Wednesday, January 25th 2012
Apple Makes More Money Per Employee Than Exxon
In a report on MSN, Apple earned over $400,000 in profit per employee, more than Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or Google last year. As most of its plants are located over seas this shouldn't be a surprise. However what was a surprise is the apparent brashness of a Apple executives response when asked if they could bring some of that manufacturing back to the United States where Apple originated from. He was quoted as saying, "We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries," The Apple executive said. "We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible."
The report also detailed an alleged conversation between Steve Jobs and President Barack Obama during a benefit dinner. All of the Silicon Valley's top luminaries asked a question of the U.S. President. When it was Steve Jobs turn President Obama interrupted Mr. Jobs and asked, "What would it take to make iPhones in the United States?" and Mr. Jobs replied bluntly, "Those jobs aren't coming back." Now without knowing the entire context of the conversation it would be easy to vilify Mr. Jobs or even the Apple corporation. However what can be said with absolute certainty is Apple computers at one time were in fact made in America and now no longer are. Be it cheap labor or factories with more flexibility, Mr. Jobs helped create a company with a $400,000 dollar profit margin per employee and those jobs are not coming back to the U.S. any time soon.
Source:
MSN
The report also detailed an alleged conversation between Steve Jobs and President Barack Obama during a benefit dinner. All of the Silicon Valley's top luminaries asked a question of the U.S. President. When it was Steve Jobs turn President Obama interrupted Mr. Jobs and asked, "What would it take to make iPhones in the United States?" and Mr. Jobs replied bluntly, "Those jobs aren't coming back." Now without knowing the entire context of the conversation it would be easy to vilify Mr. Jobs or even the Apple corporation. However what can be said with absolute certainty is Apple computers at one time were in fact made in America and now no longer are. Be it cheap labor or factories with more flexibility, Mr. Jobs helped create a company with a $400,000 dollar profit margin per employee and those jobs are not coming back to the U.S. any time soon.
47 Comments on Apple Makes More Money Per Employee Than Exxon
i don't see how that can ever work out.
Businesses are in business to make a profit...point blank. Dont matter how when or where. Consumers like things,cheap. So to make a profit and keep prices low....over seas they go. We like high wages cover everything health plans and Escalades......its all just simple math....and a whole lota greed.
Now adays, outa grade 12 if you're even lucky enough to get a job, it's min wage and nothing, have a hard time getting a used chev cavalier for that.
Sad thing these bone head execs don't realize is that if people can't afford crap they won't buy crap, and on an economy based on capitalism, that doesn't bode well for long term sustainability.
I guess once Europe and North American become 2nd and 3rd world countries someone may finally realize it was the wrong choice.
Hello, and thanks for making this forum freely available.
There is no lack of options for manufacturers. Blaming the consumer for getting excited over products whose design and marketing are cleverly designed to create excitement avoids responsibility for knowingly failing to do the right thing.
Business leaders are good at business, not fairness, nor intellectual clarity. Henry Ford, for example, was a great American engineer and innovator of products, production and labor practices. He was also known as an anti-semite, authoring and publishing articles which were reviled in the U.S. and compiled into book form in Nazi Germany, helping to fuel their war effort - an effort which he opposed.
So don't expect Apple's leaders to do the right thing. They don't even necessarily know what it is. Worse yet, they may confuse imperceptibly-slow progress with fair attention to a problem that ruins people's lives right now - today. As someone else here said, Apple can stop this now - today. To get that to happen, they have to be told.
When enough consumers learn of these bad practices - by Apple and others - consumers will demand something else: compliance. Consumers will do so in the form of petitions (which already exist), legislation (which is why we have reasonably safe milk to drink and food to eat) and innovation (which is the sexiest of the three actions).
Innovation includes, but is definitely not limited to, boycotting existing products and creating new products in garages and other safe environments. The good initiatives will survive and the bad (including unhealthy manufacturing and dangerous working conditions) will expire.
This will take some time. My generation may not live to see it. More people will die, and even more will be unfairly maimed and sentenced to painful remainders of lives that should have been as healthy as yours or mine - before sweat-shop manufacturing is ended all over the world.
The fact that we can accelerate the end of unfair working conditions is not thanks to Apple, Foxconn or even IBM - though IBM far exceeds the others in terms of developing products fairly and for those who are already disabled.
We can accelerate the end of unfair working conditions because of the scientists who developed what we now call the internet, and because of the light-gloved government that hears our raised voices regarding internet freedom.
The answer is not in your mobile communicator. It's at your desktop. It's staring at your screen right now.
The answer is with you. As Apple's poison orchard shows, capitalism runs on its own. Democracy requires our energy to keep businesses focused on doing the right thing. This blog is a great way to share and communicate. Organizing makes the difference. You can do it.
NPR's recent This American Life broadcast began a movement. You can help.
Organize to hold accountable those who play unfairly. Do so with voices, laws and wallets. Start today.