Should you feel guilty about your iPhone or iPad? Yes? No? Depends…maybe…well…I’m not sure…

APPLE Through a mastery of global manufacturing, in the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.

NY TIMES Last week, NYT gave us an inside look at Foxconn, their Chinese manufacturing company; Also looked at what it's like to work at several China-based factories that crank out Apple's iPads, iPhones and iPods by the millions.

Wanna make an iPhone? According to employees inside those plants, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices labor in harsh conditions. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

Foxconn… Foxconn is a 24-hour operation Employees work six days a week, sometimes in 12-hour shifts. They're on their feet for so long that their legs begin to swell. There are underage workers. They live in crowded dorms on the factory's campus. In recent years, there have been reports of workers leaping from buildings in apparent suicides Suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records All this according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

What our Government says…kinda… Nicholas Ashford, former chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, a group that advises the United States Labor Department. “…[W]hat’s morally repugnant in one country is accepted business practices in another, and companies take advantage of that.”

In a poll from the Times (that ran with its Foxconn story last week), most consumers thought companies such as Apple should make products in the U.S. but still absorb the added manufacturing costs. What do YOU think?

No Faith in the Consumer? In the opinion of the Author: In the end, consumers would be the ones who have to pay to make working conditions better for the people who make your iPhone. And it seems unlikely there are enough of you out there willing to do that.

What does Apple say? Former Apple executives say there is an unresolved tension within the company: Executives want to improve conditions within factories, but that dedication falters when it conflicts with crucial supplier relationships or the fast delivery of new products. Recently, Apple reported one of the most lucrative quarters of any corporation in history, $13.06 billion in profits on $46.3 billion in sales Its sales would have been even higher, executives said, if overseas factories had been able to produce more.