THE COUNTRY'S PROBLEM IN A NUTSHELL: Apple's Huge New Data Center In North Carolina Created 50 Jobs

[FarCenter]

Apple also actually exemplifies some of the reasons why we have such huge unemployment and inequality problems:

"Digital" businesses like Apple employ far fewer people (per profit) than traditional manufacturing businesses.

Apple's 60,000+ jobs are not just in the US--they're spread around the world.

Apple's extraordinary ~25% profit margin means that the benefits of its success accrue primarily to a relatively small group of shareholders rather than a broad base of employees.

To put this in context, the Economist recently noted that Apple, Amazon, and Google together employ 113,000 people--which is less than 1/3rd as many as a single American success-story from the prior generation, GM, employed in 1980.

A striking example of this phenomenon is Apple's new data center in North Carolina.

Like other North Carolina foothills towns, Maiden was once a thriving home of textile mills and furniture makers. Now it's struggling, with an unemployment rate near 13%.

In the prior generation of American companies, the decision by Apple to locate a huge new facility in Maiden would have been transformative for the town. This is one reason Maiden lured Apple with major tax breaks and crowed about the company's decision to put a data center there.

But as Michael Rosenwald of the Washington Post reports, Apple's new data center in Maiden will create only 50 full-time jobs.

And most of them won't go to Maiden residents, who lack the necessary skills.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-new-data-center-north-carolina-created-50-jobs-2011-11

[leftyladyfrommo]

1. I tried to tell a friend of mine that one of the problems with the

econly is that computers have simply taken most of the jobs. One person can now do what it used to take a hundred people to do. Companies aren't hiring because they are making tons of money the way things are now. They don't need to hire more people. The current goal is to use as few employees as possible and let the machines do all the rest of the work.

She told me I was full of shit. I guess that everyone will be all right if they just take the time to learn to use computers.

I think she missed the point.

[taught_me_patience]

4. One guy with a masters degree and a personal computer

can do the same amount of statistical "work" as hundreds of PhDs 30 years ago. Database technology and computing power has improved that dramatically...

[PSPS]

14. It is a challenging conundrum

As manual labor becomes more and more unnecessary, and world population keeps growing and growing, what happens?

One school of thought says relatively full employment is still achievable because, despite automation, there will be more people demanding more things which will still increase the demand for manual labor. In other words, increases in population counteracts increases in productivity.

But another school of thought, about which I've seen only a few scholarly discussions, envision the abandonment of the whole concept of "work." In other words, one would not have to "go to work every day" in exchange for money to finance their life. As you can imagine, something like this requires the abandonment of many of the fundamental concepts of modern society.

[leftyladyfrommo]

16. What if they just pay people to not work - then they have

money to buy stuff with.

This whole thing scares me. I really think we are going to see a future where there just isn't a lot of work that needs to be done. People without money don't have choices. And they are easy to control because they don't dare take chances on anything - they need to survive.

It could mean really drastic changes for our whole society.

[dkf]

28. They would probably need to be paid for doing something, getting an education at least to possibly

train for a job.

[Fumesucker]

39. The whole point is though, what jobs?

There's only so much a person can consume before consumption strictly for the sake of consumption becomes the aim, a fair percentage of the population has reached that quite some time back.

As Americans become more and more productive an ever smaller percentage of the population is needed to maintain a given standard of living.

More and more the surplus productivity has not gone to the 99% that would turn around and spend it which injects it back into the economy but rather to the 1% that tends to invest it in digital churning "investments" like we have seen with the whole panoply of exotic investments dreamed up by the Quants on Wall Street.

[dkf]

54. The job that someone else is presently doing.

If we had several people competing to be the replacement a transition could go much better.

[Fumesucker]

64. What?

People competing to replace a worker are not themselves workers, if they replace the worker then that worker is no longer a worker.

I'm surprised I have to state this directly, you usually seem more perceptive.

[dkf]

65. No but they can be paid to be in training for that position when it is opened up.

Like any understudy or 2nd or 3rd string quarterback.

[Fumesucker]

71. Paid by whom? n/t

[eridani]

67. How about we spend more time being active citizens?

Volunteering to directly solve our communities' problems, paying more attention to officeholders, becoming officeholders ourselves?

[Fumesucker]

72. Most people are not cut out to be politicians..

I'd make a miserable politician because I say what I think with little filtering, I've learned this the hard way.

Volunteering is all well and good but people who don't have any means of supporting themselves aren't going to have much to volunteer when they are doing everything they can do to hold body and soul together.

[Sirveri]

82. The key is to reduce the working hours and ban over time work while raising min wage.

We need more central control of the economy and not less.

