Maybe I’m just astoundingly naive, but I watched the State of the Union and listened to Obama talk about bringing jobs back to our shores. Revitalizing troubled cities like Cleveland, Pittsburgh. 

I also read today about Apple’s 46 billion dollar record sales. It’s tremendous that they’ve achieved that much success, and indeed people everywhere online seem to be trumpeting this victory.

But I can’t help but think about how its iPads, iPhones, MacBooks, et all are all made overseas, in places with apparently harrowing and less-than-ideal conditions. 

As an industry leader, could Apple turn around and say “Cleveland is the new city of the iPhone”? Make its iPads in Pittsburgh? Cleveland could put up a big brightly-colored sign off the freeway that says “This is an Apple Town” with a counting ticker of how many iPhones have been made so far within its city limits.  

Maybe it’s too expensive. But what is too expensive? Maybe Apple records—worst case scenario—half of what it recorded this year. But that’s still 23 billion dollars. Right? 

I don’t know, maybe I’m way off.