How Apple CEO Steve Jobs jobbed the Left or something

“How do you become a business titan that treats employees like garbage, creates products intended to be monopolies, charges excessive prices that result in outrageous profits, practices significant tax avoidance, and yet not get pilloried (on the contrary, become deified) by the anti-business media? ” Bruce Bialosky asks for Townhall. “It’s simple; you are Steve Jobs and you are just too cool to criticize.”

“As accounted by Walter Isaacson in his recently-published biography of the late Mr. Jobs, the man was a fruitcake (no pun intended since he called himself a fruitarian),” Bialosky writes. “His behavior towards other people was, at best, erratic, and very often anti-social.”

Bialosky writes, “The fact that he broke almost all the rules of the Left and yet remained an icon to them is quite instructive.”

Here are some examples:

1. He was a horrible employer

MacDailyNews Take: Hoo Boy.

1. Apple CEO Steve Jobs gets 90% approval rating from own employees – March 9, 2009

2. He exercised maniacal control over his products, adamantly refusing to consider open platforms. He maintained this closed platform philosophy for the iPod, the iPad, and the iPhone – which is one reason why sales of Google’s Android-based smart phones have now surpassed the iPhone (and also why sales of Android-based tablets will exceed iPads within the next year).

MacDailyNews Take: Wrong again:
• With 8.7% market share, Apple reaps 75% of mobile phone profits – February 3, 2012
• Gartner: Tablet sales to hit 119 million units in 2012; Apple iPad to lead through at least 2016 – April 10, 2012

3. Through extensive marketing, he convinced people to pay more for his products than comparable products offered by his competitors.

MacDailyNews Take: Marketing, eh?
• J.D. Power: Apple ranks highest in smartphone customer satisfaction for 7th consecutive time – March 16, 2012
• Apple sweeps PCWorld Satisfaction Surveys for desktops, notebooks, smartphones, and tablets – December 7, 2011
• Apple Mac tops American Customer Satisfaction Index customer satisfaction for 8th consecutive year – September 20, 2011

4. Steve Jobs was always – and Apple continues to be – a monumental exporter of American jobs. While President Obama is running around accusing Mitt Romney of exporting jobs, he is well aware that Jobs was the master, creating over 700,000 manufacturing positions in China. To his credit, however, Jobs did tell the President to his face that he exported jobs because the educational system in America is disgraceful due to its domination by teachers unions.

MacDailyNews Take: 514,000 U.S. jobs created thanks to Apple Inc. – March 2, 2012

5. Using these business practices, he rang up the largest profits in American history, but does anyone complain about Apple’s outsized profiteering? The Left complains about banks and oil companies and drug companies because they’re not “cool” like Steve Jobs. But Apple’s profit margins are 29.66%, compared to Shell Oil’s 6.74% or Citibank’s 11.73%.

MacDailyNews Take: See our response to #3 and:
• Huge crowds line up for Apple’s new iPad on 1st day – March 16, 2012
• Eager crowds line up for The King of all Smartphones: Apple’s iPhone 4S – October 14, 2011

6. And after earning exorbitant profits, he practiced serious tax avoidance (which I wholeheartedly endorse for any entity, but the Left hates.) What’s fascinating is how the Left protected and excused him for this; in fact, the New York Times just published a serious analysis of Apple’s tax avoidance schemes. It’s obvious that the Times knew about this for years, but chose not to write about it when Jobs was alive… To be fair to the Times, at least they contrasted the tax rate of Apple with that of the Evil Empire (WalMart). Apple’s federal tax rate was 9.8% while the Evil Empire paid 24%. What is a liberal to do?

MacDailyNews Take: Nope:
• The New York Times blows it again: Incorrectly reports Apple’s tax rate as 9.8% when Apple actually paid 24.2% – April 30, 2012
• Apple to The New York Times: We are among the top payers of U.S. income tax – April 29, 2012

7. It wasn’t until late in life that he started to make substantial contributions to charitable organizations. Compared to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, he was never a generous person and chose to live in quite a luxurious life-style.

MacDailyNews Take: Prove “it wasn’t until late in life” that Jobs began to make substantial contributions to charity (Bialosky can’t). Steve Jobs lived with his family in a modest home in a normal neighborhood, without locked gates or bodyguards like many CEOs of major companies and, oh, BTW:
• Bono praises Steve Jobs as generous and ‘poetic’ philanthropist; Apple has been (RED)’s largest contributor to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria – September 2, 2011
• On charity, Steve Jobs has a right to remain silent – August 30, 2011
• Apple helps iTunes users donate to Japan earthquake and tsunami victims – March 13, 2011
• Apple and American Red Cross begin accepting Haiti relief donations through iTunes – January 15, 2010
Steve Jobs, Bono confirm ‘Product Red’ Apple iPod nano, iTunes ‘Red’ gift card – October 12, 2006
• Apple adds ‘Donate to American Red Cross’ section to iTunes Music Store for Hurricane Katrina relief – September 1, 2005

Bialosky writes, “The point of all this is that the Left has always chosen its favored capitalists. Unions anoint business people whom they favor, and our President has been a major practitioner of crony capitalism – picking winners and losers. If Steve Jobs (and Apple) gets a pass for whatever reason, then every business in America should be treated the same way. And we didn’t even mention the child and slave labor used to manufacture Apple’s products.”

Full shmegegge – Think before You Click™ – here.

MacDailyNews Take: Bruce, you’ve accomplished a rather amazing feat: You got everything wrong. Congrats!

[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]