Apple CEO tells whoppers in interview

[Human101948]

“It’s skill,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in response to a question on “60 Minutes” Sunday from Charlie Rose as to why the company’s products are made in China.

Rose clearly wasn’t buying it. “They have more skills than American workers? They have more skills than German workers?” he pressed.

“The U.S., over time, began to stop having as many vocational kind of skills,” Cook explained. “I mean, you can take every tool and die maker in the United States and probably put them in a room that we’re currently sitting in. In China, you would have to have multiple football fields.”

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/tim-cook-apple-doesnt-make-its-products-in-china-because-its-cheaper-2015-12-20?link=MW_popular

And then he goes on to make excuses for his company's massive tax dodging.

[Truprogressive85]

1. Yes Mr. Cook keep talking

Paying fair share is political crap ?

So China has better skilled workers than America , how patriotic

What was Apple tax rate for 2014 ?

[Human101948]

2. Just like they can't find any Americans to fill those H1B jobs

and they certainly can't find any people with science degrees...

“There’s no evidence of any way, shape, or form that there’s a shortage in the conventional sense,” says Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University. “They may not be able to find them at the price they want. But I’m not sure that qualifies as a shortage, any more than my not being able to find a half-priced TV.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-11-24/the-tech-worker-shortage-doesnt-really-exist

Bright.com, a California-based company that uses big data analysis to pair jobseekers with employers, released a report last month that showed that the supposed dearth of high-skilled engineers in the United States may be fiction after all. In fact, Bright’s analysis reveals that for the top 10 jobs where H-1B visas are requested, only three do not currently have enough qualified American jobseekers to satisfy demand.

“The main conclusion that we need more foreign tech workers is not true,” says David Hardtke, Bright’s chief scientist.

http://fortune.com/2013/08/05/the-myth-of-americas-missing-software-engineers/

[Human101948]

3. Apple is a corporate scofflaw...

U.S. taxpayers provided $3.2 billion in tax subsidies for Apple’s rich corporate pay packages that the company never actually pays. Apple enjoyed $3.2 billion in stock option tax breaks from 2010 to 2012 – 12 percent of the $27.3 billion in excess stock option tax benefits granted to 280 Fortune 500 companies studied by Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ).[xvii] Some argue that this tax break encourages excessive corporate pay packages. Here’s how it works, according to CTJ: “Most big corporations give their executives (and sometimes other employees) options to buy the company’s stock at a favorable price in the future. When those options are exercised, corporations can take a tax deduction for the difference between what the employees pay for the stock and what it’s worth (while employees report this difference as taxable wages).”

-snip-

Most of Apple’s undistributed foreign profits appear to be invested in the U.S. tax free. Apple complains that its foreign profits are sitting offshore and not able to be invested in America because it does not want to pay its effective corporate income tax rate. But a recent U.S. Senate study found that between 76 percent and 100 percent of Apple’s undistributed accumulated foreign earnings in 2010 were either held in U.S. bank accounts or in U.S. investments.[xix]

http://www.americansfortaxfairness.org/badapple/

[hobbit709]

4. all the skills needed to assemble an iPOS are here.

They were all here until you decided to increase your profit margin by moving the jobs offshore.

[IDemo]

5. I've worked in electronics R&D for over 20 years

The vast majority of people sitting on the line at FoxConn or other manufacturing sites are using a very specific set of instructions to assemble their particular point in the assembly. Any knowledge of tool and die making is completely irrelevant, as is even fundamental knowledge of electronics theory except for some basics at the quality inspection end.

He had to have been hearing the guffaws of laughter from people across the nation who actually have a clue about these things.

[HughBeaumont]

6. COST.

"Total political crap" my fucking ASS, you wingnut son of a bitch. No one except your zit-faced gaggle of Penn Jillette wannabes are buying this victim blaming.

The CEO Larceny Cult is almost as hilarious and pathetic as the assholes who defend them.

