Apple should come back to the US

Just_Me_D

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It will never happen. With manufacturing costs here in the US, there's absolutely no way that Apple could make their products here and make a profit. Costs for products would have to go up 75-100% to maintain profitability for Apple. That means your iPhone would be $400 on-contract and your new 13" MacBook Pro would run you $5,000 instead of $2500.

First and foremost, welcome back. It's been a while. :)

Now in regard to your comment, I have never been hired by a union. The paychecks I've received did not bear a union logo or any of its leadership signatures. Furthermore, the jobs that I've had that were NOT unionized paid me quite well. In my experience with unions, ALL of them ended up on the side of greed and thus caused the overall membership harm in the form of job loss. To be fair, a lot of the fault lied with the membership who fail to understand business (operating costs, etcetera). I wonder how many of you would get offended if you started a business, hired employees and paid them what you consider to be a good salary, offered good benefits and treated them well just to find out that they were instituting a union to protect them from your alleged unfair labor practices? What about people who get hired and reject union membership and then get harassed because of that rejection by union members? I've seen it happen with my own eyes. Is that fair? We can't sit here and say that Americans would demand good pay and benefits but then turn around and say that without unions, we would be paid a dollar and hour. That is a crock. Unions, in my opinion, are a blessing that end up being a curse over a period of time.
 

anon(4698833)

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First and foremost, welcome back. It's been a while. :)

Now in regard to your comment, I have never been hired by a union. The paychecks I've received did not bear a union logo or any of its leadership signatures. Furthermore, the jobs that I've had that were NOT unionized paid me quite well. In my experience with unions, ALL of them ended up on the side of greed and thus caused the overall membership harm in the form of job loss. To be fair, a lot of the fault lied with the membership who fail to understand business (operating costs, etcetera). I wonder how many of you would get offended if you started a business, hired employees and paid them what you consider to be a good salary, offered good benefits and treated them well just to find out that they were instituting a union to protect them from your alleged unfair labor practices? What about people who get hired and reject union membership and then get harassed because of that rejection by union members? I've seen it happen with my own eyes. Is that fair? We can't sit here and say that Americans would demand good pay and benefits but then turn around and say that without unions, we would be paid a dollar and hour. That is a crock. Unions, in my opinion, are a blessing that end up being a curse over a period of time.

Unions are a double edged sword...they fight for you while fighting against your well being under the guise of fighting for you.
 

skoenig

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It's also about tax avoidance

Apple Avoids Billions In Taxes


Apple needs a certain structure in place in order to benefit from discrepancies and incentives in different countries. Given the amount of money at stake building a $50M company in Luxembourg or Ireland is nothing compared to $Bs avoided in taxes elsewhere.

Apple isn't alone in being big enough to warrant a sophisticated tax structure. Starbucks, Amazon and others all do the same because ultimately they're responsible to their shareholders not to citizens...


~Steph
 

ame

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Jeez. I went to bed when I should have been continuing this discussion!
Why? For the sake of this discussion, let's say that I applied to work for Company A who paid me a generous salary which gave me the means to better provide for my family. Now, being that you think we should all be paying a TON more in taxes, wouldn't that weaken my ability to better provide for my family? How much of my salary that "I" worked for should i keep, in your opinion? please be specific. Furthermore, if I am to pay a TON more in taxes, is that in addition to or separate from income taxes? Speaking of "income taxes", you do realize that it is a tax on income. Those who do not earn an "income" do not pay income taxes and guess what, a great deal of those people are the very people allegedly in need of help while others are certain wealthy people. You do realize that many of the left leaning politicians are among that 2% and they, too, hide their money offshore to avoid paying taxes. Think of Warren Buffet. Isn't he still fighting to not pay back taxes while hypocritically claiming to be pro-tax? Here's a secret. We've been in a hole for a while and up until March 23, 2011 when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act became effective, everything was salvageable. You're kidding, right?
I absolutely realize that there are people on both sides of the aisle avoid paying their taxes, and that's why I say EVERYONE. And that tax reform is needed to close the loopholes. We all want the services we rely upon, police, fire, roads, etc., how do you expect they be paid for? They are paid for by our taxes, and if we were all paying more and not worrying so much about how to pay less and reduce a deficit created by wars we don't belong in and people not paying taxes at a sustainable rate for services we all demand as entitled Americans, we would have better quality of life, better healthcare coverage (if we had a good socialized system where no one was without good quality coverage that actually was designed to work), and not have everyone working themselves raw to provide for their families and missing time WITH their families. We live to work, not work to live. Maybe Ill make next session tax law instead of constitutional law...

