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Saturday, July 05, 2014

Collectivism To The Rescue Of Yet Another Janesville Business


According to the Janesville Gazette, a Janesville manufacturer, United Alloy, considered expanding outside Wisconsin and ultimately ... well, read it yourself....

JG Excerpt:
“Ultimately, we came back to the fact that our employee base here in Rock County is exceptional, hardworking and fully trained,” Achs said. “We believe we have world-class manufacturing talent right here in our own hometown, and we decided that it was wisest to go with the people who helped us achieve our success in the first place.”

Awww, that's so sweet.

Oh, but I almost forgot this part...

JG Excerpt:
In order to keep United Alloy in Janesville, the city provided an incentive package worth $887,460, and the state kicked in a forgivable loan of $500,000 and tax credits worth up to $130,000.

Okay, so they're picking up $1.5M in collectivist hand-outs to stay put in Janesville, otherwise they would be moving out. Got it.

This was a big event as Gov. Scott Walker made sure to come into town to help celebrate with United Alloy their newfound dependency on government. It was a joyous occasion with photo ops and smiles everywhere.

But what we can also expect at some point months down the road is a donation of $10,000 or so from United Alloy to one of Janesville's or Rock County's favorite charities with Gazette headlines boasting of their generosity to our poor little community. It's called the 3-step collectivist cakewalk.

It's not a problem at all if you're into dancing one way while looking the other way. We're used to it.

Just saying.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where have you been living all your life? What do you see wrong with this. Would you rather have them leave? There is nothing wrong with trying to keep jobs in Wisconsin, it's an investment. Sure, we lost on GM, but we can't let that scare us away from making these investments in the future

Lou Kaye said...

Outside of the fact that United Alloy met the benchmarks of the incentive package before the package had a chance to incentive them, thereby eliminating the very purpose of the package to begin with, I don't know if I can answer your question without writing a 30,000 word manifesto on the free markets and the role of government.

So the least I find wrong (after the benchmark boondoggle) with this is the fact that those championing these economic development tools are the same folks who typically rally for the free markets and against big government and government dependency. If they would at the minimum publicly align their free market philosophy with the reality of their collectivist actions, then I would understand where they are coming from. In the meantime, I think this is extortion in its purest form and that there are better solutions to whatever they are trying to accomplish.

But again, if government power through collectivism must rescue the free markets or individual private businesses whether through TARP or an incentive package, just say so and at least one person (me) will understand their motives better.

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