Why worry about Chinese workers making iPhones, eventually robots will be making them anyway.
In addition most of the value of an iPhone is in the design and marketing, which is primarily done in the U.S.
In addition most of the value of an iPhone is in the design and marketing, which is primarily done in the U.S.
But surely the employment value of an iPhone is still largely in the manufacturing. How many employees at Apple do you think is directly involved in the design and marketing of it?
Versus the number of Foxconn employees building it?
Close to a billion dollars a month to employee an equivalent number of US citizens. The iPhone couldn't exist at those prices.
Robots?
But the real barrier is that making all the screws, the gaskets, etc, is all overseas and it would be prohibitive to have to ship those raw materials.
And sure, to make ALL those things -- American all the way down -- would be quite expensive. But nobody is advocating for more american factories making screws.
I did read the article. I wasn't talking about total money to make an iPhone in the US; I was talking about total money to employ 200,000 workers.
Sure we could make it in the US, but it wouldn't add anywhere near 200,000 workers. The OP was talking about employment value.
This is false. Making it in America would remove $65 (if that was indeed the figure, which is very doubtful) from the profit of the device. The price wouldn't change. Product pricing has nothing to do with the cost to make it, but is instead whatever the market will bear.
What part is false? Production cost != Price. It's like you made the assumption it does, then argued against the assumption?
Yep. When people complain about losing US manufacturing they are really complaining about losing US manufacturing jobs. Sure, manufacturing output is growing in China, but it's also still growing in the US. Automation is what has killed the US manufacturing job and not offshoring.