Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class - NYTimes.com
Rated • 9 reviews • globalisation • nytimes.com
Big article on the outsourcing of Apple's manufacturing to China. I'm from Manchester in the UK. We were the original capitalist megaslum: a city which mushroomed from nowhere in the world's first industrial take off. Families would share cellars which were regularly flooded with sewage; children from the foundling hospital were worked to death before their 10th birthday. Workers organised. By the 1960s we had a decent standard of living and a respected identity. Then the bosses decided it was more competitive to send manufacturing abroad,
Won't this just happen everywhere else unless we come up with some answers? I've spent years of my life cringing at some British people's denial of the steep decline in UK power during the 20th century; the idea that our Special Relationship with the US is a relationship between equals. But I take no pleasure in the current plight of the US.
I suppose workers in China will enjoy a brief moment in the sun, when they succeed in getting some of the good things in life before they see their jobs headed elsewhere. Isn't the free market wonderful?
Yes, I'm aware that China claims to be communist. But look at the disparity in wealth within the country, the lack of any respect for individual freedom, the treatment of Tibetans and Uighers. Where it differs from the West appears to be in the adoption of a protectionist policy towards its economy: see china.org.cn/china/Lhasa_Unrest/2008-04/16/content_14966297.htm [china.org.cn/china/Lhasa_Unrest/2008-04/16/content_14966297.htm] (an article on boycotting the French firm Carrefour.)
Won't this just happen everywhere else unless we come up with some answers? I've spent years of my life cringing at some British people's denial of the steep decline in UK power during the 20th century; the idea that our Special Relationship with the US is a relationship between equals. But I take no pleasure in the current plight of the US.
I suppose workers in China will enjoy a brief moment in the sun, when they succeed in getting some of the good things in life before they see their jobs headed elsewhere. Isn't the free market wonderful?
Yes, I'm aware that China claims to be communist. But look at the disparity in wealth within the country, the lack of any respect for individual freedom, the treatment of Tibetans and Uighers. Where it differs from the West appears to be in the adoption of a protectionist policy towards its economy: see china.org.cn/china/Lhasa_Unrest/2008-04/16/content_14966297.htm [china.org.cn/china/Lhasa_Unrest/2008-04/16/content_14966297.htm] (an article on boycotting the French firm Carrefour.)