Why America Doesn't Need More Tech Giants Like Apple 631
Hugh Pickens writes "Optimists says that if only America produced more companies like Apple and Amazon and Google and Facebook, the country's economic problems would be fixed — America could retrain its vast, idle construction-and-manufacturing workforce, and our unemployment and inequality problems would be solved. But Apple's $1 billion new data center in North Carolina has been a disappointing development for many residents, who can't comprehend how expensive facilities stretching across hundreds of acres can create only 50 new jobs, especially after thousands of positions in the region have been lost to cheaper foreign competition. In fact, Apple actually exemplifies some of the reasons why the U.S. has such huge unemployment and inequality problems: 'Digital' businesses like Apple employ far fewer people than traditional manufacturing businesses, Apple's 60,000+ jobs are not just in the U.S. — they're spread around the world. Companies like Apple 'create amazing products and vast shareholder wealth, but they don't spread this wealth around as much as earlier industrial giants did,' writes Henry Blodget. 'So, yes, we should celebrate the success of Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon. But we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking they're going to solve our unemployment or inequality problems.'"
Re:Americans (Score:5, Informative)
Who hurt you man, why so jaded?
Maybe that comes from the fact that Asians are not as lazy and against "stupid jobs" (when they are in fact the most useful ones) as Americans?
A quick google search reveals the average manufacturing job in China pays $134 per month. It has little to do with laziness or stupid jobs, its simple economics.
I've been saying this for YEARS! (Score:5, Informative)
Municipalities and state governments are MORONS. There is not one reason to spend a single cent of tax incentives on a data center. They hear "Google", "Apple", "Facebook", and they have visions of hundreds of highly-paid software engineers sitting in row upon row of cubicles, and then going home to their brand-new houses, spending all their millions in local stores, etc.
Not even the companies themselves promise much in the way of jobs, but the governments aren't paying attention.
If you have finite electrical generating and grid capacity, it's far better to lure in SOME kind of manufacturing facility (they do still exist) then a data center that will book a huge portion of the output while employing a tiny handful of people that really don't get paid that much.
Re:Americans (Score:5, Informative)
But no; everyone just looks at absolute numbers and not relative numbers.
Re:Americans (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Americans (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe with a not so quick Google search there is different data that comes up? [averagesalarysurvey.com]
Career Entries Gross (USD) Average Gross Salary Average Net Salary
General Manager 8 $93,657 595,656 CNY 447,625 CNY
Director 5 $88,050 560,000 CNY 446,000 CNY
IT Manager 8 $69,055 439,187 CNY 348,081 CNY
Manager 7 $59,973 381,428 CNY 300,285 CNY
IT Project Manager 6 $51,834 329,666 CNY 252,666 CNY
Human Resources Manager 6 $43,606 277,333 CNY 209,166 CNY
Architect 6 $35,901 228,333 CNY 181,736 CNY
Manufacturing 11 $32,547 207,000 CNY 176,529 CNY
Engineering Manager 6 $32,128 204,333 CNY 167,500 CNY
Marketing Manager 7 $31,706 201,651 CNY 158,366 CNY
Sales Manager 8 $31,184 198,330 CNY 170,486 CNY
Software Engineer 6 $27,004 171,746 CNY 135,659 CNY
Mechanical Engineer 6 $24,552 156,150 CNY 113,333 CNY
Accountant 5 $18,624 118,450 CNY 86,800 CNY
University Professor 5 $18,006 114,515 CNY 101,800 CNY
Manufacturing Assembly Worker 5 $13,774 87,600 CNY 74,000 CNY
Re:Need (Score:3, Informative)
So, the whole point of "competition" is to eliminate competitors.
No, the point of competition is to sell your goods or services for less than it costs you to supply them. Eliminating a competitor can make that easier to do, because it's one way to increase your price without increasing your costs. However, there's a limit to how effective that can be so long as barriers to entry are low. You must keep your price low enough that it wouldn't profit a potential competitor to enter your market.
~Loyal
"Triple the costs" (Score:5, Informative)
You underestimate how little money companies are prepared to save by betraying their countries.
Re:Jobs aren't the only effect (Score:4, Informative)
That's how barter works. Presumably at least some value was added in the process and thus some wealth was generated.
Re:Americans (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wages as percentage of GDP peaked in 1972 (Score:3, Informative)
It worked in Germany.
Re:50 jobs (Score:3, Informative)
Yup, and now that the $1B construction job is done, do we just ship the construction workers off to "somewhere else"?
