Have You Heard About Apple's Sweatshops In China?

Yes $30-$50 an hour. That includes benefits. Actually, there were plenty of jobs 40 years ago up north that people in unionized jobs making, when you include benefits 30-40 dollars an hour. Most of them do not exist anymore of course, and you can guess why; it was no viable economically.

CEOs sign packages, as opposed to the contracts we think of when think about signing a work agreement. If they stink up the place in a year, they have some outrageous "golden parachute" they leave with. Most of us think that is ridiculous of course, and we are told that in order to get the most talented candidates for the job they have to offer such packages. I agree with you, I do not think they do.

In order to bring back the jobs that are overseas now, the pay for those jobs located here would not be very good. Steve Jobs, who was a notorious micromanager, grew increasingly frustrated with union labor in trying to get agreements for manufacturing for Apple. Remember, Jobs was not a reasonable guy, but many CEOs are, yet Jobs moved his manufacturing overseas long after many other companies had.

Personally, when given a choice, I will not buy Chinese manufactured goods. I will give you a few examples. Dishware. I could buy a nice coffee mug or tea cup for a buck, but I would not feed the birds water out of one of those; as you have mentioned, safety. Tools. I can easily find tools made in the U.S., or Canada, but I have to look. This costs much more than just grabbing the cheapest thing, but I would rather buy something made here. You mentioned pet food. A lot of people grab the cheap stuff, but if the knew what was in them, or where they were made, they would not. And I know two people with very sick pets "on their last legs" who started feeding the pets Blue Buffalo food, and the pets are well now, and the extra money for food was cheaper than the vet bills.

What we can do is simple, and simple ways are where real impacts can be made. Electronics are a bit of a different matter, but there is no reason why companies can not be petitioned in regards to the matter. I am just not in favor of singling out one company. Want to beat on Apple, then beat on the manufactures of Android phones also. Remember, Steve Jobs and Apple are the ones who pushed and helped the New York Times (where the newspaper story comes from; the magazine WIRED did an article about a year ago) get its paper onto a format for portable devices. So the convoluted relationship we all have with Chinese manufactured items is a tangled web.