Wisconsin Report Confirms Foxconn's So-Called LCD Factory Isn't Real (theverge.com) 109
According to a report from Wisconsin's Division of Executive Budget and Finance, Foxconn has not built the enormous Gen 10.5 LCD factory in Wisconsin that it specified in its contract with the state. "It also says that the building the company claims is a smaller Gen 6 LCD factory shows no signs of manufacturing LCDs in the foreseeable future and 'may be better suited for demonstration purposes,'" reports The Verge. From the report: The report notes that Foxconn received a permit to use its so-called "Fab" for storage, which The Verge first reported this week. Furthermore, according to an industry expert consulted by the state, Foxconn has not ordered the equipment that would be needed to make LCDs. If the building were to be used as an LCD manufacturing facility, the expert notes it would be the smallest Gen 6 in the world and "would appear to be more of a showcase than a business viable for the long term." If any LCD-related manufacturing were to take place in the building, the analysis says, it would likely only be the final assembly of components produced elsewhere and imported to Wisconsin. Such a project would have a vastly smaller impact on local supply chains and employ nowhere near the 13,000 workers anticipated in Foxconn's contract with the state.
Wisconsin Secretary of the Department of Administration Joel Brennan said in an interview with The Verge today that "clearly the Gen 6 that's been discussed and built in Mount Pleasant is not similar to other Gen 6 fabs around the world." Brennan said the memo was an effort to consult industry experts to better understand the scope of Foxconn's current project and its potential impact on the state. "There was justified criticism of the [former Governor Scott] Walker administration for entering into this contract, and not really getting any outside experts for an industry that was new to Wisconsin," Brennan said. "This is about making sure that we can use the best expertise that we have inside and outside state government so that we can make the best decisions possible." The report provides the fullest articulation of the state's reason for rejecting Foxconn's subsidy payments so far. Last week, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), which oversees the deal, denied the company its first installment of the nearly $3 billion refundable tax credits because it hasn't built the "Gen 10.5 Fab" specified in its contract.
The project Foxconn has pursued instead, the new analysis says, would not have warranted the record-breaking subsidy package passed by then-Gov. Scott Walker, nor required the infrastructure state and local governments have built to support it. "Taxpayers fully performed their side of the agreement to date, while the Recipients have not," the report says. In fact, "state taxpayers have spent as much if not more than" Foxconn has on improvements to the company's supposed manufacturing campus. The Verge previously reported that state and local governments spent at least $400 million on the project, mostly on land and infrastructure the company will likely never need. Foxconn listed approximately $300 million in capital expenses at the end of 2019.
Wisconsin Secretary of the Department of Administration Joel Brennan said in an interview with The Verge today that "clearly the Gen 6 that's been discussed and built in Mount Pleasant is not similar to other Gen 6 fabs around the world." Brennan said the memo was an effort to consult industry experts to better understand the scope of Foxconn's current project and its potential impact on the state. "There was justified criticism of the [former Governor Scott] Walker administration for entering into this contract, and not really getting any outside experts for an industry that was new to Wisconsin," Brennan said. "This is about making sure that we can use the best expertise that we have inside and outside state government so that we can make the best decisions possible." The report provides the fullest articulation of the state's reason for rejecting Foxconn's subsidy payments so far. Last week, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), which oversees the deal, denied the company its first installment of the nearly $3 billion refundable tax credits because it hasn't built the "Gen 10.5 Fab" specified in its contract.
The project Foxconn has pursued instead, the new analysis says, would not have warranted the record-breaking subsidy package passed by then-Gov. Scott Walker, nor required the infrastructure state and local governments have built to support it. "Taxpayers fully performed their side of the agreement to date, while the Recipients have not," the report says. In fact, "state taxpayers have spent as much if not more than" Foxconn has on improvements to the company's supposed manufacturing campus. The Verge previously reported that state and local governments spent at least $400 million on the project, mostly on land and infrastructure the company will likely never need. Foxconn listed approximately $300 million in capital expenses at the end of 2019.
Trump is going to lose WI. The debate need to talk (Score:1)
Trump is going to lose WI. The debate need to talk about this!
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Trump made a big deal about this and US jobs but f (Score:3)
Trump made a big deal about this and US jobs but failed to hold to it and they get to keep the tax cuts.
