Alright, here's my take on that article.
At the end of the article it's mentioned that they don't get all the incentives unless they expand up to 13,000 employees, so we'll assume that number. That's a little more than 200k per job, about five years at the average salary.
I see literally nothing wrong with this.
I kid, I kid, but I consider this very acceptable. Industrial jobs tend to create and support more jobs; a 50k average salary for 13,000 people can support a pretty big town. Assuming the factory sticks around, it's more sustainable than just paying them 50k each from the state budget.
I really wish that article said where in Wisconsin this factory would be. I'm curious how 50k stacks up to cost of living in the area. The negotiators for the state could've done a much better job, but I think it's not too terrible a deal.
Edit: Old but gold article, relevant. It /is/ written by a manufacturing dude, but the point gets made.
Edit2: To clarify, I don't particularly support this deal. Wisconsin is in a fairly strong economic position and doesn't need to spend so much cash on one deal. But at the same time, someone has to defend it, right?
I don't think anyone really has to defend it... and I MIGHT agree with you on some level if it weren't coming out of taxpayer pockets to fund the whole thing. You're taking money from people, filtering it through State Government, then FoxConn, then employees, then it goes back to the community it was taken from... maybe. I get that socialism is evil and all, but at the same time, in this one specific case at least, putting that money into social projects or just flat out welfare payments to people would cut out a couple of layers where the money is getting siphoned off and diluted.
There's the argument that after the whole thing is paid off in
4-15 years 2043*, depending on how the math works out, then there might be some potential return on investment. But there's no guarantee of that either. Large companies like FoxConn are more than able to shift locations every few years to take advantage of more favorable political favors. Even any "Loss" on capital they might sustain by abandoning their Wisconsin holdings would work itself out in the accounting.
I'm not even saying that governments helping businesses get started is a bad thing. It often works out well for new and emerging areas of business and for smaller businesses trying to establish a foothold in their first few years. However this isn't anything new, nor is it a small business. This is the worlds 4th largest tech manufacturing company just plopping down another factory to crank out TVs. My big question is if there's even anything in this for FoxConn other than the government subsidies.
*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn#United_StatesWikipedia suggests Wisconsin's budget office isn't even looking at a "break even" point until 2043.
EDIT:
The news is going to burn its audience out because even many of biggest Trump haters are just tired of the news at this point.
They really might as well make a section called "Trump News"
I mean the news broadcast is justified... But even if there was a tornado everyday in the USA, people would get really tired of reading about every single one.
In terms of absolute tornado counts, the United States leads the list, with an average of over 1,000 tornadoes recorded each year.
They may not happen EVERY day... but on average... 3 times a day. We DON'T hear about every tornado in the US.
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