The last week brought us a striking contrast that tells us much about the current debate over the direction of this country.
On one hand were the perpetually aggrieved protestors of Occupy Wall Street. While much of the media, desperate to find a liberal counterpart to the Tea Party (remember coverage of the state-house takeover in Wisconsin?), tried to pretend that this was an organic and leaderless uprising by middle America, the reality was that most of the demonstrators were the same motley crew that regularly shows up to demonstrate against the World Bank or G8 meetings, their ranks bolstered by union activists, MoveOn.org, and the Obama front group Organizing for America — not to mention the usual collection of filthy-rich movie stars who flew in on private jets and then climbed into waiting limousines to show up to denounce the filthy rich.
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But while Roseanne Barr was suggesting that the rich should be beheaded and demonstrators were making such reasonable demands as the forgiveness of all debt, much of the rest of the world was mourning the death of Steve Jobs, the filthy-rich businessman who was responsible for all those iPhones and iPads that the iPod-sporting protestors used to organize their demonstrations.
Jobs certainly was rich. Estimates suggest he was worth more than $7 billion. But it’s important to realize that he didn’t start out that way. Jobs’s story was a quintessential American one. Born poor (and out of wedlock), he achieved success through hard work and brilliance. Along the way he failed sometimes. But when he did, he didn’t beg Washington for a bailout. Instead he frequently put his own capital at risk, taking chances, because entrepreneurship truly is risky. And he showed us that no amount of adversity can stop someone who is truly determined and talented from achieving the American dream.
Does it really matter what tax rate Steve Jobs paid? He was not even a notable contributor to charity. Yet, he did more to contribute to American prosperity and the general betterment of mankind than any government program could ever hope to. Start with the obvious: The various businesses started and run by Jobs employed more than 30,000 Americans and thousands more around the world. Jobs truly was one of those job creators so disparaged by the Occupy Wall Street crowd.
Estimates suggest that Jobs generated as much as $30 billion annually in increased wealth for the U.S. economy. Obviously, without the wealth that Jobs created, all of society would be that much poorer. And, of course, as Jobs drove the value of Apple from $2 billion to $350 billion following his return as CEO in 1997, all of us moved a bit closer to a comfortable retirement as the value of our pension plans and 401(k)s, almost all of which include Apple stock, increased.
But that only captures a small fraction of the social benefits generated by Jobs.
The technology that Jobs brought to the mainstream of American life doesn’t just let us listen to music or play Angry Birds. It has made businesses more efficient, lowering the cost of goods and services for all of us. It has made it easier for everyone from doctors to teachers and students to soldiers on the battlefield to access information and stay in contact with others. It has disseminated knowledge, improved medical diagnostics, and helped bring about the overthrow of dictators. It has helped the blind read the denominations of dollar bills and alleviated the symptoms of children with autism.
The Occupy Wall Street crowd, and for that matter President Obama, see government as the center of our existence. It is government that makes for a better society, while the rich, businessmen, and entrepreneurs are “takers” who don’t “pay their fair share.” But would we really have been better off if we had taken more of Jobs’s wealth and given it to the government? Would President Obama really have used it better than Jobs did? Would the government have given us all that Jobs did?
Government has spent trillions on schools that don’t educate, anti-poverty programs that don’t lift people out of poverty, stimulus programs that don’t stimulate, and health-care programs that don’t control the cost of health care. Compare Apple or Pixar’s record of success with the failures of government. For that matter, what government jobs program has created as many net new jobs as Jobs?
In fact, the next time someone suggests that what we need is more taxes, more regulation, more class warfare, more government programs, we should instead suggest that what we really need are policies that encourages a poor boy from San Francisco to become rich and thereby make the rest of us a little richer as well.
Jobs was by all accounts a terrible person who treated his colleagues, including those that he owed a great deal to, like Steve Wozniak, like absolute dirt. They stole the majority of their ideas, and their innovations were just in marketing and packaging more than actual technology.
Also, anyone who buys Apple products is a fool. You are paying a premium for something mainly because it looks silly, and most of the products come with a built-in death clock. It's called 'Planned Obsolescence', and you're soaking in it.
Rapidly, someone carrying around an Apple product is becoming as quickly identifiable as a technological know-nothing as people with .aol addresses used to be.
Bill Gates, is that you? Those are the dumbest, most uniformed comments I've ever seen. My 8 year old Mac would beg to differ with your "death clock" premise. That's just dumb.