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I'm sure that in each of all those other countries where Foxconn reneged on their big subsidized projects, there was also a teachers' union to blame.
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You would have to have some evidence that Foxconn did actually plan to carry through. The anger against the governor was because of the ill informed Pollyanna belief of his that Foxconn would save them all.
Re:Trump is going to lose WI. The debate need to t (Score:5, Insightful)
Not his fault, per se, but he did preemptively take credit for it as part of his promise to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.
Instead the very-stable-genius dealmaker-in-chief was duped again.
Re:Trump is going to lose WI. The debate need to t (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't grow the economy on a national scale the size of the US with one-by-one deals by a halfwit dealmaker. Economies of this scale happen organically. Old industries die off and new ones arise, and trying to put the old ones on life support is just a drain on the system. None of Trump's success stories were successes, they were just showboat pieces. He praised one company for saving 100 jobs through his "deal making", ignoring that the same company was still offshoring its business elsewhere with a net loss of US jobs. This piece meal approach may work for a small town mayor but it's an absurdly inefficient way to fix the US economy as a whole.
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Re:Trump is going to lose WI. The debate need to t (Score:5, Insightful)
How would it be Trump's fault that the company didn't live up to its agreement?
It won't be. Trump will only claim successes. It it goes wrong it's somebody else's fault.That's how it's done.
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As they say, "Success has many mothers, failure is an orphan".
Re:Trump is going to lose WI. The debate need to t (Score:4, Insightful)
If one of the sides doesn't live up to an agreement, without penalty, then it wasn't much of an agreement.
It probably wouldn't be so bad, except Trump has still been bragging about the Foxconn plant as recently as July.
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"I believe that the fact that I brought in - it will be soon - millions of jobs - you see where companies are moving back into our country. . . . We have companies coming back into our country. We have two car companies that just announced. We have Foxconn in Wisconsin just announced. We have many companies, I say, pouring back into the country."- Trump, remarks at a news conference on infrastructure, Aug. 15, 2017
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And nobody with a clue is surprised (Score:2, Insightful)
It did not make any sense back then and it does not make any sense now. Of course, Foxconn faked the whole thing. And all those that profited politically did not look closely.
Just the usual scamming of far too gullible voters...
Re:And nobody with a clue is surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
and when the state put an toll on I-94 to cover the upgrade cost they need to change an big exchange fee for china user paying on line with non us banks.
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FOXCONN's name says it all... bunch of foxes that conned the greedy state Retardicans. Any deal, especially one dealing with technology, that expects to take 50+years to break even is a loss from the start. Think of all the technology that's come and gone in only 5 years... much less 50 (punch cards, core memory, discrete transistor computers, etc.)
The only construction going on in the area is Amazon and Liz (U-Line).
As for the toll.. What Toll? The one in Waukegan, ILLINOIS!? Or you talking about the t
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WI is talking about adding TOLL's there.
IL the full I-294 is tolled the full way
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What would be their motive in tricking the local government into paying for infrastructure improvements they had no intention of utilizing? And the tax breaks, which they knew were contingent on production.
It would be great to get the truth - the inside stoy on foxconn's side of this - which we probably won't. Presumably business conditions changed so they didn't follow through.
Re:And nobody with a clue is surprised (Score:5, Informative)
It would be great to get the truth - the inside stoy on foxconn's side of this - which we probably won't. Presumably business conditions changed so they didn't follow through.
Foxconn has a history of promising to build big factories in places around the world and then never using them for the intended purpose. Honestly, I really don't know why they both keep doing this and why places keep falling for it. Other places that Foxconn has made false promises to are:
central Pennsylvania - they apparently did actually hire a fraction of the workers they promised to, but they don't actually make anything at this location and nobody working there is allowed to talk about what their jobs actually are
Indonesia - they got nothing
India - they got nothing
Vietnam - they also got nothing
They have actually built plants in China where things really do get made, but the working conditions are so bad that some of the workers commit suicide.
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That working conditions/suicide thing was overblown. The suicide rate at Foxconn plants was LOWER than the suicide rate of the general populace. People die by suicide all the time, and most of the time it has nothing to do with their work. You may as well conclude that music or comedy have terrible working conditions because there are some very famous people that have died by suicide, despite their wealth and fame.
Are working conditions at Foxconn plants anything that I want to experience? No. Were the cond
Re:And nobody with a clue is surprised (Score:5, Informative)
Oh really? Might want to try again [cbsnews.com].
She was late for work the first day because the site is so vast and confusing that she got lost. "The factory directory shows that there are ten zones listed from A to H, J, and L, and they are further subdivided into A1, A2, A3, L6, L7, J20, and so on. It takes almost an hour to walk from the south main gate to the north main gate, and a.m.another hour to walk from the west to the east gate. I did not know what each building was, nor did I know the meaning of the English acronyms that could be seen written everywhere, such as FIH [Foxconn International Holdings] and the JIT [just-in-time] Hub."
Yu's job was inspecting screens to ensure they weren't scratched. She woke at 6:30 a.m., attended an unpaid meeting at 7:20 a.m. and started work 20 minutes later. Lunch was at 11 a.m. and she usually skipped dinner to work until 7:40 p.m. -- a 12 hour day. Technicians from the engineering department time every task and, if workers can meet the quotas, the targets are increased. Anyone unable to meet their hourly quota is not allowed to rest. Conversation in the workshop was forbidden.
. . .
To achieve targets, Yu had to adopt a particular posture, her stool had to stay within yellow and black lines; every movement was studied, rationalized and standardized for maximum efficiency. Although Yu made no mistakes, she saw others punished by being made to stand at attention for hours or endure a public humiliation of reading statements of self-criticism.
. . .
At the end of her first month, Yu received no wages because of an administrative error that no one helped her to resolve. She had to take a bus to another factory of 130,000 people where she had to try to find someone to locate her wage card. No one would help her. The second-hand cell phone her father had given her when she had left home broke and she had no money left. With no friends, no communication and no money, she jumped from her dormitory window.
But wait, there's more:
Foxconn's response has been, fundamentally, to blame the workers. CEO Gou insists that if he were running the factory in his homeland Taiwan, he would not be held responsible for the suicides; only in China is he forced to bear this burden. Now, new hires must sign an anti-suicide pledge, promising that if they kill themselves, the company won't be blamed or pursued for compensation "so that the company's reputation would not be ruined and its operation remains stable." Only after an outcry did the company retract the document. It put up safety nets instead.
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Yes, I still stand by that. While her situation is tragic, even the story you linked to was a rash of EIGHTEEN people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"ABC News[31] and The Economist[32] both have done some simple comparison— although the number of workplace suicides at Foxconn is large in absolute terms, the suicide rate is actually lower when compared to the overall suicide rate of China[33] or the United States.[34] According to a 2011 Centre for Disease Control and Prevention report, the country h
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Would Foxconn working conditions be accepted by American workers, or would Foxconn accept the higher costs of US workers, while they deliver less effort than Chinese workers?
No and No
Re: And nobody with a clue is surprised (Score:2)
Re:And nobody with a clue is surprised (Score:5, Informative)
As someone who was used to dealing with them as a customer, I warned people they were shifty and duplicitous. I warned that they would not honor the terms of the agreement the way people would think. I said, "They have an army of lawyers that will scrutinize every detail of the deal. They will do the minimum necessary to collect the largest amount of incentives. They will then throw up their hands, blame something, and either walk away or repurpose those buildings into something not using much human labor. They hate paying Chinese assembly line worker wages. Why in the pit of Hades do you even think they'd pay even minimum wage in Wisconsin for factory workers?" This is a company that thinks people working 6 days a week, 12 hours a day, is one day short and a couple hours short, and rather than treat workers humanely, installs netting to minimize the disruption suicide causes to production on their campus.
You picked the wrong company to defend. I haven't even scratched the surface of the problems regarding this company.
No need for a motive when tricking a fool... (Score:5, Insightful)
A fool will help you trick him.
Then he will proceed in shooting himself in the foot. Then in the other. While setting himself on fire.
It was all explained years ago.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/... [theverge.com]
When Walker signed the Foxconn deal in November 2017, the details matched those jotted on the napkin: the state promised a $3 billion state subsidy if the company invested $10 billion in a plant that created 13,000 jobs.
The size of Wisconsin's subsidy quickly began to grow, as spelled out in state legislation passed about six weeks later and implemented by the Walker administration.
By December 2017, the public cost had grown to include $764 million in new tax incentives from local governments in Racine County, which is just 40 minutes south of Milwaukee where the plant was to be located.
Other additions included $164 million for road and highway connections built to service the plant, plus $140 million for a new electric transmission line to Foxconn that would be paid for by all 5 million ratepayers of the public utility We Energies.
With other small costs added, the total Foxconn subsidy hit $4.1 billion - a stunning $1,774 per household in Wisconsin.
It's all due to Walker's and the Republicans' criminal incompetence and negligence during the "planning stage".
The above mentioned napkin is barely a metaphor - it was a jotted down scribble on Walker's stationary. [gannett-cdn.com]
And boy did all that "planning" show when $3 billion in subsidies blew up into $4.1 billion in cost to the Wisconsinite taxpayers.
They didn't think nor care about the risks involved - not THEIR money after all.
So they kept putting more and more of other people's money on the line hoping for a big payoff in VOTES.
But Walker was elected in 2010 on a promise of creating 250,000 new jobs in the state in his first term as governor. Six years into his tenure, he still was far short.
Running for a third term in 2018, he badly needed a big win.
You gudda gamble big to win big, amiright?
https://www.jsonline.com/story... [jsonline.com]
The state's June 2 offer would have paid Foxconn 10 cents in cash for every $1 in qualifying wages the company paid to workers, this letter says.
The final deal offered to Foxconn would pay the company 17 cents for every $1 in wages.
Normally, the state offers to offer no more than 7 cents for every $1 in wages.
Foxconn didn't need a motive to keep bleeding the state and its people - Walker and the Republicans already had that in spades. [vox-cdn.com]
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That dickhead Scott Walker needs to practice his penmanship.
wow (Score:2)
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set up a fake factory or a real one for part of the work, ship product there for some minor work and play financial games to reduce taxes and import tariffs
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What would be their motive in tricking the local government into paying for infrastructure improvements they had no intention of utilizing? And the tax breaks, which they knew were contingent on production.
Part of it could just be they hoped the previous Wisconsin administration would stay in power long enough to keep giving them sweet deals while not fulfilling their obligations, knowing his political base is pro-business enough to eat up even the slight mention of potential new jobs. Walker likely only agreed to this farce to give him a big political win in the run up to the 2018 election. It wasn't enough though.
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They were hoping to get a warehouse and possibly a small assembly line practically for free through the various subsidies and tax breaks. Their misfortune is that the voters decided to put an actual adult in charge and now they don't get their subsidies without actually keeping their word.
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Or maybe they are just waiting for next month to see if it's worth going ahead with.
It's not just Trump's and Biden's policies at play, the Chinese government has been introducing new laws blocking the export of technology. Building a gen 10.5 plant in the US might not be legal soon.
Re:And nobody with a clue is surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember folks, this was the greatest deal ever! Anyone who pointed out that FoxConn was less than honorable, or had pulled shenanigans elsewhere, was shouted down by Republican talking heads, the above politicians, and every other Republican in the state government. Walker already lost his job, in no small part due to this fiasco. Of course he deserved it because the initial deal outline was one he scrawled out on stationary. Speaker Vos and Senate leader Fitzgerald should lose their jobs for sheer effing incompetence, signing off on it without paying attention. All of the records at the WEDC regarding the deal should be made public, including all meeting minutes.
The FoxConn-ed those three, well that or they were in on the grift.
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Of course, Foxconn faked the whole thing.
I think it is appropriate that we all review the definitions of real and virtual now.
If you can see it, and it is there . . . it's real.
If you can see it, and it is not there . . . it's virtual.
If you can't see it, and it is not there . . . it's gone.
So, which one applies to the Foxconn factory . . . ?
Seriously, that's your talking point? (Score:2)
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I don't even think the politicians like Walker who back these deals care about job creation, or perhaps more specifically, I don't think the politicians like Walker are even smart enough to understand this.
They're so sold on the ideology of "business good", "government bad". Literally anything that takes money from the government and gives it to business is good. At a minimum, it balances out taxes and bureaucratic-imposed costs. It's like a kind of tax cut. And possibly, with logic similar to trickle d
A bipartisan idiocracy (Score:3)
There is some kind of solar cell factory in Buffalo, NY that is not living up to the optimistic promises?
This is not a uniquely Republican thing. Far be it for me to say this excuses the Repubs for this outcome by claiming "the other guys do it too", but has to take a strict Libertarian no-government-picking-industrial-winners-and-losers position to have standing to call the people involved idiots.
Walker is not there (Score:2)
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Politicians effectively cannot create 250,000 jobs. They may be able to lose that many jobs, but to create them is immensely difficult. The economy is like a herd of rhinos, you can't really control them very much; the most you can do is take credit after the fact, but predicting that you will make the herd of rhinos turn left is a claim that cannot be trusted.
Politicians can create jobs by paying for those jobs directly out of the government's coffers. This may mean building infrastructure, and then you
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It did not make any sense back then and it does not make any sense now. Of course, Foxconn faked the whole thing. And all those that profited politically did not look closely.
Just the usual scamming of far too gullible voters...
Pretty much story whenever the state subsidizes private industry, and it's appear to have been that way for thousands of years. Modern politicians eagerly endorse the big promises of bountiful economic benefits for citizens, while businesses know there are almost never consequences when the promised benefits are not fully met, or not met at all. IUnfortunately, far too many politicians love the possibility of hidden personal benefits, either paid directly to them, or to third-parties they have a relationsh
Sad and Hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, "state taxpayers have spent as much if not more than" Foxconn has on improvements to the company's supposed manufacturing campus.
Oh yeah hell of a businessman that orange one.
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Sad and Hilarious
I see no reason to conflate Hilary Clinton into this matter.
She had nothing to do with this.
Don't trust the lamestream media! (Score:5, Funny)
There is totally a huge LCD factory there, it's just hidden underground, and in the lowest secret level is a prison where all of the celebrities and deep state politicians will be locked up during The Storm! There's also a secure vault where Trump's health care plan is stored.
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It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.'
In the subbasement where both the light and the stairs are out.
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There's also a secure vault where Trump's health care plan is stored.
With blackjack and hookers!
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Like Willy Wonka's factory. Nobody ever goes in and nobody ever comes out!
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and the workers have no union, no osha, etc.
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What would you call a Trump Mini-Me?
Oompa Loompa Diggily Bigly...
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There is totally a huge LCD factory there, it's just hidden underground...
No, off of I-94/41, in plain sight. [goo.gl]
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So instead of invisible dragons in their basement, they have invisible lizard people? Close enough, I guess.
Public Veto (Score:2)
At first I thought about the average citizen having the ability to securely vote over the Internet on everything that his local government deals with, but I realized that this brings about all sorts of issues.
A better stone-step might be for t
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As I understand it, the Swiss already have this sort of system in place. It should think it works well at the city/provincial level, and maybe even the national level for smaller countries like them, but it would probably be an unwieldy mess for larger or more populous nations.
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Not quite. We vote on a lot of things, far more frequently than you. but we still have a representational government.
Not how government works (Score:4, Interesting)
(spending - tax revenue) = amount borrowed
then what chance does the average voter have?
We don't vote on issues, we vote for someone we think is the best expert to REPRESENT us and make informed decisions on our behalf. Reading and drafting laws is a full time job. There are lots of solutions that sound great if you only think about them for 5 seconds but are terrible if you spend 30 minutes investigating them. Unfortunately at some point voters decided that they didn't want smart people in power and we get people like Trump and Trudeau. At least with Trudeau though he admits when he doesn't know something, delegates it to an expert and then goes back to looking pretty.
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Unfortunately at some point voters decided that they didn't want smart people in power and we get people like Trump and Trudeau.
I don't like Trump (at all) but I don't think it's fair to call him "not smart". (I don't know shit about Trudeau) He's likely very intelligent, and is most certainly smarter than you and I in at least 1 topic. My biggest issue is is that he's pompous, ignorant, and a sociopath.
At least with Trudeau though he admits when he doesn't know something, delegates it to an expert
THIS is my absolute biggest issue with Trump: He doesn't know when to shut up and let the experts talk. There are few people that aren't smart in some subject, but that's the difference between being smart and not being ignorant.
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This is why WBush looks so competent compared to Trump. WBush probably has a lesser IQ than Donald. But he understands that there are a lot of things that are beyond him. So he stays away from the details, but insists on being involved in deciding the big picture trade offs, which is the correct thing for the president to do.
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Dubya has shown decent signs of intelligence. Trump so far has no sign whatsoever of higher brain function. People say he must be smart because he's rich, ignoring that he started life rich and stayed that way (and probably could be lots richer if he was better at it). He gets out of all his bankruptcies well off, but that's because he has great accountants. All his political ideas come from people whispering in his ears. Rumors he had people take tests for him at school. I have not seen evidence that Tru
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NOOOOOOO (Score:2)
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I'm a fan of the Constitution, perhaps a nut to some, but I've yet to hear anyone with the idea that the two-house Great Compromise was put in place to protect against mob-mentality.
Interested in hearing about the idea, can you elaborate?
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not sure if SleepingEye wrote this or not but it doesn't support the the assertions '... designed for protecting against mob mentality...' and '..supposed to act as a conservative break for "mob rule" of the house...'
instead, there are some facts thrown in about elections/terms and the last 3 paragraphs are political statements not relevant to my particular inquiry
the more common understanding is that while patterned after the British (for which I can fully believe the 'prevent mob-rule' mentality is in pl
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The USA needs to address the built-in gerryma
Re: Public Veto (Score:3)
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You failed your civics class didn't you.
Almost no-one votes for President. Only 538 people vote for the President.
People vote to appoint the electors and the distribution of electors means that a resident in Wisconsin has a much higher influence over the election of the President than a resident in California.
At the Senate level, we have a number of relatively small groups of people who elect safe Republican seats while much larger groups vote for safe Democratic seats. Classic gerrymandering.
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You failed your civics class didn't you.
No, I didn't, and apparently you don't know what gerrymandering is. Gerrymander: manipulate the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to favor one party or class.
There is no manipulating of the boundaries of the states going on. Gerrymandering doesn't affect Presidential or Senate races.
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You failed civics class because you claimed that "entire state population votes for those offices.", which is not true. As I pointed out, there are only 538 people who vote for the President.
Exactly. This happened when the Republic was originally set up.
They didn't have to set the boundaries of the electoral college match the state boundaries.
They didn't have to set the boundaries of Senate constituencie
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The entire state population does vote for the President, there is no gerrymandering possible. The electoral college voters have not, at least in our lifetime, voted against the majority vote of the individual voters of their state.
Also, it is not *my strict definition*. It is *the* definition and it is the commonly understood usage for the term.
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Please explain why Trump is President when Clinton got more votes.
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Though the voters should be informed in this case. Do you want direct voting on budgets when the voters aren't good at arithmetic in fhe first place? You need experts, and in the current political environment the voters hate the nerdy experts. Section 7, clause c, paragraph 2, shall 10% of teacher pensions be placed in annuities, bonds, stocks, or Nigerian princes? Not the sort of thing you want voters directly voting on.
Also the voting populace is not stable, and it is nice to have an economy and gover
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So, no, I don't think it would take much effort once it's all running, it would be for the bigger issues, most people won't care most of the time anyway, but it allows the public to keep an eye on corruption and any blatantly
Republiicans are creating jobs (Score:3)
Quantum computing (Score:5, Funny)
Thank goodness Wisconsin didn't invest in a quantum computing plant. They would be told that any attempt to measure the state of the plant would change the outcome, thus no one can really know what the plant is or isn't doing.
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However, the quantum computing plant would face severe scrutiny and criticism over the truckloads of cats being sent to the plant with none of them ever coming back out again.
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But what would they do with all the unemployed cats?
A fool his his (well, taxpayers) money... (Score:2)
.... are soon parted. And there are no bigger fools than politicians hoping to buy votes.
Take the land away (Score:2)
If the contract doesn't specify that they have to sell the land for fair market value if they don't built the promised facility, it's garbage.
So it probably doesn't.
Regardless, the proper answer to this is to kick their asses back to China, not just to not give them more money
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Yeah, but Republicans leave being tough on business and doing sensible things to the other party
The Kevlar Kandidate gets closer to another run (Score:5, Insightful)
And now, while he doesn't get to declare bankruptcy himself (as the company isn't his) he does get credit for watching a huge boondoggle go kaput. He's just a few large business failures short of Donald Trump now, which positions him perfectly for 2024. And just like Trump, he's never had a job that he had to seek out; everything came to him through the public sector or through family connections.
Silver lining (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in Wisconsin and typically lean left politically. The infrastructure improvements that were made for Foxconn will probably help the state in other ways. This area of Wisconsin is between Milwaukee and Chicago and many Wisconsinites would like to see more economic cooperation between the two states. We have rail service between the two cities (Amtrak) and Chicago commuter rail comes into Kenosha but stops there. I would like to see it extended to Milwaukee so that Milwaukee area residents could more easily commute to jobs in Chicagoland. The major infrastructure expense for Wisconsin was probably significant improvements to the highways (I-94 and county/state highways) in the area. That will help many businesses besides Foxconn. They did take land through eminent domain if I remember correctly which could cause a lot of bad blood if they don't do anything with it.
What amazes me though is that my brother-in-law works for them as an engineering manager and he claims to be very busy. I trust him and I do not think he is lying about how busy he is. He had to live in Taiwan for three months while they were training him (it was a major hardship on his family). But I also think everything in these reports is accurate. For the life of me I cannot understand what they're doing down there.
Other people on this thread have suspected that this will cost Trump Wisconsin. I agree that Trump will probably lose in Wisconsin, but I think that's more because suburban Milwaukee (where I live) has had enough. In my subdivision, in a very Republican county (Waukesha) we have more Biden signs than Trump signs. That is a completely new phenomenon.
Manchurian Candidate (Score:1)
Profit? (Score:2)
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Foxconn.
They got a lot of political goodwill from the Trump administration, which they leveraged into their products not being as hard-hit by Trump's "trade war". Plus their CEO got to have several meetings with Trump, which presumably affected Trump policies. Or at least allowed the CEO to learn about those policies earlier than others.
Let's be careful with our language, for once? (Score:2)
Tax breaks cost the state nothing but opportunity dollars in the future.
You personally could offer me $6 billion in tax breaks to build a factory, and if I do nothing, I get nothing, it costs you nothing.
Let's distinguish that from an actual paid subsidy (which as far as I can tell, was basically nothing here) where the state pays the company. There were some of these, in that the state built infrastructure etc for the plant, but no payments for anything that wasn't otherwise useful for Wisconsonians in so
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(which as far as I can tell, was basically nothing here)
You'd be wrong about that.
First, as you mention, the local and state government built a lot of infrastructure to support the plant. Foxconn didn't have to build those roads, etc, and Foxconn property is now much more valuable thanks to them.
Second, the government used eminent domain and threats of eminent domain to take land and give it to Foxconn.
Third, this wasn't only tax breaks. Foxconn got cash for meeting certain targets in the theory that they were heading towards the factory. Foxconn quickly sta
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I'm not sure it's quite as clear as you present.
https://www.chicagotribune.com... [chicagotribune.com]
According to that article, WI gave $15 mill to Mount Pleasant which was certainly meant for infrastructire to support the plant, but infrastructure helps everyone. Arguably, it made Mt Pleasant more attractive for other business/industry as well.
Mt Pleasant and Racine cty have spent $190 million in local funds (of which $60 mill was Foxconn's money, and they DO have payments to continue there) mainly to buy land and relocate p
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but infrastructure helps everyone
Yes, a large sewer line run to the Foxconn property helps everyone in town!!
This isn't a city builder video game. Infrastructure isn't just a number that makes a city "more attractive". The roads actually lead somewhere, and if you're not at that "somewhere" the road doesn't help.
In addition, if that "somewhere" is empty or near-empty you now have a more expensive-to-maintain road system that you are not benefiting from.
Eminent domain sucks, I grant you, but it's hardly "taking land" and "giving it to Foxconn".
What do you think happened after the city took the land? They didn't hold it.
I would never assert that about $150 million is pocket change
You're i
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"Yes, a large sewer line run to the Foxconn property helps everyone in town!!"
Of course it doesn't, but it might help Mt Pleasant attract more businesses to that industrial zone generally, if the infrastructure for power, sewer, and roads is already present. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's also not completely-lost money, either. As Mt Pleasant grows it will certainly EVENTUALLY be used, saving the town a later investment/bonding bill.
"What do you think happened after the city took the land? They did
Clearly, Wisconsin should go American... (Score:2)
And sue Foxconn into oblivion.
Loose the lawyers!
What's This? (Score:2)
No duh... (Score:2)
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They literally have the word 'con' in the middle of their name. It's like the movie, "Muppet's Most Wanted", where the bad guy's last name is Badguy.
Well. to be honest both parties literally had con in their names.
Chinese Businessmen Lying?! (Score:1)
So? Only a Democrat would fall for this. (Score:1)
The Long Con (Score:2)