Micron CEO: No need to invest in U.S.

[IDemo]

After recently announcing overseas expansions, CEO says Micron will be ‘just fine' without more hiring at home

By Ken Dey - Idaho Statesman
Edition Date: 04/21/07

If Steve Appleton's cryptic quote in the latest edition of BusinessWeek magazine is right, Idaho shouldn't count on any more jobs or investment from Micron Technology.

"I don't have to hire one more person in the U.S. I don't have to invest one more dollar here — and we'll be just fine," Appleton, chairman, president and CEO of the Boise-based semiconductor company, says in the April 23 edition of the magazine.

The article says U.S. companies are investing more in capital projects overseas and less in the U.S. to reduce costs and be closer to emerging markets.

Micron exemplifies the trend. It is the largest private employer in the Treasure Valley and in Idaho, with an estimated work force of 11,000. But most of its expansion has occurred outside of Idaho — and, recently, outside of the U.S.

In March, the company opened its first plant in China. In November, it announced plans for a $3 billion plant in Singapore to build flash memory in a joint venture with Intel.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/235/story/80587.html

[madrchsod]

1. eat the rich

[shadowknows69]

9. With some fava beans and a nice Chianti

n/t

[SammyWinstonJack]

10. Damn right!

:grr:

[pscot]

2. Why does Steve Appleton hate America?

n/t

[WinkyDink]

3. Because he's a greedy b*****d? Just a guess.

[rhett o rick]

21. Nothing personal....it's just business. By the way it is not effective

to put your "n/t" in the text.

[SammyWinstonJack]

23. "It's not personal, it's business". Tell that to the ones losing their jobs too outsourcing.

I'll wager that they find it too be very personal.

[rhett o rick]

26. I was being sarcastic. nm

[tech3149]

4. I guess we'll be just fine

without investing another dollar in Micron.

[alfredo]

5. Ungrateful baggage.

[msongs]

6. Micron will soon fire those Idaho workers....bet money on it nt

[acmavm]

7. Time to start treating these corporations as 'foreign' and stripping them

of all their rights and privleges that they are entitled to if they were honest American companies. No corporate 'personhood' either.

Strip them of their rights, privileges, and protections because they do not qualify for them anymore. Just because the CEO and the Board live here making Americans pay their taxes for them does not make them American companies. They have to benefit the United States and the American people to really fit that definition.

[OhioChick]

12. You Got It. n/t

[rhett o rick]

31. This is the most important and challanging issue facing us. If we fail

democracy in the United States is dead.

[sutz12]

8. Patriotism at it's finest...

:sarcasm:

[Initech]

28. You got that right!

[IDemo]

11. Boise has become like a mill town, only with silicon instead of logs

Any employment activity at Micron, whether positive or negative, has a big 'secondary impact' on the local economy. While they certainly aren't going to shutter the place anytime soon, layoffs or a slowdown in hiring would be devastating for homebuilders and others who have grown accustomed to the skyrocketing growth here.

Micron isn't the only game in town, but make no mistake, they're the economic anchor of Boise.

[Keefer]

13. I used to work for Micron

After I got out of the USAF in 1992, I went to work in Boise for Micron and made computer chips. Excellent benefits, 401(k), bonuses five times a year. It looks like things sure have changed.

[Strelnikov_]

14. But Tommy Friedman sez because the world is flat and . . .

we are creating a market over there to sell to and people will have Lexi under their olive trees and heck the Micron oligarchs have to do it because of the immutable laws of Smith and Ricardo which are even more indisputable than the law of gravity.

Now, I know that Tommy has to be right cause he is a NY Times columnist and all and I see him on TeeVee all the time getting his ass kissed by the big name talking heads so he must have something really sweet he is pulling out of his ass but . . .

if the world is indeed flat, why is job creation only flowing one way?


Could Tommy Friedman be wrong? Could Tommy be setting up an economic system that is a train wreck waiting to happen? A system that magnifies one of the primary reasons for the great depression (overproduction due to workers not being able to buy the products they produce). An economic system, because it is based on trade between what are essentially rival nations, could collapse catastrophically essentially overnight.

But, then again, the nations of Europe in the early 20th Century had similar economic integration, and they never went to war. Oh, wait . . .


Nineteen-ten was peaceful and prosperous, with the second round of the Moroccan crises and Balkan wars still to come. A new book, "The Great Illusion" by Norman Angell was just published, which proved that war was impossible. By impressive examples and incontrovertible argument Angell showed that that in the present financial and economic interdependence of nations, the victor would suffer equally with the vanquished; therefore war had become unprofitable; therefore no nation would be so foolish to start one. Already translated into eleven languages, "The Great Illusion" had become a cult. At the universities, in Manchester, Glasgow, and other industrial cities, more than forty study groups of true believers had formed, dedicated to propagating it's dogma.