First thing that HAS to go: Salary compensation. If you're offering a contract as a third party, fine, offer a contract at a set price, but not for the common employee. The only purpose of salary compensation is to reduce overhead costs and violate over time compensation laws.

Next, mandatory max hours combined with minimum wages that make sense (rent control would help here). As the single worker is able to produce more and more above his own requirements (when due to technology) the other labor elements must shift to other jobs or simply go without, this would mitigate such effects.

[TNLib]

91. Yep

IT has been used to replace allot of workers however. I see most of my IT colleagues coming over as cheap labor from India. I wish they'd shut down H1b's and then college kids could train up to work in the IT field and replace them.

[raouldukelives]

32. I think your right on the money

Many people have jobs that require air travel for no reason than to attend some "business meeting". Literally destroying the climate for nothing. We need to look at paying people not to fly, to commute, to destroy the future of our planet with fossil fuels. Sure it makes corporations money and allows people to feel "productive" but how much would it be worth to people 100 years from now to have us realize the climate is worth many more dollars than a cheap iGadget.
We need to look at rewarding people who live lives that don't place a burden on the children of tomorrow.

[AngryAmish]

79. Half the population has below 100 IQ

What in the world are we going to do with those people?

[Tesha]

90. Mostly they'll be watching "Ow, My Balls!" on TV. (NT)

[coyote]

70. I think we need an entire paradigm shift in working.....

Why do we need to have a "job"? Why do we have to work 40 hours/week? All this technology and progress is suppose to make our lives easier. Instead people are working harder than ever before and for less money.

Some ideas I have:

I think perhaps we could change the work week to a 10 hr/work week and enforced. This could create many jobs. There must be some kind of planned transition of course for this. I don't know how inflation and everything would fit into this, but why not? Why must we work 40 hours/week?

Make it a basic human right that people are provided with food and shelter.

Basic data privacy laws could create tons of jobs. This is what is done in Europe. Private data cannot leave the country, therefore forcing companies to hire people in the country as customer service reps to examine your records. In the US, some guy in India can help you with a credit card problem for example....this is not allowed in the EU.

In Germany, there are price controls for retails goods. For example, a Walmart cannot sell a 500€ TV for 200€ because the small and pop shop does not having the buying power like a Walmart. This allows the small and pop shops to survive because there are no big bargains by either going to a Walmart or some big box store. Yes this makes this more expensive for consumers but more jobs are created because everyone has an equal playing field.

[JoeyT]

77. Those are the ideal situations.

Though what it looks like we're going to end up with is about half the population unemployed and the people that control all the money making them compete with one another to see who will work the cheapest in the worst conditions while absorbing the most abuse.

Actually, we're pretty much there already. The numbers just aren't that high yet.

[DireStrike]

87. Marx beat everybody to the punch on this one.

[NashVegas]

47. Not Really Improved

But made things more precise.

Meanwhile, humans are being "de-skilled."

[grantcart]

19. 100% correct

Remember draftsman (drafting blueprints for archeticts), bank tellers, Video Stores,

gone.

remember pre email, first class stamps? What is the Post Office supposed to do when there is no more first class mail?

We need to rethink everything. How can a society that bases its dignity and ability to feed a family operate when there will not be enough jobs for everyone to work?

Four day work weeks, forced vacations.

Incremental changes will never catch up with the revolutions in productivity.

This is the underside problem of vast increases in productivity.

[kentauros]

40. Drafters/Designers are far from "gone".

If that was the case, well, I likely wouldn't have an account here ;)

Yes, I'm a drafter (actually a "Designer" as my skills are above those designated as a "drafter".) And yes, I use software on a computer (dual monitors with both AutoCAD Civil 3D and ESRI's ArcGIS mapping program.) However, I do not do the work of "100 people". I don't even do the work of ten people. I really only do the work of one drafter of the past. I might do a little more work and a little faster, but I am certainly not replacing a hundred people in this position.

Computer jobs really don't replace that many people, unless you're talking specifically about those fields centered around making computer progress, such as this Apple facility. Looking around the engineering office where I work, I see a broad spectrum of professions using the GIS mapping software even as most of them aren't mappers. It's a database program first and a mapping program second, so all sorts of existing professions can use it. AutoCAD is limited to engineering, architect and civil professionals, but even there, that's a pretty broad spectrum, too.

I don't disagree about your other points with regards to work-weeks and vacation. I'd like to see those change for the better. That will take a boatload of work, though, and major attitude changes for our congress-critters before they could ever be put into place.

