Let’s say a stranger knocks on your door and tells you, “Give me lots and lots of money, and I promise to do some unspecified good things for you. Later, even if I change my mind, I’ll keep the money.”
How quickly will you run to your wallet and toss your money at him?
“Here’s a few billion in Wisconsin taxpayers’ money.
The Wisconsin Assembly sent a $3 billion incentive package for Taiwan-based Foxconn to Gov. Scott Walker on Thursday, signing off on a deal to lure the electronics giant to the state with the biggest subsidy to a foreign company in U.S. history.
Democrats have raised alarms about exemptions under the bill that waive requirements for Foxconn to first develop an environmental impact statement before constructing what could be a 20-million-square-foot campus.
Foxconn would also be allowed to build in wetlands and waterways.
And:
There are 2.3 million households in Wisconsin. So a $3 billion incentive package requires each household in Wisconsin to send $1,300 to Foxconn.
What do Wisconsin households get for their $1,300, their potential loss of wetlands, waterways and overall environmental degradation, plus special legal immunities?
Foxconn has said it hopes to open the plant in 2020 with 3,000 workers, but that the workforce could grow to 13,000.
“3 billion dollars” of taxpayer’s money given for “hopes” and “could”?
The details are important, given (their) history of making and breaking promises in numerous countries and regions over the years, including in the U.S.
A pledge to invest $30 million in a factory in central Pennsylvania in 2013 was also greeted with much ballyhoo.
Four years later, the factory has still not been built, to the disappointment of state officials.
They are not alone. In 2014, Foxconn promised a $1 billion investment in Indonesia, which has still not happened, according to the Washington Post.
A pledge to invest $5 billion in Vietnam in 2007 has also failed to materialize, nor has the company met its promises for India.
Foxconn has also been under fire over the widely reported issues of working conditions at its existing plants. Foxconn’s China plants have been the scenes of protest and periods of high suicide rates over the years.
Pennsylvania, Indonesia, Vietnam, India — Foxconn repeatedly breaks its promises and also is a horrible employer, whose working conditions are so bad, employees are at a high risk for suicide.
And none of these things were considered by the Wisconsin GOP?
The great negotiator, Donald Trump, who is loath to risk his own money on most of his projects (he rents his name), boasted numerous times about this “incredible” deal:
Trump inspects the “8th wonder of the world” that never will be built.
By Blair Guild, June 28, 2018 / CBS NEWS
Speaking at a ceremonial groundbreaker for a new Foxconn plant in Wisconsin, President Trump called the new facility “the 8th wonder of the world,” despite the fact that Foxconn has cost the state at least $3.5 billion in tax breaks and grants, according to calculations from Wisconsin’s nonpartisan legislative fiscal bureau.
At that rate it would take the state 25 years to break even on its investment, the bureau calculated. In other words, each job Foxconn has promised to create costs the taxpayers $263,000. The company has said at least 13,000 direct jobs would be created, paying an average of $53,000 a year.
“As Foxconn has discovered there is no better place to build, hire, and grow than right here in the United States,” Mr. Trump said.
Actually, as Foxconn has discovered, there is no better place to steal billions of dollars from conned taxpayers, than right here in Wisconsin.
The Taiwanese company, which received more than $4 billion in tax subsidies, is scrapping its initial plans, but will keep the money, thanks.
BY Bess Levin, January 30, 2019
From the moment Wisconsin struck a deal to pay Foxconn more than $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies to build a plant in the Badger State, critics decried the plan as a total scam that had Donald Trump and Paul Ryan’s fingerprints all over it.
And they weren’t wrong! Writing for The New Yorker last year, Dan Kaufman laid out the many ways Trump’s “incredible” deal was poised to screw Wisconsin locals for years to come
— from the billions in “direct cash payments from taxpayers” that they wouldn’t recoup for about a minimum of 2.5 decades,
— to forcing homeowners to sell their properties “at a price determined by the village,”
— to granting the company special court privileges (like the ability to make numerous appeals of unfavorable rulings in a single case),
— to serious concerns about the factory’s impact on the water supply,
— to the fact that all those billions could be better used on things like the state’s crumbling roads or understaffed rural schools.
When a guy, who has taken six businesses into bankruptcy, tells you he has a great deal for you with a company having a history of screwing its investors, would you really trust him?
TAIPEI — Foxconn Technology Group said on Friday that it will go ahead with the construction of a plant in the American state of Wisconsin, following direct communication between Chairman Terry Gou and U.S. President Donald Trump.
The announcement came just days after reports that parts of the $10 billion project would be suspended.
“Great news on Foxconn in Wisconsin after my conversation with Terry Gou!” Trump tweeted Friday afternoon.”
Oh, sure. You can believe that a phone call from Donald Trump has restarted the project. And if you believe that, you can believe his other 13,000+ lies.
Sadly, you taxpayers in Wisconsin learned a bitter lesson too late, and now you will pay, pay, endlessly pay for your expensive education.
Wisconsin agreed to give the company $4 billion in tax credits in return for Foxconn building a factory in the state.
The whole deal was a GOP invention. Trump bragged that the deal was only happening because he got elected.
The deal almost immediately fell apart, with Foxconn Chair Terry Gou admitting the company had no intention of building the promised LCD panels in the United States.
The square footage of the proposed factory drastically decreased, dropping from 20 million to under 1 million. The promised jobs plummeted from 13,000 to 1500.
And then Foxconn decided it might not be a factory at all, which means it wouldn’t provide the blue-collar jobs Walker and his cronies promised.
At the end of 2018, Foxconn employed 156 people in the entire state.
With that, the deal no longer seems viable for Wisconsin, so they’re hoping to get Foxconn back to the bargaining table and hammer out a different deal. A Foxconn representative met with current Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to talk about possible adjustments.
However, Foxconn can’t help itself from asking for more: They’re hoping to have a longer time to qualify for capital investment tax credits.
In the end, this is just another Trump-related deal gone horribly wrong. Trump and Walker made flashy promises, gave away billions of dollars, and left the taxpayers holding the bag.
This whole charade leaves Wisconsin taxpayers with a couple of sad truths:
Trump’s GOP never has been concerned about the welfare of the middle and lower economic classes. It strictly is a rich man’s (emphasis on “rich” and emphasis on “man’s”) club.
When Donald Trump speaks, he either is lying or at best, doesn’t know what he is talking about.
None of this will cost Trump or his GOP one penny. You Wisconsinites will pay the full cost.
Ironically, even in the unlikely event that Foxconn did as promised, the benefits you Wisconsinites funded mostly would have accrued to the citizens of Illinois who live in the north Chicago population corridor. So thank you for trying, though it didn’t work out.
But, don’t be angry. In the immortal words of one Greville Janner, “If you are going to get raped, you might as well lie back and enjoy it!”
Lastly, having predicted that the Foxconn project would prove to be a gigantic con perpetrated on you folks in Wisconson, I have one more prediction:
You will vote for Trump and the Republicans in 2020.
Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.
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#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 