LyrArc Article Gist
China's tariffs on US products could be called self-respect tariffs as US exports to China are small compared to China's $1 trillion surplus a year. $143 billion mainly oilseeds and grains! US business not willing to rely on US labor created the outshoring that built Chinese industrial growth, shipping out technology in the process, that created this situation. Consultants to Apple at the time such as myself bringing Total Quality of Management from Japan to the US, could see the failure of production quality at the Colorado Springs plant just before Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1998. About 20-25% of PC product was defective on the production lines seen with my own eyes. Looking back I believe it was not just the workers but the managers and engineering that needed to guide and motivate the workers with new ways to build in quality control. These were the days when Apple's Steve Jobs hired Tim Cook to revamp production and ship it to China. American workers got blamed. Yet as Jim Carlton shows in "Apple the Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders," by 1996 a new German CEO Michael Spindler 1993-1996 had driven the company to the ground. The struggle with Microsoft gave Jobs an idea- by shifting production to a low cost location he could make the high margins to outinvest all competitors with new products-ipods, iphones, ipads. There is nothing wrong with American workers and their craftsmanship. Timeline- Steve Jobs returns to Apple 1997-1998 Tim Cook is hired from Compaq to revamp manufacturing in 1998 1999-2000 - the strategy is made to shift all of the production to China. Jobs could generate the margins and quality to challenge Microsoft, and profits to invest in new products 2020 -   the weakness of the strategy is apparent with supply side shock for chips and computers with the pandemic stopping shipping 2024 - after taking small steps to shift production to India does little to shift back to America 2025- Apple facing serious tariffs and the country's mood shifting to Make in the USA tells the new US president DJT it will invest $500 billion to shift production back to America. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Uniqlo, the unit of Japan's Fast Retailing, is now the largest apparel chain retailer in Asia. Uniqlo has expanded rapidly in Asia, opening on average 2 stores a week. Uniqlo has 182 stores in China. CEO Tadashi Yanai, says the goal is to become the world's No. 1 apparel shop by 2020, even though Uniqlo has only half the sales of Zara's fast fashion apparel chain, which is part of Spain's Inditex Group. Uniqlo plans to open about 10-20 stores a year in the U.S. and is not planning on making an acquisition. Yanai, who owns one third of Fast Retailing shares, says he prefers organic growth. He has studied Gap in detail during the 1980's and 1990's when Gap was popular, including its display methods for khakis, sweaters and tees, calling its then CEO Drexler, "professor."

LyrArc Article Gist
Brings together Intel, tapping into its server technology and the One Laptop Per Child Project of Mr. Negroponte at MIT Media Lab. Advanced Micro Device joined up in 2005. The price of a PC has been brought down to $100 by the One Laptop Per Child Foundation. How much impact will the project now have, now that a number of backers have joined the effort? Two competing approaches, how has that been resolved? Intel based on training teachers, One Laptop based on self learning in groups, Intel using Windows, One Laptop using open source, one controlled by Intel and Microsoft and less price sensitive and the other more chance to bring price down as its open to any manufacturer or software developer thats right for the goals of One Laptop.

LyrArc Article Gist
China's new prime mnister Li Keqiang has his first press conference in Beijing in March 2013. He says his priorities will be cutting bureaucracy, giving private enterprise and consumers a bigger role in the economy, increasing social spending and fighting pollution.

LyrArc Article Gist
Microsoft's planned release of Windows 8 in 2012 with its use in tablets, and its new strategies for increasing Windows Apps for smartphones.

LyrArc Article Gist
The key role being played by Xi Jinping and advisor Liu He in developing economic policy and top down changes for China in 2013-2015.

LyrArc Article Gist
In the third fiscal quarter ending June 28, 2014, Apple sold 35.2 million iPhones, up 13% from the year ago quarter. Profit reported was $7.75 billion for the quarter, up from $6.9 billion in the prior year quarter. Revenue increased to $37.43 billion from $35.32 billion the prior year quarter. Apple is not experiencing the weakness in smartphone sales that Samsung is seeing. The strong sales comes with increasing sales in China following the distribution deal with China Mobile. iPad sales slowed with sales declining to 13.3 million iPads in the quarter, down 9% from the prior year quarter. While Samsung has difficulty in preventing lower cost competitors such as Xiaomi and Huawei from eroding sales in China Apple sales are increasing. Apple's revenue in China increased by 28% for the quarter. China is a western brand conscious market as seen in sales of U.S. and German made automobiles. Another trend Apple is capitalizing on is the sale of larger screen iPhones. Screens larger than 5 inches make up 20% of iPhones shipped in China, according to IDC, which are estimated to go up to 50% by 2017....

