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Why a poor Southern city's only hope was a Chinese company moving ...
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A grim bargain
Once a weakness, low-skilled workers who get paid little have become the Deep South’s strength
A REGION LEFT BEHIND: LOST OPPORTUNITY IN THE DEEP SOUTH. Second in a series.
Read Part 1: An opportunity gamed away
Read Part 3: A grim bargain
Read Part 4: A lonely road
Above: Jadareous Davis puts on his cap and gown in a classroom at Ruleville Central High School in Ruleville, Miss., before the graduation ceremony in May. Davis and other graduates of poor-performing schools in Deep South states often find themselves hunting for low-paying jobs.
That’s when James Deshler decided he had to go see it for himself.
A REGION LEFT BEHIND: LOST OPPORTUNITY IN THE DEEP SOUTH. Third in a series.
Read Part 1: An opportunity gamed away
Read Part 2: Graduating, but to what?
Read Part 4: A lonely road
So one Friday night, after finishing his shift at the roadside quick mart that his family owned, Deshler told his girlfriend and two buddies to pile into his Crown Victoria, and they turned on the high beams and found the dirt beginnings of the best new opportunity in Wilcox County in a half-century. Here, tractors and bulldozers were making way for a quarter-mile-long copper plant that would be owned and run by a Chinese company lured to the area with a massive package of state and local tax breaks. Five hundred people would have jobs, and Alabama’s government called the project a “catalyst” that would “lift the fortunes” in a county where 1 in 5 workers could not get a job. Deshler scanned the site, snapping a few dark photos of the machinery. Though he could see his breath, he stood there for five minutes.
Above: A truck passes through what amounts to downtown Sunny South, Ala. State and local officials lobbied to convince the Chinese-owned Golden Dragon, one of the world’s largest makers of coils for air conditioners, to move a factory to Wilcox County, where jobs were desperately needed. The plant now employs about 200 workers with some mixed results.
“A blessing,” Deshler remembers saying. “This place is going to be a blessing.”
Two years later, Deshler, 29, looks back on that moment as a time when it was still easy to believe that his life, like his home town,was about to change markedly for the better. He hadn’t yet started working at the copper plant at a wage nearly half of what he was expecting while saving coins so he could buy an engagement ring at Wal-Mart. He hadn’t yet watched his bank account dwindle below $10, falling back on his father for help. And he hadn’t yet started wondering if the Chinese flag towering in the employee parking lot in fact said something about the cost of economic progress not just in this southwest corner of Alabama but across the Deep South, a region that has increasingly enticed foreign companies with the prospect of lavish tax breaks, plentiful land and cheap American labor.
“I look up at that flag,” Deshler says now, “and, man, I think about shooting a flaming arrow into it.”
Deshler’s frustration reflects the desperate steps being taken in a part of America simply trying to survive economically. In wide swaths of the Deep South, public schools struggle, turning out workers who lack basic skills. Agricultural work has long faded, while job opportunities in once-prosperous industries such as textiles and timber have been lost to cheaper options in Latin America or automation at home. Politicians say they must give freebies to lure companies here, or offer nothing at all and watch the region — which already lags behind the rest of the country on most measures of well-being — fall even further behind.
But in some cases, when opportunity arrives, it highlights a grim bargain: Jobs come at great cost but offer only a slightly better version of a hard life. The region’s weaknesses — a low-skill workforce that doesn’t expect particularly high wages — become its competitive strengths. And suddenly, the only opportunity for somebody such as Deshler becomes a Chinese company looking for a place from which to do more business in the United States.
Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tube Group, which is based in Xinxiang, China, and is one of the world’s largest makers of coils for air conditioners, announced its arrival with blue and gold “Now hiring” posters pinned across southwestern Alabama in libraries and event halls. Deshler had been waiting for a job much like this one. Five years ago, he moved back in with his parents and enrolled in a machinist program at the only community college in the area, using his savings from a job in Montgomery for tuition. He figured he would raise his earning power.
