Quote :

"In other words you didn't read the link I posted. The idea of a data plan without the cost of a phone rolled into it is such a foreign idea that most people don't even give it credit for existing. If you come out and declare that you want to pay upfront for the phone, then they will look at you funny because they assume all Americans have a loan shark kind of discount rate, but in the end you will save money over the 2 year period."

Well I'm already on an incredibly discounted family plan with my dad and sister. But thanks for telling me about my own situation.

4/30/2012 11:03:47 AM

Quote :

" You can't just look at rote hardware costs to determine profit margin. It costs money to pay the designers, build the factories, run the company, etc.. Do you think any product you buy has anywhere near the value of materials in it? For electronics, the physical parts are a small portion of the full costs. "

Why would apple have to pay to build the factories? Do they actually make any of the hardware themselves?

4/30/2012 11:10:47 AM

There are two different categories of determining profit. Marginal profit is the amount of money a company makes on each single product they sell. Profit margin is their revenue - operating costs for the company as a whole.

4/30/2012 11:18:34 AM

http://blog.marksweep.com/post/20469283331/the-beer-game-or-why-apple-cant-build-ipads-in-the

The profit margin is greatly affected by economies of scale and the efficiency of the supply chain.

That article explains a little why apple, and most labor based manufacturing, is probably never coming back stateside.

4/30/2012 11:31:19 AM

Quote :

"Well I'm already on an incredibly discounted family plan with my dad and sister. But thanks for telling me about my own situation."

So basically you drank the cool aid.

Pro tip: when a clothing store has rewards programs and special promotions with stacking 30% discounts, the final discounted price is probably a good bit over the fair asking price of what they're providing you with.

4/30/2012 11:44:50 AM

I pay ~$60-70/month for data and enough minutes and texts to where I never have overages. I am with Verizon, which is generally accepted as the best company in terms of wireless performance, and I bought an iPhone for $99. But yes, please keep telling me how I am not getting value for my money.

4/30/2012 1:08:39 PM

Woo! $25 a month for plenty of data, minutes, and texts to where I never have overages!

Although my Triumph cost more than you paid, at $129.

Such is the beauty of capitalism. If you want to pay for it, the rest of us will tend to let you

4/30/2012 1:12:20 PM

I'm not interested in Cricket.

4/30/2012 1:13:26 PM

by the way, which mobile phone manufacturer(s) does things differently in terms of supply chain, working conditions for overseas employees, etc.?

[Edited on April 30, 2012 at 1:18 PM. Reason : .]

4/30/2012 1:17:48 PM

you guys ever heard of Coltan? long story short, its derivatives are in most cell phones, computers, and other electronic products.

by the time it became fashionable to make movies and sing songs about blood diamonds and other bling, folks in Africa were already killing each other over this stuff.

get on your google machines and look this shit up... i'm not really providing any commentary on this, just wanted to make sure you guys knew about it.


and just FYI

http://www.dol.gov/ILAB/regs/eo13126/main.htm

4/30/2012 1:57:54 PM

Quote :

"Why would apple have to pay to build the factories? Do they actually make any of the hardware themselves?"

They've worked with companies in the past to front the cost of building manufacturing plants to get priority treatment on supplies and new tech (sharp is an example of this). To bring manufacturing state side they would most likely have to do the same thing.

... Unless you know of a facility over here with the machinery, building space, and support space for the 2 million American workers it would take to replace the 1 million Chinese workers working 70 hour weeks to crank out iOS devices, AND room to grow.

That brings up the point too that the components don't have to ship very far to get to the Chinese workers. They would be boating massive quantities of circuit boards, chips, screens, and casings here to be assembled which I'm sure has an extra cost. It's way more than just labor costs to bring the volume of manufacturing stateside. I'm sure it could be done though, but for what benefit?

If Apple paid their fair percentage of taxes, those billions could be effectively spent here to help create other jobs.

