[JumpCrisscross]

> hate the way Apple phrases their business investments like they're performing some great charitable act

Why do you think domestic investment is so economically useless that it must be a charitable act?

Cupertino is announcing spend. Spending here is better for people here, ceteris paribus, than spending there. If they announced $430bn in new Southeast Asian contracts, there would be a twin top comment lamenting Apple's lack of domestic spending.

[anon_tor_12345]

>Why do you think domestic investment is so economically useless that it must be a charitable act?

that's not what op (the person you're responding to) is saying at all. they're simply saying that apple disguises its infrastructure spending as charity and that that's off-putting. in fact it's not charity and furthers their own goals.

it'd be like me claiming to be a philanthropist because i had to a build a road connecting my factory to my mine that incidentally connects towns along the way. note this is example is right on the nose because this is exactly what corporations do.

[JumpCrisscross]

> apple disguises its infrastructure spending as charity

Except it doesn't. It uses the word "investment" 17 times in the announcement. If someone reads this as a charity pitch they're doing mental gymnastics.

Apple is not even doing the whole "Made in the USA" schtick, where companies imply they're taking patriotic pain for the good of the country. This is fully pitched as a competitive play. An investment to yield returns.

[plater]

To continue as a company they have to invest just like any other company. As Apple is so big, of course the investments they make are big. But not necessarily bigger than what any other company invests in percent of revenue or profit.

This announcement makes it sound like it's something amazingly special they do. But in fact, any company throughout history has invested a certain percentage of their revenue, just like Apple is now doing.

[gumby]

It's a press release. What else would you expect?

They aren't claiming to be investing more or less than anyone else. They are simply advertising their plans.

I think Apple's "amazing" infomercials are over the top, but this press release seems anodyne.

[ojbyrne]

And pretty well any company throughout history has made sure the public knows about its investment.

[jdmoreira]

It could never be charitable because Apple is a publicly traded company and investors want returns.

People talk about companies the same way a hunter-gatherer applies animism to trees for example. Companies are not people, they can’t be cynic nor greedy they just are what they were created to be. Profit machines.

Apple is extremely good at being. High returns on invested capital, huge moat, etc...

[nanny]

>Why do you think domestic investment is so economically useless

GP never implied that it was "useless" at all. Your question (to use some more Latin) is a total non-sequitur.

>there would be a twin top comment lamenting Apple's lack of domestic spending.

Yes, different people have different opinions.

[JumpCrisscross]

> GP never implied that it was "useless" at all

The announcement uses the word investment 17 times. Reading that as a charity pitch requires a few logical leaps.

Companies announce foreign direct investment all the time. Nobody thinks they're trying to look like a charity.

[anon_tor_12345]

the subtitle of the article is

>The accelerated commitment will fund a new North Carolina campus and *job-creating investments* in innovative fields like silicon engineering and 5G technology

other pull quotes from the article

>Apple is doubling down on our commitment to US innovation and manufacturing with a generational investment reaching *communities across all 50 states*

>Apple is the largest taxpayer in the US and has paid almost $45 billion in domestic corporate income taxes over the past five years alone.

> designed to prepare students for careers in hardware engineering and silicon chip design — to engineering programs at *Historically Black Colleges and Universities* across the country.

>bringing *clean energy and high-paying jobs to local communities across the country*.

[JumpCrisscross]

If you're a regular at a restaurant, and you point out to you friends that you've supported said restaurant, you are not claiming a charitable act. You are pointing out the consequences of your actions.

If someone wants to see that as charity, it speaks more to them than anything else. (And claiming your patronage was an act of charity would be rightfully seen as a diminishment of said business.)

[jrwoodruff]

Not an article, a press release from Apple. Of course their PR team is going to spin it as positive as possible, that's their job. Used to be, reporters would pick this up and do their best to take the spin off, do a few interviews and provide additional context.

[ABeeSea]

None of that sounds like charity or even framed as charity. They need workers to work at these factories they are building. US workers don’t have those skills. So they need a training center for their business investment to work out.

[skeeter2020]

This is the exact same approach governments use when trying to go the other way: politically motivated hand-outs framed as "investments". It's a meaningless word in a PR statement.

[nanny]

>The announcement uses the word investment 17 times. Reading that as a charity pitch requires a few logical leaps.

Again, a non-sequitur. Even if they read "investment" as "tea party" 17 times, they still never said or implied that it was useless.

The Apple article is obviously trying to paint the investments as acts of goodwill. Not many people would expect anything else, it's just good PR. "Charity" might be an exaggeration, but can't you see why it could rub people the wrong way?

[jokethrowaway]

One potential reasons is that a lot of things are more expensive in the states - including hiring.

If they did their massive campus in Eastern Europe they would get a lot of cheap smart talent, cheap building and probably a favourable tax treatment (if they needed even more of that).

Replace with Canary Islands, Cyprus or Malta if you want somewhere with nice weather.

This is part PR, part gaining political favours.