I think you got side-tracked by data points. The point I was making is that the Apple factories are not run by automated robots. Have you seen pics of Foxconn inside the facility? People standing in assembly lines for 12+ hours doing the most repetitive work you can't imagine.

I always get side-tracked by data-points. I love data. I eat drink and sleep it. I love to tear other people's data apart. Can't help it. Death statistics are my favorite.

I'm torn. Math is not my particular forte but statistics I love like my first puppy.

Not sure what that point on that one is either.

Ever seen that TV show called (How its made?) Tons of manufacturing in the US are still made with life giving people jobs versus robots. Standing there for long hours at a time, doing repetitive work <-- do they wanna be replaced with Robots = Nada.

Th e problem I see with China is:

1 - Repetitive work with extremely low level of rewards, this includes being paid well.

2 - Job site culture is always negative = rats eat rats. Employees are spies that turn over others to management for gains or even for just for gossip.

It's not done by robots. The work is boring and the pay sucks. But they are not throwing themselves off buildings. At least they are doing it at a far less suicide rate than the rest of China.

China has a sucide rate of 12/100,000. Foxconn has 540,000 employees (Wow!) They would normally have 54 suicides.

The stories should be explaining why foxconn has such a low suicide rate. Instead they are hung up on the 10 suicides proving that foxconn is somehow evil.

Here is a youtube where she explains the numbers and then just goes right on and contradicts herself and the data.

It boils down to death = someone is to blame. But that is a farce.

Playing you, I'd have to counter that there is not enough data to support your argument.

How many of those suicides in the average rate for China occur at a work compared to private live? How many companies in China have zero suicides, how many have more than 10?

There are no hands in the manufacturing. It is all robots. There are some dudes who sit around and make sure no one trips over a plug.

I was countering this point.
Not making any comment about suicide rates and their accuracy.
Are you like this in the lab? Must drive your coworkers to the point they wanna jump off a building....

Absolutely, not enough data. The company and one year are way too small a data set. They are committing suicide where they live, jumping off dorms. But also the age group is neglected. That age group has a much higher incidence in the US and likely also China. So the expected is likely quite a bit higher. So all in all I agree with the foxxcon CEO, the story is bogus, it is not a high suicide rate. For at least a dozen reasons.

What you were countering was my sarcastic reply about the robots. What I jumped on was the bogus nature of the entire story about suicides. It's called a thread hijack. Not much of one since I was still talking about Foxxconn.

Ahhh.. so the reply about robots being used was sarcastic.
I didn't pick up on that... nothing to see that you weren't being your usual off-the-cuff self.

It's a hijack if the original point was addressed.. otherwise it's evasion tactics.

Sorry, I thought the little Chines hands was a tip off to <sarcasm>. That the belt buckles made absolutely no sense at all might have thrown you. ;-O