Foxconn Con? The Wonders of the Free Market!

Wisconsin is about to shell out as much as $3 billion for the privilege of luring Foxconn Technology Group. At $519 per citizen, it would have been cheaper to buy an iPhone for every man, woman and child in the midwestern state.

There’s a hard reality about corporate welfare; Republicans love to pick winners and losers, taxpayer money for business is a heck of a lot better than helping Americans when they need it, and there is no such thing as a “free market.” Pretty simple to figure out, thanks to Foxconn:

Let’s take a look at those figures: Wisconsin is paying as much as $1 million per job, which will carry an average salary of $54,000. The state’s economic development corporation is selling the project to taxpayers with a claim that it will create 10,000 construction jobs for building the facility and another 6,000 indirect positions. It’s expecting $3.3 million of investment per employee from the Taiwanese company.

Politicians, lobbyists and Foxconn can make the figures work by being generous with the facts. For example, if every one of those jobs came to fruition, they can claim 29,000 positions for $3 billion, or $103,000 per job. But that’s not going to happen.

Foxconn has factories in China and another dozen countries globally, yet that stated $10 billion investment is more than the group’s publicly traded flagship — Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. — has devoted to capital expenditure over the past five years combined.

If billionaire chairman Terry Gou really does dish out $10 billion on this facility, the only way to make it viable is by keeping staffing low … This LCD factory will be either labor intensive or highly automated. It can’t be both.  

A former liberal radio talk host who likes to ask the “follow-up question” at Democurmudgeon.blogspot.com