- Apple pledges to spend $350 billion and bring 20,000 jobs to the U.S. within next five years (WaPo) "As part of this investment, it will also build a new U.S. campus — focused on technical support for customers — in a location to be announced later this year, the company said. Apple will make payments of around $38 billion in tax money from its profits that it currently holds overseas... Apple will also spend $10 billion on building data centers, $20 billion in additional infrastructure investment and is increasing the size of a previously announced manufacturing fund to support its suppliers. Further investment will go into education initiatives."
- Trump Calls Apple’s Overseas Cash Return ‘Huge Win’ for U.S. (Bloomberg) “I promised that my policies would allow companies like Apple to bring massive amounts of money back to the United States,” Trump said in the tweet. Great to see Apple follow through as a result of TAX CUTS.”
- Apple pledges $350 billion investment in U.S. economy over next five years (TechCrunch) "While there is clearly a large public relations element to this announcement, the amount of money and investment involved from a private company here is just staggering, and should help create new jobs, stimulate local economies and help educate students for the next generation of jobs. Hard not to like that."
- Apple Employees Reportedly Getting a $2,500 Stock Bonus This Year (Fortune) "It’s unclear how many Apple employees will receive the bonus, but the report said it would be given to 'most employees worldwide.' Apple has over 120,000 global workers, with 84,000 based in the U.S."
BUSINESS/INVESTING:
- The millionaire class is booming (WaPo) "By 2016, slightly more than 9 million U.S. households had a net worth of $1 million or more... The problem is not that some Americans are better off than others. ...for many years, life got better for many people at the bottom as well as people at the top. Now, the top seems to be pulling away from the bottom, as evidenced by the expanding millionaire class."
HEALTH:
- Here's Why the Flu Is Especially Bad This Year (Time) "...the CDC announced a first in its 13 years of flu monitoring: As of Jan. 6, every part of the continental U.S. showed 'widespread' flu activity."
NEWS:
- Unexpected defeat in rural Wisconsin special election sets off alarm bells for Republicans (WaPo) "President Trump became the first Republican to carry Wisconsin in a presidential election since Ronald Reagan by running up his score in places like the rural 10th state Senate district... Trump won there by 17 points in 2016. A special election was triggered when Gov. Scott Walker tapped a popular state senator, who had held the seat since 2000, to become his agriculture secretary. Last night, Democratic candidate Patty Schachtner won by nine points."
- It’s becoming economically desirable to live in a trailer park (Quartz) "According to the Manufactured Housing Institute (pdf), the average cost of a manufactured home (not including land) is $70,600. This represents two years of median income in the U.S. Compare this to $286,814 for a single family home (without land), which represents around eight years of median income. There’s a similar gap for rental housing. With changing demographics comes demand for a different kind of lifestyle and what would have once been undesirable now comes with modern, energy-efficient homes, lawns, playgrounds and swimming pools. Many are located near the sea or lakes."
- Why Are Social Conservatives Silent on Trump's Porn-Star Affair? (National Review) "As I’ve written before, the comparison to the Clinton years isn’t trivial, because in the 1990s the need to protect and defend Clinton set back the anti–sexual harassment movement on the left by nearly two decades. Only now are liberals coming to grips with the mess they made for themselves. I see conservatives creating a similar mess for themselves by abandoning notions of decency and character."
TRUMPTEL:
- Trump pushes back on chief of staff claims that border wall pledges ‘uninformed’ (WaPo) "White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly told Democratic lawmakers Wednesday that some of the hard-line immigration policies President Trump advocated during the campaign were 'uninformed,' that the United States will never construct a wall along its entire southern border and that Mexico will never pay for it, according to people familiar with the meeting. The comments were out of sync with remarks by Trump, who in recent days has reiterated his desire to build a border wall that would be funded by Mexico 'indirectly through NAFTA.'" and after the headline broke, Trump tweets: "The Wall is the Wall, it has never changed or evolved from the first day I conceived of it. Parts will be, of necessity, see through and it was never intended to be built in areas where there is natural protection such as mountains, wastelands or tough rivers or water."
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- No One Wants Your Used Clothes Anymore (Bloomberg) "Fashion trends are accelerating, new clothes are becoming as cheap as used ones, and poor countries are turning their backs on the secondhand trade. Without significant changes in the way that clothes are made and marketed, this could add up to an environmental disaster in the making. Between 2000 and 2015, global clothing production doubled, while the average number of times that a garment was worn before disposal declined by 36 percent. In China, it declined by 70 percent. The rise of 'fast fashion' is thus creating a bleak scenario: The tide of secondhand clothes keeps growing even as the markets to reuse them are disappearing. From an environmental standpoint, that's a big problem."
TECHNOLOGY:
- It’s Time for Apple to Build a Less Addictive iPhone (NYT) "Like air pollution or intrusive online advertising, tech addiction is a collective-action problem caused by misaligned incentives. Companies that make money from your attention — that is, ad-supported apps like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube — now employ armies of people who work with supercomputers to hook you ever more deeply into their services. Sure, we should call on them to act more ethically — and Facebook, for its part, has said it’s willing to lose money to improve its users’ well-being — but I’m skeptical they’ll be able to suppress their economic interests."
TODAY'S SONG:
- Get Out (Freightened Rabbit)
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