If there is one thing that the American People do not have enough appreciation of it is the American news media which extends far beyond the Elitist Bastards in New York, Washington DC and Los Angeles that have little interaction with or little interest in how most Americans live their lives and often struggle to raise their families in modern day America.
Two stories over this weekend from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal prove that there is a significant place for America’s largest newspapers in the life of our nation and imagine for a moment if the editors editorial page/opinion writers of these papers actually took the time to spend some of their precious lives in the REAL America they might actually learn a thing or two about this country that sometimes the stories they publish in their papers reveal for all to see.
Those two news stories:
How the United States Lost Our on iPhone Work, Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradscher, New York Times
The New American Divide, Charles Murray, Wall Street Journal
The above two stories on the realities of American Life in the 21 st century are related because the reasons for Apple Computer moving ALL of its manufacturing to China and the divide between the Rich and Middle Class/Poor in America are directly linked and more than likely American companies will increase and quicken their outsourcing of jobs to Asia and other foreign countries in the future and the divide between the Rich and Middle Class/Poor will only get bigger which poses some terribly difficult problems and choices for the American Republic and its People in the coming years.
First on the New York Times story…
How the United States Lost Our on iPhone Work, Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradscher, New York Times

“When Barack Obama joined Silicon Valley’s top luminaries for dinner in California last February, each guest was asked to come with a question for the president.
But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?
Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.
Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.
Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.
The president’s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.
Apple has become one of the best-known, most admired and most imitated companies on earth, in part through an unrelenting mastery of global operations. Last year, it earned over $400,000 in profit per employee, more than Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or Google.
However, what has vexed Mr. Obama as well as economists and policy makers is that Apple — and many of its high-technology peers — are not nearly as avid in creating American jobs as other famous companies were in their heydays.”
Several of us here at Mad As Hell And… heard about President Obama’s question to Steve Jobs during that Silicon Valley dinner last year and we were not surprised at all at Steve Jobs response because Jobs’ view of the world and attitudes towards Americans and the American Republic are widely shared and believed in Silicon Valley and besides….in OUR opinion Steve Jobs like many American corporate CEOs don’t give two rips about the American People and if they can turn a few extra jobs making products in Asia and then selling those products back into America they will do it and not lose a nanosecond of sleep over the jobs that have been lost in OUR country.
We have written many times here at Mad As Hell And… about the life of Steve Jobs and the company he founded Apple Computer and we have made it very clear that we don’t think Jobs gave two rips about America, the American People or anything much beyond his own precious ass and his personal reputation which was fine because in America Steve Jobs certainly had the right to act in anyway he pleased, but Damn sure don’t ever try to convince us that Steve Jobs gave two rips about anything but….Steve Jobs…because in our opinion that claim would be a BIG LIE.

Here’s a FACT: Apple Computer could move ALL of its manufacturing business for products it sells in the United States back to America and still make HUGE profit margins on those products…BUT….Apple Computer making those products in America with very good wages with benefits for American employees which would employ somewhere in the neighborhood of 75,000 workers would shrink Apple’s net profit margin from its now 24 percent by 5 percentage points or so to a company wide 19 percent net profit margin which would still make Apple Computer one of the most profitable companies on Planet Earth.
Why wouldn’t Apple Computer then make at least the products it sells in the United States of America in the United States of America?
Our opinion here at Mad As Hell And…: The executives at Apple Computer including the late Steve Jobs do not give two rips about the American People beyond the American People coming into the Apple Computer stores and emptying out their wallets and purses. It is also our opinion that the executives at Apple Computer are no different than the executives on Wall Street and across Corporate America along with most of the Members of the US Congress in that Apple’s top leadership would sell-out the American Republic and American People to turn another Buck (or to get re-elected in the case of Members of Congress) and not give that selling out of the country and its People a nanosecond of thought.
In FACT…that is what Apple Computer is doing right now which makes Henry Blodget of the Business Insider right on the point when he recently wrote:

