NYT report: Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class

In these discussions, the moral thing to do has a funny way of correlating with what would be best for the person opining, or at least people who look and sound like them.

 

Not sure I understand. He is still writing a column for the NYT last I looked.

After hearing Obama's State of Union address I started wondering if the effort to cast spotlight on outsourcing was a coordinated effort.

 

In a perverted way, it's kind of enlightening to see working conditions as such in China.

"If they're so bad, quit the horrible job."

"Oh, it's the best one you can find?"

Pardon me, then, for not fearing anything about your so-called booming economy.

 

Does kinda make Friedman's "China envy" look even worse ...

 

As long as we could have a one party system, led by someone like Barack Obama, Friedman would be good with it.

He likes the efficiency of a dictatorship. He just envisions a benevolent dictator.

 

As long as Friedman could keep his house:

 

Actually, I'm not being really fair to Friedman. I don't get the sense that he wants a dictatorship, certainly not one of any substantial duration. He spoke at my campus a few years ago and admitted as much. On the other hand, when looking at our country's "broken politics" (his phrase) vis-a-vis energy and/or industrial policy, he said, the efficiency of the China approach was definitely alluring.

 

It's just comparative advantage. The United States was "The Jungle", Mexico and Latin America took that spot for a while, and now it's Asia and China's turn. Africa's turn is coming up.

 

Related to the "Apple is evil" disclosure ... stock was up 6.2 percent yesterday! Current price $446, average projections are around $570 with the projection range topping out at $650.

 

Apple CEO Tim Cook fires back by saying we're doing our best. Sorry, but a company with $100 billion in cash can do much, much better in addressing labor conditions in its supply chain.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/01/27/tim_cook_calls_assault_on_apples_ethics_in_china_patently_false_and_offensive.html

 

Always a crowd favorite. It's good to marry well.

 

I was on a long airplane ride about a year ago and chatted up 2 econ grad students from University of Chicago and they were talking about a class-wide project they'd just finished, where they did a thorough analysis of Apple stock. Their valuation: $620.

They said when they presented that figure, the professor was shocked...so the prof spent two weeks vetting their report, and even had other faculty members weigh in.

When they got their grade back, they got an A. And the professor and his colleagues all went out and bought Apple stock.

Looks like these guys were right.