“The death of Steve Jobs was followed by an avalanche of superlatives – brilliant, genius, and visionary among the more common. He was likened to Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Edison,” Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele write for The Philadelphia Inquirer.
“But in the case of Edison, there was one significant difference that went unmentioned. For more than a century, just one of Edison’s inventions alone – the incandescent lightbulb – was manufactured at numerous locations in the United States, providing employment for millions of Americans across family generations,” Barlett and Steele write. “The Apple home computer, not at all. After only one generation, all the Apple manufacturing jobs in America disappeared, as the work of building and assembling the machines was turned over to laborers in sweatshops in China and other countries. Jobs that should have provided employment for Americans for decades to come were terminated.”
Barlett and Steele write, ” Rather than open new plants in other U.S. cities and expand existing operations, the company, as other computer- and electronics-makers were also doing, moved production offshore, largely to China.”
Full hit piece – Think Before You Click™ – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple wouldn’t exist as they are now if they had to try to sell products made in the U.S., at U.S. wages, against rivals assembling their products for much less outside the U.S. Obviously, to anyone not named Donald L. Barlett or James B. Steele, factory assembly jobs are not the only type of jobs that Apple creates. If Bartlett and Steele could see the whole picture, they’d be praising Apple for creating so many U.S. employment opportunities in a tough economy that’s been struggling with job creation for quite some time now. (Please see related articles below for more info.)
“A study by researchers at UC Irvine found that the iPod was responsible for creating nearly 14,000 jobs in the United States and another 27,000 abroad,” Bill Snyder reports for InfoWorld. “And those numbers are a few years old. Given the age of the product today, the iPod may not be generating many new jobs, but think of the positions that have been created subsequently by the far more complex iPhone and iPad.”
“Sure, the iPod, iPad, and iPhone are assembled in Asia. But the real value in those products was added in Cupertino, Calif. — part of Silicon Valley — where they were invented, and in the offices and cubicles of developers around the country who crank out the apps that make the iPad and the iPhone so useful,” Snyder reports. “The offshore jobs are mostly in low-wage manufacturing, while the jobs in the states are more evenly divided between high-wage engineers and managers and lower-wage retail and nonprofessional workers. As a result of this and of cross-country wage differences, U.S. workers earned a total of $753 million, while workers outside the country earned $318 million, the researchers found.
Snyder reports, “The conclusion of that report argues directly against one of the most pervasive myths of today’s economy: U.S. workers and the middle class are not reaping the gains of the high-tech economy.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Lee Maxwell” and “Winston” for the heads up.]
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iOS developer salaries skyrocket – November 9, 2011
How many U.S. jobs has Apple’s iPod created? – July 8, 2011