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Wisconsin State Legislature Signs Off On $3 Billion Foxconn Incentive Package (venturebeat.com)
On Thursday, legislators in the state of Wisconsin approved a nearly $3 billion incentive package for the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, Foxconn, in exchange for it investing approximately $10 billion in the state and building a factory that could employ up to 13,000 workers. The legislation is now headed to Republican Governor Scott Walker's desk, where he is expected to give it his seal of approval. VentureBeat reports: The bill passed the Wisconsin State Assembly on a 64-31 vote, after previously passing the state senate on a 20-13 vote. The move signals the start of what will likely be an important experiment in just how much generous incentive packages can do to help create new tech hubs. Governor Walker has said that the Foxconn factory â" the company's first in the United States -- will help transform Wisconsin into "Wisconn Valley." While on a trade mission this week to Japan and South Korea, Governor Walker told reporters that many of the companies he met with on the trip were already "every interested in how they could come to Wisconsin and partner for that new ecosystem." However, there are still a few details that need to be finalized before Foxconn can start breaking ground -- most notably, where the company will build the factory. The factory was set to be built in either Kenosha or Racine County, Wisconsin, before Kenosha dropped out of the running earlier this week.
What's 3 billion dollars divided by 13,000?
$230,769.23 per job.
Most economists believe that these "deals" don't create jobs. They just shift jobs into subsidized sectors, with counter balancing job losses in the businesses stuck with higher taxes.
If governments were good at "picking winners", the Soviet Union would have won the Cold War.
No, they know how to play the Game now. As in how Nixoncare became Romneycare became Obamacare.
Everything that goes wrong with this preposterous project will be the Democrat's Fault. It was Them, and their Corporate Overlords, and their corrupt dealings with the Chinese that caused the Foxconn mess, and if only people had listened to Walker and the other brave Patriotic Republicans who were opposed to this from the very beginning...
And fucking ignorant self-obsessed Republicans will lap it right up.
They always do.
Let's assume, for the moment, that the politicians' estimators are correct, and that:
- 13,000 workers employed for 1 year to build the factory
- 3,000 workers employed for 15 years working at the factory
- 22,000 additional workers spawned by the need for suppliers etc, over those 15 years
That gives 388,000 worker-years supported by doing this deal, for which was paid $2.85 billion in tax credits over the 15 years.
Doing the math, that is $7,345 in subsidies paid by the government, per job per year.
If these figures are believable, then it possibly is not a horrible deal. *But* as with everything, the biggest pitfall is not in the decimal place of how many workers exactly, but in the assumptions about whether those additional workers materialize, whether Foxconn sources its stuff from local / surrounding vendors vs. Mexico, and most of all, whether in 8-10 years the market for LCD screens changes and Foxconn picks up and leaves.
Does the LCD screen market now look like it did 8-10 years ago? Should we expect that it will 8-10 years from *now* and that the deal will still be something Foxconn wants to stick to?
I have a feeling that Republican lawmakers are not quite as sharp as the economists that Foxconn, a $135B company, has on its staff to figure out whether they're getting the better end of the deal...
You're so cute... it's like watching a little kid kick a soccer ball and trip over it and face plant.
Fools join teams. Democrats and Republicans are not governing organizations. They're sports teams trying to play a game which is mostly about sucker punching each other. If you support either team it's like a little child who isn't smart enough to think for themselves yet so you look to big people to hold your hand when crossing the street and cry for mommy to wipe your little booty for you.
Party politics and worse, people who think that one party is better than the other is destroying America. Let's make this easy... while Bernie Sanders isn't exactly terribly intelligent, he has always struck me as someone who seemed to try and make decisions based on right and wrong as he sees it vs. right or left party politics. But, when they republicans let their party destroy itself from the inside and all that was left was Donald Trump... a man who made absolutely no secret of living a life of preying on the weak and whoring and whatever else... the democrats eventually chose to put their own bottom feeder at the forefront as their candidate. They didn't think in terms of right and wrong. They chose the candidate they felt would be more successful at fighting a mud slinging campaign against Donald. We ended up with a true baby seal clubber in their corner.
Then we stuck them into the ring together and she walloped and pounded on him and he made a fool of himself and she made a jackass of herself. And she was so arrogant that she actually was so sure she'd win that while he found a small but loyal base of voters, she laughed and told the rest of the voters that they don't even need to show up to vote, how could she possibly lose?
This is what your childish antics gave us. It gave us a boxing match like Tyson vs. Sphinx (last match I watched) which lasted 91 seconds (or something like that) and then it was over. That fight was a perfect match... one guy was big and stupid and talked like an idiot.... the other guy was not quite as big but also stupid and couldn't spell his own name... the punched each other, one went down and the other ended up biting an ear off of someone in the ring because they hurt his wittle feelings.
Let's also say that while Bernie is unfortunately a politician... a disease which strikes people dumb as soon as they catch it, he seemed to at least be a little in touch with things like... "After I get this job, to be successful, I will need to work with other people to make good things happen"... so he plays nice with everyone if he can. He's like GWB but able to tie his own shoelaces.
Is this who you want as your governors, your presidents, your senators, your judges? Do you seriously want to play the two team thing and make a jackass of yourself and chose left or right as if either choice is actually intelligent?
Let a big person help you a little child.
When the government is discussing things... nearly every possible thing they discuss is wrapped in a question of "How can we best represent the people of this country". What this means is that if there's two teams debating the topic, they'll debate it based on who proposed it and what would it mean for their team's power struggle.
If you however were to vote for random people... meaning... maybe start a grass roots campaign which would offer "Democrat, Republican, Random taxpayer" and when people choose the last option, they would write a name on a piece of paper, place it in a bag and someone would shake the bag and a name would be picked... then you would have entropy.
Entropy in governmental selection is far more intelligent than party politics because it means that each decision made would require people to actually discuss it. People would be forced to hear things like "Where we live, it's like this...". It will require people to discuss the needs of their constituency as they see it. It will require them to meet and discuss with local people and business leaders the needs of the peo
Not that I don't oppose this kind of thing, but a couple of points of fact.
$230,769.23 per job.
Only if you only include direct jobs. How many jobs in other sectors will be created to support this factory? I'm not suggesting it makes the incentive worth it, only that this naive calculation is wrong.
If governments were good at "picking winners", the Soviet Union would have won the Cold War.
The US government seems to do okay. The fund that supported Tesla, among others, actually turned a decent profit.
Your statement is too broad, it's like saying "if investors were good at picking winners we wouldn't have tech bubbles". Some are clearly better than others.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Can we have universal healthcare in this country? Nope, because the Repug scream "SOCIALISM!!!!".... But $3 billions to court a company, and a foreign one on top of that, somehow that's not socialism and that's okay....
What happened to "Government Shouldn't Pick Winners and Losers"? Worse yet, it's not even an American company!
There seems to be serious hypocrisy going on within the Republican party.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.