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I appreciate everyone's responses. I will respond with my own thoughts on this tomorrow.
One thing that really bothers me about US companies is how they have to pay more attention to stock holders then customers. I remember when you listened to what the customer wanted and focused on their requirements. Now companies focus on what the stock holders want and the customer usually ends up with a product thats more about profit then on quality.
Says who? Can you give some examples? Since you started this thread by referencing Apple - let's assume you mean to include Apple in this list. In which I case I absolutely disagree with this statement. Apple has shown that they actually don't really care about their stockholders. If they were beholden to their stockholders they would have been paying dividends prior to this year, and they would be paying a much larger dividend.
As well, Apple has shown that it providing to their customers exactly what they want. Apple can't make the stuff fast enough. Their customers have lots of choices, most of it cheaper. I believe that proves that Apple is paying very close attention to what their customers want, and providing it to them.
But all this about socialist utopias and stock holders is off topic. My focus is simply -is Apple the largest exporter of jobs and money to china-.
You haven't proven that. The jobs in China are new jobs - they did not exist somewhere else and then 'moved'. If the US (for example) had had the capacity to assemble those units, it would have been through automation - which only needs a fraction of the workers.
But it gets more complicated than that. The Foxconn jobs are new jobs. They are assembling parts that are coming from a variety of places, including the US (which has a lot of the chip fab facilities globally). Plus, there are a lot of American jobs involved in Apple products. The initial designing, prototyping, and engineering are done in the US, and these are very highly paid jobs. The marketing effort that goes into selling Apple products is immense, and mostly well paid as well. Once the product starts shipping in quantity, then there are 10s and 100s of thousands of people employed moving and shipping the products, selling the products, supporting the products, etc etc.
These are all 'new' jobs because they did not exist until the Apple started making these huge quantities of product.
Im not interested in why they do it, im after pretty much a yes or no. Im after numbers, like how many people are employed making Apple products overseas and hom much money flows to China.
How about how much money then flows from the workers back to the US as they buy imported goods? And why this obsession with China? Why not Thailand? Or Taiwan? Or Singapore? Where many of the parts that are assembled in China come from. Why not Brazil, where Foxconn has started a factory using (gasp!) Brazilians to assemble products?
Yes your points do have meaning, but they more describe a plague of capitalism gone bezerk with a lack of morals and standards. Ultimately your right, I will be connecting Apple to this issue as the poster child of this plague and worship of profit like its GOD.
Why not the investment banks that started selling nothing, called it 'exotic derivatives' simply because they could mark it up and turn a profit. At least Apple sells a tangible product. Why Apple? They don't dump thousands of gallons heavy crude into a city's drinking water supply and call it the cost of doing business. They don't shoot 34 striking platinum miners.
What matters are profits, not people. Its evil. Real live evil to put the stockholders obsession with profit at any cost before the livelihood of US workers.
Corporations work within the law (in theory, at least). If you don't like the law that says that the owners of the company (the stockholders) get to decide if the company should take the owner's money and give it away, then blame the law. There are, in fact, corporations who have the mandate to give away their money. They are called "Charities".
Its pretty darn evil to be forced to make a decision to outsource to china ....
.... just baseless rhetoric. Back up your assertions, eh?
and how most people have no idea what socialism actually is.