Your iPhone Was Built, In Part, By 13 Year-Olds Working 16 Hours A Day For 70 Cents An Hour, Business Insider
“We love our iPhones and iPads.
We love the prices of our iPhones and iPads.
We love the super-high profit margins of Apple, Inc., the maker of our iPhones and iPads.
And that’s why it’s disconcerting to remember that the low prices of our iPhones and iPads — and the super-high profit margins of Apple — are only possible because our iPhones and iPads are made with labor practices that would be illegal in the United States.
And it’s also disconcerting to realize that the folks who make our iPhones and iPads not only don’t have iPhones and iPads (because they can’t afford them), but, in some cases, have never even seen them.”
Yes, Henry Blodget raises a Very Damn Important point but here is the Ugly TRUTH about the people that buy Apple products but especially the supposed Wacko Liberal Nuts that love their iPhones and IPads which is very evident among the current White House staff and on Capitol Hill…
They, the Americans that buy and use Apple products that are produced by…
“13 Year-Olds Working 16 Hours A Day For 70 Cents An Hour”
….do not give a Damn about the FACT that “13 Year-Olds Working 16 Hours A Day For 70 Cents An Hour” are making those Apple Computer products which makes those Lovers of these Steve Jobs inventions Big-Time hypocrites which especially applies to the Wacko Liberal Nuts that preach “good pay” for Americans when the products they are using to put out their Liberal messages are the Very Damn Things destroying “good pay” for Americans!
Of course, the following headline from the CEO of FoxConn the company that makes all of Apple Computer’s products in Asia should give those Lovers of Steve Jobs inventions a warm feeling inside:
CEO OF APPLE PARTNER FOXCONN: ‘Managing One Million Animals Gives Me A Headache’, Business Insider
Maybe the above headline will get the Wacko Liberal Nuts to do what we here at Mad As Hell And… did several years ago with our iPods when we learned about the way that FoxConn and thus Apple Computer were treating their employees in Asia…
We tossed our IPods into the trash!