[closeupready]

7. Was never a fan of Apple; that segment didn't make me one, either.

Apple's success is a grand-scale story of how fools and their money are soon parted by fast talking hucksters.

And he claimed that they have no back door, but I don't believe him for one second.

[Bonhomme Richard]

8. You are missing the point.....

It is all about profit.
If you have a gazillion tool and die makers then the competition for your business is massive. Massive competition drives the cost way down and you have the power to dictate everything.

[bigwillq]

9. It's greed (nt)

[aksptth]

10. Not that outrageous to my mind...

First, about the jobs. I'm not sure how many Americans these days are willing to accept high precision piece based assembly line work these days. These are almost all the jobs at Foxconn. Probably next to none willing to do the jobs at minimum wage. These are the lowest level of skilled labor around -- hard monotonous work that crushes any sort of work based personal fulfillment. Certainly no Millennials would tolerate the work.

What I think Apple could do is come up with more automated ways of doing this assembly line work. That would generate a number of jobs we Americans would be good at with maintaining those machines, programming them, QC the work, and so forth. Here is the criticism: why automate when you can buy a set of hands (the best programmable robots around) for .50¢ an hour?

As for the taxes, we need to change our laws to some extent. Apple is a multi-national company. They design products in the U.S. Those products are then produced overseas and sold overseas by an overseas workforce by foreign based subsidiaries. These products and workers are taxed in each local country.

Why would a company want to bring those profits home to be taxed again at one of the highest rates around for something that never happened in the U.S.?

Not saying the profits shouldn't be taxed. But the rate needs to be lower or, just like for private citizens, a credit needs to be given to the company for the taxes already paid to foreign countries on the funds.

[Human101948]

11. First of all, he was talking about tool and die shops, not piecework...

so that was lie number one.

Secondly, if you read the story I posted above you will see that they use accounting magic to make USA profits into overseas profits and then bring the money back as a foreign investment--kind of like money laundering.

( http://www.americansfortaxfairness.org/badapple/ )

So none of your points are relevant.

[Orrex]

12. If you forgot one thing...

It was the mic drop. BOOM!

[Human101948]

13. Elvis has left the building!

Thank you ladies and gennelmen, thank you very much!

[aksptth]

14. Not definitive about anything

Yes I read your article. It doesn't say anything and has quite a few whoppers of assumptions.

It DOES NOT answer the basic fairness about taxing profits on products made outside the U.S., sold to foreign customers, by a foreign workforce, in a foreign subsidiary. That Apple then takes all those foreign profits and bundles them up into foreign tax havens -- so what? Why should I be outraged about that? Seems like good business sense to me in strengthening a U.S. company.

That is an entirely different scenario that taking your U.S. generated profits and offshoring them to a tax haven which many U.S. companies are doing these days. That is a dodge and we should be outraged about that practice.

Another sketchy claim is that all the value add Apple has is generated by the U.S. based design process. Product design is certainly a piece of the total product value but design without execution is meaningless.

Yeah I read your article and I call bullshit on a good bit of it.

Listen, I'm no corporate cheerleader but clearly in the case of multinational corporations the situation is not so simple. It begs for Apple to do what so many American companies have done already. Offshore their headquarters and make the U.S. a subsidiary. Would that be a preferable solution?

[Rex]

16. Apple could buld a factory here in American and pay people to do exactly

what they do in China...yet they would have to pay people a real wage. So you are cheerleading a company that practices slave labor in markets that turn a blind eye to abuse?

The only bullshit I see here is you making excuses for Apples dodging their tax obligations.

[moondust]

15. Americans might protest

being herded like animals into crowded dormitories surrounded by suicide nets where they could exist and work all day to help make some billionaires more billions. I'll bet he's figured that much out.

[Xolodno]

17. He's right, it is skill. Plus education as well.

American workers have too much skill and education and won't work for almost slave labor wages and hours. Don't you know its our own damn fault! How else is he supposed to line his pockets!

