This is not certain, furthermore, I see no reason to condemn Foxconn(any manufacturer) more than Apple(any design company using said manufacturer). Apple could demand better adherence to US standards in the Foxconn plants making their products. Foxconn could just buck the local trend and treat their worker better than their rivals. Why does neither Foxconn nor Apple do this? Money. Foxconn can't do it and survive and Apple wants to maintain their 30% profit margin on their products.

However when you move the plant to the US things change. Foxconn MUST meet much more stringent working standards, not only because the US has more stringent regulations but they will not find workers to work in conditions similar to those in China. Finally, almost certainly what will happen is that the majority of the manufacturing work done in the US will be done by robots and only some small points will humans be used.

One thing that hasn't been addressed in the news thus far is how Foxconn might use the robotics expertise they gain from operating in the US in China. This could have a major effect on the Chinese economy and what that effect will be is far from clear (IMHO).

You quote Average tax rate not the social security tax which is what matters. Please see these data. Which show that, in fact, the highest quintile of earns pay a much smaller percentage than the second to highest. As this quintile makes the most money we are effectively taxing the most money less. More precisely you do not pay SS tax on monies earned over a fixed number.

I think you are mistaken unless you are not speaking about the US which would be odd. The marginal tax rate has been relatively stable and dramatically decreased on the highest earners over the time period you to which you refer (see this article). This is in fact generally true of the average tax rate and most other specific taxes (excluding SS which has remained stable) as can be seen in the data here. So why do you believe that we are being taxed currently at historically high rates?

Mercury not Venus, but yes that was a legitimate announcement.

Please mod parent up and grandparent down. While the Obama related Super PAC did raise a higher percentage of its total funds from large donation, not only was that total less than Romney's (7% for O and 15% for R) but while the AVERAGE was lower for R the top 3 single donators were all on the R side all almost 3 times the largest on the O side. Furthermore, the plots the article the grandparent linked to only tell part of the story: they do not cover the newest, largest arena of political spending PACs unassociated with a candidate (e.g. Carl Rove's Crossroads). These plays are the ones who spent large sums of money and do not need to disclose where the money came from nor even how much they spent. While these types of PACs are supposed to be unassociated with candidates, Propublica has done a number of in depth articles showing that it is just in name only.

Such a simplistic view of how the US system of government operates is what has currently create such a polarize populous. Some business owners maybe be "absolutely certain" they know how things will go under which ever boogie man they decry being elected, but the reality is that the President of the US has only a limited ability to affect large scale change. This is especially true when you have a divided Congress. Giving such people a way to gamble on whomever wins an election will only lead to new forces coming into existence which will have a vested interest in the outcome of US elections, new forces which hold no loyalty to the populous but only to their pocket books. Remember the house always wins, always.

There is a very reasonable solution to many of these problems which does not require any changes to the US constitution: all the states agree to assign their electoral college votes to the winner of the national popular vote. After 2004 many "blue" states signed up. You can find more on their (admittedly horrible looking) site.

Well if it combines cards that is one nice solution I would enjoy. Carrying around a fat wallet is a pain, it causes cloths to wear out faster, and can even cause sciatica. Plus it is just a waste of resources to have 15 plastic cards when I should be able to just have one. Smartphone customer card apps have helped solve this problem but I, for one, would love to reduce the number of credit, debit, and ATM cards I have to carry around.

While I agree with your assessment I think you are missing a major part of why that assessment still fails: Amazon's P/E is ridiculously high. Spending money to make money can make sense but Amazon has repeatedly said that it is making smaller margins and large outlays of capital are not going to increase those margins (in fact likely the opposite). Furthermore, I believe what the parent is getting at is that basing YOUR valuation on a small subset of analysts predictions which have been shown time and time again to be wrong is just crazy. Sure it is "pricing the stock the match the news" but the value of that news needs to be discussed. Analysts do appear to be pulling numbers out of thin air and the market is pricing stocks based on those numbers, it is no wonder that the stock market is overvalued given the short sighted methodology people are using to make their stock price determinations.

Perhaps the issue is that you clearly do not understand how your government works. The fact that your town is 15 miles outside of Sacto doesn't mean that maintaining your roads is a State issue. In fact it is NOT. It is either the responsibility of your town or your county if unincorporated. Similarly the reasons your school budgets are being cut is most likley because of Prop 13 (which limits property tax) than because of poor management (although both could be at fault). I have no idea why you think CA spends anywhere near the most per student on education. According to this Census report, CA does not spend near the top per student. You seem to be woefully confused about how your government works. I would suggest you start fixing the government problems you see around by first informing yourself about how it is supposed to operate and stop blaming your state government for the stupidity of your local government (e.g. for putting up expensive signage).

Gah Slashdot's preview had my close link tag in the proper location while the submitted version clearly does not. Sorry for the super long linked text.

I am confused: while I agree with everything Ms. McCarthy states in your quote I strongly disagree with the assertion that it is a question of "polio versus autism." There is no evidence of this. The study that was touted as being evidence has been debunked and retracted by a majority of authors. Ms. McCarthy has been a stalwart supporter of NOT vaccinating children because of this unfounded belief. I to do not want to choose between polio and autism for my child, fortunately we have upwards of 50 years of a large fraction of the population being vaccinated without a correlated rise in autism. The rise in autism rates has occurred much more recently than the first wave of vaccinated generations OR the second generation (children of parents who were vaccinated). So what is the point of your quote? To state something that I am sure everyone would agree with: no question with only bad outcomes should be posed to the general populous. Or to imply that such a choice is relevant to this topic? Or...?

The difference between the examples you mention and the issue being discussed here is that Apple has a broad design patent on the similar products while the products you mention are under no such patent. You can think that such a patent is overly broad, a complete farce of the patent system, or pretty much anything else but it doesn't matter in terms of the law. As another poster pointed out Samsung has clearly used Apple products, which have design patents on their design, as inspiration for their offerings. While I think Samsung should be trying to show how such patents are bunk they are trying to claim that they didn't do this at all which is just not reasonable when you look at their offerings. The problem here lies in the patent system which allows overly broad design patents which can be used to stifle innovation.

While that is true we were well past that point when it was proposed as a monetary policy in the 1980s. Companies have been moving factories to cheaper locations since there were factories. As soon as companies didn't serve their local community (well before the 1950) exclusively the argument for trickle down was dead. The taint that it has placed on a portion of the American public who still thinks it has some validity has been far worse, in my opinion, than the few years of tax reductions for the wealthy. It has caused people to have a belief that cutting taxes for the rich will generate tax revenue. This combined with the unjustified belief that the US can cut spending outside of entitlements and military sufficient to overcome the budget deficit is going to cause major problems in the near and long term future of the US.

This is a great article certainly worth having on the front page of Slashdot. However, the complete lack of editorial oversight is infuriating. The sole link in this article is to Mashable, which cites BoingBoing, which sites the webpage for the book. I simply clicked through those citation and found the primary source. Why didn't the Slashdot editor do this? To push traffic to Mashable? We should have the primary source as the primary reference. If the discussion on the other sites is worth it then those can be the focus of the article. Otherwise give the primary source!