LyrArc Article Gist
Japan has accomplished a remarkable transformation of its workforce and its economy even as the working age population is declining. For years Japan was seen as a stagnant economy with a rapidly aging population. In recent years Japan has shown how a change in policy can work. Since 2012 working age population declined by 4.7 million, yet the number of people working increased by 4.4 million. The proportion of the population in the workforce rose sharply since 2012. To do this Japan turned to three underutilized parts of its workforce and population- the elderly, women and new immigrants. Japan has pursued an active policy of reviving the economy by bringing women into the workforce and breaking taboos on new immigrants. In 2004 Japan raised retirement age from 60 to 65, and then made it mandatory for companies to raise or abolish the retirement age, or introduce a system for re-employing workers who retire. This has changed Japan a lot with Japanese men working well into their 60's and 70's. In the west coast city of Kanagawa which now has a bullet train to Tokyo, out migration was a big problem that added to a declining workforce. The head of Ohara, a family owned company that makes desserts tried a novel method of advertising to seniors in apartment blocks and starting attracting seniors to fill worker shortages. It found that seniors came to work on time, performed even tedious tasks, and brought a great deal of experience. Since then the regional government has started programs to get more retirees and women into the workforce. The special programs teach small companies to adapt to the needs of retiree workers who can work in shorter shifts of few hours and do less physical jobs. Women need predictable hours to pickup children from school and shorter work weeks, for which the regional government program helps companies adapt by sending in specialists to guide the companies. As a result female participation in the workforce, for very long a big handicap is no longer so. Female participation has jumped to 63%, higher even than that in the OECD where the average is 62 years.  Japanese women had a M curve that meant they worked most in their 20's. less in the 30's with children, and more in the 50's. First the government tried to correct this with extended parental leave, increased childcare, and rewarding companies with good work-life balance. Then in 2009 the effort accelerated with employers required to offer 6 hour days if a worker asked for this. Under prime minister Abe's "womenomics" effort child care was significantly expanded- by 2015 Tokyo went from 28 to 38 spots open for every 100 two year olds. Alongside these efforts the Abe government tried to get companies to rethink their assumptions about quantity of work and overtime as productive effort. One could work shorter hours and be productive, and the old notions were seen as resulting in lower productivity. As fathers with parental leave took on more responsibility the changes transformed the attitudes for women at work. Most remarkable is the quiet change in immigration policy. The government allowed foreign construction workers to address shortages for work on the 2020 Olympics. It introduced a 3-5 year visas program for nursing care workers. Two new categories of visas will add 340,000 additional blue collar workers over next 5 years. The total foreign born workers in Japan doubled from 2012 to 2017 to 1.3 million. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Lisa Ridzen a sociology student lives 550 miles north of Stockholm. She is the author of a story about older people, Bo an 89 year old born in 2015 who lives with his wife Frederika who has early Alzheimers and a dog in northern Sweden. It is a story about the difficult life of the elderly in today's society.

Ridzen says- "If I may indulge in a bit of politics, I think we're really heading in the wrong direction. If it were up to me, our elders would be fed with a golden spoon." She is aware of the conditions for the elderly- not so good today, as they struggle to live their lives neglected by a society run by private groups for profit.

The book has struck a nerve- in Sweden where it sold 200,000 copies. It is set to be translated into French in 2026 by a Quebec publishing house, and translated into 30 languages.

LyrArc Article Gist
The mangled inscription on the Martin Luther King memorial in Washington D.C. The original inscription was shortened from four sentences to one sentence with much of the meaning lost, even distorted. The original phrases were about Dr King saying "a drum major" attitude is not a thing one has to be careful about because it can lead to an egoistic view. There are many words of Dr King which would have better served the purpose at the memorial, why these were chosen remains a mystery.

LyrArc Article Gist
The new iPad coming out in March 2012 will be priced at $499, with the prior version being priced now at $399. Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, says the iPad sales in the 4th quarter of 2011 surpassed sales of PC's by any individual manufacturer. To give some idea of the impact Apple's sales of $9.5 billion for iPads in the 4th quarter were twice the sales revenue made by Microsoft for Windows software and close to the total revenue of Google during the quarter. This third generation iPad looks like the previous one. It has an A5X quad-core chip for faster processing and a higher resolution screen with 2,048 by 1,536 pixels. The new iPad also works on the new cellphone network technology called LTE. It works on AT&T and Verizon's networks. Users can dictate e-mail on this device.

LyrArc Article Gist
The WSJ's Monica Langley provides insights into Donald Trump's campaign strategies, some of them right out of his book "The Art of the Deal." His target voter is from a think big strategy to get voters across a broad spectrum using the slogan "Make America Great Again," with a knack of tapping into a deep well of voter frustration with the political establishment. How to get attention in the media is the next step Trump tackled by using social media to the fullest - using Twitter often, making statements that attract attention such as the ones on China, Mexico, Senator McCain and Muslims that tap into failure of political correctness to address voter frustration on trade and jobs, immigration and terrorism. The Trump campaign has 14 million followers on Twitter, and 50 million "engagement" accounts on Facebook- that cost very little. Social media is to Trump in 2016 what community networking on the PC dashboard was to Obama in 2008. As the WSJ pointed out in an editorial, the splitting of the Republican vote among many candidates, and the failure of candidates to grasp the nature of the unconventional campaign waged by Trump- descending into attacks based on target groups of voters on every candidate except Trump- created the opportunity Trump has grasped with his knack for improvising along the way. Commonsense campaigning without sophisticated strategies, improvising often along the way, using the available medium of social media at little cost to get the message and slogan across, helped Trump make the deal with voters to upset the political establishment. The Sanders campaign is also based on careful repetition of the same slogan and facts about inequality and lobbyists, over and over again, offering strong action on health care and college tution just as Trump offers strong action on China trade, immigration with the idea of the wall, and barring entry of Muslims for terrorism till "we figure out what's happening." The difference being that Trump thinks big and targets the entire electorate of his party's voters in the primaries from the beginning, and a broad based campaign on many issues. Underestimating your opponent carries many risks in politics, never more so than when you are out of touch or not listening to voter frustration, and fail to speak up to it....