Last February President Obama had dinner with Silicon Valley top execs, including Steve Jobs. When the President asked Jobs what it would take to manufacture the iphone here in America, Jobs pointedly answered - "Those jobs aren’t coming back".

Almost all of the 79 million iphones, 30 million ipads and 59 million other Apple products sold by the company were manufactured overseas.

Apple has become one of the most admired and imitated companies on earth. Last year it earned $400,000 per employee. That’s $400,000. More than Goldman Sachs, Exxon or Google.

What is vexing is that Apple is not nearly avid in creating jobs in America as were other great companies in their heydays. Apple employs 43,000 in the U.S., no where near the half million employed by General Motores in the 1950s or the hundreds of thousands employed by General Electric in the ‘80s.

Overseas Apple manufacturers through contractors which employ 700,000 to manufacture iphones and ipads. Almost none of this work is done here.

If this is the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried.

Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iphone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

"The speed and flexibility is breathtaking," the executive said. "There’s no American plant that can match that."

Apparently Steve Jobs had decided at the last minute he wanted a glass screen on the iphone. The reinforced glass panes, manufactured by Corning, needed to be cut and fitted properly. A Chinese company bid for the business, underwritten by the Chinese Government. Dormitories filled with semi-skilled labor working 12 hour shifts ensured timely delivery of the iphones to Apple stores on the due dates.   P.S. - the glass is now also made primarily overseas.

A dorm room. Eight workers sleep in four bunk beds in a room about the size of a two-car garage

"The entire supply chain is in China now," proudly says a former high-ranking Apple executive. "You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours."

Meanwhile, Apple like all other multinationals stashes its profits overseas through transfer pricing in order to minimize U.S. taxes.   The U.S. does not tax profit earned and kept overseas until the money is transferred into the U.S., though the sad and obvious consequence of such a rule is that corporations are reluctant to ever repatriate income.

Meanwhile the company executives enjoy life in California. The company enjoys access to the U.S. market. The company enjoys our legal system and strong property rights. The company is protected by the U. S. Military. The company has access to the President, can make unlimited donations to influence elections, has a hoard of Congressman defending its interests, worries only about making more than it already makes and doesn’t seem to mind that Chinese workers live in dormitories.  The Chinese government keeps its currency low vis–a-vis the U. S. Dollar enabling Apple to obtain finished iphones and ipads at low cost and sell them here for massive profits. Iphones imported into the U.S. contribute to our massive balance of payments deficit with China.

It is hard to estimate how much more it would cost to build iPhones in the United States. However, various academics and manufacturing analysts estimate that because labor is such a small part of technology manufacturing, paying American wages would add up to $65 to each iPhone’s expense. Since Apple’s profits are often hundreds of dollars per phone, building domestically, in theory, would still give the company a healthy reward.

But such calculations are, in many respects, meaningless because building the iPhone in the United States would demand much more than hiring Americans.  It would require a revamping of the national economy.   Apple executives believe there simply aren’t enough American workers with the skills the company needs or factories with sufficient speed and flexibility

So ......how "American" is a company like Apple? It seems to me to be American in name only - it takes the benefits of being incorporated here but doesn’t feel any particular obligation toward American society as a whole.

After all, if the Chinese manufacturing world is so alluring why not move corporate headquarters there, incorporate in China and work closer to your manufacturing facilities?

Funny but I don’t see Apple moving its CEO to Shenzhen.  Nope.   Been there.

There is something good about being incorporated here rather than there.   An example occured in the 1990s when the Hong Kong & Shangahi Banking Corporation moved it's corporate head office to London from Hong Kong when China assumed control of Hong Kong.  "The Bank" as it is known locally still has major operations in China but its executives no longer wanted to sit there nor be subject to Chinese law.  Now why is that?

Now if there are real benefits to being incorporated in America, how about Apple and companies like it start paying for it - either in jobs in America - or if not, then in other ways.

How about we tax Apple on its global profits including those profits stashed abroad which were earned here selling their products?

How about a tariff equivalent to say $25 an iphone to discourage other companies from doing the same? Want access to our markets? Like our legal system? Like our military? Like our marketing and media clout? Like our law concerning property rights? Like living in Cupertino?

How about paying for the privilege?  Think of it as a cost of doing business.

An Apple executive can always go home and tell the little woman "Hi honey! We’ve been transferred to Shenzhen!"