Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by nanny 1880 days ago
>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.

1 comments

> 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.

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*.

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.)

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.
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.
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.
>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?