Personally, I'd like to see the tool that is the computer put to more use. 40% of all office/cubicle jobs could be telecommuted. Think of the energy savings from that alone! :)

[jmowreader]

42. If you were a mechanical designer, how many people would you be worth?

I also have a computer job, and in my case I've replaced anywhere from 10 to 50 people depending on how far back you want to go.

I create printing plates for newspapers. Our ad department places the ads on computer pages. Our journalists put the stories and pictures on. And I run the plates on computer-to-plate systems.

Thirty years ago, this job would have been done on phototypesetters. You'd have needed a darkroom person to develop photos, a camera person to screen them, people to type up the stories on one kind of phototypesetter, other people to set heads on a different phototypesetter (body-copy and display-type machines are different because the type runs the width of the paper on a body-type machine and the length of it on a display-type machine), people to paste up the text and photos, another camera person to shoot the finished flats, and a plate maker.

Sixty years ago, this job would have been done in hot metal and you'd have needed even more people because hot metal linotypes are a lot slower than Compugraphic phototypesetters were. Plus you needed engravers for the photos in addition to the camera guy and darkroom guy. And all those folks tended to have very short lifespans--sitting in a room with fifty pots of molten lead twelve hours a day for years on end will kill you quick.

I can produce four different newspapers in one night, by myself. This you COULDN'T do even ten years ago.

In Kentauros' case, I would think that even with templates and mechanical aids, it would take more time to draw blueprints or machine designs by hand than by computer, meaning you'd need more draftsmen and designers to get a machine or building designed in a reasonable period of time.

[kentauros]

46. As I implied in my post, I'm a Mapping Designer.

We still rely on surveyors, even with the advent of GPS and LIDAR. Surveyor companies often have drafters just to clean up the data they make before it goes to the client. Plus they are on hand to call when there are still data-glitches or missing surveyor-notes. I'd say very few people have been replaced in this field, and it covers all cases of civil construction.

One tidbit about GIS and mapping is that, at least in the State of Texas, the commission that governs where all of the pipelines are in the state also employs people just to keep those databases up to date and properly projected (mapping projections.) Their jobs didn't exist ten years ago.

The other thing to take into consideration is that while the design and drafting of a machine may take less time, you still have to prototype it, and then build the manufacturing system to make whatever part/product. Not to mention the fact that all machines require maintenance. More machines, more people needed for maintenance. How often do you see an office copier taken apart because it needs maintenance or some part deep within its bowels failed? Now multiply that by tens of thousands (if not more) across the country. And that's just for office copiers ;)

[grantcart]

48. Interesting I had talked with a couple of architects who basically work alone now

and had gotten a different impression. Thanks for the update.

As you note the general comment on vast increases in productivity is still on point.

[kentauros]

49. Architects don't really need drafters any more.

In some ways, they didn't need them even in the past, depending on the size of the project. Architects are unique in that they are taught all levels of drawing and even model-making while engineers are lucky if they get a single class on any kind of drawing skills (I've been told they don't teach drafting at all to engineering students anymore.)

I know the the software can generate any manner of blueprints now, though I would suspect (I don't know because it's not my field) that the contractors doing the building would also have drafters on hand for any changes that come up. Every project will have what are called "as-builts" or drawings made after a project is completed. That way, maintenance people (and anyone else needing access to complete plans) have plans that represent what is built instead of only what was planned :)

[0rganism]

50. I think it's more about all the jobs you *don't* have to do anymore

Your personal input is critical to your project, and probably doesn't happen very much faster than it would have 30 years ago, the rate being tied more to your own conceptualizations than any given procedure. However, let's say you need to get copies of your work to 12 different people on 3 continents. Well, now, that's a lot different, hey? You just email the data they can plug into their CAD utilities, and done in an instant. No more multiple-copying a blueprint, rounding up a dozen cardboard tubes, contacting shipping, and so on. Or let's say you've just finished a topographical map of an area, and someone up the chain wants an isometric view of the terrain to use for planning a housing development. You don't have to hand that off to an intern or an apprentice, you just get your computer to render the model and send a graphic -- or send over your data, and they render it themselves.

I guess where I'm going with this is, you don't notice the change because it's not what you do that's so much faster -- you don't notice what you don't have to do anymore, because you aren't doing it.

