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Comment by jimsparkman | Hacker News Reader

The idea of Foxconn manufacturing anything in Wisconsin, let alone something so specific, never made much sense to me. Do touchscreens sound fancy and exciting to voters?

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Why? Southeastern Wisconsin has a decent amount of manufacturing and Kenosha specifically used to be a car manufacturing powerhouse as well as beds. So I assume this is more of a comment on Foxconn not following through on their end of the bargain.

Foxconn’s model of business, industry, and logistics just don’t jive with the region, at least not intuitively to me. And of all things Foxconn could conceivably manufacture in the US, LCDs seem like the least economical option for them.

Well, we already manufactured in Wisconsin a lot of the stuff you need for an LCD panel. 3M Menominee makes the light diffuser (Vicuiti) film that a lot of the top end LCD makers used, Wisconsin up until 2008 had one of the top flex circuit facilities in the US ( 3M Eau Claire). TTMI in Chippewa Falls has one of the most advanced printed circuit board making facilities (built by Cray Research/SGI). I was no fan of the Foxconn plan. Wisconsin has enough smart people and know how to have done it themselves without a Taiwanese assembly shop. Pretty soon, making LCDs will be like making cheese. Just order the cheese making machines and go to work. If we don't have the smart people here (like Seymour Cray, Mark Andraesen etc) we get them from nearby states (Gene Amdahl, PhD UW Madison). Just call up Nikon, order the machines and go to work.

> Just call up Nikon, order the machines and go to work.

If it's that simple and straight-forward then in your opinion why hasn't this been done yet?

Jobs sound exciting? That's what the subsidy was predicated on, bringing high-paying factory work to the state.

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