
Obama calls Steve Jobs' success prime example of American wealth - J3L2404
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/12/23/obama_calls_steve_jobs_success_a_prime_example_of_american_wealth.html
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jganetsk
This scares me. While I have nothing against the wealth of Steve Jobs and his
revolutionary products, what America needs to maintain the middle class
throughout the 21st century is to compete with China and its ilk: raw
materials, cheap renewable energy, and basic manufacturing. Because the
revolutionary products we sell to the rest of the world aren't even made here.

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alex_c
Why?

Or, more specifically - how will racing China (and every other developing
country) to the bottom in the manufacturing game be sufficient to maintain the
middle class?

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jganetsk
Because of our balance of payments crisis. We need to stop our country's net
outflow of dollars. Lauding Steve Jobs and trying to reproduce his success
won't solve that problem. Suppose we all become designers of hit products that
are manufactured abroad. How do we guarantee that the USA doesn't get cut out
of the vertical stack? I have total faith that the other countries of the
world will be able to innovate and support just as well as we can, if not
already.

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alex_c
I understand the economic benefit, but I have yet to see a good explanation of
how it might happen. Americans aren't willing to work manufacturing jobs for
$5 or even $10 an hour - and you can't support a middle class in the US on $5
or $10 an hour.

All manufacturing requires is a decent infrastructure, reasonably stable
political and legal system, and a workforce willing to work cheaply enough.
Trying to compete against China - and the rest of the world - on those terms
for today's market, rather than doing everything in its power to keep its lead
and define tomorrow's markets, is the biggest mistake the US could make.

Manufacturing is a relatively low skilled job - the expectation that
manufacturing = middle class made sense 50 years ago, but not today.

Edit: a lot of my thinking on this issue is colored by the book The World is
Flat (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat>). It's a complex issue,
and I'm definitely open to new ways of looking at it.

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TheBlack_knight
Manufacturing is not necessarily low skilled. Look to Germany for example,
which is a heavy manufacture that uses very advanced factories, some even
completely automated.

I have no problem having China make goods for us. Manufacturing is usually a
dirty process and the jobs can be relatively low paying.

~~~
dmazin
I'm not sure how your points connect. If factories are becoming automated,
then how does that show that the replaced human workers are skilled?

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TheBlack_knight
The workers who designed and built the machines are skilled. Inefficient jobs
are replaced with with new jobs not necessarily in the same industry.

~~~
dmazin
While this makes sense, I don't think the ratio is very high. Workers
outnumber engineers by extreme amounts and so a replaced "unskilled" job will
necessarily open up less jobs than it will close. No?

And the question stands, what to do with those workers? Move them to the
facility that builds the robots that displaced them, in a loop?

That said, I do not oppose the replacement of workers with robots in any way,
as that would be artificially trying to stop the progress of mankind. But what
happens to the workers is a serious issue. What are all the people from the
closed American car factories doing?

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jcl
The article subtly points out a logical disconnect: Obama says that we expect
Jobs to be rich having created several innovative products, yet the majority
of his fortune did not come from these products (at least not the recent
ones), but instead from the sale of Pixar.

So by celebrating Jobs's wealth, we're celebrating his investment acumen more
than his innovation.

~~~
Encosia
His Disney stock is from the Pixar sale, not active investment. Smart of him
to keep it all this time (probably an easy choice given the dividends it
pays), but he ultimately has it due to the innovation at Pixar, not investment
acumen.

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poundy
As of march 2010, Steve jobs owns

5.426 million shares of Apple valued at $1.2bn

138 million shares of Disney valued at 4.45bn

I was surprised to learn today that the majority of Steve jobs wealth comes
from Disney although he is known the most for his work at Apple!

~~~
glhaynes
Yeah, I hadn't realized that it was tilted that far toward the Disney side
either.

The way he tends to talk about Apple is that they want to make products that
sell so that they'll get to "come to work the next day" and keep making more.
Obviously there's some public positioning / PR going on there, but I think
there's at least a kernel of truth, too.

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julianb
_Most of Jobs' wealth comes from shares of Walt Disney Co. that he received
when the media conglomerate acquired Pixar in 2006. Disney shares recently hit
a 52 week high of $38._

I'm surprised that most of Jobs' wealth comes from the sale of Pixar. Even
with Apple's stock price ($323) valued at nearly 9 times the value of Disney
($37).

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Encosia
The real hidden value of the Disney stock is that it has paid him $242,880,000
in dividends since the Pixar sale in 2006.

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harold
Any time I hear a politician say "those are just facts" I immediately get
suspicious.

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Benjo
How is this different from a politician saying anything else?

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btilly
The tidbit that surprised me most is that Steve Jobs gets a greater fraction
of his wealth from his shares in Disney than he does from his shares in Apple.

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TRESPASS12
Steve jobs?? Really? I would say Mark Zukerberg is a better example.

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iamdave
Not really, no.

Steve Jobs sits at the core of what Apple represents by his attention to
detail down to the aesthetic micrometer. There is an almost sinister genius in
what he does at Apple, and at the end of the day you end up with a consistent,
applicable and fluid user experience at every level _including_ sales. People
_want_ to be involved in that because they know what they're getting. Apple
constantly proves itself as a company that does more than talk about thinking
outside the box. They think outside the shipping container, and down the
street some.

Steve Jobs is an entrepreneur who knew attention to detail, and consistently
pushing the envelope beyond a "good product" will bring in dollars.

Zuck sits at the core of a social networking behemoth that has no clear sense
of direction, constant changes to using the site, frequent controversy about
privacy, fragmented user networks, and no consistency in approach.

Mark Zuckerberg, as much as some people will suffer from bleeding ears after
hearing (reading) this: got lucky.

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javert
_There is an almost_ sinister _genius in what he does at Apple_

That's an interesting thing to say. Why sinister?

I'm not saying you're doing this, but a lot of people associate evil with
efficacy (think Darth Vader, or the "evil genius" character in movies).
Actually, that's not so realistic. Thinking about Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and
so on - these people are not necessarily paragons of virtue overall, but the
qualities that make them so productive ARE virtuous, i.e., good, and not evil.

~~~
iamdave
Sinister in a very comical light-hearted way, so as to say it's kind of crazy
seeing the things he's accomplished over his professional career.

