Republican Elector from Texas voting for John Kasich

[Mitchrapp]

it kind of is the point. You can get a good smart phone for $200 or less. Most of the carriers will give you a free smart phone every time you sign a contract.

They will give you a discount but not free. Unless maybe you switch carriers.. But still, contracts suck.

 

[Spartanmack]

Being as they're (the ones who visited him) all big supporters of the democrat party, probably not as well. But at least people are talking..

I never understood how a company can go to China or Mexico for cheap labor, basically saving a bunch, and then not pushing those savings on to us. What's a new iPhone cost, over $700? Highway robbery. Cost to make it is considerably less..

they are pushing the savings on to us. There are a nujmber of analysis that indicate what it would cost to buy certain products if they were made in the US. The iPhone is estimated to have as high as $2k price tag if it were built here.

https://www.marketplace.org/2014/05...dered/how-much-would-all-american-iphone-cost

it's nonsense to think everything we buy should be made here. There are certain things that should and others that should be made more cheaply elsewhere. The problem is exorbitant union wages and corporate taxes. our taxes are so high and so unevenly applied due to loopholes, subsidies, etc that it makes America much less competitive in global commerce. If you cut our corporate tax significantly below our competitors you wouldn't even have to cut wages by much to attract domestic and inbound investment. As it is, companies are smart to leave our shores for better prices elsewhere. It's the same reason Americans shop at WalMart for the same items they could get at their local mom and pop (when they were in business). They're exercising good judgement. Slapping tariffs on their inbound goods is exercising extremely poor judgement. We can't tax our way to prosperity and we can't jump start our economy by making things more expensive for everyone. We will get destroyed and the best we can hope for for teh economy will be stagnation but more likely, it will implode if we keep going down this path.

another important thing to note is that the government doesn't create jobs - it's not the role of government. The best they can do is avoid making bad rules and implementing stupid policies that lead to adverse affects like companies going offshore for friendlier tax and regulatory regimes.

 

[sggatecl]

they are pushing the savings on to us. There are a nujmber of analysis that indicate what it would cost to buy certain products if they were made in the US. The iPhone is estimated to have as high as $2k price tag if it were built here.

https://www.marketplace.org/2014/05...dered/how-much-would-all-american-iphone-cost

it's nonsense to think everything we buy should be made here. There are certain things that should and others that should be made more cheaply elsewhere. The problem is exorbitant union wages and corporate taxes. our taxes are so high and so unevenly applied due to loopholes, subsidies, etc that it makes America much less competitive in global commerce. If you cut our corporate tax significantly below our competitors you wouldn't even have to cut wages by much to attract domestic and inbound investment. As it is, companies are smart to leave our shores for better prices elsewhere. It's the same reason Americans shop at WalMart for the same items they could get at their local mom and pop (when they were in business). They're exercising good judgement. Slapping tariffs on their inbound goods is exercising extremely poor judgement. We can't tax our way to prosperity and we can't jump start our economy by making things more expensive for everyone. We will get destroyed.

another important thing to note is that the government doesn't create jobs - it's not the role of government. The best they can do is avoid making bad rules and implementing stupid policies that lead to adverse affects like companies going offshore for friendlier tax and regulatory regimes.

That article on the cost of the iPhone was interesting. I wonder why the parts cost so much more in the US? Lack of availability? Or is that all to blame on taxes and unions too?

 

[Spartanmack]

That article on the cost of the iPhone was interesting. I wonder why the parts cost so much more in the US? Lack of availability? Or is that all to blame on taxes and unions too?

according to the article, it's primarily labor. There are a lot of rare earths metals that go into phones that we don't produce (at least I don't think we do) so there could be higher costs associated with sourcing those materials.

Edit: according to this, at least some of the rare earths materials are mined in the US. I do recall from my days trading commodity stocks that the US is at a strategic disadvantage due to dwindling rare earths deposits. Anyway, mining is more expensive in the US too so if the entire value chain of an iphone were to be US sourced to the extent it can, it's most likely going to be more expensive.

https://www.cnet.com/news/digging-for-rare-earths-the-mines-where-iphones-are-born/

 

[Gulo Blue]

according to the article, it's primarily labor. There are a lot of rare earths metals that go into phones that we don't produce (at least I don't think we do) so there could be higher costs associated with sourcing those materials.

Edit: according to this, at least some of the rare earths materials are mined in the US. I do recall from my days trading commodity stocks that the US is at a strategic disadvantage due to dwindling rare earths deposits. Anyway, mining is more expensive in the US too so if the entire value chain of an iphone were to be US sourced to the extent it can, it's most likely going to be more expensive.

https://www.cnet.com/news/digging-for-rare-earths-the-mines-where-iphones-are-born/

The rare earths is another one of those things where we should consider subsidy for strategic reasons. In additional to elevated mining costs in the US, China made a strategic decision to capture the market. It's their subsidy vs. our subsidy. Googling just now, I see an article from 2012 about the resurgence of rare Earth mining in the US with predictions that it will boom in 5 years and then I see an article from last year saying the only US rare earth miner filed for bankruptcy.

If push comes to shove as Trump tries to rework trade agreements, you'd think China would see this as a significant card to play.

 

[Michchamp]

isn't rare earth mining pretty destructive to the environment? why fuck up and destroy even more of our habitable and agricultural land than we have to?

once the climate warms as its currently projected to, we may need that land just to grow crops to fucking eat! never mind making smart phones.

I believe you can also recover rare earth metals from old phones. its not like they get used up. probably not cheap, but, scales of economy and what not will help if its our only option.

 

[Spartanmack]

The rare earths is another one of those things where we should consider subsidy for strategic reasons. In additional to elevated mining costs in the US, China made a strategic decision to capture the market. It's their subsidy vs. our subsidy. Googling just now, I see an article from 2012 about the resurgence of rare Earth mining in the US with predictions that it will boom in 5 years and then I see an article from last year saying the only US rare earth miner filed for bankruptcy.

If push comes to shove as Trump tries to rework trade agreements, you'd think China would see this as a significant card to play.

it is a critical security matter. Rare earths are in everything from tech, communications, energy production and transmission, medical devices, defense products, etc. But the point here is virtually every part of the value chain of producing an iphone would be more expensive if it were on-shored. there may be some externalities, like infrastructure problems that make some part more expensive in China - I know with coal, they imported a tremendous amount of thermal (non-met) coal from australia and other sources even though they have huge thermal coal reserves because they didn't have the rail infrastructure in place to get it cheaply from their mines to cities closer to the coast. That may have changed in the last 10 years or so.

 

[Gulo Blue]

isn't rare earth mining pretty destructive to the environment?

Yes. I mean, pretty much all mining is really expensive/difficult to do in a way that is safe and doesn't create some form of pollution. But the strategic importance is huge. If you want to make anything with electrical parts, you either go through China, or if you're lucky, there's an option somewhere else that costs about double.

And mining infrastructure takes forever to build. If we were cut off, it would be devastating. I don't know how efficient reclaiming used materials from old devices is, but last I read, that industry is also dominated by 3rd world people in poverty, poisoning themselves to pick apart old devices.

 

[Gulo Blue]

The strategic importance is huge, but before I use the word "devastating" too many times, I should also say that getting cut off is Chicken Little talk. It's tough to envision how we'd get cut off. Through international trade, you can't really cut off one country unless everyone does, so either the world would have to turn against us or China would have to cut off the whole world.