I saw this all the time back when I worked in EDA tool support; engineers and designers would often complain about a new version doing things differently, or causing problems. And don't get me wrong -- there were frequently problems, bad ones, with broken workflows and software bugs. But what didn't register was how, over the course of a few upgrades, their very model of what was expected from their tools had changed. E.g., they didn't gripe as much about the manual floor-planning and routing tools, because the auto-routers got so much better. There wasn't as much concern about certain aspects of on-chip timing, because clock trees got much more efficient. About 15 years ago, I worked in one ASIC shop where static timing analysis was a very big deal, one guy's job was basically to pour through mountains of data from overnight STA runs; I presume he's moved on because STA runs of that complexity can wrap up in under 10 minutes after every place-and-route finishes, these days, and every timing violation will cross-reference the gates, paths, and HDL source, and screening for false paths is a check-box option. So now chip designers are used to having their STA occur as a seamless, integrated part of the automated process, when not so long ago it was something they had to actually DO.

And it's perhaps a thousand little things that the computers handle for you every day that you don't notice much anymore that add up to maybe a dozen jobs, gone forever. Maybe you saw it happening slowly, year by year, and it just didn't register. Like one day your accounting department has 20 people, the next day it's 18. Like there used to be twice as many part-time student employees in the summer as there are now. It's not that you're heartless, or you didn't care about those guys having jobs, or people did their jobs poorly, the jobs just aren't there to be had anymore. 80 years ago it started happening with industrial jobs, and now it's a pain trying to find anything manufactured here. Back in the '70s, people migrated over to tech work, and now that's about ready to dry up.

What's the next thing, what skills will it favor? That's the perennial question, really.

[kentauros]

52. I notice what I don't have to do,

as well as the general mess hand-drafting was back then (until you've done ink on mylar, you can't compare carbon-smudged hands as an example of "messy".)

As for how "easy" it is to send data, that only works for relatively small files. In mapping, a project can have multitudes of large-format image files (each one at a minimum of 150mb) so it's too big for email, and I've worked for too many firms that didn't want just anyone accessing their ftp site, even the client. And the client often wanted a disc of those same files, not to mention that they wanted everything printed out, including every single time there's a route change. We're talking tons of paper per year for just one company. It doesn't matter what the technology can do, people still want their hard-copies. So, there are graphics firms set up with their primary reason for existence being to print out these massive project sets to be mailed or overnighted off to wherever.

This is why when I read about the invention of e-Ink years ago that I wanted to see the technology expand. That alone could save us all plenty of carbon-sequestering trees and we really could get to the idea of sending data instead of the antiquated ink on cellulose.

By the way, I didn't understand most of what you said there, because I've never worked in those disciplines. Piping, mapping, a little sheet-metal and electrical drafting, and almost all exclusively for the oil industry. No factory/mechanical experience whatsoever.

[Odin2005]

22. 50 years ago it was assumed that increasing automation would lead to more leasure time.

They forgot that the forces of Capitalism would instead lead to increased unemployment. a high-tech society incompatible with Capitalism, technology will cause Capitalism to destroy itself via massive unemployment.

[Kat45]

36. Yes, I remember that..

It was presented as a wonderful future. I guess the assumption was that everyone would still have their jobs and income, but work fewer hours and thus have more leisure time. They didn't consider the possibility, which has happened, that companies would just do more work with fewer employees and many of us would lose our jobs and income. You could say we do indeed have more leisure time today, but we have no money to even meet our basic needs, never mind enjoy that leisure time.

If lots of replacement businesses and jobs do not come to fruition, a distinct possibility, then how are we all supposed to live? It sees that a new system has to be devised, though I don't know what it would be. Work is so revered in this country that I can't even imagine our country finding any reason to give money to people who are not working.

[Odin2005]

41. We must do away with the "protestant work ethic"/

We must work to live rather than live to work.

[Kat45]

61. Agreed. n/t

[WildNovember]

63. Because the mythology of capitalism says that as productivity rises,

capital will share the monetized value of that added productivity with its workforce. And if workers' salaries had kept pace with productivity, we'd be in that lovely future.

But they didn't, and we aren't.

[eridani]

68. Guess how many hours a week we'd be working if workers had gotten productivity gains?

http://www.truth-out.org/jobs-mirage-how-much-more-work-do-humans-really-need/1314284068

While honest toil is honorable, a day to honor labor does make it easy to overlook certain realities, such as: Why do both left and right clamor for more jobs? Would those who get to opine for a living be willing to perform the jobs they'd impose upon others? And why jobs? If work is the only way one can be worthy of an income, why not also clamor for self-employment and start-ups? Must the jobless look forward to having a boss their entire lives? And are more jobs needed, or even possible?

Instead of clamor for jobs, why not clamor for a shorter workweek and divide the necessary work among more people? How'd 40 hours a week get to be some sort of magic number? Why aren't automation and globalization whittling that down to 30, 20, 10, going, going, gone? Juliet Schor in her "Overworked American" (1991) calculated that if increases in productivity (more output from less labor input) over the course of a baby boomer's career were applied not to things like fatter CEO salaries, but to shrinking the workweek, it'd now be 6.5 hours. Why isn't it?

