Any smartphones NOT made in China?

[beanlynch]

What I am saying is that you cant judge wages in another country by the wages in this country.

You can judge them by standard of living and the working conditions in that country.

Chinese kill to work for these foriegn owned business's because the salary and benefits far surpass any locally owned companies even though the wages would be lower than what you could earn in the USA

We are talking about companies profiting off of the labor of an unfree society? Are you arguing that China isn't a totalitarian government? I think you could easily make the argument that we've had the opposite policy with China that we with Russia, that we've enabled Communism and that we've made it profitable to be an unfree communist country that doesn't provide it's citizens rights by feeding off of our freedoms while our economy declines because of the lack of jobs. With the news that's been breaking lately about the Foxconn suicides and protests along with the protests, I think you can easily make comparisons between the working in the USA and working in China. There aren't that many people trying to sneak into China. Apple's own audit revealed a ridiculous amount of abuse.

Some can some cant. The chinese ive seen just about all have better cell phones than I do and the iphone sells very well over there. They do need to pay more money for electronics (based on avg income) but they pay cheaper for food. I can buy a lb of filet mignon for less than $3 a lb. Veggies and fruits are penny on the dollar cheap.So yes they do pay more for some things but they also pay less for others and when you are balancing the cost of living you need to take all things into consideration. The point is after living over there in a very rural area of china for more than 10 years I can say that the the overall population is doing quite well. Or I can say it this way, the vast majority of the chinese can afford the things that they want to buy. They arent sitting in a shack hungry with no clothes to wear or electricity. Another thing to consider is if they really were so poor and cant afford these high end products you really need to walk around china and just look at the amount of electronic stores that are doing very well by selling these high scale products.

You don't get to trump the dialog by saying that you lived in China. The people who were throwing themselves off the buildings at Foxconn also lived in China, and I don't think they would agree with you that it's all just hunky dorry. Why I'm resistent to what your position is black and white without acknowledging any points that might be gray. It's when one takes such an absolute position in one direction and resistent to any points on the other, that I would start questioning if there is a bias or an agenda. There are many reported abuses in China and just because that wasn't your personal experience doesn't mean it's not a valid concern.

Anyone who has studied the history of labor in the United States understands why we have labor laws. The rights we have to protect us are moral rights. The idea that a company can get something cheaper by circumventing the rights that we grant ourselves is exploiting the system, if not the workers themselves. If we believe that our rights are moral rights, then we should expect our companies and citizens to be moral in their business practices and not exploit the lack of freedom in other countries. The fact that we aren't even allowed to travel to or own goods by Cuba, and yet have such an open door policy to business with China, I think is very revealing to how the profitability of dealing with one nation versus another affects our foreign policies. To say that there isn't form of exploitation at all here is too fundamentalist on one side for me to feel comfortable with a position like that.

My personal concern is with the American worker, and my concerns extends from my family, then to my neighbors, to my community, and then outward from there. What we are seeing in our economy now is that the lack of regulation and tariffs in our international, that our founding fathers did use, has been a disaster for the American worker. We could argue whether regulation is good or bad, but if you are questioning why someone who would want to seek out and do business with companies that employ people here in the United States, the answer is simple; they're patriotic.

 

[pm]

Welcome to the forum, Beanlynch.

I can see that you spent a lot of time writing your post, and what I'm about to write will undoubtedly annoy you greatly, but I'm going to lock the thread.

The Mobile Devices & Gadgets forum attempts to be a technical forum and your post is much more political than it is technical. The original question of which smartphones are made in the US is a legitimate technical question that's on-topic for the forum, but discussions about the politics about why/how smartphones are made overseas is off-topic for a technical discussion board in my opinion.

The members of the MD&G forum elected me as moderator, and I attempt to enforce the rules as I can and I'm judging your post off-topic. On the plus side, plenty of people will read your post and no one will be able to debate it out with you, so this isn't all a bad thing for you.

I will also say that I feel bad for locking your first post and declaring it off-topic... but my feelings have nothing to do with my responsibility.

Moderator PM