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Comment by cptskippy | Hacker News Reader

When companies promise x thousands of jobs how do they come up with those numbers and why does anyone believe them? There's no way Foxconn is building a factory that requires 13000 staff. More than likely they're counting jobs created temporarily during construction, and jobs created by surrounding businesses that might crop up.

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I've seen this defined in some infrastructure bill (usually it's not defined). 1 job created really means 1 job for a year. If the job exists next year too, it's apparently created that year too. This doesn't match with my definition of creation, but it seems to better match up with reasonably likely job outcomes of projects advertised as job creation.

Eg: this factory will create 13000 jobs over the next 5 years doesn't mean there will be 13000 more working people in 5 years, it just means 13000 man years of work in the 5 year period.

The credits are tied to these jobs actually being created, so no jobs => no credits => no problem :)

Which jobs, is the parent's point. Also I'd be shocked if there weren't a loophole Jupiter could fit through on it.

Until they threaten to leave, then the whole thing will be renegotiated. That's where the problem comes in.

Or the standard "too big to fail" sunk cost fallacy will save them.

Foxconn has a history of making large claims that they don't live up to (e.g. Pittsburgh and Brazil) [1]. It's hard to trust this deal is handled properly when we find it's actually costing 50% more in tax credits after the fact.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/business/foxconn-trump-wi...

Every other company in the state will have a harder time hiring those workers because they aren't receiving a subsidy bolstering their after-tax profits. It's unfair to make all other business essentially transfer money to one that spins a good story to politicians.

This. Not only does giving credits and incentives to huge organizations harm other local organizations because competing on wages is more difficult for them now, it also increases systemic risk and transfers more power to the Goliath. When "everyone" is dependent on the too big to fail organization, that organization can throw around more threats that they will leave if they don't get what they want. Now everyone is beholden to it. These deals are bad all the way around.

Foxconn / Hon Hai had an extensive record of doing exactly this in Taiwan. I would be surprised if they haven't done the same in China.

Are they tied in the same way we gave Billions to ISP to give everyone Broadband?

I do not have any faith that government will actually enforce the requirement, I have seen it many many many where a company promises X number of jobs for Y tax break, then the actual jobs create is FAR FAR FAR less so the government just passed a new ordinance to adjust X to what ever the company did so they still get the credits even though that did not honor the original deal.

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