[JoeyT]

78. Good grief.

I couldn't even imagine a 6.5 hour workweek.

I've had jobs that demanded an 84 hour workweek on the clock for the duration of the job. Add in lunch/breaks and you're at work around 98 hours a week.

[patrice]

2. We the People built it and gave it life. Now our jobs are exported to foreign nations & We are left

to be farmed by robots.

[high density]

3. The country's problem is that people in India and China will do it cheaper

and Corporate America is happy to send the jobs offshore to put more money (in the short term at least) in their own pockets. The fact is that US consumers are running out of money to put back into the economy since it's all either being hoarded at the top or being sent offshore. Long term these corporations are going to have to follow this money offshore since the US consumer-based economy is going to trend to zero.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. They already are

Lahore s the r&d capital of the world.

Corporate headquarters will follow, or are already in the process (Microsoft moved a whole division to China) in the next ten years.

[FarCenter]

10. Lahore is in Pakistan

Pakistan is well out of the running in R&D.

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. I am confusing city

Can I blame this horrific cold. West coast of India.

Bangalore.

[immoderate]

7. Machines in India and China will be even cheaper.

As Indians and Chinese workers demand a living wage, their jobs will be automated too. Machines are cheaper and more productive, don't require sick days or threaten strikes. They don't steal.

--imm

[high density]

11. Will they ever figure out that if they want people to buy their products

that they have to pay people livable wages? The impoverished aren't buying iPhones and cable TV subscriptions. We're in an unsustainable cycle where Corporate America expects to generate an ever-increasing amount of profits but at the same time they want to minimize their labor costs.

[immoderate]

18. That will not stop. That's my point.

We just don't need everybody to work to produce the things we need.

--imm

[FarCenter]

8. There is often a two step process -- outsource, then automate

Once you outsource the work in another country the internal politics of automating and downsizing the workforce go away.

So suppose you have a business process that involves a lot of people at workstations. First thing is to move the workstations to Bangalore. Then you add the extra logic and analysis to the servers to remove the manual steps being done at the workstations.

You wind up with a much cheaper IT system, since a lot of server and network power that is spent of running workstation interfaces can be eliminated by having servers talk directly with other servers.

[JPZenger]

34. Computer memory now made in Thailand - affected by flooding

I just heard a story that a very high percentage of the world's computer memory is now manufactured in Thailand. The severe flooding has harmed production and is expected to cause a shortage that will increase prices for computers and portable hard drives.

[immoderate]

5. I've commented on this trend a few times. Productivity increases as employment decreases.

If you do the math, and extrapolate the trend, fewer people will have income to buy the overproduction. We just don't need everybody to work, and can still oversupply the population.

Surprisingly, the only commentator to bring this up, and he's done it several times, is Joe Scarborough. Go figure.

He hasn't found an answer though, because the best one is socialism.

--imm

[Dan]

12. or a sick thought...

if there are no other alternatives (socialism cost money and who will pay) then become like Rome!

[immoderate]

17. Yes there is always the feudalism default.

We could go that way too.

--imm

[raccoon]

76. Like Rome in what way? Elucidate, my dear Watson. nt

[Dan]

85. Smiling,

Conquer the world...because the number one product we sell, today, is war or the instruments of war...

[dkf]

29. You will never hear it from the liberals because that devalues labor.

So they ignore it completely.

[dkf]

30. Or maybe all Americans need to own apple shares.

We need our investments to work for us because we can't find jobs.

[immoderate]

58. The jobs are not there, and there is no need for them.

Distributing shares of corporations to citizens sounds like an idea to ponder.:think:

--imm

[geckosfeet]

9. So what's the issue - they didn't create enough jobs? The same can be said for

a lot of companies - like the a$$hat that said he would not hire until Obama was out of office. My guess is that there are a lot of jobs being lost due to unsound though processes like that.

I can certainly see why people in the financial industry would want to find a new goat to gore - they are sick or being pointed to as the industry that burned down the economy. But what are tech giants supposed to do - add inefficiencies into their business models? 50 good paying jobs with substantial benefits is a net win for any town. How this can be painted as a negative is beyond me.

The author mentions global manufacturing pay scale inequalities. Ok. Legitimate. But IMO not as much a factor as endemic ceo/rank and file pay scale inequality, a topic more closely associated with the financial sector but common in almost all larger companies.

But the point is that the hope that a few more companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon will restore the U.S. economy to its former glory is misplaced.

