[MarkSweep]

The article says Apple’s surplus is 60%. Looking at Apple’s 2020 annual report, their pretax income was 25% of sales. If you subtract out services, it is 11%.

Another way to look at it is Apple’s company-wide R&D and SG&A were 25% of the costs to create products (not services).

So the R&D costs are not negligible and the article probably overestimates the amount of exploitation. On the other hand, Apple made $67 billion before tax, so they could afford to pay their workers more.