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Foxconn Considers $7 Billion Screen Factory In US, Which Could Create Up To 50,000 Jobs (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Foxconn, the Taiwanese contract manufacturing company best known for its partnership with Apple, has said that it is mulling a $7 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing that could create between 30,000 and 50,000 jobs. According to The Wall Street Journal, Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou says the company is talking with the state of Pennsylvania among others about getting the land and electricity subsidies it would need to build a factory. "If U.S. state governments are willing to provide these terms, and we calculate and it is cheaper than shipping from China or Japan, then why wouldn't Sharp build a factory in the U.S.?" said Gou. The factory would build flat-panel screens under the Sharp name -- Foxconn bought Sharp around this time last year for $5.1 billion. Sharp President Tai Jeng-wu hinted in October of 2016 that U.S. manufacturing could be a possibility for Sharp, and he also indicated that Apple could begin using OLED display panels in future iPhones. Apple currently uses OLED in the Apple Watch and in the new MacBook Pro's Touch Bar, but otherwise it hasn't pushed to adopt the technology as some Android phone manufacturers have.
No way flat screen manufacture is going to create 50k permanent jobs.
"the company is talking with the state of Pennsylvania among others about getting the land and electricity subsidies it would need to build a factory"
You are welcome on my lawn.
*considers* and *could* are not the same as *is and *will*
I don't know that it's fair to attribute this to Trump (and I voted for him). However, even if it was, why would this make anyone sad? Are you so partisan that you would actually lament the fact that 50,000 people in Pennsylvania are going to have new jobs? Have you become so cold and heartless that you would have people suffer just to advance your own political agenda?
I'm old enough to remember a time when the Democratic Party stood up for the working class; when they were the party of compassion; when they stood up for civil liberties like free speech. Sadly, the party has long since left all that (and me) behind. And if the last election was any indication, a lot of people in formerly blue states think the party has left them behind too, states like Pennsylvania.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Because many recognize that just one number like "50k jobs" isn't the only number that matters. How much is the State giving away in freebies of taxpayer money to subsidize these jobs? How permanent are these jobs? If it's a large subsidy for temporary (like construction) jobs which will dry up long before the return-on-investment has been reached, the State would be better off just hiring these workers themselves to do something more long-lasting instead of having Foxconn skim off the top, make a killing in profit with very little cost, only to layoff these workers in a few years.
The problem with Trump and most of his campaign is that he's promising a quick, easy solution to a difficult problem: how do American workers stay competitive in a stage of increasingly easier global shipments? This is yet another example of something that feels good in the short term but can be a terrible deal in the long term.
That's fine, I already have half the parking spot listed out on AirBnB
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
In case anyone was wondering, shipping costs have NEARLY NOTHING to do with this.
The Ocean Freight industry - particularly Trans-Pacific East-Bound (ie China to US) has had long term overcapacity issues for a decade, Depending on who you're talking to, essentially for every $100 they make, the industry has been spending $105-$110 for more than a handful of years.
It got to a point that last year, you could ship a truckload of cargo from Hong Kong to Brazil port to port for $50.
https://www.flexport.com/blog/...
They're not quite that bad anymore but still, you can ship a truckload from China to Los Angeles cheaper than the cost of delivering that load from the port to a point in Metro Los Angeles.
-Styopa
"Have you become so cold and heartless that you would have people suffer just to advance your own political agenda?"
I'm sorry, but I have to laugh at that. While the "left" may be guilty of this as well, the "right" is no stranger to causing harm to advance political ideals.
The republican party has left so many people behind as well. If you're lamenting the previous state of the democratic party, but express that by supporting republican party, then you're either a total fool, or yourself a political ideologue.
"Subsidies" in these cases are usually "waive collecting taxes/fees" instead of "hand over cash".
