> While everyone in the U.S. I think would agree that securing jobs for Americans would be great, you just can't bend the math enough to make it economical.
I'm not so sure in this particular case.
People who buy Apple products are (usually) already choosing a more expensive product based on fashion and image. I can see Apple increasing the price a bit and having a big marketing campaign about being "Made in the USA."
In general though, I don't know how it's expected to work. Ironically, I think a lot of the people making the biggest fuss about bringing back manufacturing jobs will be the ones least able to buy the products once the prices skyrocket.
That reminds me of when the CEO of Papa Johns was complaining about having to insure his employees via the ACA and the enormous cost the customers would have to bear: An extra 14 cents for a large pizza.
In many cases, I would gladly pay a few percent more to have jobs back in the US. It has a cascading effect that truly "lifts all boats." A hell of a lot more than corporate tax breaks.
>> In many cases, I would gladly pay a few percent more to have jobs back in the US.
That reminds me of the idea that climate change can be ameliorated by a few people volunteering to recycle or ride bicycles in lieu of structural changes. TL;DR: these fixes don't work without scale.
I remember a big push around retaining manufacturing jobs in the '80s. Everything from clothes to cars to appliances was touted as being Made in America. By my recollection, the cross-industry marketing spend must have been fairly significant given its prevalence. But it apparently didn't work, and now these products are in general not made in America.
My assumption is that industry tried getting people to buy stuff based on place of manufacture and it turned out that given a choice between "Made in USA" or a few dollars off, most people chose the cost savings. Most people weren't in a position to spend more of their limited funds to save a stranger's job. If this was indeed what happened, I suspect this effort is doomed again.
There was a photo on reddit /funny a couple of weeks ago that had an orange plastic hose trigger with "made in USA" proudly stamped in the plastic. They'd opened up the plastic, and on the metal housing below was "made in China"...
In some cases it is long-run cheaper to buy the cheaper choice, other times it turns out cheaper in the long run to buy the expensive choice --however, this information is not easy to ascertain at the time of purchase and takes too much time for the average shopper to take into consideration when making a purchase.
I'll pay for expensive jeans which will last over the cheap jeans which don't last a year. On the other hand, the fashion industry has a lot to answer for for making people always wanting the new and the trendy, even when it impacts the environment negatively (one pair of boots lasting 10 years vs one lasting a year, for example).
I don't believe the majority of people think that way, or at least when it counted: in the 80s and 90s. Now, a lot of people have to buy from China because they can no longer afford the good stuff, even if it was available.
No. People like my parents buy iPhone because it works and because it's a serious phone. Nobody associates iPhone with status. It's a ubiquitous commodity device.
Are you seriously claiming Apple products aren't significantly higher priced than similar alternatives?
I don't even know why I'm replying here if you really don't know your parents could have bought an Android device that also works and is also a "serious phone" for half the price.
A colleague of mine bought a macbook pro for nearly $3k. When he found out about the touchbar, he cancelled the order and looked for other options. I pointed him at a decent Thinkpad X1 Carbon for about $2000, at which point he said "no, that's so expensive!"
When pushed on the point that he just willingly spent more than that on the apple laptop, he said "yeah, but when you use one, people know you're using a quality laptop". Yes, to this man at least, status was worth almost a grand.
I'm not so sure in this particular case.
People who buy Apple products are (usually) already choosing a more expensive product based on fashion and image. I can see Apple increasing the price a bit and having a big marketing campaign about being "Made in the USA."
In general though, I don't know how it's expected to work. Ironically, I think a lot of the people making the biggest fuss about bringing back manufacturing jobs will be the ones least able to buy the products once the prices skyrocket.