[Edited on April 30, 2012 at 2:43 PM. Reason : ]

4/30/2012 2:40:16 PM

^ yup, being co-located to your component supply chain is absolutely critical.

4/30/2012 4:45:26 PM

but i thought the government couldn't create jobs?

4/30/2012 6:12:53 PM

The government can create jobs. "if every worker was staffed in the army and fleet/we'd have full employment and nothing to eat"

What you are thinking about is that as the government creates jobs production falls, which means wages must fall, which means unemployment must rise, which means private businesses and jobs must be destroyed.

[Edited on April 30, 2012 at 7:27 PM. Reason : .,.]

4/30/2012 7:23:26 PM

Quote :

"It's not just a move to save on labor costs. That's a minor consideration among a myriad of more significant factors. To summarize: not only does Apple have no obligation to build its products in America----and to a large degree, not only is it not even desirable to have companies diverge from free trade and operate in a less efficient manner--but Apple can't deliver the same results in America. The capabilities just aren't here. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1 Also, in addition to the stuff noted in the Times article, note that Apple (and all sorts of other companies) exert all sorts of effort to minimize taxes. That should come as no surprise, but let me translate that: Corporate income tax in America is high, so companies structure things so that, at least on paper, the taxes are due in places where the rates are lower. Our country costs itself lots of corporate tax revenue by keeping the rates high--not only by the classic example of discouraging business activity in America, but by encouraging companies to work around our tax laws. If our corporate tax rates were competitive with the rest of the world, there would be no incentive to do this, and they'd just pay up to the U.S. government. We need to lower the rates, remove the resulting incentive to work around the U.S. taxes, and then close special interest loopholes extended to the companies who hire the best lobbyists (which would also be less attractive to begin with if the U.S. corporate tax rates were lower). [Edited on April 30, 2012 at 12:06 AM. Reason : ^ when your opinion gains more weight than Fidelity and Vanguard, maybe you'll get your way.]"

NO NO NO NO DUKE. YOUR LOGIC WILL NOT WORK HERE.

clearly we need to RAISE taxes...especially on the big corporations and rich people. its how we get votes. we need to be able to complain when they shift their money away and the effective tax revenues decrease.

5/1/2012 9:25:51 AM

Cutting the corporate tax has been a major talking point of the Obama campaign, so...

5/1/2012 9:59:38 AM

I think the reality is that corporate taxes are not even close to the crux of the issue of why manufacturing is leaving the US.



[Edited on May 1, 2012 at 10:12 AM. Reason : derp]

5/1/2012 10:10:21 AM

I'd say those numbers are misleading. politically favored enterprises face a negative tax rate (tax credits exceed tax liability) which means non-politically favored enterprises are paying far more than the 13.4% average you are reporting.

5/1/2012 11:08:23 AM

I think you are probably right, thats a problem that any sensible person would agree needs to be solved.

But the overall point still stands, corporate taxes, especially on companies like apple, are NOT the primary reason why they aren't manufacturing in the US.

5/1/2012 11:17:00 AM

Quote :

"But the overall point still stands, corporate taxes, especially on companies like apple, are NOT the primary reason why they aren't manufacturing in the US."

This may or may not be true, but your numbers aren't doing anything to support that assertion. No one really thinks of Australia or the UK as major manufacturing centers.

I'd say about the only thing those particular numbers show is that raising the taxes on businesses is not likely to generate massive revenues, since the top 2 effective taxers don't appear to be the top 2 revenue generators.

5/1/2012 2:15:52 PM

Quote :

"Foxconn plans to improve labor conditions in its Chinese factories where iPhones and iPads are made, according to CEO Terry Gou, and Apple will reportedly share in the costs of making those improvements."

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/05/foxconn-and-apple-to-split-costs-to-improve-factory-conditions/

5/11/2012 2:02:49 AM

Good job finding actual income tax numbers instead of both company's hilarious estimates of revenue they generate for the government if you include taxes paid by employees and customers. I'm not being sarcastic either, they can be hard to find espescially for Exxon mobil which puts up quite a few cloned PR pages that tend to float to the top on search results.

