Yes, it’s huge. But only 50 people work there.

The optimists argue that the U.S. solution to the stars unemployment and income inequality are more companies like Apple – the company resurgent technology that has revolutionized the digital industry and become one of the most important companies in the world.

Apple has created not only amazing, loved the products. It has created enormous profits, the vast wealth of shareholders, and more than 60,000 jobs.

If only America has produced more companies like Apple (and Google and Amazon and Facebook, and others), the story continues, the country’s problems will be solved. America can upgrade its vast, idle construction-and-production of the workforce, and our unemployment and inequality problems will be solved.
And it is true that more companies like Apple would certainly help the United States.
But we need more companies like Apple to engrave in our problems of unemployment and inequality.
Why?

Why Apple has in fact also exemplifies some of the reasons why we have such huge problems of unemployment and inequality:
• “Digital” companies such as Apple employ far fewer people (for profit) of traditional manufacturing companies.
• Apple + 60,000 jobs are not only in the U.S. – they’re spread all over the world.
• Apple ~ Extraordinary profit margin of 25% means that the benefits accrue mainly to its success to a relatively small group of shareholders, rather than a broad base of employees.
To put this in context, the Economist recently noted that Apple, Amazon and Google together employ 113,000 people – which is less than 1/3rd as many as a successful single-American history of the previous generation, GM used in the 1980.

A striking example of this is Apple’s new data center in North Carolina. Like other cities in North Carolina feet, Maiden was once a thriving textile mills and furniture of the house. Now is struggling with an unemployment rate close to 13%.
In the previous generation of American companies, from Apple’s decision to locate a new plant in Maiden would have been enormous transformation in the city. This is one reason Apple Girl lured with major tax breaks and sang for the company’s decision to put a data center there.
But, like Michael Rosenwald Washington Post report, Apple’s new data center in Maiden will only create 50 full-time jobs.
And most of them do not go to residents of Maiden, who lack the skills necessary.
The same can be said for data centers that Google and Facebook and other companies have recently built in North Carolina feet. They are useful, of course, and the city and its inhabitants are better with them than it would without them, but no longer make a difference to the local economy as the most important factories would be.
Most of the “manufacturing” job of these companies, meanwhile, are either super-high-tech job scheduling software or assembly of the work outsourced to China and other countries. And even in those countries, companies like Foxconn are working hard to replace the work with more efficient machinery.

Unlike many companies in the hardware business and manufacturing software, Apple’s profit margins are high enough to be able to afford to make some of its products in the United States, if you choose to do so. (Apple’s margins could be cut in half, and it would be even more profitable than other hardware vendors such as Dell).
But, for now, Apple has chosen to manufacture its products which can produce them more efficiently – outside of the United States and shareholders are benefiting as a result of Apple.
(It should be noted that Apple has every right to do so. Like it or not, we live in a global economy now, and Apple sells its products all over the world. Chinese citizens need jobs as much as Americans do, if not more. Beating a company to “navigation work abroad” knows of a vision of the ancient world, one that simply does not apply to the economy of today.)

But the point is that the hope that some more companies like Apple, Google and Amazon will restore the American economy to its former glory is out of place.

Companies to create amazing products and vast wealth of shareholders, but does not spread the wealth around to the industrial giant has previously done. We can talk all we want about how we need to “upgrade” our employees to make high-tech jobs, but even under the best circumstances, the process will take a long, long time. And up to the global production of pay-scales of a balance approach – which will probably be accomplished by the growth of China and our fall – companies will still have a huge incentive to build their products, where labor costs are cheaper.
So, yes, we celebrate the success of Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon. But we must not delude ourselves thinking about going to solve our problems of unemployment and inequality.