I truly believe we can have manufacturing jobs in America. We can’t have it while our taxes are sky high–and let’s not forget that when Ford was doing this there as no income tax in America–and our money is being inflated to never never land. Cheap money is a cause of lowered standards of living and our Federal Reserve is amongst the worst in modern day money printing. Our government debt is absolutely ridiculous today. In 1914, we had no such burdens. This is an entirely different time and place and that’s why jobs have left. The government has become an impediment to America’s prosperity.

I buy American–and specifically local to where I am in NY–whenever I can because I believe in a local economy. I don’t know where you get the idea that I’m into what you call “neoliberal globalization”. I believe in free trade because trading helps everyone. I am not more interested in artificially inflating the bank accounts of the 1%. I have no problem if you make your money offering a good or service that people like. If you start taking it from the the people through the government because you’re too big to fail or politically connected, that’s a problem.

I did present facts. My post shows the numeric reality in present day China. Those are the wages. That is their population. Their history is one of chaos, war, and dictators. This is their century to join the rest of the developed world. They are doing it. I am not dilly dallying in what should be’s, what if’s, and feel-good statements, I’m looking at it from what is. And that’s what I see. They will not be poor in 50 years. This argument will be little but a blip in 50 years. Maybe countries in Africa will be the subject of the same discussion but, this is how it has been for hundreds of years from Europe to America. And in end, we’ve all become richer for it. Foxconn’s factories look like a resort compared to those of Ford’s.

it is sad for the families to lose their loved ones. I’m not saying it isn’t. But, accidents happen all the time and this is not like sending children to run across a field to determine whether there are mines there or not. Foxconn tries to keep it’s facilities safe but accidents will happen. That’s all I’m saying.

I had to respond to some of this. Had you just left it as a comment of insulting words then I would have just left it as is. :) Some things just aren’t worth the time.

I do not value profits over people; that’s a generalization. I do business with companies that I feel treat their customers well and their employees. I just believe Foxconn IS treating their employees well. I know that’s the fundamental difference here. I have formal training in marketing but I’m also an avid reader of economics, politics, history, and business-related topics. And even though you wouldn’t be able to tell by this blog, I am a software developer by profession. And yes, I do work on iOS applications along with almost all the popular modern platforms.

And in the last three years, Apple has created an ecosystem for developers like I’ve never seen. They literally created an industry out of nowhere. One that now supports thousands of small and large companies that provide jobs for people here and abroad. It’s created a technology boom that doesn’t appear to be a bubble. It’s garnered more interest in VC investment in tech startups in NY and San Francisco than ever before. Granted, this isn’t all Apple but, they played, and are playing, a huge role.

When I wrote this Foxconn article in 2011, I wasn’t out to prove how great Foxconn was. All I heard was people repeating the same cliche about slave wages and their half-guilty chuckles for owning Foxconn made products. Not a single article I was pointed to included context so I wanted to find out for myself with the data available what the situation really was. And what I found is what I wrote here.

I also thank you for this civil discussion considering the general approach is to use some swear words and call it day.

It does Foxconn no good to kill it’s employees as training new employees is not free.

The Times article noted statements from Foxconn as well which i liked even though I don’t think anyone took Foxconn’s statements as anything outside of an evil corporation lying. They might be or they might not. I have no reason to believe that they are any more truthful that the 1600 Foxconn employees who were interviewed.

I also read about the suicide protest from workers working on XBOX 360′s at Foxconn as well and that was resolved. Why these workers threatened suicide is a mystery to me and I haven’t gone to investigate it so I won’t make any assumptions.

But, to paint Foxconn as some blood-soaked evil corporation is entirely unfair. At the end of the day, there is no reason any of Foxconn’s workers need to work there. If you can explain to me why these people won’t go work for that amazing non-existent fairy tale factory then I’d love to hear it.

Also, a great deal of the anti-Foxconn information comes from anecdotal accounts by former employees. It is not surprising the disgruntled ex-employees have nothing nice to say. It is also not surprising that interviewing 1600 Foxconn employees and discovering that they would all rather work fewer hours for more pay–who wouldn’t? This is what I’m talking about when I say these studies are flawed.

I presented hard facts and maybe that is heartless. Fine. But, I also know that even if we all spent $50 or $100 extra dollars for iPads, iPhones, Macbook’s, XBOX’s, or whatever Foxconn is producing in order to improve the factories or increase pay, that $50 or $100 isn’t a magic trick. That’s money you spent on an iPad instead of at your local grocery store or at Target or somewhere else.