Instead, he found himself stuck. He spent long shifts at the family’s struggling quick mart, a place his grandmother had bought in the 1970s when it was the only liquor store for miles. Deshler worked the counter and ordered gasoline and sold barbecue and Bud. He split a minimum-wage salary with his brother, taking in $3.70 per hour.
And that’s when he noticed the new trucks hauling by. Deshler applied online, as did 4,500 others, and he was among the first to get hired. He started at the copper plant on March 12, 2014, two months before the ribbon-cutting, and that morning he snapped a photo of himself as he headed into the factory. “GD Copper,” his orange hard hat said, and Deshler — 6-foot-10, with red, curly hair — wore a plaid shirt and safety goggles.
“First day on it!” he wrote on Facebook, where he shared the photo.
“No more dollar menu for this guy,” a friend commented. “He’s gonna upgrade to the combo meals! LoL”
wilcox County sits in the center of Alabama’s Black Belt, a swath of dark-soiled farmland that over the previous decades had been drained of its economic blood: first with the mechanization of agricultural jobs, then with an exodus of people, finally with the shuttering of factories and mills. In a county that is 70 percent black, the historical inequities have dovetailed with a more modern inability to adapt economically. Between 2000 and 2010, Wilcox lost 30 percent of its jobs and 25 percent of its businesses. Its unemployment rate went from 8.7 percent to 26.3 percent.
By the time Wilcox turned to China, the median household scraped by with $23,000 per year, according to Census Bureau data, an income level almost half of the state average and 15th lowest among the 3,144 U.S. counties. Job applications from the area were riddled with basic errors, said Joy Norsworthy, head of the local employment center. Many didn’t know to capitalize sentences.
“The lack of education is severe,” Norsworthy said, “and I’m comfortable using that term.”
Wilcox had a rail line, but broad sections of the county lacked sewage, water, even cellphone service. There was no day-care center, no public transportation. The main town, Camden, was a grid of treeless streets where discount stores advertised in their windows that they accepted food stamps.
“The entire county is back in the Dark Ages,” said Jim Emerson, a board member at the Wilcox Chamber of Commerce.
In this case, Golden Dragon — or GD Copper, as it would call the U.S.-based arm — started looking for a place to build a factory in the United States after it was slapped with tariffs in 2010. A U.S.-based consultant, Raymond Cheng, who specializes in Chinese business opportunities, encouraged the company to solicit multiple bidders.
“You really need to go to the South,” Cheng recalled saying in one phone conversation with the chairman of Golden Dragon, Li Changjie. “You need a lot of land. You need cheap labor. You need to establish in friendly ground.”
Over several months in early 2011, giant three-ring binders arrived regularly at a law office used by Cheng’s company, each one touting available real estate, low utility prices, easy highway access, laws that weren’t friendly to organized labor. In total, five states and 62 towns submitted bids.
To help push the deal, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R) dined with Li. Company executives visiting the region were greeted with imported Chinese tea and Mandarin video messages. Alabama’s state workforce team explained how, if chosen for the job, they would visit Golden Dragon’s Chinese headquarters, study the process, and make videos and training courses for the new U.S. employees. In Alabama, Golden Dragon wouldn’t pay taxes for 20 years; it would get free roads and land.
Alabama also did something no other state was willing to try: Its legislature passed the “Made in Alabama” act, a tailored law that allowed the state to reimburse Golden Dragon for several prior years of tariffs. A version of the law had first been drafted by Cheng and a lawyer, according to Cheng and a lawmaker who sponsored the bill.
Ultimately, the company was given the choice of the reimbursements or an extra $20 million in cash. Golden Dragon chose the cash.
What went wrong with the Deep South?
Five states in the South are much worse off on economic and social measures than the majority of the country.
Here’s how the region compares, broken down by county.
MALE LIFE EXPECTANCY, BY COUNTY
Worst fifth (64 to 72 years)
Middle fifth
Best fifth (77 to 82 years)
The region is home to some of the lowest life expectancies for both men and women. In many counties of the Mississippi Delta, the average male dies before 70.
