China Poisons its People, not Apple

"Chinese environmental groups accused Apple Inc of turning a blind eye as its suppliers pollute the country," begins the Reuters piece I found on HuffPo about Apple suppliers poisoning the Chinese.  It's the Chinese government who is poisoning its people, not Apple.  Apple merely lives by the laws of the land.  If those laws, or lack thereof, permit operation of a plant that poisons, change the laws or write the regulations.   


Once upon a time in a place called America companies poisoned citizens in places like Love Canal, NY with impunity.  Why?  They were following the laws...mostly.  Eventually, citizens made companies stop poisoning them with legislation like the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (1948), the Clean Air Act (1970) and the Clean Water Act (1972).


Some argue these laws and subsequent regulations drove jobs to places like Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and eventually China.  There's truth to that argument.  But which of those countries has surpassed America in living standards, wealth, and global dominance since 1948?  Seems we made the right call. (Something to consider in the current debate over jobs vs. government regulation).


Apple is a public company, not a country, community, or deity.  Apple answers to shareholders looking for..wait for it...profits.  It's not up to Apple to write the laws of the lands where they or their suppliers operate; it's up to Apple to follow the laws written by the governments of the lands where they do business.  But when the power of government doesn't derive from the governed in places like...wait for it...CHINA...then the governed don't really matter that much.  The government would much rather attract factory jobs no matter the cost to the environment or its people's health.  (Does anyone remember how China had to blast the smog out of Beijing pre-Olympics?)  It's the Chinese government that's responsible for poisoning its people, not Apple and other companies who abide by the laws of their land.


So spare me the "Apple is evil" storyline.  Place the blame where it belongs...with the Chinese Communist Party.

The percentage of unmarried teen births has dropped?

My rant earlier today triggered a conversation with my Dad...not surprisingly...in which we discussed the alarming rise in births to unmarried women in America as it relates to attaining the American Dream.  40.6% of live births in America in 2007 were to unmarried women.  When I graduated from high school in 1980 it was 18.4%.

But I found it fascinating that in 1970 50% of nonmarital live births were to women 20 years or younger.  In 2007 that number was 23%.  So no longer does unmarried mother mean teen mother.  Indeed, in 1970 8% of births were to unmarried women age 30+.  In 2007 17% were 30+ years old.

We are not alone.  Iceland, Sweden, Norway, France, Denmark and the UK all have a higher percentage of nonmarital births than America.  The Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, Canada, Spain, Italy and Japan (all the countries the CDC report on) all have increased percentages of nonmarital births  since 1980.  As the CDC says, "The upward trend in nonmarital childbearing seen in the United States is matched in most developed countries, with levels at least doubling or tripling and in some cases increasing many multiples between 1980 and the mid-2000s."

So why these increases in births to unmarried women?  Here's what the CDC thinks.

"The historic increases in nonmarital childbearing result from many factors, including substantial delays in marriage beginning with the baby-boom generation and changes in sexual activity, contraceptive effectiveness and use, and abortion. Many infants are also born to couples in cohabiting relationships: According to the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, about 40% of recent nonmarital births were to cohabiting women. In addition, there have been attitudinal changes. The societal disapproval that unmarried mothers faced at one time has diminished sharply".

That 40% stat is key for two reasons.  It nearly halves that 40.6% of live births to unmarried women I mentioned above.  We used to associate births to unmarried women with unwanted or unplanned children.  But if 40% of nonmarital births are to cohabiting women it indicates that these children are born into homes with two parents (albeit not necessarily a man and a women).  These homes are likely  more stable and perhaps more affluent and probably less dependent upon support from the State than single parent homes.

It's not always about race

On NPR this morning I heard a great piece about why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  Now, before you click off this seemingly Marxist rant, don't.  The piece drew a powerful argument that it's easier to become wealthy if you start with wealth.  Well, duh, methinks.  But they went further.  They gave strong evidence that the American Dream is much easier to attain if your fore-bearers had resources to give you a leg up; be that an education, a downpayment on a house, or simply a nice, stable home.  Now here's where I snorted at the story: they drew the comparison between a single black mom and a married white couple.  But the key difference wasn't race it was heritage.  How long had their respective families been in America?  It was clear the single black mother came from poverty.  And they made it clear that her fore-bearers had been poor, probably because they were descendants of slaves who were given nothing.  The white couple had inherited $60,000 from a rich aunt that they used to buy a house.

But my father came from very modest means.  His father was a teacher.  His grandfather was a coal miner.  And before that his fore-bearers were immigrants with next to nothing.  But because his mother put a premium on education, and because my father worked his butt off for 30 years, he's now independently wealthy.  But that jump to wealth didn't happen in a generation.  It happened over several generations and was catalyzed by my father's work ethic placed on top of several generations of his family slowly, incrementally improving their lot.

The NPR piece also made significant mention of the social programs that helped the single black mom go back to college to get her degree and buy a house after living on the streets.  The State had stepped in to accelerate her improving living standard.  And it worked.  Funny, but social programs do work from time to time.

NPR mis-interpreted the ENTIRE phenomenon when, in the exit promo for the next segment, they titled it "Race and the Wealth Gap".  This story, this phenomenon, this fresh interpretation of achieving the American Dream had much less to do with race than it did with heritage.  It takes generations for immigrants to slowly, incrementally improve their family's living standards.  And sure, racism makes it doubly hard for people of color in America to break through economic barriers.  But rather than celebrating the triumph of the single black mom in the story -- and there were triumphs aplenty to celebrate -- they chose to, once again, promote it as a "race" story.  It cheapened the story and dishonored the black mom in it.