The companies create amazing products and vast shareholder wealth, but they don't spread this wealth around as much as earlier industrial giants did. We can talk all we want about how we need to "retrain" our workforce to do high-tech jobs, but even under the best of circumstances, the process will take a long, long time. And until global manufacturing pay-scales get closer to equilibrium--which will likely be accomplished by China's rising and ours falling--companies will still have an overwhelming incentive to build their products where labor costs are cheaper.

So, yes, we should celebrate the success of Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon. But we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking they're going to solve our unemployment or inequality problems.

THE COUNTRY'S PROBLEM IN A NUTSHELL: Apple's Huge New Data Center In North Carolina Created Only 50 Jobs

I agree - we should not delude ourselves into thinking that the tech giants are going to solve unemployment and inequality problems. It may take legislation to help get that ball rolling. But when the rw and 'conservative' politicians deliberately seek to weaken the economy to undermine a democratic (and fairly elected) president, I think congress should investigate grounds for treason, sedition or unethical behavior for some its members.

The senate minority leader stated publicly and on the record, his job was to make sure the president was not re-elected - essentially to undermine presidential efforts and initiatives regardless of the cost to the country. Why didn't his statements garner more attention than they did - and perhaps calls for reprimand or censure?

To deflect the affects of deliberate and conscious undermining of a democratically elected president and the catastrophic failure of the financial industry onto companies who are providing demonstrable positives is,,,, well I am not sure what it is but I don't like it.

[leftyladyfrommo]

15. Did you see where the new Happy Feet movie bombed so

600 people lost their jobs? The people that animated the movie just all got fired.

Most of them found work with another company.

[hunter]

20. The general problem is that money floats to the top like scum.

And the waters underneath go dark and anaerobic.

First thing we gotta do is scrape the scum off, let the light in, and stir some air into the water.

Tax the very wealthy to control inflation, and create money and jobs for those at the bottom who have nothing. This will get the economic waters circulating again.





http://info.organicpond.com/vertex-pond-aeration

[pscot]

88. The devil is in the details

When you're down there in the anoxic zone struggling to breath, getting rid of the pond scum above is an impossible dream.

[Odin2005]

21. Capitalism is incompatible with the increasing per-worker productivty.

This is because in Capitalism technological developments that increase productivity leads to unemployment.

[ThomWV]

23. What a bogus article. No shit, any child could tear it apart in minutes.

"benefits of its success accrue primarily to a relatively small group of shareholders rather than a broad base of employees" Horseshit, Apple has far more shareholders than it has employees, this statement is not only false its exactly backwards from the truth, and it appears to be the basis for the entire article. Then there is this nonsense: "Maiden was once a thriving home of textile mills and furniture makers. Now it's struggling, with an unemployment rate near 13%". Every single one of those southern textile towns was wallowing in gross unemployment that often exceeded 50% long before the computer revolution took hold. They hadn't had a good jobs base in those towns since the late1970's and some of them were even defunct by then.

[emulatorloo]

26. Don't confuse me with the facts.

[upi402]

24. The media hyping NAFTA...

That! was the tip of the iceberg for me.

Corporate fascism is bigger that Apple or Microsoft or digital efficiencies of any ilk, in my opinion.

[zbdent]

25. and what are the impacts of the tax breaks to all these "job creating" businesses???

People forget that, any tax breaks to businesses mean that the locals have to make up for the lost income ...

[Initech]

44. It's all made up. Every single last fucking bit I'm concerned.

60,000 jobs? And all we get is 50? To them that's just not even a concern. After all, there's profits to be made!! :grr:

[moondust]

27. Maximum Wage should be contemplated.

Seems it might eliminate or at least temper the savage greed underlying many of today's problems: automation, offshoring, finance sector chicanery, tricks of all kinds used by sociopaths to enrich themselves at everyone else's expense. Anybody who can't live on $_______ a year has a personal problem. Fuck the crybabies who can't deal with it.

[undeterred]

31. But there are places who want one IT person who can do everything.

They have 40-50 people. And they want ONE person who can do desktop support, networking, database management, and all the high level project management work that goes with the business, which can be quite a bit. On an easy day one person is enough. But that one person is going to be spread awfully thin, and they are going to want to pay that one person as little as possible. Ten years ago they would have had 3 people, minimum.

[Trekologer]

33. That's what a data center is--a big building with no windows, lots of computers, and a few people

Comparing it to textile mills or furniture factories is looking for equivalency that simply does not exist. Might it attract other high-tech companies, established or startup, to set up shop there? Maybe--but that would depend on the quality of the workforce available in the area and even then it isn't a given.