It might not matter if you and i individually decide to do that but, when 15.4 million people–that’s how many iPad’s Apple moved in Q4 of 2011–that’s a lot of money and those are other people’s jobs that you don’t see. I am not prepared to decide that a Foxconn worker is more important than the minimum wage worker with little skills at my local grocery store.

I have no sympathies toward the Chinese government or their arbitrary minimum wage laws; I feel the same about minimum wage laws everywhere. However, it is the stance of the proponents of minimum wage laws and various other laws that an entity evil enough to jail and kill it’s own citizens should also be tasked to handle the well being of its citizens.

As far as that study you noted, I looked at the link you had and there is no hard facts anywhere. An interview with 1600 workers is very obviously not a good source of objective information. Studies that rely on observational evidence or interviews is not hard evidence.

Even if we ignored that flaw, what exactly do you suppose these Chinese workers do otherwise? Foxconn can tell them to work triple overtime but, they don’t have to do. Go work somewhere else. Unless the alternatives are worse. In which case, how moral would it be to force people to live in a worse situation because we don’t like the ones they are currently in?

Life is not easy. If the Foxconn workers don’t like their job, they can go work somewhere else. If there’s no other options then, well, that is life. If you want something better, you work for it. No one owes anyone anything and there is never a guarantee anyone will get what they want.

I don’t need to rationalize technology; I know it does the world good. It is those who walk around believing a poorly paid worker at a Foxconn worker is suffering so that they can have an iPhone that needs to rationalize–by guilting themselves or some other way.

The options these Chinese workers have is abject poverty on a farm or a means to better their lot in life at a Foxconn factory. If there was another way, they’d do it. To think that poor people in China are too stupid to figure that out is insulting to them.

But, I agree.

Interesting viewpoint on the situation, and probably correct on the face of it. Unfortunately, in order to actually eat ‘humanely’ raised livestock, you’d have to either raise it yourself, or trust someone else to do it. To me, this means buying locally where I’d be aware of the practices on the farm in question. To trust some sort of formal certification process is like trusting that food labeled ‘organic’ never saw a pesticide, herbicide, or chemical fertilizer in it’s life. Lobbying groups have already muddied those waters. Don’t even get me started on the definitions of ‘free range’ and ‘cage free’. So, until I’m back in a position to locally source any meat I may want to consume, I’ll stick to being a vegetarian, although technically an ovo-pescatarian. To dispel any assumptions, I’ll also mention that I’ve hunted, fished, and been in a small scale slaughterhouse, none of which affected my decision to eat meat. Driving by a industrial chicken ‘factory’ did more, that and seeing conditions in which the food we eat lives.

Still, I encourage those who are sticking with their meat to make the decision to buy ‘free range’ and ‘cage free’ even if the definition falls short of what you might expect. It’s better than doing nothing.

The analogy of smoke and fire is faulty at best. Where there’s fire, there’s bound to be smoke because smoke and fire go hand in hand. However, suicide and long work hours do not correlate nearly as well. It’s not even close.

I also did not say the suicides are all a big coincidence. I just said I do not know why they are committing suicide en masse but, I noted that Foxconn is subsidizing deaths. I’ll quote myself from the second paragraph:

“Most of the outrage over Foxconn came about as reports of their employees committing suicide piled up. Why these folks are committing suicide is anyone’s guess. However, this big bad slave driving company gives the families of deceased employees 8.5 – 10 years worth of wages.”

If you are saying the correlation between a great deal of work hours and suicide are as tight as that of fire and smoke then one would expect suicides to be happening to every employee there. It is not. Accounts in this country work just as many or more hours during their busy season and we do not have mass funerals for accounts during this time.

If you would like to demonstrate how the everybody wins part is bogus, please do. Otherwise, you just sound like you’re blowing smoke. I’m not saying I know everything but, I demonstrated facts in terms of Foxconn’s wages and working hours as well as the economic principles of value and how economies grow. You are more than welcome to refute it. Calling it bogus demonstrates nothing.

I must say, I’ve never heard of any other company having even close to as many of their employees kill themselves.  The fact that you are trying to say the conditions of the work and their deaths are separate issues is ridiculous.  Seriously, you’re making it sound like all these suicides are a big coincidence.  Again, where there is smoke, there is usually a fire. 

I could go on, but I’ll finish by saying that article shows a complete lack of understanding of the situation and just a lot of ignorance on your part.  The “Everbody Wins” section is bogus…  just bogus.  I wish I could be a little less blunt, but that would take away from my point.  I guess I just find this article to be quite obtuse and ignorant.  Again, not trying to be a jerk about it, but I’m simply stating the facts.