There are many who agree, so lots of voters will be voting to express that agreement. You can try to change my mind, but you must do so by solid argument, not by telling me my opinion isn't operative.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#184

Post by nitrogen »

ryanlol wrote: post #180
ericd wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Single Payer would increase healthcare spending by 18T, rather than just moving it around, and increase taxes, while ignoring the part where there's a corresponding decrease in private healthcare spending. The central hook of that WSJ article.

Assuming the 18T figure is correct, how could you just "move it around"?

I think idea is that the money currently spent by employers and individuals on insurance and direct medical costs would instead be spent on healthcare taxes, and that the current private spending is approximately enough to cover public healthcare if redirected.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#185

Post by MagnumOpus »

ryanlol wrote: post #180
ericd wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Single Payer would increase healthcare spending by 18T, rather than just moving it around, and increase taxes, while ignoring the part where there's a corresponding decrease in private healthcare spending. The central hook of that WSJ article.

Assuming the 18T figure is correct, how could you just "move it around"?

Putting it simply, the amount that you pay would be moved from a line item on your pay slip called "private health insurance" paid to Aetna or whoever, to a line item called "medicare contribution" or "national health service contribution" paid to the IRS.

On the back end, rather than Aetna shelling out money to the hospital so that you can get treated for free or cheaply, the government would do so - just like it already does for Medicare and VA.

So it is not $18tn additional burden - it is a similar burden, but not going through the hands of private insurers who take a cut.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#186

Post by nerdponx »

habitue wrote: post #130
c3534l wrote: post #21

What does it say about the world we live in where blogs do more basic journalism than CNN? All that one would have had to do is read the report actually provided. I don't think I'm being too extreme when I say that, apart from maybe PBS, there is no reputable source of news in America. If you don't believe me, pick a random story, watch it as it gets rewritten a million times through Reuters, then check back on the f…

Check out who won the pulitzers in news this year: http://www.poynter.org/2016/here-are-the-winners-of-the-2016... Best investigative journalism: Tampa Bay Times & Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Ever heard of them? This is availability bias. Good journalism is all over the place. If you're looking at CNN and MSNBC and Fox News and lamenting the state of journalism vs. fluff in the modern era, you're looking in the wrong pl…

But that's just the problem. Who goes and seeks it out? Most of the country does not, but at the same time does not share ( or doesn't have the wherewithal to follow through on) the skepticism in this thread.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#187

Post by [deleted] »

abhi3 wrote: post #179
dang wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN threads are supposed to be conversations, and summary comments don't fit with that. Reciting a summary into the public record is a boring addition to conversation in its own right—imagine someone doing this in person—and makes the discussion more shallow, since it's no longer grounded in people having read the story. HN readers can, should, and do read articles, find out what's interesting about them for themselve…

The idea of providing a summary was that many people are busy and knowing what an article is about will enable them to better allocate the small amount of time they can spend in a day on casual reading - on stuff that they are really intrigued by and feel the need to get deeper into and then they can "read articles, find out what's interesting about them for themselves, and bring the insights they've harvested to oth…

[deleted]

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#188

Post by trelltron »

nitrogen wrote: post #183
oldmanjay wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every voter gets to decide if they find that okay. Your opinion isn't really operative.

I was raised in a very conservative environment. I now hold progressive opinions because I find the arguments compelling. It seems insane to me to deny large segments of the population access to the things everyone else uses to succeed (education and healthcare), and then expect those outcast people not to commit crimes or drain welfare or break down civil society. There are many who agree, so lots of voters will be…

For what it's worth, the entire civilised world agrees with you.

Re: Almost Nothing About the ‘Apple Harvests Gold from iPhones’ Story Is True

#189

Post by mattlutze »

morcheeba wrote: post #88
techonup wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This line of argument really needs to be toned down. While it's obviously true that papers like the WSJ, NYT, WashPo, etc. have influential partisan editorial boards, their newsrooms are filled with reporters and editors of various political leanings. More importantly, these reporters are among the best in the country and do their very best to find and report the truth in an unbiased fashion. That's what makes these…

This article turned me off the WSJ: http://www.wsj.com/articles/price-tag-of-bernie-sanders-prop... 18 Trillion -- yikes! It's not until the 5th paragraph that we find out that this includes health insurance and that me and my employer wouldn't have to shell out for that anymore. Does it save me money overall? A question not asked. But they do make a big deal about that number and how alarmed they are at it, even if…

Hmm.

3rd paragraph they break it down some -- 15 Trillion for health care over 10 years, or averaging 1.5 Trillion per year.

There were ~151 million Americans in the labor force and employed last month[1]. If they're the folks that will be paying, then it's something like $9,934 per year in taxes that need to be collected per tax payer, to support the (in 2013) roughly 316 million population[2] of the US with an additional roughly $4,747 in government spending.

(I'm using 2016 employment numbers because 2013 we were still recovering from the recession, unemployment was much higher, and it's better to play with conservative estimates.)

WHO[3] has 2013 numbers indicating Government spend on healthcare at $4,307 per capita, and total spend (govt. + private) at $9,146.

With 2013 numbers, we'd be bumping the public spending on health care to $9,054 per capita.

To note, in 2013, of the US private spending, $3,063 out of $4,839 is on insurance plans. The remaining $1,776 is the per capita out of pocket cost (again, for 2013).

I don't think I know of any single-payer systems around the world that covers all costs. UK, Germany, Sweden [3-5] all have expansive single-payer systems established. The out of pocket is indeed lower for these -- a few hundred to $700 ish per capita vs our $1,700.

Those programs, if you have a gander, are more substantial for the massively lower government spend per capita on healthcare overall. If we're suddenly looking at $9k per capita govt spend, vs the 3-5 for these other states, I'm not sure that we've yet fixed something.

The selling point of the Bernie concept must be putting this initially more-expensive insurance plan in place ($3,xxx vs $4,747) with the goal that sometime after 10 years we'll have seen enough price suppression that our out-of-pocket goes down enough to break even, or start to reduce total costs, over the private-only market.

10 years is a really long time. And adding $9,900 / year on average to each taxpayer seems like a big number.

[1]: http://www.dlt.ri.gov/lmi/laus/us/usadj.htm

[2]: http://www.worldpopulationstatistics.com/us-population-2013/

[3]: http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.country.country-USA?lang=e...

[4]: http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.country.country-GBR?lang=e...

[5]: http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.country.country-DEU?lang=e...

[6]: http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.country.country-SWE?lang=e...

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