Why Apple Is Not Made in the USA

"With the notion we might go along
That employment at home should be strong,
But our skills, we apprise,
And our chain of supplies
Don't compare to those guys' in Guangdong."

A New York Times profile on Apple's manufacturing of the iPhone opens with President Obama at dinner with Steve Jobs, asking him what it would take to bring this operation back to America. It's a poignant moment, as it seems that both US iPhone jobs, as well as Steve Jobs himself, were going and not coming back. Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher take an in-depth look at the economics of iPhone manufacture and determine that factory-ready skills and scalable supply chains are lacking here at home. "Though Americans are among the most educated workers in the world, the nation has stopped training enough people in the mid-level skills that factories need," they write. As for supply chains -

The entire supply chain is in China now,” said another former high-ranking Apple executive. “You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.

Is massive vocational and technical training America's answer to this challenge?

The Ideal Rate

"The taxation of capital gains,"
Said a student of John Maynard Keynes,
"Would ideally fall
Between 'nothing at all'
And the rate at which Buffett complains."

Writing in the Wall Street Journal on the "Three Policies That Gave Us the [Steve] Jobs Economy," Amity Shlaes cites the slashing of the capital gains rate from a confiscatory 49% to 25% in 1978. Building on this evidence, she reaches the silly conclusion that "taxes on capital should always be lowered, and dramatically." One might just as easily conclude that, because a diet improved one's physique, that mealtime portions should always be dramatically lowered, too. But what is the correct capital gains rate? Undoubtedly, it lies between encouragement of wild speculation and discouragement of capital formation.

Apple CEO No More

Said Jobs: "I'm no longer the ruler now,
But review my achievements and you'll avow:
The tools of the geek
I made sexy and sleek -
Thanks to me, your technology's cooler now."

Steve Jobs' resignation as CEO of the company he co-founded in 1976 prompted an outpouring of tributes that seemed like obituaries, if not to the man - who, though evidently gravely ill, is very much alive - then to his visionary leadership of America's iconic technology company. Indeed, the word "icon" itself gained new meaning with the introduction of the first graphical interface computer - the Macintosh - in 1984. The story of Jobs' rise, fall, exile, triumphant return and rise to the top is already the stuff of legend, but his signature achievement is the transformation of technology into beautiful objects of desire.

Jobs Stimulus

The economy's new focus is Jobs
(That's Steve - not you poor working slobs),
Who's enthralled every geek
With a tablet so sleek
Without keys, buttons, trackballs or knobs.