If manufacturing jobs inherently made countries great (at all), then China and southeast Asia would be The Best. What made America great during the golden years of blue-collar workers wasn't manufacturing per-se, it was in finding productive use of a workforce which happened to be manufacturing at the time. Today, the economy is more focused on services than products[1], and we should be focusing on how to expand service jobs rather than easily outsourced and automated manufacturing jobs.
By the way, unemployment is below 5%[2], which is quite healthy. More important than jobs is that wages for all jobs are above a subsistence level so that people actually have discretionary funds at the end of the day. We don't necessarily need more jobs (although there's nothing wrong with having them), but we *do* need better wages. Adding jobs (and demand for labor) is one way of achieving that, but it's not the only way. Minimum wage is another. Capping CEO and executive total compensation as a multiple of company-average pay is another. And for what it's worth, I'm not someone who needs better wages, but I recognize that it's important nonetheless.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com...
[2] https://data.bls.gov/timeserie...
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
If you are a woman, LGBTQ, a muslim, a black or hispanic person etc., why would you support jobs in a state that helped put Trump into power?
Because you're a decent human being?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I don't know that it's fair to attribute this to Trump (and I voted for him). However, even if it was, why would this make anyone sad? Are you so partisan that you would actually lament the fact that 50,000 people in Pennsylvania are going to have new jobs? Have you become so cold and heartless that you would have people suffer just to advance your own political agenda?
I'm old enough to remember a time when the Democratic Party stood up for the working class; when they were the party of compassion; when they stood up for civil liberties like free speech. Sadly, the party has long since left all that (and me) behind. And if the last election was any indication, a lot of people in formerly blue states think the party has left them behind too, states like Pennsylvania.
Republicans have been so partisan that they blocked infrastructure improvements for 8 years and allowed their country to rot so their guy could shine by making infrastructure improvements one of his big campaign issues. You also blocked a posting to the supreme court so that you could fill it after the election. Not exactly an example of non-partisansship is it? While I don't see Democrats as being flawless by any stretch of the imagination you Trump voting Republicans aren't exactly angels of honesty virtue and selflessness either. You would do well to look in a mirror once in a while.
Trump or not, it's sure good to see at least some jobs moving in the other direction for once.
According to the Reshoring Initiative, about 41,000 jobs have been returning to the US per year for the last six years. This does not even count jobs that were planned to leave but reconsidered (like Carrier) or jobs created from foreign investment (like FoxConn).
As automation becomes more capable and wages in other countries increase, it just makes sense that jobs would start to return. Unfortunately for the rust belt the jobs which return are often not the same low skill work which was off-shored over the past few decades.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Except taking taxpayer money in subsidies and creating minimum wage assembly line jobs which will probably be replaced with automation within the decade does nothing except funnel even more money up the capitalist pyramid to the top. All that subsidy money should be spent on education for those workers so they can get better-than-minimum wage jobs. There's no benefit to the lower class if you're just keeping them enslaved as factory workers, you're just enabling the upper class.
The same company than made the news for automating away 60,000 jobs in a single plant because even though the jobs only paid between $1.60 and $2.20 an hour it was still cheaper to remove the jobs anyways.
And we are talking about THAT company and creating 50,000 at American wages in an industry that can be so automated away that it is virtually unmanned?
Get the fuck out of here with that noise.....
At best you would see them create 50,000 temporary jobs building the plant and setting up the automation as quickly as possible before letting them go and letting this virtually unmanned machine loose and probably getting the tax payers to spread their butts to give them tax cuts like Trump is proposing and did with Carrier.
But this company actually creating that many permanent jobs at even minimum wage in the US in this market? I have a better chance getting a 3-some with Jessica Alba and Hayden Panettiere.
And if Obama and Democrats in congress push a health care plan directly modeled on Mitt Romney's Massachusetts health care plan (a plan which was considered a success by most Republicans), Republicans will be against it. This is not a new phenomenon, and it is not unique to one party or one president.
Foxconn first announced that they were "considering" building a factory in Harrisburg in 2013. So far they have moved this many shovels of dirt: 0.