[cascadiance]

18. Yes, we keep voting in CORRUPT F'ING CONGRESSMEN that screw Americans over with education, etc.

... and make an IT education TOO F'ING EXPENSIVE for *SMART* kids with any sense to invest in (they would more intelligently pick fields like medicine or law where they won't be f'ing outsourced by these crooks. So many others that our jobs get outsourced in countries like India, etc. give their citizens FREE bachelor's degree educations that our kids can't touch, in addition to our standard of living being ten times higher than theirs.

Now, do I want to throw out foreign workers here from this country? NO! But I want a damn even playing field so that we can compete when we invest in education, etc. that we have in the past when we LEAD THE F'ING WORLD in creating the high tech sector and the internet with government subsidies then and an industry that initially didn't even have layoffs, in addition not having NAFTA-style free trade agreements or the H-1B program that even the congressman who was the person who CREATED this legislation in the early 90's then is now campaigning AGAINST this program as being riddled with corruption, and misused.

So, yes, it's our fault unless we throw OUT these corrupt congress people and other government figures and replace them with politicians that will work for US and not corporate american crooks that infect our government too much now! Go Bernie and those who are working with him to try and make this happen!

The times are changing though... Even Senator Cruz was getting criticized in the Republican debate by corporate whore Rubio for putting forth new legislation where Cruz is succumbing to Republican grass roots pressure to start working more against the H-1B program than his earlier stance of supporting it.

http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/dec/16/marco-rubio/marco-rubio-says-ted-cruz-supports-legalizing-peop/

And Obama just passed a bill that has Indian body shop firms all up in arms about their H-1B fees more than doubled now unless they hire more Americans (which is why so many of us unemployed folks are seeing a lot of 3 month contract offers in our emails these days). Probably no coincidence that these are three months that is approximately the same time the TPP is being voted on that is rumored to be eliminating quotas on H-1B Visas too.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/the-pain-points-of-us-visa-fee-hike-for-it-companies/article8014661.ece

http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/the-omnibus-spending-budget-bill-59155/

http://profit.ndtv.com/news/industries/article-us-visa-fees-hiked-it-firms-staring-at-over-rs-25-000-crore-bill-1257273

This article notes that this legislation will also affect education for Indian students getting degrees here in the U.S. A lot of them do come here to get graduate degrees so that coupled with free bachelor's degrees in India that American students need to pay heavily for here, they can get an American graduate degree at an American institution, and only pay for the graduate degree, where most American students have a hard enough time paying for a bachelor's tech degree, let alone both a bachelor's and a graduate degree.

http://www.thehansindia.com/posts/index/2015-12-21/Why-the-latest-H-1B-Bill-is-bad-news-for-Indian-students--194718

When the right wing such as Cruz reverses his stance on H-1B and is now adopting Bernie Sanders' language in his proposed legislation to increase H-1B minimum wages, and you have Breitbart reporting heavily on increasing of also heavily abused H-2B visa program in the recent Omnibus bill, I believe there's an opportunity to get Americans united to work for protecting American workers. And if Democrats can take the lead, they can ensure that such legislation is not xenophobic at its core, and more concerned about protecting workers against exploitation everywhere, not just creating new "bottoms" for the elites to race to like TPP and programs such as H-1B are creating.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/12/16/omnibus-increases-number-unskilled-guest-workers/

Rubio also feeling the pressure from Republicans on his stance on this issue too.

http://www.readingeagle.com/article/20151219/AP/312199939

I want to emphasize that we need to make sure that Indian or other nationality students are treated fairly, and that many of us welcome working alongside them here, and not just want to "keep them out" the way many Republicans want. But we want a level and fair playing field, which as noted in the above information doesn't exist today, but things might be changing with recent pressure to fix some of these problems. I think there's a big opportunity for us as Democrats to take the lead on this. But we need to be more vocal about our stances on things like H-1B and the "free trade" deals coming soon the way that Bernie is, and ensure that the political dialogue in our debates, and many of our primaries and subsequent elections have these issues discussed by Democrats and not just the "Trumpsters" amongst the Republicans.