This was the most striking part to me: "According to The Seattle Times, the starting rate at the Airbus plant, about $16.50 per hour, is comparable to the starting wages at Boeing’s passenger-plane plant in Renton, Wash. But the Airbus pay scale tops out at $23 an hour, while experienced Boeing workers can earn $45." We now have so much surplus labor that even this relatively skilled job only pays $16.50 an hour.
You get what you pay for to some extent too... as Mercedes found out, German Engineering is no match for Alabama manufacturing....
Mercedes reliability has always been a joke, as any consumer reports study will tell you. They are more a tribute to German marketing than engineering.
In any case, there are plenty of high end manufacturers in the american south. BMW and Boeing in SC, just off the top of my head, for example. Stereotypes are wrong, sometimes.