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| ABC News - Diane Sawyer |
From the NY Times:
When Barack Obama joined Silicon Valley’s top luminaries for dinner in California last February, each guest was asked to come with a question for the president.
But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?
Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.
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.
“Companies once felt an obligation to support American workers, even when it wasn’t the best financial choice,” said Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Labor Department until last September. “That’s disappeared. Profits and efficiency have trumped generosity.”
“We shouldn’t be criticized for using Chinese workers,” a current Apple executive said. “The U.S. has stopped producing people with the skills we need.”
But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?
Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.
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.
“Companies once felt an obligation to support American workers, even when it wasn’t the best financial choice,” said Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Labor Department until last September. “That’s disappeared. Profits and efficiency have trumped generosity.”
“We shouldn’t be criticized for using Chinese workers,” a current Apple executive said. “The U.S. has stopped producing people with the skills we need.”
From ABC News:
The facts show that our nation is addicted to imports. In 1960, foreign goods made up just 8 percent of Americans' purchases. Today, nearly 60 percent of everything we buy is made overseas.
Manufacturing is not a 'sexy' topic, even on a physics blog.
However, it is a means by which we grew a middle class in this nation. As manufacturing goes, so goes education or the need to educate a replacement workforce.
I am participating in something at Bethel, the church my wife and I now attend in New York. I patterned it after an event at Galilee Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, NC called "Super Saturday," essentially a career day. We're working on exposing the kids to STEM careers and possibly becoming those replacement workers.
However, it's not just up to a teacher in class: a systemic change in our 'entertainment-focused,' consumer-driven society, meaning American society has to happen. A sense of responsibility to "ourselves and our posterity," a getting up not just to paint protest signs, but to actually work at mastering a subject that scares the BEJESUS out of us, a courage to plod forward to tutorials after school and on weekends, online help (← this is a good site), and the upper classmen that seems to have the subject mastered.
We need a Sputnik Moment, or like climate change: we can't easily turn around past the tipping point.
Technology Review: Manufacturing is Key to Innovation as Well as Jobs
NY Times: Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class
NY Times: Voices of Chinese Workers in the 'iEconomy'
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