Apples And Oranges. They Don't Get Them Either.

You've heard the old adage that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, right? Well in Apple factories in China, it's not necessarily the apple that keeps the doctors away. In fact it's probably unlikely that workers get many apples at all. What's more likely to keep the doctor away is the management at the factories. At the very least they're keeping safe working conditions away. I think I've mentioned before that working conditions are abominable, and then there's the living conditions. See, workers live in dorms and since the companies go 24/7, they only need half as many beds as there are workers. We had those kinds of conditions in this country, but that was something like a century ago. In the coal fields in the east. Workers and their families lived in "factory towns". They lived in factory owned houses, bought everything at the factory store and paid even for the tools they used to mine the coal. Near the end of the pay period, there was nothing left until payday. So the women were put to work in silk mills and lace works in order not to get deeper in debt. Well, it looks like China is taking a page from our history for their most modern factories. And they're taking one more step beyond. Do you suppose they have the wrong calender? I mean do you think they think we're just rounding the corner into the twentieth century? You don't suppose they're emerging into the industrial revolution do you? Well of course they are emerging from a rural, farm based, poor worker class, into a modern industrial giant. I suppose this is a first step on the road to prosperity for all. Well, except that these apple workers aren't really any better off than they were down on the farm. There is one bright spot in all this though. At least Apple gets to have a really, really cheap labor force. And they can't get that in America. Or anywhere else. Now you know why their Ipads have low prices, right?