Apple's "Hot News" now includes a story about how they're reforming their supplier workplace conditions in Shenzhen by inviting the Fair Labor Association to inspect Foxconn's formerly suicide-riddled plant there:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/02/13Fair-Labor-Association-Begins-Inspections-of-Foxconn.html?sr=hotnews.rss
What they conveniently leave out is the fact that the fair trade standards organization is Fairtrade International (fairtrade.net). Refer to the Wikipedia article on fair trade:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_trade
The reason I include this mention in my Obamerica blog is because I'm tired of hearing people laud Apple's cofounder for innovation & job creation in America. I'll give him the innovation plaudits but he creates jobs for Chinese factory workers & techies w/ H1B visas in America who send much of their income back to their families in their countries of origin. That's not helping the under- & unemployed Americans get back to work. What's more, his advertizers convince Americans to waste their hardearned dollars on overpriced technologies. Additionally, the tech sector helps the Fed pretend there's no inflation by including low-priced hardware in the items used to calculated inflation but not counting the high monthly data bills associated w/ those products. This, along w/ ignoring essentials like food & fuel & giving a 40% weighting in the average to housing (which almost no one's currently buying) drags down the headline inflation numbers so the Fed can keep up a loose monetary supply in order to keep the interest cost low on an exploding federal debt. That said, Obama's only the latest & worst of a long chain of Repubs & Dems addicted to OPM (spending other people's money to buy votes from nontaxpayers).
Friday, February 17, 2012
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