Foxconn: America's High-tech Manufacturing Nemesis

A very large percentage of Americans have not heard of Foxconn, yet it plays a big role in how we talk, play, create, transmit and store data - basically about as integrally tied into our lives as bottled water, except people who make bottled water in America earn more than the average $176 per month Foxconn pays it's employees.

Apple, IBM, Cisco, HP, Dell have their products manufactured by Foxconn, and the rationale is that it makes PCs, Routers, Phones affordable for American consumers. Cheap products can't compensate for the emotional and economic cost of  lost jobs - should we have better paying jobs and a well off country or be on the verge of insolvency nation full of cheap imported stuff?

Here's the Foxconn story - a chapter in the saga of Americans making Americans redundant: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_38/b4195058423479.htmjobs

Listen to Andy Grove, now!!

Pointless debating when the obvious has been obvious for years, now its imperative we as the people and our government as our representative and also responsible for our well being listen to Andy Grove, as not listening to him is continuing committing suicide. We've been fed a myth and Mr. Grove refutes it, baring the truth, that outsourcing manufacturing is not a panacea that it's made out to be but a guillotine that we created and use daily to kill our jobs and standard of living. So listen to Andy Grove, and Make it in America and buy Made in America, and also question (the motives and loyalties of) those who advocate job exports in today's day and time.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_28/b4186048358596.htm

"Clearly, the great Silicon Valley innovation machine hasn't been creating many jobs of late—unless you're counting Asia, where American tech companies have been adding jobs like mad for years.

As time passed, wages and health-care costs rose in the U.S. China opened up. American companies discovered that they could have their manufacturing and even their engineering done more cheaply overseas. When they did so, margins improved. Management was happy, and so were stockholders. Growth continued, even more profitably. But the job machine began sputtering.

That means for every Apple worker in the U.S. there are 10 people in China working on iMacs, iPods, and iPhones. The same roughly 10-to-1 relationship holds for Dell, disk-drive maker Seagate Technology (STX), and other U.S. tech companies.

But what kind of a society are we going to have if it consists of highly paid people doing high-value-added work—and masses of unemployed?

How could the U.S. have forgotten? I believe the answer has to do with a general undervaluing of manufacturing—the idea that as long as "knowledge work" stays in the U.S., it doesn't matter what happens to factory jobs. It's not just newspaper commentators who spread this idea. Consider this passage by Princeton University economist Alan S. Blinder: "The TV manufacturing industry really started here, and at one point employed many workers. But as TV sets became 'just a commodity,' their production moved offshore to locations with much lower wages. And nowadays the number of television sets manufactured in the U.S. is zero. A failure? No, a success."

I disagree. Not only did we lose an untold number of jobs, we broke the chain of experience that is so important in technological evolution. As happened with batteries, abandoning today's "commodity" manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow's emerging industry.

The rapid development of the Asian economies provides numerous illustrations. In a thorough study of the industrial development of East Asia, Robert Wade of the London School of Economics found that these economies turned in precedent-shattering economic performances over the '70s and '80s in large part because of the effective involvement of the government in targeting the growth of manufacturing industries.

Levy an extra tax on the product of offshored labor. (If the result is a trade war, treat it like other wars—fight to win.)"

On Success

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower" - Steve Jobs

In-n-Out, iPhone, Pixar, Flip, Prius are proof that innovation redefines expectation, and changes how we live.

"To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines" - Steve Jobs

Innovation + Discipline are the foundation of greatness for above companies, and will always remain the foundation of great firms and great managers who run them. Delorean was innovation without discipline; and GM no innovation since 1957.

It's the same world, just different attitudes.

Shameful conduct of shameful American companies

Jay Leno said on the 12th, forget Merrill Lynch lets "lynch Merrill" in reference to reports that 4 company executives paid themselves $121 million in bonuses just as the company was writing down billions due to CDS related losses and at the same time being acquired (with US Government's help) by BofA due to liquidity problems. Liquidity problems were bad enough and the company was so concerned about projecting the right image to its clients that it canceled branch office Christmas parties (Seattle office party was scheduled for December 5), yet it paid executives $121 million? Forget lynching, how about taking a stand for truth, honesty and justice and firing your Merrill Lynch Financial Advisor? There still are decent, honest firms and Financial Advisors out there, including the honest folks of Merrill Lynch who left the company when the extent of corruption became evident.

And who would think Dell would join the ranks of shameful companies? I bought a Dell XPS-13" computer in January. Within a week of arrival the computer did not work right, so I called customer service. After about 3 hours of being shuttled between customer service centers in the Philippines and India staffed by the most inept, though earnest and polite people, who asked me the same questions, made me turn off and on the machine, I demanded to speak to someone in the USA since I'd bought an American computer in America from an American firm. Finally I got to speak to Tim in Florida who said the only way I could demand to speak to and receive service from a US based support group was by signing up for "YTT Premium Support" for $149 per year. Despite the fact that my computer was less that a week old Tim would not help until I signed up for the service so I did - and one of the reasons was that I want to do my bit to help keep some jobs in America. The promise of the service was: a dedicated phone number and a guarantee that the phones would be answered in 2 minutes. That promise hasn't been kept. Today - the 14th - I was on hold for 45 minutes this morning, and when my computer could not connect to the Internet I was told that I was in trouble since Dell needed to do an online diagnostic and until that was done there would be no on site service, so if my computer is dead therefore not connectible what do I do? May I get a refund for the non existing premium support and better still return my computer to get Dell the hell out of life?

So how many Americans like me have been cheated by Merrill Lynch and Dell? And what are we doing about it?

Practice vigilante justice and buy Apple and invest with an Independent Advisor.