Comment by thrmsforbfast | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thrmsforbfast | Hacker News Reader

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A maximum of 13k jobs. They still get billions and carte blanc environmental waivers even if only a tenth of those materialize.

Also worth noting that the average salaries required to get those subsidies have dropped substantially since the beginning of this process; we've gone from "lots of skilled jobs" to "mostly $15/hr factory labor". Totally predictable to those of us who know the difference between "iPhone factory" and "Apple HQ", but this was a huge source of confusion among my non-tech blue collar Wisconsin friends. They [1] really did think there would be six figure tech jobs available to anyone with a CC degree.

[1] edit: here "they" refers to 10-15 specific people, and isn't intended to generalize to "all Wisconsites", although I do believe there's a demographic that's being intentionally deceived and who would change their opinions on Foxconn if someone sat them down and explained that "working in an LCD factory" is not a "tech job" in the sense of six figure salary with good benefits, and that if those "tech jobs" do come to Wisconsin via Foxconn it's going to be a relatively small number of them and most certainly won't go to people who are straight out of high school after 6 months in a fast-tracked community college program.

Factory labor might be shit, but it typically comes with good health benefits and will put food on the table for your family.

I get the feeling that people who snub factory jobs live too high on the economic ladder to realize how much of a step up that sort of job can be for a person.

Used to. Pensions are gone and wages have stangated for decades. Most anything above $20/hour puts it squarely in "the capex to automate this makes sense now" territory. And everything else gets farmed out to rotating temps so that any benefits that do exist can be advertised but are only rarely paid out. I've seen that play out a few times just among relatives (consider this a tacit response to your second paragraph, BTW).

More importantly, Foxconn's agreement with WI states that up to 93% of workers can be paid $15/hour. That's barely enough to live on even in Wisconsin.

If Foxconn were legally required to pay 50k+ with benefits for factory work, I would happily agree with you. But that's not what the contracts say. The contracts say basically everyone except management and engineering can be paid $15/hr.

Also, the Amazon fulfillment center just a few miles from the site of Foxconn's new plant pays $15/hour and is constantly hiring. So we're basically paying 4.1 billion for... a bunch of jobs that are roughly equivalent to openings that already go unfilled just down the street.

Finally, remember that we're talking about 4.1 billion dollars. That's a lot of healthcare/education/infra/small business development/etc. opportunity cost.

I don't know much about the Foxconn plant, so you may be right about the particulars there.

I also agree with you that the working conditions for factory workers have been degrading significantly for the past 20 years or so.

$15/hr might be barely enough to live on, but it's still better than minimum wage. Also the nature of working on an assembly line is different from working in a fulfillment center. Being able to tell people "I help build those" has more pride behind it than telling people you run around shoving stuff into boxes for people.

I'm in Iowa, which I imagine is similar cost of living to Wisconsin. My dad worked in factories almost his entire working life. I stand by my statement that if you are lucky enough to land a full time factory job, it can be a viable way to raise a family.

>this was a huge source of confusion among my non-tech blue collar Wisconsin friends. They really did think there would be six figure tech jobs available to anyone with a CC degree....

That's unfair. Wisconsinites are not stupid. We knew what this deal meant for the most part. The issue is corruption. We have few effective methods of fighting it here in Wisconsin. I'm not trying to wuss out or anything, but there is a reality to life in a place like Wisconsin.

Think of it this way, there is probably some percentage above which corruption becomes too ingrained, and you can't do anything about it anymore. Maybe that percentage is 10%? Maybe it's 20%? Whatever. But if a place reaches that tipping point, that's it.

And I don't think that's unique to Wisconsin by the way. I think MOST states and municipalities would present the same issues if their tipping point number was reached. It just becomes very hard to do anything about what's going on around you.

> That's unfair.

I'm not painting with a broad stroke here. I'm referring to specific people I have had specific conversations with.

Of course, Milwaukee, Madison, and also many of the smaller cities in Wisconsin have great engineering cultures with extremely smart people who understand this distinction. And also many Wisconsites with non-Engineering backgrounds obviously understand the distinction.

All I'm saying is that, based on my first-hand experience, there were many in Wisconsin who did not/do not understand this distinction. Which is good news, because that means that explaining simple and easily demonstrable facts can change people's minds.

Perhaps sustained canvassing on this issue would be a good way to change things in WI. I've been able to win a few people over by explaining over a year ago where this whole thing was going to go and then reminding them any time there's a development.

Thank you for that clarification.

When Walker's recall campaign failed, I stopped being sad about leaving the state, because at that moment I knew that it was now majority gullible idiot.

Walker is as much of a track mark on Wisconsin's dirty drawers as Blagojevich was on local and state government back when I lived in Chicago--perhaps a bit less obvious about it, and with an (R) instead of a (D) pinned to his dark money drop box.

From my perspective, it looks like the corruption is growing, the normal measures to fight it are not effective, and it may be necessary to take up arms to bring it back under control, or just leave and not look back. It seems like almost everywhere is at least near its tipping point, if not already well past it. The Citizens United decision might have made it a runaway.

I agree it's not unique to Wisconsin. Maybe it's more prevalent in places that don't have that much industry in that area, so it's easier to fool people. When a new amazon fulfillment warehouse comes to a city, hopefully people know it's not going to be filled with programmer level salaries. But if you had no expose to software design and only had warehouses then you might not know the difference.

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