Sharanth Kumarasivan
Opinions Editor
Over the last few years, Apple Inc. has suddenly jumped from struggling competitor to dominator of the computer industry.
With its new stylish, lightweight computers, range of i-products and signature stores, Apple has now become a household name the world over, not to mention the world’s wealthiest and most-traded company.
Its stock price is chasing $600 per share for the first time ever, and CNN Money ranks it the world’s most admired company. CEO Tim Cook announced last month at the MacWorld Expo the company had a $98 billion profit.
This is greater than the GDP of two-thirds of the world’s nations, and enough to purchase Facebook, Yahoo, and Netflix together, according to the Associated Press.
After a certain point, companies don’t really need any more money, and just hoard it away with no worthy purposes except dishing out large bonuses to already-overpaid executives, or viciously buying out smaller startups, inhibiting the free market in the process.
Such startup companies could do things that create a real positive impact, namely bringing back manufacturing to the United States.
Other than creating more jobs in the U.S. and reducing the unemployment rate, it can also be for making a statement.
A company that builds its products here is saying that it takes pride in being American, and is not simply making money by shipping jobs abroad.
America has always been defined abroad by the products it manufactured. In the Industrial Revolution, it was steel and Standard Oil. Then came its Levi’s jeans,
automobiles, Boeing aircraft, and computers.
Now, most of these industries have been shipped abroad, including Apple computers.
A consumer in Germany amazed by an iPod’s touch screen will call it American ingenuity. But the iPod cannot be American in the full sense because it was not manufactured in the U.S.
The sanctity of Apple products is further reduced because it is not even Apple that makes its products. Instead, firms such as Foxconn manufacture the products in their factories, and put the Apple logo on it.
With Apple being this separated from its own manufacturing, there’s a lot of misconduct that goes on.
First of all, by manufacturing in China, where minimum wages and fair-labor laws are rarely enforced and unions given very little leeway, Apple is supporting the exploitation of overseas workers.
Workers at one facility were paid $100 a month, half of which they were forced to pay back to their employer for room and board, according to Mail on Sunday, a British newspaper.
Another audit showed a string of worker suicides because of bad labor conditions, which Apple responded by making workers sign contracts promising not to commit suicide. In 2010, many workers were poisoned by chemicals used in making the products, according to ABC News.
Manufacturing closer to home would make it more likely to conform to fair labor ethics because of stricter labor regulations. Of course, this overly optimistic proposal would mean greater manufacturing costs and fewer profits. But at the same time, Apple can afford it, and also preserve its identity.
Apple, more than any other company, touts its roots. It is a distinctly Californian company, and not only because it was founded and headquartered here in the Bay Area. It also embodies the Californian ideals of clear-mindedness and innovation.
In the packaging of every Apple product in the world are the words “Designed by Apple in California.” The sanctity then disappears when you flip it and it says “Made in China.”
Wouldn’t it be much better if it simply read “Designed and Made by Apple in California?”
