Foxconned: Imaginary Jobs, Bulldozed Homes, and the Sacking of Local Government by Lawrence Tabak

Author:Lawrence Tabak [Tabak, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BUS000000 Business & Economics / General, BUS068000 Business & Economics / Development / Economic Development, BUS079000 Business & Economics / Government & Business, BUS077000 Business & Economics / Corporate & Business History, HIS036070 History / United States / 21st Century
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2021-11-18T00:00:00+00:00

Misunderstanding Leads to Mismanagement

When the Foxconn project first emerged, it seemed that creating “family-supporting” blue-collar jobs for motivated high school graduates in the age of globalization and automation was an admirable mission. However, spending billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize a highly automated, modern factory that has little room for blue-collar workers is an odd way to achieve that goal. While the Wisconsin state legislators were considering the $3 billion subsidy package, the gap between promises and reality was there for anyone to see—that is, anyone who took the time to look. Perhaps the frantic pace to pass the legislation and Foxconn’s steady deadline pressure reflected just this.

A major piece of the problem in Wisconsin was the politicians and economic development professionals who were pushing the deal. These were not precise technocrats. They weren’t even particularly curious folks who were willing to take the time to understand the basics of the industry they were promoting. Trump, Walker, Mount Pleasant’s state senator Robin Vos, Dave DeGroot—these were Republicans who thumbed their nose at science and facts. Walker wouldn’t allow agencies under his charges to employ terms like “global warming” or “climate change.” He had even gone so far as to issue a gag order in 2015 that forbade Department of Natural Resources employees from even talking about climate change on the job. These were and are faith-based politicians who see what they want to see and believe things will just work out—for them, anyway.

Robin Vos, the leader of Wisconsin’s house, has never wavered from his confidence that the Foxconn deal was “one of the biggest accomplishments we’ve probably had in our state’s history.” Vos achieved some national notoriety in April 2020 when he led the charge to require Wisconsinites to head to the primary polls despite COVID-19. His picture from a polling site in full protective gear from head to foot as he uttered “Perfectly safe to vote” became an internet meme. (His theory that forcing voters to appear in person would suppress turnout, to his party’s benefit, proved incorrect.)

Vos has been very much the Mitch McConnell of Wisconsin, promoting his narrow agenda, reflexively opposing anything that comes out of the Democratic executive branch and disdaining compromise. When confronted about the gerrymandered Republican majorities that the state legislature maintained in 2018 (after 54 percent of the state’s voters cast their legislative ballots for Democratic candidates, 64 percent of the seats went to Republicans), Vos explained that it was absolutely justified. “If you took Madison and Milwaukee [the state’s two largest population centers] out of the state election formula, we would have a clear majority.” In other words, the votes of the “educated elite” in Madison, home to the University of Wisconsin, and the people of color in Milwaukee were, to his mind, worth less than largely rural, heavily white votes. Scott Walker expressed this same dubious logic in a July 5, 2019, podcast, saying it’s a “flawed argument” that “a vote in Madison counts the same as a vote in a very rural community or in a suburban community.

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