Wisconsin and Foxconn…
Via the New York Times Wisconsin and Foxconn:
Foxconn’s plan for a $10 billion factory in Wisconsin is certainly good news for President Trump and Republican politicians Gov. Scott Walker and Speaker Paul D. Ryan, whose district the plant would call home.
But the deal with Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics supplier, comes with a heavy price tag for Wisconsin taxpayers: $3 billion in state tax credits that dwarf the typical incentive package companies receive from local governments.
Even as Mr. Walker celebrated the news with Foxconn executives at a rally at the Milwaukee Art Museum on Thursday, experts on the political left and right alike said the rewards were not justified by the cost of the tax breaks.
Over all, the subsidies for the Foxconn plant, which would produce flat-panel display screens for televisions and other consumer electronics, equal $15,000 to $19,000 per job annually.
Guaranteed income for each lower income resident which Repubs would rail against. Instead, the state gives it to high income individuals and a foreign company.
I do not think there is any easy solution to the ongoing race to the bottom among the states. Wisconsin has destroyed organized labor and starved its infrastructure, education systems and longstanding commitment to the environment all in an attempt to make the state more “business friendly” and it still comes down to offering more tax and other subsidies to large employers like Foxconn. And that is just the tip of the iceberg because every other manufacturer and large service provider in the state insists on similar breaks or subsidies on threat of moving their operations to a more business friendly state or country. Meanwhile Wisconsin becomes more and more like Mississippi except colder. It might be more business friendly but less and less a good place to live. That is especially true of the best and brightest young people like my daughters who fled the state at the first opportunity–one with an MBA and the other with a degree as a physician’s assistant. I have left too and now send my state tax dollars to a different state. That was not because of Walker and the GOP, but they made leaving the state where I lived the first 63 years of my life easier. I fear that the state will never recover from its renewed flirtation with the fascist right. As things get worse and worse for the average person, they get sucked into the lies of the GOP that it is all the liberals fault. With the ongoing assault on public education and the state university system there are fewer and fewer people to see through lies or understand that Foxconn coming to the state is not great triumph for the GOP. The rubber will only hit the road when businesses leave because there are not enough workers with the skills to fill the jobs.
On a further note, I just read an article that Foxconn has broken promises tobuild plants in a variety of locations most recently Pennsylvania. Would not be the first time Walker and Ryan have been conned.
http://www.middleclasspoliticaleconomist.com/2017/07/foxconn-aims-to-break-bank.html