Quote :

"First Quarter 2012 ExxonMobil Apple Revenue (Billions) $124.0 $39.2 Income Taxes (billions) $7.7 $3.9 Profits (billions) $9.5 $11.6 Profit Margin (%) 7.6% 29.6%"

Unfortunately those don't tell you the actual breakdown of taxes paid to the US as opposed to all entities globally. We can look at 2011 fiscal year for each company; it doesn't really make either of them look particularly great as far as how much they pay domestically compared to what they sometimes claim is their revenue generating effect or tax burden.

For Exxon:
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/xom/financials

Here's one for Apple:
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/aapl/financials

For the fiscal year 2011 (whole year is more informative than individual quarters)-

Apple 2011
Revenue: 108.6B
Gross Income: 44.52B
Global Income Taxes: 8.28B
US Income Taxes: 4.65B
Net Income: 25.92B

Exxon 2011
Revenue: 433.53B
Gross Income: 109.06B
Global Income Taxes: 31.05B
US Income Taxes: 2.04B
Net Income: 41.06B

So comparing total taxes paid globally to net and gross income - it is clear that Exxon's balance sheets include quite a lot more taxes paid globally proportionally. However in terms of taxes paid to the US and States the story is very different. Bear in mind that both companies engage in deception when trying to make themselves sound like they pay extra generously to US coffers. Apple has made statements in the past to the effect of having a tax-revenue generating effect of 10-11 billion dollars; sure if you include income taxes paid by employees. Exxon Mobil has similarly made claims that its US tax burden is over 12 billion dollars in this same year; that works if you consider the taxes YOU pay at the pump as their tax burden. In reality both companies pay lower US income taxes than they might want you to think; globally though Apple is far more adroit at avoiding income taxes and Exxon is more specifically good at avoiding them domestically.

Even just going by gross income rather than after expense pre-tax income, Exxon Mobil's foreign taxes pose the greatest challenge to any fair method of increasing the US tax revenue paid by them. If we could get Exxon Mobil's income tax breakdown to look more like apple's it would be a non-trivial increase in US tax revenues as well as a massive reduction in Exxon Mobil's tax burdern. I suspect their international tax burden is not something they can shift stateside as easily as apple might due to the international nature of their first party operations and holdings.

[Edited on May 11, 2012 at 5:50 AM. Reason : a]

5/11/2012 5:32:41 AM

Quote :

"The people working in the assembly lines (which also produce products for companies like Dell, Samsung, and so forth) are more than happy with their compensation, in fact Apple pays some of the highest in the industry in that region."

What do you know, neoliberal tripe that isn't based on anything resembling reality.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/string-suicides-apple-manufacturer-china/story?id=10789704

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9006988/Mass-suicide-protest-at-Apple-manufacturer-Foxconn-factory.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1382396/Workers-Chinese-Apple-factories-forced-sign-pledges-commit-suicide.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/27/apple-contractor-workers-threaten-suicide

You're carrying water for some of the scummiest, cruelest, greediest pieces of shit on the entire planet. Way to go, you're scum amongst scums.

Quote :

"Cutting the corporate tax has been a major talking point of the Obama campaign, so..."

That's because Obama's a right wing hack.


[Edited on May 11, 2012 at 10:11 AM. Reason : .]

5/11/2012 10:07:48 AM

^ The same use of subsidiary contractors that allows Apple to avoid paying much taxes internationally (in fact that 8 billion I figure I listed was deceptive as the actual taxes paid ws closer to 5 suggesting non-us paid taxes was somewhere around 500 million) compared to what they pay state-side also lets them claim that THEIR foreign workers are well paid and happy. After-all, it's their contractors, subsidiaries and parts suppliers who are working those assembly line personnel to death.

5/11/2012 10:50:03 AM