Is the iPad Killiing Job in the US?

kresspin wrote:

Photo-fish wrote: Union workers can't afford iPads.

Oh come on. They're just a little more expensive than a smartphone (some are the same price) and way less expensive than a flatscreen.

We are dealing with Jesse Jackson's Jr. ghetto neighborhood now. Just wait he will next be asking for free ipads for his constituents.

conifermtman wrote:

SS109 wrote: To expand on PS's thoughts, look at the IKEA story in the papers over the weekend. IKEA sets up a factory manufacturing their furniture in the US and are being raked over the coals currently for labor law violations.

Where do you think IKEA will open their next factory? I am betting it will be in a country with weak labor law enforcement.

As far as I am concerned IKEA put itself in that position. If IKEA wants to market itself as a progressive company it should uphold the values it proclaims to support. After all IKEA pays its workers in Sweden on average $19 an hour and has to give them 5 weeks of paid vacation. It seems to me that the people at corporate headquarters figured out that they could not make a profit in the paradise known as Sweden and had to find lower cost labor to subsidies their way of life. What a shock. Where is a good liberal to spend their money on furniture now? I would suggest your local Amish furniture store if you don't want to support corporate america.

The cost of living is a lot higher in Sweden. About 10 years ago I was there and spent $75 on two oxburgers, a beer and a Coke, a tiny Coke. I should have been running the Kroner/USD numbers before I went into that restauraunt. :VeryScared:
So I could see $19 a hour in Sweden about equivalent to thier US wages.

Specifically regarding the iPad topic, I can see a day not too far in the future where the schools issue a similar device in lieu of books to all of the students when they register for their classes at the middle and high school levels - even sooner at the college level - and then you get to pick it up preloaded with your schedule for that semester, the text you will need, the homework assigned, test dates and all the rest of it. There will be either the ability to take notes in your own handwriting, capture the lectures via voice recognition or you will be able to download the text of the lecture given on any particular day for study purposes. Homework will be submitted via wireless file transfer directly from your tablet and you will no longer have an excuse that the teacher lost your homework after you submitted it since you will get a confirmation number that can be verified once the file has been received.

Solves the problem of purchasing new or used books at the college level. Instead of buying the book new at $300 a pop, or purchasing them used for half that amount, you will simply pay a ridiculous rental fee for its use that semester with an option to purchase it if you think it is something you will want to hold onto for the rest of your life, or at least until the format changes. You can then pay to update the format every 3-5 years so that the latest and greatest electronic incarnation of the book can still open up the file.

The pendulum of the cost of printed material is one its way back to the days of the revolution where only a very limited number of books were produced and each one was highly expensive to purchase. While technology will go a long ways towards allowing everyone access to material that only the very rich could afford in the days of Thomas Jefferson, it will make the neighborhood library essentially obsolete. Instead of a brick structure filled with shelf after shelf of books that has to be maintained, there will be a net accessible site where electronic copies can be "checked out". Libraries won't have to worry about the book not being returned, after you check the book out it will automatically delete itself from your personal library when your allotted time expires.

It will, however, be a wonderful thing for the children and their parents. No longer will those of limited means be unable to provide books for their children or spend their weekends scouring garage sales with their kids in tow to purchase at the price they can afford that their child shows an interest in. No longer will there be book sales of tomes removed from the library shelves to support the operations of the library. The books now in circulation will become what they should have always been, treasured items passed down from one generation to the next, instead of discarded and worthless items sold for a quarter apiece in paperback or dollar or two for a hardcover.

I have in my possession 9 volumes of the writings of Thomas Jefferson, published in 1856 (IIRC) by an act of Congress, purchased by a New York congressional representative and donated to the Flushing, NY library system - which was how the libraries obtained their books before the governments decided that they should levy a tax to accomplish the same ends. The library sold them at some point in time to raise additional funds to support the library that taxes didn't provide, and the books, complete with the tags pasted into them which identified who had, out of their personal generosity purchased and donated them, ended up in someone's personal library. When that person passed from this life to the next, the people who ended up with the estate put them into a box, along with all the other books the person had spent a lifetime collecting, and donated them to a local school. The LMC specialist at that school looked through the boxes, decided these were not worth the space they would take up on the shelves and had them designated for collection by the trash collectors to be entombed along with the rest of that days garbage. They were presented to me as a gift by someone who rescued them from that fate and knows of the high regard I have for Thomas Jefferson and his contribution to creating for posterity what we now know today as the United States of America. The story of these books is, to me, a parable of how we got to be where we are today, and what we need to do to get this ship of state back on the tack it was always intended to sail.