Response from New York Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander:
Our reporting does not make racial or genetic generalizations, but simply cites experts who have experience with the industrial process in U.S. and Chinese factories.
I can point you to the comments of Patrick McGee, author of the new book Apple in China. On a recent podcast appearance, he said "The tasks that often are being done to make iPhones require little fingers. The fact that it's young Chinese women with little fingers like that actually matters. Apple engineers will talk about this"
Young Chinese women have small fingers, and that has made them a valuable contributor to iPhone production because they are more nimble at installing screws and other miniature parts in the small device, supply chain experts said.
China has millions of people who migrate around the country to work in factories as Apple revs up production around a new iPhone. They often work from the summer until Chinese New Year, when production slows down, so Apple’s suppliers don’t have to pay them for a full year of work. They live in dormitories connected to factories with assembly lines longer than a football field, clustered nearby component suppliers.
Elon Musk is from of Africa. He grew up in a wealthy african family.
His massive cuts will impact war refugees and some of the poorest people in Africa. People who, for no fault of their own, were born in the wrong place at the wrong time.
USAID spent $38.1 billion in fiscal year 2023. (1)
Sounds like a lot of money, right? Well, actually no. It's less than 1% of the US budget. In 2024, total federal spending was $6.8 trillion. (2).
To give you a perspective:
Since October 7th, the United States spent $17.9 billion dollars on military aid to Israel (3). Israel is a rich country with universal healthcare (4).
US millionaires and billionaires evade more than $150 billion a year in taxes, according to the head of the IRS. (5). Gabriel Zucman, a highly respected economist (6) came to a similar conclusion. In a recent paper, Zucman found the richest americans evade taxes on 25% of their income(7)
According to leaked tax returns, in 2016 and 2017, Donald Trump paid $750 in taxes. And he paid no income tax at all in 10 of the last 15 years. (8)(9).
The US is not in financial trouble because of vaccines to kids in Africa. Period.
Elon Musk claims USAID employees are thieves/scum. He keeps accusing them of fraud on his social media X. That's another lie.
In 2024, the Office of the Inspector General audited USAID at the request of Congress. The 70 page audit report found no evidence of fraud.
I know how large social media companies operate. This is all about increasing the value of Reddit users to advertisers. The goal is to have a more accurate user database to sell them.
Zuckerberg literally brags to corporations about how good their data is on users:
There are some quality exceptions (CBC, VLC, The Guardian, Linux, PBS, Wikipedia, Lemmy, ProPublica) but, by and large, "free" means they don't care about you. You are just a commodity that they sell.
Facebook, Google, X, Reddit, Instagram... Their goal is keep people hooked to their smartphone. The recipe is very simple. You give them small dopamine hits (likes, upvotes) followed by a small break with outrageous content/emotional content. Then another dopamine hit.
Keep them hooked, gather their data, and sell them ads.
The people who know that best are former top executives :