Having lived on both sides of the divide (PC vs Apple), I'll take Mac any day. And their support systems at the retail stores and Apple Care, are second to none. You can't get support like that from the Geek Squad.
"They stole the majority of their ideas, and their innovations were just in marketing and packaging more than actual technology."
Amen.
Without Xerox to invent the graphical user interface, and other "Apple innovations", and without Steve Wozniak to make the initial Apple computer a reality, Jobs would be just another technical egomaniac thrashing in obscurity.
All of these Jobs encomia only serve to point out that marketing DOES work. People only remember what's in the ad and don't dig much deeper.
Marketing DOES work. It's what made Obama, Jobs, and OW household words. It's what keeps Ron Paul in the shadows. It's what's taking this country down.
What a contrast. It is curious that the OWS crowd (a la Greece) vilifies the few rich, who innovate, apply intellect and capital, and take risks to build something--as greedy evil people.
Yet the OWS people want to hide their greed in a socialistic structure. Are not the riots in Greece an indication of the greed of the masses? It is inevitably the few, like Steve Jobs, who innovate and grow. The 'protesters' of OWS want, but that's just it. They reveal their own hidden greed by demanding the fruits of others' labors.
The OWS crowd point out the villainy of some of the rich. People like you grossly distort their statements into bizarre straw men.
As the cost of living has risen, wages have remained stagnant. The middle class are being squeezed into poverty, yet you call them greedy. Meanwhile, the rich are getting richer and taxed at one of the lowest rates in history, if they even pay taxes at all.
This idea that rich people never acquire or maintain their riches through immoral means is absurd. They do and need to be rooted out and held accountable.
Tanner has it exactly right. People operating in the market system, where you have to compete for resources and only profit if you put them to uses that consumers like, produce wealth. In contrast, people operating in the political system, where resources are taken and the losses due to bad decisions fall on taxpayers in general, absorb wealth and squander resources. Is that lesson too difficult for the OWS people to grasp?
Depends on what you mean by wealth. Jobs was phenomenally good at causing people in other countries to send dollars to America in exchange for iPods and iPads.
We need more people like him.
We're on the same side here, even though you and I probably have very different ideas about what "wealth" means.
I have to admit, I'm not sure. I think it has a lot to do with measuring the difference between what I want and what I have.
A bunch of questions, all with the usual "all other things being equal" caveat:
1. Am I wealthier than an 1811 American because I have indoor plumbing?
2. A man invents a UV tanning bed. Has he become wealthier if no one ever uses it? What if the existence of his invention amuses him greatly?
3. I pay the inventor of the tanning bed to use it because I want to get tan. Is the inventor wealthier? Am I?
4. It's a sunny day and I get tan on natural sunlight alone. I save the money that I would have paid to the inventor of the tanning bed. Am I wealthier?
5. I find gold in my backyard and dig it up and smelt it into neat gold ingots. Am I wealthier?
6. Same as 5, but there's a massive food shortage and you're the only one left with food -- and it's just enough to feed you. How much wealthier did finding the gold make me?
7. Is wealth neither created nor destroyed, like matter and energy? When the whole world has indoor plumbing, are we all wealthier? Is my boat higher, or has sea level merely risen, raising all boats?
It's interesting you confuse satisfaction with wealth. I think it provides an interesting insight to those with similar views to you.
By your logic a person from my old neighborhood with a color television, cell phone, indoor plumbing, a car, vaccinations, anti-biotics, and AC is poorer than a Russian serf in 1861. Why do I say that? My neighbor was aware of big screen TVs, BMWs, and iPads and wanted them. The Russian serf wasn't aware of them or anything my neighbor had that he lacked. Therefore my neighbor has a much larger gap between what he wanted and what he had than the serf.
Sorry, MikeB, but that's just stuipd.
The best personalized measure of wealth is: "how many days can I maintain my current standard of living". That accounts for most of your questions while not making it possible to claim a Russian serf just before the nominal freeing of the serfs is wealthier than a poor American circa 2011. Because while the self might be wealthier in that he has more days than the American we can convert between the two definitions of days and make apples to apples comparisons.
Wealth/prosperity is time saved (to obtain the things you need/desire). Consider the amount of effort/work you would need to expend to obtain the things you need and/or want today vs any time in the past. You/I are wealthier b/c we can expend far few hours today to obtain what we want/need then 50 years ago or 1000 years ago. How much work is required for you to have food and shelter (vs your ancestors)? How much work is required for you to travel thousands of miles to Europe or wherever (vs your ancestors)?
