Apple Reportedly Seeking to Move Significantly More Production From China to India

I'm not arguing... I just responded to your post about taking dinner pictures. What phone and model do you have that's $100?

 

Ralph Lauren of phones 1

 

What does anyone do with any item that makes it better than the cheapest model of that item? What do you with fancy food that you don't with fast food? What do you do with a 2018 car that you don't with a 1990 junker? What do you with new clothes that you don't with Goodwill clothes? Do you have issues with every non-bottom-end company?

 

Apple's computers are worth it for technical and creative processing. Gaming on phones actually has a lot of value

 

I don't eat chancy food every night. Ruth Chris's steaks are flat out better than outback

Regardless I'm going to realize that difference

 

China has purposefully invested in the skills needed for electronic manufacturing; it's not that India, Vietnam or the US couldn't do it, it will just take time to train people. That's part of the issue and the supply chain is the other, which took over a decade to build and optimize. Sure, it could happen somewhere else but it will take time.

As a self avowed globalist/free trader, the issue is America went too far on the supply side which made it easier to hollow out America (too business friendly). A better balance would have been more investment in our people. Immigration certainly helped fill the skills gap, but we can see what happens when an over reliance of that happens. Nostalgia about what we used to do isn't useful except for elections. We pretty much wasted an O&G renaissance due to an ill conceived global trade war (opposed to a China trade war) and Covid is pretty self explanatory negative towards commodities.

 

actually, it's more that u under-estimate the size of the illiterate populace in India.

u claim to have visited India. then u must know about India's de-facto caste system and that it has close to 10 official spoken / written languages.
add to it the 75% literacy rate, what u have is an extremely unproductive work force.

SK, Jpn, HK, Singapore, Chn, VN have some of the most productive workforce in Asia;
the common thread among them is 100% literacy and one official spoken/written language

ever heard of brain drain?

u know that a lot of India's educated elites are working in the US, some are actually running Microsoft, Google, and other tech ventures, no?

u do know that India is hated in Pakistan and, to a lesser degree, in Thailand, Myanmar, no?

funny that u didn't use these words when Japanese military kicked the Taiwanese fishermen out of DaiYuTai island stealing the resources around it.

ur less-than-informed on the situation.

it was India who instigated the skirmish. in retaliation for China teaming up w Pakistan in connection w the one belt one road initiative.
the area in dispute, is in Chinese territory, as defined by the agreement entered into between Britain and China in the 1800s


fyi, http://bbs.clutchfans.net/index.php?threads/prc-territorial-expansion.272451/#post-11271799

Both the PRC and India gained independence ~ 1949; some 7 decades later, to say that the PRC has enjoyed more success would be under-stating it.
India's national psyche has been bruised---BIG TIME---by China's many achievements over the past 3+decades

India's #1 nemesis has been Pakistan; she was miffed when China invited Pakistan to join its ambitious 21 st Century Silk Road project. India had also declined China's offer to join the project. As a work around, China has built the Silk Road constructions around India, India feels encircled by the Chinese construction project.
effectively, this so-called dispute amounts to India giving China the finger

Under the 1890 Convention Between Great Britain and China Relating to Sikkim and Tibet, the Doklam Plateau had been defined as part of Tibet. .[/QUOTE]​

 

^^^

Yea but India has demographics while China is aging quick. Demographics are destiny.

 

And this where we will have to disagree. They shouldn’t charge more because their SG and A would be much higher building in the US vs China or India. They should accept that they will generate less profit. I know right what an unimaginable concept.

The reality is that profit generates very, very, very few people. The top 10% of income earners own 80% of the stock market and seriously what about pensioners? As far as I recall there are very few non governmental pensions and the right would love nothing better than to remove the ones that are governmental as they constantly cite the bloated payouts and mismanagement. If pensions are such a beneficiary of corporate profits where is the outcry that corporations reinstitute them?

We continue to try trickle down economics which continues to result in greater wealth disparity and massive debt. Why don’t we try to actually pay people a wage where they can afford the products they are building? Henry Ford understood this. It could actually benefit Apple and others as more people can afford their products leading to more sales which leads to more jobs which actually stimulates the economy.

Demand side economics created the middle
class; supply side has ruined it. We need a rebalance.

 

I don't think sheer population is the advantage that it might've once been. It's possible that India might've already overtake the PRC in population size and if not will soon. India as a market though isn't nearly as powerful as the PRC or the US or EU which are much much smaller. As others have noted while their large population means there a very large educated class there is also a very large uneducated class. Income inequality and poverty are major burdens on India developing.

India's large population combined with it's poor infrastructure also mean that pollution is very bad there. While the PRC is also very polluted a lot of that is from industrialization. A lot of Indian pollution is from so many people with poor sanitation.

If we are going to bet on which country will be better off by 2050. I would still put money on the PRC over India.

 

Why? The entire underlying purpose of a company is to generate profit for the people that own the company. If there are no profits to be made, why would they take similar risks? If the lottery had the same odds but a $100,000 grand prize instead of $100,000,000, people wouldn't play that either. It's easy to point to Apple - but you hear about them because that's the success story. Entrepreneurs and financers pour endless time and money into failed ventures to find the one success story. If the reward isn't there, there's no reason to take the same risks.

There isn't much demand for pensions because the vast majority of people no longer work one job for much of their lives. Pensions no longer make sense, so things have shifted towards 401Ks and other things like that where you can take it with you when you leave your job.

Henry Ford didn't live in a global world. Besides, he is the leader of the "fewer workers" movement by creating the assembly line to make things cheaper. He was all about automation and cutting labor costs.

Manufacturing things here and paying people more doesn't help anyone in the long-run, when its possible to do it cheaper elsewhere. Over time, it brings up other wages and standards of living (as we've seen in China), which then creates more buyers for products America specializes in. There's a reason why trade has brought massive wealth and services to the whole world all across human history - it lifts both the wealthy and the poor. Isolationism and centralizing production has been tried many times and never worked anywhere. Why would you think it would work today?

Middle and lower income Americans have massively benefited from globalization - in a world without trade, these groups don't even have access to smartphones that give them the world at their fingertips or $100 flatscreen TVs or cheap food, clothing, etc. Americans buying power is higher than any point in the past - flat incomes (largely due to health care costs - companies are actually paying far more for employees), but lower prices for much of their everyday spending.

This has nothing to do with Demand or Supply side economics. If anything, there is a demand for cheap(er) iPhones and Apple is filling that demand.

 

Demographics are India's strength and China's weakness. In 2050, China will be one of the oldest countries in the world based on current trends. China may have a larger economy in 2050, but I'm not sure how they've replaced their prime age working population. You're absolutely right about India's government structure being it's biggest weakness.

I can see a probable case for each country overtaking the other. India still hasn't moved up the value chain and is currently trying to make its move at the expense of China. Might work, might not.

 

You need to separate American entitlement and nostalgia from economics.

 

Sad people we can go back to the fifties The same Americans who complain about the global economy swear by capitalism.

@Phillyrocket

You can't have it both ways. Can't bury the internet, or trains or planes or automobiles.

 

I'm going to say I'm glad to see so many pro-trade opinions in this thread. It was feeling kind of lonely between the economic nationalist on the right and the progressive populist on the left.