Source: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington
All told, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Washington Post, Golden Dragon received subsidies worth some $200 million — the bulk of it in local and state tax abatements, plus the cash, $5 million in land and road costs and nearly $2 million in worker training. County leaders say they had little choice: They had spent years trying to lure companies, reaching out unsuccessfully to more than 100. Even Golden Dragon only settled on Wilcox after a site in a neighboring county proved too small.
“When your hand is in the lion’s mouth, you act accordingly,” said John Moton Jr., the chairman of the county commission. “We have the highest unemployment rate in the state. Our hand was in the lion’s mouth.”
Though many states recruit businesses with tax incentives, states in the Deep South pioneered the practice and remain aggressive users of the tool, pitching not just tax breaks but low costs and anemic union participation. The strategy has both payoffs and potential downsides. Mercedes, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Airbus and Boeing now have plants in the Deep South, providing tens of thousands of sturdy middle-class jobs. But while those high-profile plants attract much of the attention, experts say tax breaks often are used for the many companies offering lower-wage work.
In South Carolina, several thousand people work for newly relocated Chinese companies, including textile plants that have been lured by subsidies to depressed areas. Some companies have also resorted to using temporary workers. Nissan, which by some estimates was given more than $1 billion to open shop in Canton, Miss., depends heavily on a staffing company where advertised jobs start at $12 per hour.
Politicians and industrial recruiters in the region portray the new jobs as transformational, capable of lifting families out of poverty and narrowing the divide between whites and blacks. Bentley said in an interview that his state’s deals “pay for themselves” within four years, by driving new jobs and new spending. His and other state offices declined to provide data supporting that claim and instead sent to The Post a single-page document with numbers from six particular projects.
“It contributes to a stream of continuous income,” Bentley said.
Still, some regional experts and economic analysts say the strategy amounts to a flawed attempt at a quick fix that surrenders a source of much-needed tax dollars that could be used for spending on education, health, and infrastructure. “It’s a vicious cycle, because poorer states spend less on the things that would allow them to be less poor in the long run,” said Wesley Tharpe, a senior policy analyst at the left-leaning Georgia Budget and Policy Institute.
Golden Dragon’s main allure has been its willingness to bring on people without experience, with nothing more than a high school diploma. Shortly after the plant began hiring, in early 2014, it became a landing spot for some of the region’s most needy. A woman who had previously commuted two hours every day for a $7.75-per-hour job at a corn dog factory. A couple with five children that had roamed the country for years, filling in anywhere manufacturers were on strike. A single mother who had worked back-to-back eight-hour fast food shifts, rising every day at 3 a.m.
Golden Dragon’s chairman, Li, said in a phone interview that the quality of workers in Wilcox “is not very good.” The company’s head of human resources, K.C. Pang, said wages are based on market value and skill set, and were determined after discussions with state officials. Pang also said that roughly half of those who apply are rejected because of felonies or failed drug tests.
“Realize, if these workers could get a job at the paper mill,” Pang said, referring to one of the last major sources of jobs in the town, “don’t you think they’d be there?”
The average worker at Golden Dragon, among the 200 that have so far been hired, makes $13 per hour. The company says it offers generous and regular raises.
Deshler started at $11.
unlike the majority at Golden Dragon, Deshler had manufacturing experience. Straight out of high school in 2004, he got a job at Hyundai in Montgomery. He started at $17 per hour and ended up at $25 five years later. He bought Ralph Lauren polos and American Eagle blue jeans and a big truck. The lone downsides were the noise and rush of the city, which drove him crazy. For 208 weekends in a row, he fled Montgomery for Wilcox, where to relax he drove around at dusk looking for deer. He knew good jobs were easier to find outside rural areas, but figured this would be a compromise: He left Hyundai and began school at the community college in Clarke County, which neighbors Wilcox. He graduated in 2011 as a certified machinist.
Although he was relieved to have a job after years at the quick mart, Deshler felt he was overqualified and underpaid. Several months into the job, he applied for a promotion. He would go from operating a machine — “sitting down, pushing 30 buttons,” as he called it — to operating an entire machine shop, a crucial position in which you make the tools that keep the factory humming. Deshler had long wanted to be a machinist: He had used tools going back as far as his teenage years, when he fixed the family Jeep Cherokee, the one his dad had used for 360,000 miles while delivering mail on rickety back roads.