Below are a few of the Mad As Hell And… blog posts on Steve Jobs and Apple Computer which make it Very Clear what we think about Jobs and Apple moving the manufacturing business for Apple Computer to Asia:
The Remarkable Life and the Sad Death of Steve Jobs – Mad As Hell And… Quotes of the Day – Thursday, October 6, 2011 – Steve Jobs
And
Apple Computers CEO Steve Jobs Has Said That Apple Is Building A New Headquarters In Silicon Valley – Great! – Now, What About Bringing Home A Few Thousand Manufacturing Jobs To America From the Tens of Thousands of Jobs In China That Make ALL of Apple Computers Products? – Wouldn’t Someone That Was Running A Successful American Company That Actually Cared About America Make At Least Some of Those Products In America? – Maybe Not….and People That Buy and Like Apple Computers Products Should Keep That In Mind As They Go About Their Daily Lives, June 9, 2011
And
Apple Computer Has $65 Plus Billion Dollars In the Bank….But They Make ALL Of Their Computers and Phones In….CHINA! – Memo to Steve Jobs: Is It Possible That Apple Computer Could Create Some Manufacturing Jobs In America To Make At Least Some of All Those Computers and Phones You Are Selling in America? – No, We Can’t Have That Because America and the American People Are In Our Opinion Just An Afterthought For Steve Jobs and the Silicon Valley Boys and Girls – What A Surprise! The Pompous Arrogant Ass Al Gore Is On the Apple Computer Board of Directors – Jobs and Gore = Two Pompous Arrogant Asses That Care About Little But Their Own Precious Asses While the Average American That Is Having A Hard Time Paying the Bills and Finding A Good Job Be Damned! – Who Exactly Raised These Folks, Because It Couldn’t Have Been, Americans Because Our Parents Taught Us To Be Loyal Americans and NOT To Chase $$$$$$$$$$$$ At the Expense of Everything Else – Bastards!, May 9, 2011
And
Big United States Firms Shifting Hiring Abroad? – Gambling in Casablanca? – No, IT CAN’T BE! – Oh, It Be and These Large U.S. Companies Have Been Shipping Jobs Overseas For Years and Then Selling Products Back Into America To Americans That Used To Make Those Very Same Products – Shame On Those Companies….Although We Rather Doubt That Any Of These Bastards CEOs Lose A Minute Of Sleep Over Destroying Jobs in America – Frankly, They Could Care Less Because After All…There Is Money To Be Made! – Bastards! – 99 Percent of These Products Made Overseas By American Companies That Are Then Sold Into America Could Easily Be Made In America Without the Price at the Retail Level Going Up Much At All….But Then Those CEOs Would Have A Tougher Time “Beating the Street” and Those Big Bonuses Are Based on Their Company’s Stock Price Going Up!….So Overseas the Jobs Must Go! – As We Said….Bastards! – Question: Even After Shifting Thousands of Jobs Overseas Exactly How Is GE CEO Jeff Immelt Still In A Job….Because He Has Been An Abject Failure As CEO of General Electric!, April 20, 2011
And
An Important Question For All Users of Apple Computer Products, But Especially for the Wacko Liberals That Often Seem to Love Apple Computers, iPhone, IPads, Etc…: Why Does Apple Computer Make All Of Its Products In China…Especially When There Are Millions of Unemployed Americans Right Now? – Damn Good Question! – What Is the Cost Difference Between Making An Apple Computer Product In China Compared to the United States – It’s A Lot Less Than You Think and Thus We Ask Apple Computer and Steve Jobs: Do You Not Give A Damn About America and the American People?, March 23, 2011
Yes, if you read the above Mad As Hell And… blog posts you will learn our views of Apple Computer and other American companies that make products that have HUGE profit margins that could easily be made in America because the one thing we need most in America right now for those Americans that do not have access to “good paying” jobs which is as Charles Murray points out in his essay in the Wall Street Journal is increasing at an alarming rate outside of America’s “elite” neighborhoods and communities
The New American Divide, Charles Murray, Wall Street Journal
“America is coming apart. For most of our nation’s history, whatever the inequality in wealth between the richest and poorest citizens, we maintained a cultural equality known nowhere else in the world—for whites, anyway. “The more opulent citizens take great care not to stand aloof from the people,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, the great chronicler of American democracy, in the 1830s. “On the contrary, they constantly keep on easy terms with the lower classes: They listen to them, they speak to them every day.”
Americans love to see themselves this way. But there’s a problem: It’s not true anymore, and it has been progressively less true since the 1960s.
People are starting to notice the great divide. The tea party sees the aloofness in a political elite that thinks it knows best and orders the rest of America to fall in line. The Occupy movement sees it in an economic elite that lives in mansions and flies on private jets. Each is right about an aspect of the problem, but that problem is more pervasive than either political or economic inequality. What we now face is a problem of cultural inequality.
When Americans used to brag about “the American way of life”—a phrase still in common use in 1960—they were talking about a civic culture that swept an extremely large proportion of Americans of all classes into its embrace. It was a culture encompassing shared experiences of daily life and shared assumptions about central American values involving marriage, honesty, hard work and religiosity.
Over the past 50 years, that common civic culture has unraveled. We have developed a new upper class with advanced educations, often obtained at elite schools, sharing tastes and preferences that set them apart from mainstream America. At the same time, we have developed a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America’s core cultural institutions.”
As usual, Charles Murray is right on point and people that want to deny the TRUTH about the widening divide in America are either lying to themselves OR they are out of touch with the reality of the American Republic in 2012 and it is our opinion here at Mad As Hell And… that this divide is primarily being driven by an unholy alliance by the Federal and state governments that often work in cooperation with Wall Street and large American corporations to do the Very Damn Thing they claim they are working to stop…
The wholesale destruction of the Working Middle and Lower Classes in America
If one actually understands or admits to the REALITY of the growing divide in America then what can be done to stop it and return to a path to a good paying job for ALL Americans?
The answer to the above question is a very difficult one to answer, but let’s start with the problem inside the executive suite at Apple Computer and other large American companies that employ Millions of People around the world to make products that have HUGE Profit Margins (Over 100 percent and for Apple Computer 400 percent or more profit margins on their products) that those companies then SELL INTO AMERICA when those companies could very easily make in America and still make HUGE Profits on their products.
What was it that English historian Edward Gibbon wrote in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was one of the primary things that brought down the Roman Empire (from Wikipedia summary of the book)?

“According to Gibbon, the Roman Empire succumbed to barbarian invasions in large part due to the gradual loss of civic virtue among its citizens. They had become weak, outsourcing their duties to defend their Empire to barbarian mercenaries, who then became so numerous and ingrained that they were able to take over the Empire.”
It is OUR opinion here at Mad As Hell And… that the top executives at Apple Computer and other large American companies that could easily be employing Millions of American to make the products that they SELL in America have in the words of Edward Gibbon have lost their…
“civic virtue”
….and that loss of “civic virtue” is demonstrated by Apple Computer and other large American corporations willingness to be in business with companies like FoxConn which is beyond the pale from our point of view and if those American corporate executives really gave a Damn about America, the American People, American Workers and the cities, communities, families and the children of America they would right now be employing Millions of Americans in OUR country but that is not happening because in the words of the Pompous, Arrogant Ass who could be a poster boy for everything that is wrong and sometimes right about America, Steve Jobs, who said to the President of the United States who has a White House filled with staffers that LOVE Apple Computer products that are made by “13 Year-Olds Working 16 Hours A Day For 70 Cents An Hour”…