Jobs will go down as one of more brilliant salesmen in history. Only Steve Jobs could have consumers part with thier hard earn cash and feel good about it. He was the only executive in the computer industry that was obsessed with asethetics. His products were always the most pleasing to the eye; he would keep a product form being launched in order to take another few grams off its weight, or a few milimeters off its size (I'm sure he drove his engineers insane). In Silicon Valley rumours abound recalling his infamous staff meetings (turn-over at Cupertino I imagine was high).
But, he was also a visionary. He was the first executive in Silicon Valley to see that the days of the PC were coming to a close. The desktop (and now the laptop, thanks in large part to the iPad) was becoming a commoditiy, and Jobs if anything demanded obscene profit margins. Hence, the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Jobs drove an industry his way, and in the process made Apple again King.
That was Jobs key - demand the highest margins by delivering a product that everyone just had to have. He was ruthless in his pursuit of large cash flows.
And only Steve Jobs could develope the "cool" persona that Lefties so love. It is very ironic that so many people worshiped a man who outsourced almost all of his operations to Asia; made billions in stock options; and demanded the highest profits possible. As they say, "Branding is everything".
The evidence that Steve Jobs was essential to the economic history of the United States is scant.
Nothing he did was unique or novel. It was all inevitable.
His salesmanship and drive got him on the wave of personal digital computing at an opportune time. He persuaded consumers (only 10.7% of them in the personal computer market, by the way) to evaluate products on irrelevant, superficial characteristics. Selecting a personal computer on the basis of its color and sheen is like selecting a car on the basis of its model name.
Mark Steyn and others have remarked at the stasis of fundamental innovation that has gripped Western art, science and technology over the past 40 years or so, singling out personal computing as the great exception.
Has it not occurred to anyone that the rising ubiquity of personal digital computing is in perfect negative correlation with the decline in intellectual dynamism?
Has it not occurred to anyone that the near-complete perfusion of our lives with personal computing has made us dumber?
Prediction: within ten years, it will be widely recognized that personal computing stunts and constrains human cognitive capacities. Then, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates will seem about as heroic as Mr. R.J.Reynolds does now.
A fundamental problem with measuring whether we are "richer" is that certain factors, which perhaps have real value, do not appear on the balance sheet.
Some folks (including myself) would say that we now live in a world where many persons are preoccupied with mindless and purposeless chatter on cell phones, or tuned out by watching endless computer videos, playing games, or zoned out with earbuds. Others would note that tech companies have been leaders in importing workers from certain nations, which can devalued European culture in America. Others would note that where tech goes, crowded and overpriced housing, unsupported by a stable job market, is sure to follow. Yet others would note that the value of a college education, even one in relevant and employable fields, is far less that it was before.
Similarly, the need for two-income families, for financial security, has had profound consequences in terms of family size and structure, with a growing gap in economic position. To some extent, this has been enabled by the large number of tech-related jobs that women can perform, without the muscle or tedium of jobs in fields such as factories or construction. This is very good, or not so good, depending on one's views.
But these factors are accounted as zero. All that is measured is money, or cash equivalents.
Steve Jobs didn't do all of this; neither did Apple Computer. But certainly they were major players.
On the other hand, many folks would assign positive value to the same factors that I have disrespected above.
Yet I think that most NRO readers, including myself, would assign negative value to much or all of the OWS demands.
That's not true, in many parts of the country you can live on one income. Look at the 1950's people lived in small homes and apartments as most of Europe still does.
Get rid of everything that's been added since the 70's, your cable bill, cell bill, second car, etc. Growing up our family ate out probably twice a year, "fast food" maybe 10 times a year.
In the rich city I grew up in, doctors lived in 2500sf homes, now teachers do.
It is true as well, that the addition of women into the workforce certainly depresses wages as well.
The federal government doesn't invent things, create things or build things. It uses other people's money to buy things. When we deprive America's creators, innovators and builders of their wealth, we also deprive them of the motivation to work hard, the willingness to take risks and the desire to share their creations with others. Human nature being what it is, how will the federal government encourage brilliant people to share their brilliant ideas if there is little or no reward for doing so? Even Pavlov's dog was smart enough to expect a suitable reward for his efforts.
If you go to the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, you will find an entire wing of the convention center that is dedicated to companies that make nothing but Apple accessories. From chargers, to cases, to keyboards, to software, to....you get the idea. How many more people have jobs at these companies because of Steve Jobs? Steve created more jobs and opportunities than any government ever could. RIP Steve.
In the last decade, Apple produced things of value. The financial industry? Not so much:
"Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens."
