Obama calls Steve Jobs' success prime example of American wealth

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/12/23/obama_calls_steve_jobs_success_a_prime_example_of_american_wealth.html

by J3L2404 • 16 years ago

22 37 16 years ago

jganetsk4• 16 years ago

This scares me. While I have nothing against the wealth of Steve Jobs and his revolutionary products, what America needs to maintain the middle class throughout the 21st century is to compete with China and its ilk: raw materials, cheap renewable energy, and basic manufacturing. Because the revolutionary products we sell to the rest of the world aren't even made here.

alex_c3• 16 years ago

Why?

Or, more specifically - how will racing China (and every other developing country) to the bottom in the manufacturing game be sufficient to maintain the middle class?

jganetsk4• 16 years ago

Because of our balance of payments crisis. We need to stop our country's net outflow of dollars. Lauding Steve Jobs and trying to reproduce his success won't solve that problem. Suppose we all become designers of hit products that are manufactured abroad. How do we guarantee that the USA doesn't get cut out of the vertical stack? I have total faith that the other countries of the world will be able to innovate and support just as well as we can, if not already.

known• 16 years ago

    Chinese capitalism  = American capitalism - Human rights
    Indian capitalism   = American capitalism + Wage slavery

dstein• 16 years ago

and basic manufacturing

Everybody brings this up, but the reason manufacturing was sent overseas was because of technological progress. If you can't even convince Americans to pick their own peaches anymore, how are you going to convince them to make their own sneakers like they do in Indonesia?

cheap renewable energy

Coincidentally, the cheap labor overseas might make this a reality in the form of inexpensive thin-film solar panels.

jganetsk4• 16 years ago

Manufacturing was sent overseas because of cheap labor and plenty of available raw materials in other countries. Am I wrong?

Inexpensive thin-film solar panels made by cheap labor might be a net win, if we spend less on solar panels then we do on oil. We just need balance of payments, we don't need to make EVERYTHING here.

yummyfajitas• 16 years ago

We are keeping up in terms of manufacturing output.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/INDPRO

We just do it more efficiently, resulting in lower manufacturing employment.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/USAPEFANA

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/OPHMFG

jganetsk4• 16 years ago

Our goal shouldn't be to keep up with China's output, but to keep up with our own input.

javert2• 16 years ago

"Competing" with China is a recipie for disaster. A better strategy is to cooperate with China by allowing mutual free trade. Then, China and the US are one large market, and their success is Americans' success.

what America needs to maintain the middle class throughout the 21st century

20th century notions of the "middle class" are probably already becoming obsolete; talking about "throughout" the 21st century is really premature. Going from 2000 to 2100 is like going from 1900 to 2000, but faster.

It seems likely that we're moving into more of an "information age" where you will basically have a prosperous and successful "information class" (with a huge variation in income, but even those at the bottom will be living comfortably), and a "labor class" for which there is less and less labor over time.

Fortunately, these "classes" are not fundamentally based on birth (as classes were originally envisioned). Also, I think it's perfectly feasible for the size of the "labor class" to shrink at a comfortable rate (i.e., people needing jobs will not outstrip available work to the degree that lots of people have to be living in extreme poverty). But for that to happen, it will be necessary to abandon strong welfare policies in countries with large segments of society that are "stuck" in the "labor class" (America in particular comes to mind).

This is just off the cuff thinking... I may want to retract some of this later on.

alphaBetaGamma• 16 years ago

I don't think developed countries should focuse on being competitive in raw materials and basic manufacturing.

Countries that have a substantial percentage of their population that is not very educated have a comparative advantage (in the technical sense [1]) in fields that require a lot of unskilled labor. E.g. raw materials & basic manufacturing. So the developed world will always have a hard time competing with them in these fields.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

TRESPASS12• 16 years ago

Steve jobs?? Really? I would say Mark Zukerberg is a better example.

iamdave2• 16 years ago

Not really, no.