The day Golden Dragon managers told Deshler he had won the promotion, in the early summer of 2014, his dad, James II, rushed to the supermarket to buy ribs and pork and sweet tea, and everybody gathered in the back yard. Deshler figured the new position would help him pivot back toward independence: He talked with his girlfriend, Lauren, about buying a home and where they might live. Deshler hadn’t pinned down his exact raise, but he guessed it would be big — maybe $16 per hour, up from $11. The average machinist in Alabama makes $19 per hour.
And then, when Deshler checked his pay stub several days later, waking up to check the deposit on his smartphone, almost nothing had changed.
He thought it was a mistake. The company said it wasn’t. He was now making $11.75 per hour.
“It was like taking a big bite of lemon,” Deshler said.
Now Deshler wondered how any job at Golden Dragon could lead toward the middle class. He started looking differently at the factory, noticing its quirks, resenting its features: The several dozen Chinese engineers who helped supervise the plant couldn’t speak English and lived in modular trailers on the factory grounds. The awkwardly translated Chinese slogans touting work ethic. (“One Quality escape erases All the good you have done in the past.”) The oil spills that sat on the floor; the minor injuries that piled up. Maybe, he wondered, this was why his father had long cursed Chinese-made tools, always the low-budget option at Lowe’s.
Only this time, it was his life unfolding on the cheap. Deshler bought a $22,000 home on the foreclosure market, spent weeks yanking out the roach-infested interior, then months more rebuilding it by hand. He moved in with Lauren and her son because the couple were expecting a child. They got married at a courthouse, without a honeymoon. Even when Deshler’s salary finally climbed to $14.50 an hour earlier this year — the result of meeting performance goals — it didn’t cover a mortgage, insurance, light bills, baby food.
“Literally, going to Dairy Queen is a mini-vacation,” Deshler said. “And if that’s a mini-vacation, what am I supposed to do if I have bald tires?”
“I feel for him,” James II said. “He might as well be working at Wal-Mart.”
In the many weeks when money hit zero, they fell back on Deshler’s father, who sometimes seemed to be the one person holding the family together. Deshler had only been able to buy the modest home — and the materials for the rebuild — with help from his dad. James II had dropped out of high school, then spent four years in the Navy, six years in the Coast Guard and almost 20 years with the Postal Service. He had a night job, too: He took classes. First he earned a GED. Then a bachelor’s degree. And finally, a law degree, for which he drove four hours round trip to Montgomery, coming home at 1 a.m. He quit the post office in 2008, on the same day he graduated from law school. He now billed clients $250 per hour and talked jokingly about starting a little “family dynasty” of wealth.
Deshler sometimes wondered what lesson to make of his dad’s adult life. Was it proof that intense work pays off? Or used to pay off? He went back and forth.
“I still believe I can do what my dad did,” Deshler said. “I have to believe that a job with $40,000 or $50,000 isn’t out of reach.”
Deshler applied for some other positions and was tempted by an Australian shipbuilding company in Mobile. But the work was two hours away, and pay started at $14 an hour.
one night in the summer of 2014, Deshler got off work, called his wife from the car and said he wasn’t coming home just yet. He drove, instead, to his dad’s law office, which held the only functional computer Deshler had access to. He pulled up Google on the browser and looked for what he called “only the most legitimate sites” — official releases, newspaper articles.
For the next hour, he scrolled through the back story of his company. Here was the state’s commerce secretary in 2012, saying wages would average “$15 to $17” per hour. Here was the governor touting Golden Dragon in his biggest speech of 2014, saying fresh hope was coming to “disadvantaged areas.”
Deshler called his dad.
“Our government, they sold us down the river,” Deshler said. “They can go to hell.” His dad asked Deshler if he wanted to quit.
Instead, Deshler did something else. He started talking at work to Joseph Boykins, a fast-talking shift worker — “almost a televangelist type,” Deshler said — who had been trying for weeks to drum up interest in a union. Unions in the South were far less common than in the rest of the nation, and Deshler’s dad had always said that unions weren’t worth the trouble.
