Apple Goes On A Hiring Spree In China

[jtuck004]

20. Yes, on both of those points. One of the big subsidies that workers have had

over the years is heath care they worked for, but were paid by employer funds that were not taxed. That is going to be over as the costs are shifted to the worker, and taxed.

And, so far at least, we still add a couple million people a year who will need training, etc.

But even if people strike, what do they strike for? McDonalds workers going from a wage that they can't live on to a wage that they can barely live on? The low-paid and service jobs are the only ones we can't really export. There will be some service workers unions, but it's very doubtful they will hold much political power, nothing like the unions of old.

Down the road the people and robots making the machines they work with are making 32 or 3 times that, but where there used to be 10,000 people in the factory, now there are 300. And the better paid ones have relatively decent working conditions and no "consciousness" of being oppressed.

But the labor pool is no longer just the United States - now we are competing with the world. Apple hires workers in China, the well-paid ones with a college degree to work on their phones to be sold in the stores here. Well-paid, college degree = $22 day. So if the better-paid knowledge workers become too much trouble, they will find themselves competing against workers in other countries. And while we could then raise tariffs and isolate ourselves, we are fooling ourselves if we think the world must do business with us. One just needs to look around and see the contracts China is creating with Brazil, Russia doing business with others. We still have a bit of a toehold in some areas, like airplanes, but even that has a point beyond which we become of less value.

And we can only get taxes from people that are working.

Interesting discussion. We shall see what happens...