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Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

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171–180 of 265 posts

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#171
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single thing in this lengthy article comes together to make one clear point: they had no plan at any step of the way and just tried to BS it all, and they've done it several times around the world. Blaming this on lazy Americans when they were literally begging for something to do is strange. The article is gathering plenty of facts and interviewing plenty of people. If you've got insider information with some…

I'm not blaming it on lazy americans. Huge difference. I blame the chinese directly. They never had the intention of hiring American workers. They know American workers are capable but inferior and they screwed them over on purpose. >Every single thing in this lengthy article comes together to make one clear point: they had no plan at any step of the way and just tried to BS it all, and they've done it several times…

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Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you define the meaning of "worse" here and then back up your claim with evidence?

https://youtu.be/9KRe08n0d3o?t=7 Just watch it. I'm an american born chinese. I'm basically a lazy bastard like every other american. If you go to china you'll see these people are industrious af. They will work their ass off no question under slave labor until they kill themselves. You've heard of the nets to prevent suicide in Foxconn right? The movie spins the whole situation as a cultural problem. This is partly…

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Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#174

Did any voters actually fall for this? It seemed laughably fraudulent to me at the time, and it's not clear to me if the con worked or if politicians are so non-responsive to the voters that it didn't really matter if anyone was actually fooled.

It was mostly Republicans, and yes they fell for it hard.

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a church is not a person, it cannot believe in anything. how does a church pray? how does it make a confession? do not antropomorphize companies, it does not compute at all.

I agree that the church itself doesn't have freedom of religion. But for the members of the church to have freedom of religion they need to be able to exercise their freedom as an organized group. The end result is the same: the government is limited in what restrictions it can place on the group, because to restrict the group is to restrict the members.

> But for the members of the church to have freedom of religion they need to be able to exercise their freedom as an organized group.

There is no logic in this sentence. An organised group as an entity doesn't need to be treated the same as a citizen for the freedoms of the members of the group to be respected, I don't understand where is the leap between: rights of a citizen should be extended as rights of a virtual entity that groups citizens. Why?

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#176
post #9

This entire project was a shameful example of political pump-and-dump by our former governor. He sold the more gullible elements of our state on this fairy tale about Foxconn, got lots of air time and Trump points out of it, made an abortive presidential run, and then got replaced and slunk into the shadows before the music stopped. Now our new Governor is left cleaning up the embarrassing mess while simultaneously b…

I was upset about losing the high speed rail, but the Foxconn deal made me wild. It was so clearly a con job from the beginning.

And the only reason they obsessed over killing high speed rail was that it would make southern Wisconsin slightly more attractive to young people, who would tip the voting scales.

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#177

Anyone know what was in it for Terry from the start? It sounded like access and favor from Trump, but the trade war still happened and he’s still saying there’s going to be a LCD factory to this day.

Foxconn stayed out of the cross-hairs, unlike Huawei, ZTE, SMIC, etc. Honestly they should've been since they are a prime facilitator of outsourcing of high margin manufacturing. Pretty much any major computing giant you think of gets their stuff made by Foxconn.

I'd argue that a _real_ trade-war didn't happen. If it did, color me underwhelmed[1]. We got some tariffs put on Chinese goods, China started buying Brazilian soybean instead of American. To put an end to this, a deal was struck were China buys much more agricultural products, which has been going poorly[2]. Sure, there was some economic damage, but I don't think this can be classified as a 'trade war'. Unfortunately (or fortunately), a proper definition doesn't exist in terms of a financial impact threshold.

One angle that I don't think anyone has discussed. Terry Gou is running for Presidency in Taiwan, and this could be a way to show him rubbing shoulders with international leaders. The US is big ally to Taiwan, and who better to be in the good graces of than the President of the US?

Apart from the above discussed angle, I think my comment from Jan 2019 is still relevant[3]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_tr...

[2]: https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/us-china-phase-one...

[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19018486

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#178
post #56
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

worst ? what about citizens united? how often is eminent domain abused for economic development, compared to how much favorable legislation was passed for corporations?

I knew someone would bring up Citizens United v FEC when I said worst. I know this will be an unpopular opinion on this forum, but I believe that case was decided correctly. I agree wholeheartedly with Justice Kennedy's opinion that "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech" Read the opinions and d…

I would still put Citizens up there. We have rules around elections in the same way that we have some limits on individual speech (yelling fire, and all that) to effect the fundamental right that the First Amendment is meant to protect. Similarly, PACs were an unforeseen (and in some ways unforeseeable to eighteenth century framers) exploit of a well functioning democracy as it relates to people.

Kucho vs. Common Cause as well. Gerrymandering is a clear abuse of the system. Kagan’s dissent is heartbreaking.

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#179
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Foxconn all short to medium term potential with sort of middle of the road upfront costs? Their upfront costs are probably nominally higher than average, but state of the art manufacturing moves fast, the up front costs are either paid back quickly or a waste. The same forces limit the long term potential; if they don't keep up, the investment quickly withers.

Yes. This investment made no sense. The state would have gotten a better deal by just hiring people directly.

That's what I'm thinking too. The only way you can salvage this is by canceling the contract with Foxconn and buying the empty buildings at rock bottom prices and grant funding to local startups who are allowed to use the buildings for a low price. At a minimum this would replace the fake jobs with real ones.

Re: Foxconn’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin

#180
post #178
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew someone would bring up Citizens United v FEC when I said worst. I know this will be an unpopular opinion on this forum, but I believe that case was decided correctly. I agree wholeheartedly with Justice Kennedy's opinion that "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech" Read the opinions and d…

I would still put Citizens up there. We have rules around elections in the same way that we have some limits on individual speech (yelling fire, and all that) to effect the fundamental right that the First Amendment is meant to protect. Similarly, PACs were an unforeseen (and in some ways unforeseeable to eighteenth century framers) exploit of a well functioning democracy as it relates to people . Kucho vs. Common Ca…

Yeah, but updating the constitution and election laws are congress' job, not the courts.
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