So now they are rehashing the announcement three days after Trump's inauguration, getting lots of good press, and venting the steam from protectionism, while still uncommitted to actually doing anything. Politically, this is brilliant.
It's all about the money, as any corporation is always about.
Thus the more accurate restatement of the headline, "Foxconn indicates it would be willing to build factory in the US in exchange for massive tax breaks and government subsidies". They know which way the wind is blowing, and how to milk it for maximum gain.
"Not STEM," for another reason:
Think piano lessons.
Many kids are forced to take piano lessons because mama and papa think it's important that their kids take piano lessons.
Mostly, two things happen:
Kids learn to hate the fucking piano lessons and damned few are ever any good at it.
Kids need exposure to many endeavors in order to determine where their natural aptitude points.
When that activity is identified, then the student should be allowed to chase that dream.
STEM education is valuable when a STEM-enabled person pursues it.
If they suck at STEM, maybe they are piano prodigies and no one, including the student, knew.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
>Democratic ain't perfect, but they will usually compromise to get the job done. I almost wish they would not.
You're about to get your wish. After 8 years of seeing one of the best democrat presidents of all time being obstructed senselessly at every turn, decried as a radical no matter how centrist and bipartisan and moderate he acted... the democrats are done playing nice, they sure as hell aren't going to play nice with the worst republican president of all time. There isn't a democrat anywhere on the hill who hasn't got the message: compromise will lose you, your seat.
In 2010 the Tea Party gained massive influence over politics, despite never being more than about 10% of the people - and never holding more than 10% of the seats on the hill they controlled the entire thing, right down to the power to twice shut down the entire government ! Because the elections that put those 41 people into government sent a clear message to every other republican that if they compromise in any way - they are doomed to lose their seats too.
Now imagine what happens when the 66%-odd of Americans who hold progressive values take the same stance. 3 Million women marched in America this weekend (and another 2 million around the world) - and not just in the big cities. There were small towns where 50% of the population was marching. You think they'll accept compromise with the guy who declared his inauguration-day a "day of patriotic devotion" like the worst kind of banana-republic? With the guy who, on his second day in office, signed a death warrant for millions of women around the world (the global gag order) and is promising to do the same to them (defunding planned parenthood) ?
Between 1968 and 1988 California consistently voted for the republican presidential candidate. They were the second reddest state in the Union after Texas. In 1992 the republican government went too far. They came up with prop-187, a proposition that essentially denied all public services to anybody who was an illegal immigrant. Just like now, the debate was ostensibly about law-and-order, budgets and the like... but it would quickly degenerate into "too many brown people" every time. And just like now - it was filled with flagrant lies: immigration was, in fact, down at the time, the economic difficulties of California at that time had nothing to do with immigration - they were caused by the end of the cold war and the resulting loss of lots of defence jobs in the state, the school overcrowding had nothing to do with immigration (in fact enrollment was lower than in the 1980s), that was caused by the republican government's massive tax and budget cuts having led to lots of schools being closed.
The centrist wing of the democratic party at the time tried a campaign that still treated immigrants as lesser - they just didn't think prop-187 was a good solution to the problem (they argued that without healthcare immigrant waiters would make people sick, without schooling their kids would become criminal delingquents etc.) but the liberal wing of the party took a different tack. They embraced diversity - and started building a broad coalition with multiple race groups. African Americans, Asian Americans and Latino-Americans were pulled in - and they did serious work to undermine the effects, including organising free citizens-ship classes and helping latino-Americans to become citizens, then register to vote - more than 10-thousand immigrants became citizens with their help in the first year.
By the time of the next election - democrats (And specifically the liberal wing of the party) won the state in a landslide, they've controlled the state houses ever since and the only time they haven't held the governorship was that time with Arnie, and even he had to see all his budgets rejected until he rewrote them into something the liberals could, if not like, at least tolerate. The interesting thing is that, as the democrats ruled California the state went from the worst economic state in it's history post-cold-war to one of the
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *