Foxconn Considers $7 Billion Screen Factory In US, Which Could Create Up To 50,000 Jobs (arstechnica.com) 381
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.
Sharp TVs were about the best, weren't they? (Score:2)
I worry with all the changes over the last year that something is going to give. I'd prefer Japan keep control. Although jobs for the US is a super nice thing for us.
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Recycling again (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not a chance in hell (Score:5, Insightful)
No way flat screen manufacture is going to create 50k permanent jobs.
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Re:Not a chance in hell (Score:5, Informative)
Panasonic's newer factories in Japan are "lights out", as in they are so automated that they could run with the lights off.
It's the only way to make high end displays. Dust free, parts moved by robot, precision assembly way beyond what a human could manage.
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When those 50k jobs don't manifest themselves, and 1000 robots are building TVs, do you really think the new administration is going to let the public see the real employment numbers?
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Stop moving the goalpost. No one said "permanent", and these figures are always construction jobs and nothing to do with real permanent work afterwards.
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Most of these jobs will be construction work actually building the plant. Many of those will be workers who already have a job in construction but now have a juicy contract to look forward to, and the remainder will be labourers whose jobs will only last until the plant is finished. Throw in a handful further up and down the supply chains if you're feeling generous.
Job creation figures are the last statistics that one should be taking at face value.
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There's high turnover as the workers keep on killing themselves.
That is what the super fun netting is for!!!!
Free market unleashed (Score:5, Informative)
"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"
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So, the only two options are corporate welfare or welfare for people?
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"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 I lived in Pennsylvania and it happened to bring jobs to may area, I'd be for it. Pennsylvania has some pretty poor unemployment numbers. If it was me looking for a job and this created a job for me, I'd be all for it myself. In fact, here in Texas we do this tax abatements and subsidies all the time at the state, county and city levels of government and have successfully attracted some pretty big employers to the area with tens of thousands of jobs. Take a look at Texas' unemployment numbers of you
Re:Free market unleashed (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is, you eventually run out of other people's money to give to corporations.
I live in Texas, too. That budget surplus, though. It has its downside:
http://www.mysanantonio.com/ne... [mysanantonio.com]
Re:Free market unleashed (Score:5, Insightful)
Then wouldn't it make more sense to subsidize the consumer if you're going to subsidize anything?
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counterpoint: Land is a lot more expensive in the US than most Asian places
Don't forget that in the US you can actually buy the land, though. Sure, there is some Eminent Domain risk, but in China you can't even buy the land in the first place. All you can do is lease it from the government. As soon as someone with deeper pockets and/or better connections wants your plot, you're out of luck.
How do they get to that 50k number? (Score:2)
How many construction workers are going to get jobs building the factory?
How many jobs are going to be people on the line doing line work?
How many jobs are going to be people in control booths running the massive machines cranking out screens?
Also, unless you're going to also be building a phone factory here as well, it seems a bit short sighted to make the screens here, but the cpu's in China or Korea and the bodies who knows where? China?
Until I see a bulldoze
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Aside from the battery, the screen assembly is the biggest and heaviest, and also the most expensive component. If they're made here, why not ship all the other components to the US for assembly. Save on import duties for domestically sold phones.
Also the article says flat panel displays. That's vague but coul
Semantics (Score:5, Informative)
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What kind of jobs? (Score:4, Insightful)
Like a comedian said lately "I need a job to get decent money, not to be occupied. I can keep myself busy all by myself just fine".
Are those jobs paying enough to live off them?
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It is Foxconn. Do you really think the question needs to be asked?
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Are those jobs paying enough to live off them?
I guess it depends on your definition of "living". I wouldn't consider the $12-$15/hour typically paid for "technical assemblers" a living wage.
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It's called 'paying dues', it's how you get a better job at better pay. If you do it right, you only have to do it once. Morons get stuck there.
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Good luck kid. There is a reason nobody will let you start at the top.
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Famous line from "The Secret of my Success", THE yuppie-movie of the 80s:
Can you get promoted out of the mail room?
You can't even get paroled out of the mail room.
That of course changed.
Today, you CAN get fired out of the mail room.
Uber Parking Lot (Score:2)
They can seal the deal by offering the use of their parking lot for Uber drivers.
One shift at Foxconn. One shift at Uber. One shift sleeping in the parking lot.
Re:Uber Parking Lot (Score:5, Funny)
Not much value if systems aren't built here too (Score:2)
Let's see... New factory to build displays in the US, but all the phone and computer manufacturing is where the existing factories are in SE Asia... Not very economically smart.
Apple doesn't build computers here, so why would they source screens here, ship them to China, then bring back the finished product? Or is Foxconn also planning an assembly plant here, where the display-less iPhones are assembled here?
Assembled in (non-Asia) ? (Score:2)
Or is Foxconn also planning an assembly plant here, where the display-less iPhones are assembled here?
Aren't the iPhone (or was it other smartphones?) already "proudly assembled in the USA" (for a very liberal definition of assembled: mostly connect the battery and close the case - none of the pesky soldering of surface-mounted component, that one goes in Asia) just for the sake of giving an impression of locally manufactured good ?
with the "assembled... " indication being the second best marketing buzzword after the unobtainable "made in the USA"
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| Aren't the iPhone (or was it other smartphones?) already "proudly assembled in the USA"
No. They are "Designed in California".
When ordering online, it is not unusual to receive an iPhone shipped directly from China, with paperwork showing such. Especially when ordering a new one right at release. They're shipped on a pallet, but each individual box has already been addressed to it's final destination.
I'm supprised it took so long. (Score:2)
It's about time that the Chinese multinational's took advantage of all the low cost American labor available this side of the pond.
Important Question (Score:3)
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Even better! It will have tort reform so suicide nets are needed!
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Will it have suicide nets?
Why would it? Robots don't commit suicide.
Or it could be 49000 robots and 1000 jobs (Score:3)
That is more like it goes. Even if many companies currently are trying to suck up to Trump, they actually have no intentions to follow-through.
Automation (Score:2)
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Do you have the first clue about how screens are made? There are no artisanale OLED/LCD displays. If there were, you wouldn't want them.
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By counting every construction job, assuming final assembly will follow the screen production and assuming OLED will dominate the market. Statistical bullshit, same as always, from all sides.
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Cheaper than Shipping? Hardly. (Score:5, Informative)
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/... [flexport.com]
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.
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High value products do no use container ships.
Like cars for example? I'm pretty sure a car is worth more than an iPhone...
Hopefully not. (Score:2)
OLED screens tend to burn in.
They do however look excellent! For a while.
Feel the bern...or is that burn? I'm still a little confused from the election.
Corporate welfare (Score:2)
Free money for the shareholders aka "land and electricity subsidies".
Foxconn? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Really? (Score:2)
How much does it cost to ship items like phone screens from Japan? It's a tiny amount.
Re:Sad to see Trump... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Sad to see Trump... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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?
And the problem with Trump's alternative is that she claims there was no problem. Democrats don't seem to get the utter incoherency of their position: America has no problems and Trump can't fix the really bad problems that America has.
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So they want access to that market and those workers but don't want to pay any taxes to help pay for the infrastructure that society needs.
Taxes are for the poor.
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By "giving away as freebies" you mean "not taxing as high". Money isn't inherently the government's, a tax cut isn't "giving away" money, it is "not taking at gun point".
It is not the government's job to employ people, your recommended alternative is likely outside the bounds of their constitution. If the people taking these jobs were unemployed, they were generating zero or negative tax revenue for the state. If they work these jobs they're now contributing.
The globalization experiment has shown that th
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math is hard
Re:Sad to see Trump... (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Re:Sad to see Trump... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Two wrongs != right
That's great, so long as those who do wrong get punished accordingly, so that there is a disincentive to continue doing wrong. But what happens if someone's getting rewarded for it? Do you think that they're going to do anything but continue acting that way? And what message does it send to others?
Consider if I had two sons, Bobby and Johnny, and Bobby hit Johnny and took Johnny's lollipop. And then when Johnny went to hit Bobby back I stopped him and said, "two wrongs don't make a right", but I let Bobby
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I doubt it's all about Trump but I bet taking that call from the President of Taiwan that so many people raged at him about didn't hurt our chances.
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Are you so partisan that you would actually lament the fact that 50,000 people in Pennsylvania are going to have new jobs?
The answer to that here in PA has been "Yes" for a long time. Between the Democrats and the unions (same thing really) they'd rather see a plant close than negotiate "give backs".
Re:Sad to see Trump... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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Because women, acronyms, muslims, and the Democratic Party's slaves need jobs too.
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I don't know, Philly Cheese Steaks are awesome.
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And why would they do that? It strikes me that no sane company would go around intentionally trying to piss off the executive branch of any government they were thinking of making an investment in.
Re: Sad to see Trump... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Exactly! And, given that Foxcon is committed to nearly 100% automation and relatively low skill in their factories, these jobs will *not* pay that well. They may *appear* to pay well in Western PA, where jobs are wanting, but then China will have leverage against Trump if he tries to screw around with tariffs - China can just say, "we're leaving" and then what. Who is going to "give" - Trump, or China? China is playing Trump like the chimp that he is.
Look, China is planning to lay off MILLIONS of workers
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They better watch it - Foxconn [reuters.com] is thinking of opening a $7 Billion display screen factory in the USA, on top of $50 Billion, and you know darned well that fear of Trump putting duties on them is part of it.
Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics maker, is considering setting up a display-making plant in the United States in an investment that would exceed $7 billion, company chairman and chief executive Terry Gou said on Sunday.
The plans come after U.S. President Donald Trump pledged to put "America First" in his inauguration speech on Friday, prompting Gou to warn about the rise of protectionism and a trend for politics to underpin economic development.
You really have to admit that 30-50k new jobs is significant.
Gou said he told Son that the United States has no panel-making industry but it is the second-largest market for televisions. An investment for a display plant would exceed $7 billion and could create about 30,000-50,000 jobs, Gou told Son.
You can hate on him all you want, but if fear of Trump can bring manufacturing jobs back, the people whose livelihood depended on manufacturing jobs and who voted for him are going to be happy they did. As for the rest, you should all wish for more success stories, despite your personal opinions. It's not like any other president hasn't been an asshole. Why? "It's the economy, stupid!"
And yet we still have idiots saying "I hope he fails." Cut your nose of to spite your face all you want, the rest of the world thinks you're idiots to undermine anyone trying to reverse the trend of killing the middle and lower classes for the benefit of crony capitalists.
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The middle class is the enemy of the elites. They want serfs, not a middle class.
Re: Sad to see Trump... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Spending LESS on education would be better. The cost of education has been way over the cost of inflation for a couple of decades - cut the fat, the stupidity, the mickey mouse courses, the diploma mills, the fat, the fat, the fat - there is no reason education costs should have been so crazy - except of course, the more subsidies and grants students get, the easier it is to charge more.
As for what type of jobs to train for? One certainty is NOT in STEM - it's only a matter of time before AI learns how to
Re: Sad to see Trump... (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
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And how were Obama and Clinton (either one) any better. Bill Clinton killed off Glass-Steagall - a real gift to Wall Street. Obama was too chickenshit to beat up on insurance companies, especially since he (and every other politician) needed the donations, so let's give them huge public subsidies instead of creating a single-payer system like other modern countries have. Hillary was seen as Obama's 3rd term - so more of the same.
Jimmy Carter was right - the US is an oligarchy, same as Russia.
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If you want to see an oligarchy, just watch trump. He's not going away after 4 years. He's not going away after 8 years, either. He's going to build a small ruling class with him and his family pulling the strings, forever. This guy is really, really, really dangerous. If he does fail, as he undoubtedly will (trade wars aren't going to benefit the middle class) I'm sure he will do anything to maintain power: from an escalation of the "alternate facts" campaign we're already seeing, to rigged elections,
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Oh, and make no mistake, the "alternative facts" thing is not a joke... it's how dictators become dictators: by declaring that truth is whatever they say it is.
They get stopped only if the population is willing to loudly and persistently declare: "There are four lights!"
And that gets hard when lots of the people doing so start going missing...
What a world we now live in... when did conservatives start loving Russia and Nazis ? Seriously ? We can't punch Nazis now ? And they accuse liberals of being too poli
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Yeah, if they were run by "thinking people" they would purposefully and publicly stick their finger in the eye of the new President in his first full week in office, when he's a man that is known for excoriating people publicly and also seeking retribution.
I don't think you are operating with the same definition of "thinking people" that the rest of us probably are. This is a company that wants to do business with this country, and will probably have representatives meeting people from both the administrat
If Foxconn execs have a clue (Score:3, Insightful)
If Foxconn executives have a clue on how to run a business, they have considered total costs and risks. Six months ago, there was a big question mark: there was a 70% chance that it was about to become more difficult and expensive to operate in the US, because the "fuck corporations, tax and regulate them to death!" party was likely to take control of the legislative and regulatory machinery. That would mean they could expect costs and time frames to increase. There was a 30% chance that the more business-f
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Shipping stuff on big container ships is pretty cheap.
Afaict there are two main advantages to manufacturing in the country you sell in.
1. Speed, container ships are slow, and aircraft are expensive. Slow shipping means more capital tied up in stock and slower response to market changes.
2. Protectionism, restrictions and taxes on selling your products can be a real damper on buisness.
The Toyota case is an example of a response to protectionism. The US government presured the Japanese government into restrict
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I purchased a Toyota vehicle 13 years ago. Part of my final choice was due to the fact that the vehicle was assembled in the US, and had one of the largest percentage of American made parts when compared to other vehicles. In 2004 the Toyota Sienna mini-van was listed as the second 'most' American car you could buy.
This was after owning a Ford made mostly from Mazda parts that were made and assembled in Mexico.
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This has nothing to do with Trump
Like I've said before... It doesn't matter if Trump had anything directly to do with this or not. What matters is if the average Trump voter THINKS he did or if the pendants can convince folks Trump had an effect.
This is POLITICTS people, a big mixture of PR, spin and sometimes actual FACTS (when hey don't get in the way of the first two).... It's a wild game played by both parties to varying degrees of success.. So what's the point of trying to argue either way on this?
Re:Sad to see Trump... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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So you'd prefer that there be even fewer jobs, so that the unemployment rate can look artificially low as people go on welfare because their unemployment benefits run out and they can't get jobs? Foxconn isn't just thinking of investing $7 billion, for 30 - 50k jobs - they're also thinking of another $50 billion in US investments [reuters.com].
If that creates jobs at the same rate, that's another 210,000 - 350,000 jobs, in addition to the 30,000 -50,000 from the display manufacturing investment. That's more new jobs th
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Re:Sad to see Trump... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Sad to see Trump... (Score:5, Informative)
>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
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Hate to say it, but that sounds a whole lot like the anti-Obama Republicans.
Not saying it's right because "they did it first" or whatever - it was bullshit when they did it too. Ideas should stand or fall based on merit, and we should all be hoping for success, because if Trump succeeds at this, we all win. If he fails, we all take it right in the ass. Just like with Obama.
Time to grow up and govern.
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Trump or not, it's sure good to see at least some jobs moving in the other direction for once.
Jobs have been returning to the US for a while (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [reshorenow.org], 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.
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Re:Sad to see Trump... (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean other than Obama pulling us out of the disaster of the Bush years and steadily growing the economy. Not to mention getting health care for millions of people. Oh yeah, and getting rid of the "you were off insurance for a day, sorry, that's a pre-existing condition" BS. But other than that, what did the Romans ever do for us?
Re:Sad to see Trump... (Score:4, Informative)
Nevermind that Foxxconn first announced this plan back in 2013 - under Obama's watch right ? This new "update" announcement is just a way to score brownie points with the new administration over something they've been busy working on for years.
Re:Sure, why not. (Score:5, Informative)
"Subsidies" in these cases are usually "waive collecting taxes/fees" instead of "hand over cash".
Re:Whaaa! We don't want those jobs. (Score:5, Insightful)
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... [businessinsider.com]
[2] https://data.bls.gov/timeserie... [bls.gov]
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Welfare (Score:4, Informative)
I used to think conservatives were against welfare.
Depends on what you mean by welfare..... Free handouts for no purpose but to pay off one's supporters or buy votes? No, generally don't support that.... Free food and healthcare for abled bodied people who refuse to take responsibility? No, don't support that either and neither do most of my republican friends.
Supporting those who cannot work though no fault of their own and cannot support themselves? I'm good with that kind of welfare. Tax abatements and incentives to bring businesses and associated jobs from overseas? Depending on the business, I can see that being a good thing too and if you call THAT welfare, then I guess republicans are for that kind of welfare.