Today I read about how Toyota scrapped plans to build a giant-ass plant in Alabama, despite very generous financial incentives (at taxpayer expense).
Where did they move it? Ontario.
Professed deciding factor: the low-quality of the local work force. Apparently, some are functionally illiterate and require "pictorial" training. Partly true, I'm sure. The South has it's share of hillbilly shack-dwellers and possum-ranchers, but there's more than enough smart folks to staff a car factory or two. Or dozen.
Paul Krugman points out that Toyota stands to save huge amounts of money by opening a plant in a country with national healh-care, which is every developed nation except the USA. Maybe if we had better education and health-care, we'd have better workers. Fuck it. Let's just hand-out some tax-cuts and subsidies to the already wealthy instead. The poor are poor by choice. Ask any rich bastard.
This evening I've seen two commercials for Toyota, claiming they are "growing the American landscape" or some such rot. Canada is America, in a geographical sense, I suppose...
Meanwhile, over in Iraq, the Iraqi army and police have proven to be less than useless. You don't want to anywhere near these guys. They get blown up at an alarming rate. It's very difficult to find competent recruits . Why?
Iraq had it's army destroyed during the first Gulf War- the scraps and remnants left over weren't worth a damn; a moot point since we disbanded them anyway (oops)
So now we're recruiting from the dregs and the desperate. At best, they are desperate men, who , after two years of chaos , blood-shed and deprivation will do anything for a dinar or two.
At worst , they are thugs and infiltrators.
If you can't find good help in Alabama, how can you expect to find it in the ruins of Iraq?
2 comments:
We do need better education and also socialist healthcare in this country imo. That would map to some improvement in the quality of our workers, but I think the main thing that affects us as a country is what I call the hunger factor. A person who is hungry for a better life works for it. We are spoiled, decadent, and short-sighted in this country. There is much opportunity that is squandered because it is not as quick and easy as some of our other options. I know what being poor is, eating poorly, going without. I've also been back through volunteerism to help the less fortunate, and I see things now just as I did back then that just blow my fucking mind. Having said all that, I also believe we have a greedy wealthy elite in this country. I'm not talking about the numbnut who drives a hummer and lives in a big house - they just think they're wealthy elite. (cont)
Last night my husband and I were having a discussion on Niger. I won't go into the whole discussion, but one of the key thoughts was how our country really isn't that different in the philosophy of it. They have a corrupt wealthy govt that uses the country's wealth for their own benefit and for amassing even more wealth while its citizens starve. We may not have people dying of starvation in the streets, but we do have a population that is allowed to live on a subsistence level above starvation while the truly wealthy strike deals and grow wealthier. There is no reason we couldn't have socialist medicine, except all the pharmaceutical companies would lose the billions they make every year gouging the hell out of us, making the elderly and working poor choose between eating and healthcare. We are governed by the corrupt. But my point is that we must also take responsibility for our part in all this, our willingness to continue the charade of what life is like in this country, our hunger to be informed, mitigate, change.
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