Ok, I can see that there is nothing to be gained here. You are a liberal, pro union woman with an axe to grind. And I am offended that you continue to state that I am what I am and have what I have because I’m a white male. You don’t know me nor do you know anything about me.

I never said that I hated unions. What I said was that they served a purpose, but IMHO, they have outlived that purpose. My father worked hard for everything he got. He actually grew up in an orphanage, and he never for a moment believed that he was entitled to anything that he didn’t earn. And he taught me that, as well. I have a good job, working in IT. I didn’t get here because I was "white" or "male" - and I am offended that you would even suggest that. I got here because I worked to put myself through school. I earned a degree in IT. I started in an entry level position some 30 years ago worked my way up in this industry. It is by the grace of God and my own hard work that I have been able to create a nice, albeit modest life for myself and my family. My wife works at a local university, and she is paid on par with the other workers in her office - regardless of their gender. She has also been promoted over men in her office. And she has lost out on another promotion to a man in her office. I hate to disappoint you, but genitalia has nothing to do with it.

And I find it incredibly suspicious that the only union in the whole country that has "issues" is the union to which my father belonged for all of his adult working life. When I see my brother-in-law go to the GM shop in Flint Michigan and not work (because he’s been assigned to the "job bank"), I can’t help but believe that the unions have a LOT to do with the entitlement mentality in this country. The liberals in charge of the "cradle-to-grave" handouts are also complicit in this B.S., but by and large they are supported by the unions, so IMO, they are one and the same.
Actually that's not what I said. I said they are ONE WITH issues, and that IS because of Union bosses, not because of people like your father. THE one with the most is probably a tossup between teachers and UAW. And I never said I am pro-Union. I just said they are definitely still necessary to protect the working public in this country, from business and from themselves. I am back in school studying law, and presently am in labor and employment law, and found that this last election combined with the research and factual reading I am doing in school is well timed. People in this country are so quick to forget, quick to blame, and quick to hate on Unions, despite Unions being the reason they have what they do have, including weekends for the vast majority of the employed. We as a country also choose to forget what we did to the Native Americans who inhabited this country before we got here and decided it was ours. Like I said earlier in the thread, Howard Zinn's book would open a lot of eyes. People are so quick to forget history. Not just anecdotal evidence, actual recorded historical fact.

Also, I don't know you or anything about you, and regardless of how hard you worked or studied, your gender and race made a massive impact on your employer's decision to hire you, whether you choose to acknowledge that or not. Your dad worked hard to give you a different socioeconomic class than you would have otherwise had which did open the door for you to have better opportunities, opportunities to get the job you had now. But don't think for a minute that your race and gender didn't affect the outcome of your career.

This thread seriously belongs elsewhere in this forum.

And FYI, you are taking this personally, and taking offense, which is unnecessary. I am not offended, nor do I have an "axe to grind". I am trying to engage in an educated discussion with people who have varied opinions and educational backgrounds. Since it's getting out of hand, Ill stop and go back to lighter things. My gloves I won earlier this year were swell the other day when it was friggin freezing out.
 

Fausty82

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In a not totally unrelated vein, I see that Michigan, the home of the US auto industry will become the 24th Right-to-Work state today. There’s a lot of drama around this issue - including a state representative promising "there will be blood" if it happens. Wonder why they’re trying so hart to protect the unions?
 

Just_Me_D

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In a not totally unrelated vein, I see that Michigan, the home of the US auto industry will become the 24th Right-to-Work state today. There?s a lot of drama around this issue - including a state representative promising "there will be blood" if it happens. Wonder why they?re trying so hart to protect the unions?