[WildNovember]

37. A data center is a business. Comparing it to businesses of another era in terms of the number

of people it employs is not a false comparison.

[bluestate10]

43. You are right. Facilities like data centers create more corollary jobs than jobs at the center.

Apple has parts suppliers for the center that will need to depot parts near the center. Workers from the center will buy homes and shop nearby. And the data center should attract research entities that need inexpensive computing power.

[octothorpe]

57. Except much of the manufacturing of parts are located in other countries...

Ship the parts in, have some semi-skilled "techs" prep the systems, rack 'em, connect 'em and apply some basic configs so the engineers at some NOC in India can finish up. Actually, the NOC is probably somewhere in the US.

[WildNovember]

35. When productivity results in fewer jobs, the mythology of capitalism says

that 1) more jobs will be created in spin-off industries, and 2) the fewer jobs in the now more productive industry will be higher paid.

If pay had kept up with productivity, there would have been fewer, but more highly paid jobs. Instead, there are fewer jobs and they pay less. IOW, capital is taking a bigger slice of the pie, and that's the main reason for all our current problems, domestically and internationally as well. More money to capital = more concentration of power -- in politics, in media, in all industries generally, in land ownership, etc. It also means more unhappiness, hardship, and pathology as a response to unhappiness and hardship.

[octothorpe]

60. That theory might generally be true, and the destruction of jobs is hardly the issue here...

All these fancy high-tech gadgets still need to be produced and designed. However, we outsourced much of the production of those to other countries. I'd tend to think the biggest culprit is something along the lines of economic specialization, or least our poor implementation of it. Obviously there are some things we still do very well and lead world in (no, it's not just military stuff), but how much of it is large enough support the country?

(of course I could totally be off base here...)

[WildNovember]

62. OTOH, almost every country in the world has been losing manufacturing jobs, even China.

Over the past decade, U.S. manufacturing jobs have declined by more than 11 percent, Miklovic noted. But at the same time, Japan’s manufacturing employment base has dropped by 16 percent, while the number of manufacturing jobs in countries including Brazil have declined by some 20 percent, he pointed out. “And one of the largest losers of manufacturing jobs has been China,” Miklovic added. “We like to pick on China and say that all of these jobs are going to China, but they’re losing jobs in manufacturing as well.”

The reason for the job losses? Miklovic summed it up in one word: automation. Through automation, he said, “we are really doing a good job of improving the productivity of people.”

http://www.automationworld.com/webonly-320


And production is increasing, even in the US:

In this paper he is examines the factors leading to a reduction in manufacturing job worldwide. He concludes that job losses are mainly due to increased manufacturing productivity (worldwide, manufacturing productivity is increasing and jobs are decreasing – including China).

Manufacturing output is also increasing worldwide, most notably in China, but also in the USA (which many seem to neglect when they talk about things like the “eroding manufacturing base in the USA”).

http://management.curiouscatblog.net/2006/04/07/manufacturing-jobs-data-usa-and-china/


According to the mythology of capitalism, this should be the best of times for workers. They should be making more money & working less. But in fact they're making less money/benefits & working more - & becoming more economically insecure.

Offshoring jobs is only part of the conundrum, & I personally don't think it's the biggest part.

We also have to ask ourselves why our own government is doing these apparently counterproductive/illogical/destructive things.

[octothorpe]

89. Those are some big percentages. A lot more than I would have thought.

Just to be clear, you're not suggesting we should do away with more productive ways of doing things, right? You mean it as you don't understand why our government doesn't do anything to make it so the workers benefits from the increased production, aye? I've also wondered why so many of the politicians talk about how we're a knowledge based economy now, but many of them seem to do everything in their power to make it difficult for us to be the best in education (goes for both sides of the political spectrum from what I've seen)

[Initech]

38. They're just making these numbers up at this point.

60,000 jobs - but we only get 50. That's not even 0.0001%!! Where do they come up with this crap???

[aletier_v]

45. 36 hour workweek

154 million fulltime jobs in the US is...

171 million jobs at 36 hours per week.

Lets face it, most of ameruca doesnt care about the unemployed but...

Theyd care a great deal about 52 3-day weekends per year.

[ellisonz]

51. Never happen...

Many salaried employees already work more than five eight-hour-days.

[aletier_v]

55. Has ALREADY happened

During the Great Depression, the workweek shrank from 48 hours to 40 hours, legally
enforced after 1936.

Likewise the workweek shrank from 60 to 48 hours from 1865 to 1900 (the Long Depression).

Already happening now, many cities and states on 32/36 hour workweeks.

[ellisonz]

59. Hasn't resulted in any more jobs really...

And most of those cities and states are doing so temporarily for budget reasons.