“Those jobs aren’t coming back.”
No, Steve. Those jobs COULD come back to America but Apple Computer in our opinion believes that making a…
24 percent net profit margin
INSTEAD OF A
19 percent net profit margin
…is more important than employing Tens of Thousands of Americans in good paying jobs IN AMERICA and that is the same attitude of the top executives at hundreds of large American corporations that could create Millions of good paying jobs in America if they were willing to sacrifice a few points on their net profit margin from products that are making HUGE PROFITS for their companies.
We are REAL Capitalists here at Mad As Hell And… but we are…
AMERICANS FIRST

…and one of the biggest problems in America today is that we have too many Americans that put…
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
…ahead of THEIR Country and they put $$$$$$$$$$$$$ first because when you get right down to the FACTS these Sorry Bastards LOVE $$$$$$$$$$ more than the United States of America and the American People and if Millions of Americans cannot get good jobs in OUR country these Sorry Bastards could really care less.
It is impossible for us here at Mad As Hell And… to force Apple Computer or any other American corporation to move the manufacturing business for the products they sell to the American People to America, but it is possible for us to call out the executives at Apple Computer for what they REALLY are…
It is OUR opinion that the executives at Apple Computer and other large American companies that make the products they sell in America in other countries are Sorry Pieces of Crapola that put…
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
…ahead of their country and they do that because they do not give TWO RIPS about America or the American People and that REALITY explains why the American Republic is now coming apart which in the words of Edward Gibbon is being caused by the loss of “civic virtue” which Gibbon identified as one of the main culprits in the Fall of the Roman Empire….and which will be if not reversed be one of the main reasons the American Republic falls as well.
You may have seen this news story recently about the new CEO of Apple Computer Tim Cook:
Apple CEO Tim Cook could earn top salary for 2011 with $378 million package, AP
Isn’t that special?
Well, if Apple Computer made the products it sells to the American People IN AMERICA then Apple CEO Tim Cook would still have received a Very Big payday in the Hundreds of Millions of Dollars…BUT….not employing Tens of Thousands of Americans in America to make those Apple Computer products is worth that extra $80 Million Dollars to Tim Cook and other Apple Computer executives because in OUR opinion Tim Cook and the leadership at Apple Computer and other large American corporations do…..
NOT Give a Damn about America
…and they prove that FACT by their own actions.
Oh, it’s not just Tim Cook that is responsible for the ethos that now dominates Apple Computer and other large American corporations that will trade a few extra Dollars and a little higher net profit margin in exchange for shipping Millions of Jobs overseas and those people are the Boards of Directors of these companies and below are the Board Members of Apple Computer who in OUR opinion also don’t give Two Rips about the American Republic or the American People (Yes, note that the Pompous, Arrogant Ass Al Gore is on the Board of Apple Computer which makes perfect sense since Al Gore is also in our opinion one of the Sorriest Human Beings ever elected to office in the history of the United States of America):

“Arthur D. Levinson, Ph.D.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Genentech, Inc.
William V. Campbell
Chairman and former CEO
Intuit, Inc.
Tim Cook
CEO
Apple
Millard S. Drexler
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
J. Crew
Albert Gore, Jr.
Former Vice President of the United States
Robert A. Iger
President and Chief Executive Officer
The Walt Disney Company
Andrea Jung
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Avon Products, Inc.
Ronald D. Sugar, Ph.D.
Former Chairman and CEO
Northrop Grumman Corporation”
Why is their a widening divide between the Haves and Have-Nots in America which is in our opinion leading to an unraveling of the “American Way of Life” and the American Republic?
Call it a loss of “civic virtue” or call it that the Very Sorry Bastards listed above and across America don’t give Two Rips about the American Republic and the American People, but don’t say that the divide between the Haves and Have-Nots isn’t happening in America because we see that divide every day of our lives with our own employees, in our own communities, in our cites and states and all across America and until the leaders of America both in the corporate world and government start Giving a Damn about America and the American People things are only going to get worse…..much worse in FACT….which means if you give a Damn about America you will start getting involved in the “civic affairs” of YOUR country and start holding the leaders of America accountable for their actions.
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