Steve Jobs sits at the core of what Apple represents by his attention to detail down to the aesthetic micrometer. There is an almost sinister genius in what he does at Apple, and at the end of the day you end up with a consistent, applicable and fluid user experience at every level including sales. People want to be involved in that because they know what they're getting. Apple constantly proves itself as a company that does more than talk about thinking outside the box. They think outside the shipping container, and down the street some.

Steve Jobs is an entrepreneur who knew attention to detail, and consistently pushing the envelope beyond a "good product" will bring in dollars.

Zuck sits at the core of a social networking behemoth that has no clear sense of direction, constant changes to using the site, frequent controversy about privacy, fragmented user networks, and no consistency in approach.

Mark Zuckerberg, as much as some people will suffer from bleeding ears after hearing (reading) this: got lucky.

javert2• 16 years ago

There is an almost sinister genius in what he does at Apple

That's an interesting thing to say. Why sinister?

I'm not saying you're doing this, but a lot of people associate evil with efficacy (think Darth Vader, or the "evil genius" character in movies). Actually, that's not so realistic. Thinking about Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and so on - these people are not necessarily paragons of virtue overall, but the qualities that make them so productive ARE virtuous, i.e., good, and not evil.

poundy2• 16 years ago

I agree with this and what I find more interesting is that he also brought us Pixar. He is definitely not a one trick pony and definitely has something great in him!

Bud• 16 years ago

When Zuckerberg has been building great stuff for 35 years—-as opposed to hiring people to build great stuff that he didn't even think up, for a year or two--then he can be compared to Jobs.

Until then, it's kind of a joke to do so.

btilly• 16 years ago

The tidbit that surprised me most is that Steve Jobs gets a greater fraction of his wealth from his shares in Disney than he does from his shares in Apple.

poundy2• 16 years ago

As of march 2010, Steve jobs owns

5.426 million shares of Apple valued at $1.2bn

138 million shares of Disney valued at 4.45bn

I was surprised to learn today that the majority of Steve jobs wealth comes from Disney although he is known the most for his work at Apple!

glhaynes• 16 years ago

Yeah, I hadn't realized that it was tilted that far toward the Disney side either.

The way he tends to talk about Apple is that they want to make products that sell so that they'll get to "come to work the next day" and keep making more. Obviously there's some public positioning / PR going on there, but I think there's at least a kernel of truth, too.

julianb• 16 years ago

Most of Jobs' wealth comes from shares of Walt Disney Co. that he received when the media conglomerate acquired Pixar in 2006. Disney shares recently hit a 52 week high of $38.

I'm surprised that most of Jobs' wealth comes from the sale of Pixar. Even with Apple's stock price ($323) valued at nearly 9 times the value of Disney ($37).

Encosia2• 16 years ago

The real hidden value of the Disney stock is that it has paid him $242,880,000 in dividends since the Pixar sale in 2006.

jcl• 16 years ago

The article subtly points out a logical disconnect: Obama says that we expect Jobs to be rich having created several innovative products, yet the majority of his fortune did not come from these products (at least not the recent ones), but instead from the sale of Pixar.

So by celebrating Jobs's wealth, we're celebrating his investment acumen more than his innovation.

enjo• 16 years ago

There is no pixar for Steve Jobs without Apple.

Encosia2• 16 years ago

His Disney stock is from the Pixar sale, not active investment. Smart of him to keep it all this time (probably an easy choice given the dividends it pays), but he ultimately has it due to the innovation at Pixar, not investment acumen.

notahacker• 16 years ago

the corollary is that some investors in Apple have profited (certainly in proportion to the significance of their input) from its success to a greater extent than Steve Jobs. I'm willing to bet not all of them were investing capital raised through their own ingenuity in other fields...

harold• 16 years ago

Any time I hear a politician say "those are just facts" I immediately get suspicious.

Benjo• 16 years ago

How is this different from a politician saying anything else?

Obama calls Steve Jobs' success prime example of American wealth

Related Stories