> It's a redistribution of wealth from everyone to a select few (in this case, people who need iPhone cables) Surely you're joking and I'm bad at picking up on

> It's a redistribution of wealth from everyone to a select few (in this case, people who need iPhone cables) Surely you're joking and I'm bad at picking up on satire. First, this particular scenario is exactly the other way around! By not doing this, every single consumer pays a lot more than they otherwise would so that this one guy's obsolete middle-man business model is protected. Why the hell should we all be chipping in to insulate his comfy middle class lifestyle from global markets? Especially when his business model already depends on offshoring manufacturing jobs anyways... protecting this guy's job is an extremely weird place to draw the line in the sand! Second, this case is particularly egregious. I literally don't know a single tax payer who doesn't need iPhone or USB-C cables. And a lot of non-tax payers even have a smartphone. A smartphone is the single greatest expense for many extremely poor people, who use their second hand phones to apply for jobs, keep in contact with family, google homework questions, as a calculator, find services, etc. > The least fortunate will not always be the greatest beneficiaries of the subsidy. Anecdata time. There's an on-and-off homeless guy in our neighborhood who has a phone he uses to find places to eat/sleep, apply for jobs (getting to a physical location across the city is expensive -- better to apply online), find bus routes to job interviews, and make small change doing surveys/selling good stuff he finds on the curb during university move-out/finding random yard work on Craigslist/etc. And also, of course, for free entertainment. He doesn't even have a data plan -- he bums wifi off the local coffee shop. A smartphone is a computer that he can conceal and keep close to his chest when sleeping in the park or a shelter. Thousands of homeless folk definitely benefit from cheap iPhone/USB cables, from cheap smartphones, etc.