I suspect it's more about protecting power & status.
 

redbeard

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Utter non-sense? lmao...i quit taking your post seriously when you made the 1950's comparison to modern day manufacturing and being "better off".

Cheap foreign junk...as opposed to the amazing quality of the stuff produced here? Please...you know what the #1 complaint for consumers looking to buy an american made car was for the last 30 years? Cheap, poor quality interior components.

Look, I'm all for bringing jobs to my country, when our country is doing better, even insignificantly, my quality of life increases. At no time would i PREFER, as a citizen, that work and money be sent to another country, but if you deny that our governing regulations, taxations and over bearing stresses they put on companies doesn't send this work else where you're a fool. And if you think the quality of products is some how going to miraculously increase by being produced here, you're not seeing reality. $12/hour laborers in U.S. manufacturing plants = $2/day laborers in overseas manufacturing plants. QC would remain the same or lower in most cases.

I shouldn't take anything serious that is corporate pr parroted by someone I don't know, but I do because our nation has been taken over by corporations that are hell bent on destroying it, and it's going to take everyone, all 300 million of us to stop them. And I care..

And yes, most consumer products these days come from third world nations, and are junk compared to stuff made here. Many of these foreign cars have been made right here in the USA for decades, or in high wage nations like Germany. The most unsafe, poorest quality cars in the world are currently made in China. Virtually everything made in first world nations where components aren't sourced from the cheapest of the cheap, and workers aren't worked to death, is of higher quality. I don't know where you could have picked up this idea that anything made in a third world factory is somehow better than anything made here. There used to be a time where the made in the USA label meant it was the best of the best. Using American cars as an example that nothing made in America can be made well, is not only ridiculous, it's insulting. American cars went through a period where they made a lot of junk, and who was to blame for that? Well it's the executive class that nickel and dimed everything in the pursuit of making the highest profit margins possible. Short sighted management who only seek out the highest short term profits, even if it costs the company in the long run is a reality of the modern American corporation. Yet these executives don't receive 1/10 of 1% the hatred, demonization, and vitriol hurled at them that unions do, even though many of these CEO's are silver spoon elitists that make millions off ruining companies, who have never got their fingernails dirty once in their lives. Why aren't they "lazy, stupid, greedy bums with a sense of entitlement?".

As far as regulations and taxes go, it's nuts to think that somehow business shouldn't be regulated or taxed. Do you want to return to the Gilded age? We saw how that turned out for folks, there's damn good reasons why we have rules in place and taxes. What many people want basically is corporate anarchy, just allow them to do whatever the hell they want, and pay no taxes, all while receiving the benefits off of doing business and living here. Corporations have proven they cannot be trusted, regulations, which are basically laws that businesses have to abide by are necessary, and many companies still thrive here under them. It's just the mammoth corporate interests which want to do away with them so they can fulfill their endless greed. People have to live under laws and rules, it's insane to say that corporations shouldn't have to. And I know they spend a lot of money every year trying to convince people that our relatively weak regulations are such a huge "burden", even as they rake in record profits every quarter..

And yes I think products made here would be better quality than a third world sweatshop, thanks to our regulations for one. And I cannot think of one product that had its quality go up after moving the factory to China, Mexico, Guatemala, or Bangladesh. In fact, I know of many products whose quality went into the gutter after sending the jobs elsewhere. Their retail prices didn't budge, quality went down.. So who benefitted? Not you or me, not the people who lost their jobs, only the executives of these companies gained from this race to the bottom. Why would anyone want to continue down this destructive path?



----

Sorry to bring this back up so late, but I'm just getting back online after buying a new Mac after my windows based pc succumbed to a nasty computer virus..
 

redbeard

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In a not totally unrelated vein, I see that Michigan, the home of the US auto industry will become the 24th Right-to-Work state today. There?s a lot of drama around this issue - including a state representative promising "there will be blood" if it happens. Wonder why they?re trying so hart to protect the unions?

You mean "right to work for less". The states that have passed these un-democratic, oppressive laws all have lower wages than their union counterparts. But hey, that race to the bottom can't come soon enough!

I suspect it's more about protecting power & status.

Of the powerful corporate elite like the Koch bastard brothers, and other UN-American, soul-less evil of the world..
 

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