But now Deshler sidled up to Boykins and said he was in. In the coming weeks, Deshler pulled aside colleagues at the factory, telling them a union could improve their benefits and pay. Golden Dragon, in turn, spawned a campaign to convince workers that unions weren’t necessary.
Deshler’s viewpoint represented only about half the workforce. Others, including many who came from unemployment or minimum wage jobs, felt thankful for Golden Dragon and said they had no interest in disrupting the factory’s work.
“For the first time, I can go out and have a steak,” said Sue Thomas, 50, whose children are grown and who left a job in a neighboring county at a sewing plant and now makes $16 per hour at Golden Dragon.
Days before the vote, Bentley wrote a letter to Golden Dragon employees, saying that unionizing could have a “negative impact on your community by discouraging other companies from locating there.”
On Nov. 7, 2014, workers decided, 75 to 74, to form a union.
Hours later, Deshler and Boykins wandered out of the factory and toward the employee parking lot. They shared a hug. But they had expected a landslide, and neither could quite shake the feeling that the moment felt like something less than a victory. If Golden Dragon had catalyzed anything in Wilcox, it was a division over how to feel about the opportunity they had.
“Nobody wants to go back to less than nothing,” Boykins said.
“Nobody wants to work a damn job that pays them for the rest of their life like they were cutting grass in high school,” Deshler said.
Nothing changed quickly in the next year; it wasn’t until October that contract negotiations even started. Deshler did what he could to make Golden Dragon just a portion of his life. He turned himself into a homebody. Supper and bath time were the evening routine. He tried to be reliable at work: “No ass-kissing, but come in five minutes early and leave 10 minutes late.” He tried to think less about money, because the stress of it was riling up an old back injury and he refused to pay for painkillers.
But then, there were some mornings, like a Thursday in September, when he awoke with $1.15 left in his bank account, a gas tank needle pushing below “E” and 24 hours until the next paycheck.
“A royal pain,” Deshler said.
It had happened more than a half-dozen times already, this gas tank roulette, and Deshler knew the gauge well enough to know how it would end. He just barely made it to work. He spent eight hours at the factory. And just before heading home, he called his dad to meet him at a Phillips 66 gas station. Deshler’s car was already waiting at the pump when James II pulled up, lowering his window and passing over a debit card.
“Our little drug deal,” Deshler said, jokingly.
They chatted for a few minutes while Deshler half-filled his tank, using $20.
“Appreciate it,” Deshler said, and he handed back the card. Deshler said he was heading home for dinner. James II said he was returning to his law office.
Then, they drove off in different directions.
Xu Jing in Beijing contributed to this report.
1005 Comments
Said OK, we'll play. But don't blame us for playing to win. And you are caught in the crossfire. James, do not forget your standard of living is first of all still better than 99% of the world. But yeah if you feel like you've been given a raw deal, look first to your politicians and think to yourself are they really for the little man, folks like you in rural Alabama? Or are you being bamboozled into voting for interests which are decidedly against you. The GOP elite will paint you as something who isn't trying hard enough because they hate handouts. But being pro Union isn't a handout because your dad is a lawyer and you still feel bad about taking gas off him. You are no leech brother. You are the backbone and pride of America. But you are being taken from a ride because you are southern and can't fathom voting for a democrat. It is time to wake up and smell the coffee. And figure out for yourself which politicians are really for the little guy and which are not.
Why are company bosses and owners afraid of unions? They know unions give workers a voice and power in the process of determining what is a fair wage, and help protect worker rights in issues like overtime, job injury, etc. They do their best to bring out every flaw unions have ever had, plus insinuate or make up a lot more stuff, so workers won't unionize.
However:
1) Posting a comment on the article's web site will do nothing for your particular problem. Make a phone call to the Post's main operator/receptionist and calmly ask who to talk to you until you get the correct person.
2) Writing in all caps is LIKE SHOUTING. Please don't shout.
