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No Mexican left behind
These are but a slice of the loser's strategy -- using public "investments" and "incentives" in an attempt to stimulate markets that already have signaled their desperate weakness.
Instead, aren't investments into strength the smart business strategy?
Pittsburgh is not unique. In Galesburg, Ill., officials trusted that a smorgasbord of tax breaks coupled with union concessions would save the Maytag refrigerator factory. Maytag closed in September, costing the city 1,600 jobs. Maytag is moving the work to a plant in Mexico, where labor is so damned cheap.
One of its competitors, Electrolux, which makes Frigidaire refrigerators, is closing a factory in Greenville, Mich., with 2,700 jobs lost. Production will move to Mexico despite an offer of $182.6 million in tax breaks, union concessions and a new building. That much money and Electrolux still wouldn't bite.
We are alarmed, not by free trade at all, but by something truly worrisome, something cultural.
If $1.50-an-hour Mexican workers will do the jobs, what does that say about Americans who think that in the 21st century they can build a life on performing labor that can be done inexpensively by anyone with a strong back and little education?
It says they will be left behind.