[Lorien]

66. Never say never. The French march and therefore they have a 36 hour work week

we just have to put more boots on the ground to get what we want.

[WinkyDink]

74. You might notice the French have a far different approach to the Social Contract than we do.

To our detriment and shame.

[Odin2005]

75. 30-hour work week. And 6 weeks of paid vacation.

[Synicus Maximus]

53. Only 50 jobs at the data center but what about the other jobs the

data center supports? There are support people for the center who don't work for Apple but work for Cisco or IBM or whoever supplies the routers, switches, servers etc. There are the designers, security consultants, installers, electricians, HVAC people which probably made a year or more pay during the designing and install phase not to mention on going maintenance of the facility, little of which will be handled by Apple.

[eridani]

69. The sum total of all those support jobs is vastly less than the number of support jobs for

--a manufacturer like GM.

[octothorpe]

56. Are they still hiring any network engineers? :P

I could use a change of scenery. I'll even get under the floor and pull some trunk cable.

[WinkyDink]

73. Apple has destroyed/made out-moded other industries.

[belcffub]

80. you have to look at the other jobs created as well

first you have the construction jobs to build the place... these are temporary but building a project like this is no different then building a bridge... many people depend on these type of projects for their lively hood.

the jobs building and maintaining the equipment that goes into the building (hvac - electrical - security - etc)... these don't stop after the building is done...always seems to be something that needs working on...

the jobs building and maintaining the servers, storage, networking, backup, security, etc... some of these jobs will be over seas but many are right here... you have the installers and maintenance people, programmers, tech support... lots of good paying jobs here..

the spin off jobs apple creates for accessories and software is also huge...

just saying that only 50 jobs will be created is not telling the hole picture...

[Romulox]

81. Taking all that into account, the unemployment rate in NC is still in double digits.

All of these "other jobs" have failed to materialize, so far.

What actually has happened has to figure into your analysis at some point, doesn't it?

[belcffub]

84. umm.. I am betting the other jobs have materialized...

in the grand scheme is the unemployment rate too high... yup... but don't blame an area which is actually seeing job growth...

data centers don't exist in a vacuum... the 50 jobs mentioned are only the tip of the iceberg... there are many other people at other companies that are employed due to this and other data centers existing... the economic impact of this data center not existing would affect 100's of people if not more...

is it a ford plant in 1980... no... and I never claimed it was... but these are very good paying jobs and the ancillary jobs created are also good paying jobs...

want to find work get trained and educated to do these jobs... I have two positions I am on the hiring committee on that are looking for people to work in this type of environment... 5 years ago when we searched we got 50+ resumes... for these last two I have a pool of 11... and these are good paying jobs ($75k ish) with good benefits (health, 401k or pension, dental, eye care)... the talent is just not there like it was a couple of years ago...

[eridani]

86. The spinoff is completely piddling compared to the spinoff from

--manufacturing. None of it can compare with even one parts supplier for GM.

[HughBeaumont]

83. The problem, which many of us have been talking about for years:

We may have reached "Peak Capitalism" years ago . . .

And I like the comment on this article:

However, you are wrong in a number of ways to say that it smacks of an "antique worldview" to complain about "shipping jobs overseas".

First, while the Chinese may need the jobs even more than we do, it is not our duty to provide them.

Second, although it may be more capital- or fiscally-efficient to use the cheapest labor this quarter, it is fundamentally unwise for any corporation and for this society as a whole. If a company or society does not itself make what it consumes, it is not creating wealth -- it is squandering it. This applies both in the sense of actually creating the wealth and in the sense of maintaining and upgrading the knowledge base to make advanced things. It is no longer primarily American engineers, managers and workers who are learning first-hand how to efficiently make modern products, it is Chinese. Soon, we won't be able to make modern things even if we want to.

Third, it is critical from a national security perspective to make both advanced and staple goods onshore. We are already seeing big problems in our military systems from electronic components that are defective, counterfeit, and deliberately subverted with backdoor controls. A great military is not much good if the enemy can shut off our supplies and/or disable our weapons at will.

But, these longer term issues have been swept aside by crony capitalists buying influence from sellout politicians so that they can extract more profits from the system this quarter; nevermind that they are selling down the river the long term interests of their shareholders and countrymen.

If that is an "antique worldview" I'll keep it thanks, in preference to the opinions of 1000 overpaid, over-educated, and ignorant MBA dweebs, all of whom "could not have foreseen" the current multiple crises, because they were all 'risk-managed'. Riiiiight.

[True Earthling]

92. Productivity is no friend of the unemployed n/t