You obviously have never worked in the construction trades. They don't just go down to Home Depot and pick up 200 guys from the parking lot to build a complex like this. Nor do they haul a trailer on site, put up a sign saying NOW HIRING, and wait for locals to show up with hammers and work boots. A job like this will be contracted out a large construction company, in this case Holder Construction. They then subcontract to large specialist companies for electrical, plumbing, concrete, ironwork, etc. Those specialist companies, at least the skilled trades ones, will pretty much invariably be union shops. They aren't going to be hiring Jethro the local electrician to wire up the place. Heck, Jethro probably couldn't even get hired by the electrical contractor, since it's highly unlikely that he's a member of the IBEW. Union construction jobs like that do draw from local union members first... but there frequently aren't very many members sitting around waiting for work. Do they put up a NOW HIRING sign then? No, unions are essentially a guild system, structured to keep labor scarce and expensive. They list the available jobs on their web site [ibew.org] and bring union guys to them. Construction workers are highly itinerant, and will go to where the work is. Then, when the work is done, they move on to the next job, in the next town.
No, even the building process didn't directly employ a whole lot of locals, largely only the few that happened to be union guys waiting for work. There was undoubtedly a temporary uptick in the local fast food, liquor store, motel, and prostitution industries, but that's probably the extent of it.
No, that is not it either. (Score:4, Informative)
There is no point in competition for any business. None.
Businesses are FORCED by antitrust laws to maintain a certain level of competition instead of simply eliminating it with any means possible.
If they could get away with it they'd divide the pie into various noncompeting monopolies and live happily ever after.
Perhaps buying off, or taking over or selling a monopoly or two here and there.
And when you have an undisputed monopoly, you don't need to innovate or do research - so even friendly competition through research is simply a drain on your bottom line.
Competition has a point ONLY to the consumer.
So, it is not "to sell your goods or services for less than it costs you to supply them" but for the customer to have the widest choice possible.
Whether they choose according to price, quality, availability, variety, service, color... that is up to the (potential) customer.
All 7 billion and counting of them.
Corporations, companies, businesses are not there "to create profit".
Oh sure. Profit IS the motivation for the owner of the capital to create a business/company - through PROVIDING A PRODUCT OR SERVICE NEEDED BY THE SOCIETY.
If there is no need for the product/service they are providing, there is no need for that kind of a company.
And there is no motivation to create it as there is no profit to be made in things that nobody will buy.
Re:50 jobs (Score:5, Informative)
Yup, and now that the $1B construction job is done, do we just ship the construction workers off to "somewhere else"?
My dad is a retired lineman, and he spent half his career doing electrical construction. Yes, shipping construction workers somewhere else is exactly how it's done. I didn't see much of my dad as a teeneger when he was tramping around the country building towers and stringing cable.
Re:Nike shoes (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Tech giants want to offshore/inshore all jobs (Score:4, Informative)
Yep. The world needs a minimum wage.
That's not the answer. People forget that third world economies are different from first world economies. You can pay a third worlder less. When I was stationed in Thailand in 1974, it was a third world country with a median income of $1,000 per year. But you could rent a bungalow (woman included) for $30, feed four at a nice restaraunt for under a dollar (including expensive American soda), take a bus anywhere in the country for a nickle. They weren't really that poor. Likewise, I'm twice as rich as someone living 200 miles away in Chicago who earns the same wage as me, because verything cost twice as much up there.
What the world needs is for these people to be unionized. Management bargains collectively with you alone, you have no power. They bargain collectively with your own collective, now you have power.
Do you like your 40 hour workweek, sick time, vacations? Thank the unions.
Yep. The world is connected by the intertubes.
That always makes me laugh. Computers haven't had tubes for over fifty years! And to us geezers, and innertube was inside a car's tire.
Re:Nike shoes (Score:3, Informative)
"In China you just don't have that problem. [In America, t]he massive left wing agenda to redistribute the wealth has caused these problems."
Ladies and gentlemen, death93.
Re:Nike shoes (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.newbalance.com/company/committed-to-american-workers/?action=recommendContent&pageID=%2Fcompany%2Fcommitted-to-american-workers%2F%23comment6761&pageTitle=Committed%20to%20American%20Workers [newbalance.com]
In addition, you can even select shoes by either made in america or assembled in america (less than 60% american content).
Re:And who owns those corporate profits? (Score:4, Informative)
Stock market doesn't create money or value, it swaps money from one pocket to another, and some people are so good at swapping money from others pockets to theirs that they become very rich.
In the old days that was called robbery, but now that it's based on whether you got the info first instead of whether you have a gun or not, it's become legit and morally OK ?
Same principle, different mechanisms.