Slashdot Mirror
Foxconn is Confusing the Hell Out of Wisconsin (theverge.com)
Josh Dzieza, writing for The Verge: The secrecy and vagueness are frustrating to critics. How do you prove that Foxconn won't build an enormous LCD factory during an industry glut or create a research campus larger than MIT in rural Wisconsin other than by pointing out that experts -- and even, occasionally, Foxconn executives -- say it makes no sense? State House Minority Leader Gordon Hintz recently appointed himself to the board of WEDC, and Foxconn's continued promises of 13,000 jobs make him palpably furious. Speaking in slow, measured tones in his Madison office as he packed for a trip, he said the state needs to "right-size" the project to something realistic, likely a few hundred research jobs, and that Foxconn needs to be honest about its plans. "For something that had a 25-year payback, building a factory because the president wants you to for reasons that have nothing to do with market viability is insane." Hintz believes Foxconn is trying to slow-walk the project until 2020, continuing to use it to win Trump's goodwill in the trade war and waiting to see who's elected. Foxconn has responded. Nilay Patel, writing for The Verge: Today, Foxconn responded to that piece by... announcing another innovation center in Wisconsin, this one in Madison, the state's capital. The building, which currently houses a bank, actually sits directly across the street from the Capitol building, and it will continue to house the bank because Foxconn did not announce when it would be moving in. Here are some other things Foxconn did not announce: how much it had paid for the building, how many floors of the building it would occupy, how many people would work there, or what those people would be doing. It did announce that it would be rebranding the building "Foxconn Place Madison," however.
Throw em off the building.
This is just one of the effects. Of course, Foxconn has no intentions doing an economically demented move. But tricking the, ahem, "stable genius" in the white house, why not? It is the job of politics to keep companies like Foxconn under control and if politics proves incapable, everybody suffers.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
But before leaving office, [Scott Walker (R)] undermined [Tony Evers (D)]’ power over the project by signing a bill that moved the Foxconn liaison out of the governor’s administration and into the state’s economic development corporation, WEDC, and prevented Evers from appointing a new WEDC CEO until September. So far, Evers has taken a cautious approach.
This mess has been brought to you by the Republican party.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Wisconsin should "thank" former Republican Scott Walker and current politician Donald Trump for the Foxconn mess.
They put the "con" in Wisconsin.
Lets take that point by point, shall we...
They told them to get fucked in the last election.
Its actually been a lot longer that the democratic party has been shitting where they eat. Its a proud tradition that goes back at least 30-40 years. The republicans shit on the same people, but at least have the good graces not to pretend (well prior to Trump anyway) that they are the saviors of the middle class.
The future is women and minorities, aka the Obama coalition.
These are in fact growing demographics, and ones that are becoming more politically savvy and cohesive as a group. Both parties would be stupid to ignore this trend.
If anyone cared about the American working class, Democrats wouldn't be importing millions of illegal aliens.
Illegal aliens are good for all classes of Americans. They are not getting the manufacturing jobs, and the walmart jobs. In fact, they are getting the way-less-than-minimum wage jobs picking food, and doing dangerous/disgusting jobs that allow most Americans to pay a small percentage of their paycheck on food instead of the $1000 per month it would cost if the agricultural labor were paid minimum wage, and the subsidies went away. Another perfect example is in the housing industry. Without illegal labor, the cost of building an average house is on the order of 200k-300k, more in the expensive locales. illegal labor helps to bring the total cost to build down into the 150k range which makes it affordable for vastly more people (remember, the price of housing drives the cost of rent as well).
Massive unskilled labor greatly harm's the working class and keeps labor costs down for the ruling class
In the long term, the cost of labor is passed directly to consumers. The people who benefit most from cheap labor are everyone except the cheap laborers, and those that want to compete directly for specific jobs, but the jobs that illegals typically take are the ones that are completely unskilled, or dangerous as hell. for example, roofer have a short life expectancy, and most of the hard/unskilled work (lifting bundles, tearing off old roofs, etc...) is done by illegals who are paid next to nothing. These people fall off roofs and are disabled or killed with shocking regularity. The cost of a replacement roof for a typical house can be anywhere from 10k to 30k. If you had to use strictly legit labor, that cost would be closer to 50k. All of the legit roofers in our area went out of business 30 years ago, and all that is left are the illegals, so there are no more jobs to lose. Bringing in a million more illegals wont make them able to do any more jobs than they already do.
The Democrats and the working class are now entirely estranged and I don't see this changing.
Very true. Both parties have long since written off the minimum wage working class because they don't vote. Prior to Trump and Sanders, these people had no one to vote for. Given the choice, they would vote for Sanders, but they were not given that option. They voted for Trump instead. They did not vote for him because they believe he will do anything for them. They voted for Trump because they believe he will fuck up the "elites" which includes both political parties. He has delivered exactly what they expected him to, and that is why his approval will never go below 30%. That is the 30% who are so fed up they just want to see it all burn.
At the end of the day, the working class is just plain screwed. Automation, not illegals, is making them unemployable, and there is simply no way to reverse that trend. No politician is ever going to try, so we will have massive unemployment while at the same time having millions of unfilled jobs; a truck driver is simply never going to write safety critical Flight control software (except maybe at Boeing). The only reason we don't see that discrepancy right now is because the unemployment in this country has been absorbed by millions of Americans being forced into early retirement without sufficient retirement funds. If those people showed as unemployed as they actually are, our unemployment rate would be sky high.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
I laughed at both comments :)
A recent local news article said that Foxconn was starting to lease its land (did it grab it from farmers through imminent domain?) to local farmers.
I guess some of the build-out plans have changed...