From "The Guns Of August" by Barbara Tuchman


OK, I think I know what is wrong with my head now. I have been reading all the wrong stuff, Tuchman and Diamond and Tainter and McKibben, when I should have just been reading Tommy. My Friedman has become diluted by knowledge.

[IDemo]

15. Appleton is investing plenty in the US

to add to his airplane collection -- http://www.appletonairsports.com/planes.html

[Kip Humphrey]

16. I don't have to buy one more Mcron product. I don't hav to invest one dollar in Micron either.

[RB TexLa]

17. I haven't invested in North America since 9-11-2001

[supernova]

18. My Micron desktop

When I finally could afford a new computer after I got divorced 10 years ago, I bought a Micron over the net. I customized it just like I wanted it. Top of the line tech for 1997. And amazinging, I've never had a problem with it. It always fires up, and I've always been able to keep it running. I don't know what Micron tech support is like because I've never had to call them.

Just in Feb, I replaced my 10 yo desktop w/ a new MacBook. I was thinking of keeping the Micron to use as a backup server and firewall, even if it is huge, clunky, and heavy as all get out. But I think I'll let it go now.

[IDemo]

19. Micron Technology spun off the pc's a while back

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2001mar/chi20010323004982.htm

[Little Wing]

20. They were the best PCs around that timeframe

Really in a class of their own in design and build quality.

[supernova]

33. I'm been amazed

at the staying power of this one.

Sure, it's out of date now. And the keyboard looks like it does underneath my fridge. But the thing still WORKS, very well. I could blow away the origianl OS and install XP with no problem. Plus my Monsoon speakers will soon be working on my new MacBook as soon as I can figure out how.

[The Backlash Cometh]

22. Someone oughta boot his ass out of the country.

[brentspeak]

24. Looks like the tax cuts for the investing class really worked.

For themselves, that is.

[jmowreader]

25. Sadly enough, he's absolutely right

Thanks to our wonderful Job Exporting pResident, most of the things Micron's memory ends up in are made on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. It makes very little, if any, sense from a purely economic point of view to make RAM in Idaho, box it up, ship it to China, build it into an end product and ship the end product back to the United States. (It makes a lot of sense from a jobs-in-America standpoint, but if the manufacturers gave a good goddamn about jobs in America, they wouldn't have outsourced 100 percent of their manufacturing to fucking China.)

There is a definite market for expansion RAM, though; last I checked, Microsoft has not gone out of business, nor have they quit making operating systems that abide by the First Law of Memory Expansion: put in twice as much as Microsoft says you need, because no one in the world would have bought Windows Vista if they'd known it really needed two gigs of RAM. They can leave that part of the business in Boise and do well.

[depakid]

34. This one goes back to Clinton & the DLC

They're the ones who promoted GATT, pushed for "fast track," and China's entry into the WTO. They share equal blame with the Republicans on this one.

Thanks, Bill.

[ArmchairMeme]

27. Agree with acma

When corporations leave the U.S. "Strip them of their rights, privileges, and protections because they do not qualify for them anymore. Just because the CEO and the Board live here making Americans pay their taxes for them does not make them American companies. They have to benefit the United States and the American people to really fit that definition."

I think especially the corporate personhood should be revoked as foreign companies should not get special treatment. It is the people of the U.S. who have earned special treatment and we the people should be getting it.

[Initech]

29. Boy this makes me really glad I didn't go with one of the big box companies

So when I needed a new PC, I didn't go with any of them. Instead, I built my own for $1250 ($1470 with monitor), and got better components than any of them would have offered me, AND, I saved about $2,000 in the process.

[rhett o rick]

30. To survive the middle class will have to reinvent itself. Once the middle

class was needed to provide labor for the corporations now they can go to communist China and abandon the middle class. The most important issue to determine our next President, which one will help the middle class survive. There will be a lot of corporate pressure against such actions.

[blues90]

32. Appleton and all others like him .

Should be shipped out of america in a small boat and let them make it to china or where ever else they gain to profit , let them take their damn chances and burn their US citizenship paper work .

If they want to downsize america due to their own greed then they are no longer part of this country since they do not offer to support it .

[redacted]

35. So this economic secession from the Union has become a corporate trend?

Halliburton moves to Dubai and now others follow their lead to varying degrees? Why buy Micron's products if this is their approach? Seems like the opposite of Toyota and Honda who have booming plants right here in the U.S.