California’s Silicon Valley is a microcosm of America’s new extremes of wealth and poverty. Business is better than it’s been in a decade. Facebook, Google and Apple have minted hundreds of new tech millionaires. But not far away, the homeless are building tent cities along a creek in the city of San Jose. Homelessness rose 20 percent in the past two years, food stamp participation is at a 10-year high, and the average income for Hispanics, who make up a quarter of the population, fell to a new low of about $19,000 a year — in a place where the average rent is $2000 a month.
[...]criticize the working conditions for those who put your iPhone together, tiny piece by tiny piece, and it’s likely you’ll get hit with some variant of this threadbare counterpoint: Well, by Chinese standards, it’s actually pretty good. Did you know they get free housing? And they’re sure better off than they are back in their village.
We’ve already established that “by Chinese standards” doesn’t mean much. And the Workers could always have it worse! fallacy, that it’s somehow acceptable to cheer a man sleeping in a slum because he isn’t sleeping in the mud, might go back farther in time, but it was put forth in its most racist, salient form 236 years ago, by Scottish philosopher and OG factory cheerleader Adam Smith:
Compared, indeed, with the more extravagant luxury of the great, [a common worker's] accommodation must no doubt appear extremely simple and easy; and yet it may be true, perhaps, that the accommodation of an European prince does not always so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant, as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king, the absolute masters of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savages.
Because when you pay $600 for an iPad, you shouldn’t have to feel bad about the people who died making it.
New iPad App Protects You From The Horrifying Truth Of How Your Ipad Was Made. | Happy Place.
In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.
However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.
Apple’s iPad and the Human Costs for Workers in China – NYTimes.com.
Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.
Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.
The president’s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.
via Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class – NYTimes.com.
from @hassankhan:
“Apple is worth more than 45 days of worldwide oil consumption – Roughly $7 billion per day assuming 86 million barrels a day at $83 per barrel (Nymex Crude)”
Things Apple is Worth More Than | 45 Days Worth of Global Oil Consumption.