Headline could read “Company turns up providing much needed high paying jobs to region left devastated by failed industries (steel, manufacturing, …”. Or you could say “Evil company moved in and sets up company town.”
Honestly agnostic to this whole thing but it’s interesting to watch efforts to spin things one way or another.
> it’s interesting to watch efforts to spin things one way or another
If you can’t spend your entire life improving yourself from the circumstances of your birth then you don’t have a class system, you have a caste system.
In America, class has always been something you can buy your way into. Take a trip to Newport some time, and visit the mansions of the robber barons: each is stuffed with mediocre classical and neoclassical mimicry. The purpose of these ostentatious displays was to prove to each's neighbors that they were sufficiently landed, wealthy, and worthy of their class designation.
Edit: But of course note: wealth is neither necessary nor sufficient for class; it only makes it much, much more accessible.
Midwit theories of Utopia always seem to single in on one thing they can turn into a boogieman, and ignore the rest of the complex system.
If you disagree, why don't you just hire people yourself and tell them to do stuff? Easy money from exploiting labour, no?
If you want to call it exploitation than call it exploitation. I'm fine with exploitation if the definition of exploitation is "jobs"