Comment We can't compete (Score 1) 598
Kindles, and Nooks, and iPhones, iPods, iPads, MacBooks, and MacBook Airs, Lenovo ThinkPads, etc., etc., etc.
The summer before college (1978) I worked for an audio electronics manufacturer. I'd guess that most of the assembly line workers made little more than minimum wage.
I suspect that today, even if they wanted to, most companies here in the U.S. couldn't find enough workers willing to do that work for minimum wage, and even if they could, Foxconn, at let's say $1 an hour, is 1/10th the cost.
Now Foxconn is going to automate, presumably to further reduce their labor costs. Which then begs the question: Why can't Apple and Amazon build those same automated factories here? Then at least the 100 jobs to run the automated factory would be here, rather than in Taiwan or Shanghai.
But the answer is probably that even with automation, the cost of salary and benefits, including health care for those 100 people here would still dwarf the costs of doing in offshore.