3) Also, sentences have periods at the end. Writing without periods at the end of your sentence is like talkingnonstopwithoutstoppingtotakeabreath. It's very easy for someone to dismiss whatever you say when you talk like that.
I researched the issues in Anniston, AL with the Monsanto chemical plant that pumped deadly chemicals into a local creek and the nearby water and environment for decades. Monsanto (they've since renamed, shuffled, and "officially" sold off that company, which they did when it was all about to hit the fan publicly) actively suppressed their own tester's results that showed a cage of bluegill turned belly-up and dead with boils on their skin within 10 second of immersion in that creek near the waste line. The reports and court case shows a slew of Alabama state inspectors and agencies and local govt. colluded with the company to give them passing grade inspections, suppress revelation of the deadly pollution, etc.
Money trails tell you who to hold accountable and why. They can also teach you on *how* something was done, so you can try to pass laws to prevent its repeat, and they tell you what kind of politicians *not* to elect. You want true public servants who care about the common people, not those who are in bed with big financial interests who've been proven by their own actions to be predators on the common people's lives and livelihoods.
This is the core of the worker/employer agreement, and it's been gradually degraded over the past few decades as Labor rights have been whittled down by court cases (often supported by the Nat. Chamber of Commerce), by corrupt state legislatures and governors, by agendas (like in Wisconsin) to destroy unions, and by a long term misinformation campaign to not only discredit unions, but also to indoctrinate workers with the idea that they are powerless, that asking for honest pay is "asking for a handout," that honest pay will "make companies lose money so they have to do layoffs or close down."
Yet when you look at the money, it tells a different story: corporate execs pulling down huge salaries and benefits, profits being put into stock market rather than reinvested in the company, larger companies and investment firms buying companies to use them as losses, close them down, and making a profit going and coming (as Bain capital often did).
See next post, continued.
The common policy was to buy a plant, run it into the ground, call it a loss and close it, and open a new manufacturing plant overseas where labor was cheaper and had no real protections. The U.S. used to have manufactured goods as our #1 export---now it's raw materials.
Phase 1 was to drain these plants and move operations overseas. This created a labor glut on the employment market. Predictable competition for the few remaining jobs meant that desperate employees would accept lower wages, wouldn't fight attacks on labor protections effectively, wouldn't unionize or strike effectively, and in general would become ground down.
Phase 2 is starting to kick in: Now that the average American (not just in blue collar but in many other jobs too) has been ground down, has learned to see their neighbor as competition for that vital job rather than teammates in fighting for better, they're starting to bring in foreign manufacturing (or even American) where the companies have similar wage-slave workers as abroad. State officials often don't care because they're lining their pockets in the process, through their own companies, through campaign contributions, through employment-after-office offers, and/or through outright bribery and/or investment in company stocks, etc.
We are in the end-game of all this. If we, the American people, don't stand up on our hind legs and fight this, vote in people like Bernie Sanders who are dedicated to our rights, and work together (no matter our race or gender) to get more honest public servants elected to change the laws that allowed all this, we're sunk. They fear us uniting, so they continue trying to divide us. We have GOT to take back our power by voting in good people and participating in the system, and by getting unions to help us stand up to them. We can do this. Honest pay for honest work, and no devaluing said work or workers.
In manufacturing environments, errors and mistakes drive up costs to incredible levels and if confidence is lost by customers, there is always competition that is willing to do things right.
These backwoods areas should find the most effective individuals possible to improve the quality of their schools so that students' abilities can blossom and thus offer competent workers to the world's employers.
Cheap labor is meaningless when mistakes lose you your best customer.
In the end these policies are ruinous, but Corporate America never looks at the long term; ever-mounting quick profits are their standard. We are fast approaching a return to feudalism, where the (corporate) nobility class owns nearly all the resources, the remaining tiny middle class is there to provide them with the small amount of superior services and goods they need... and the rest are serfs whose lives are considered valueless and easily replaceable, and whose sole function is to labor at worse than a hand-to-mouth existence, labor that squeezes the product from all the lands, crops, and businesses the elite own.
We have to turn this around. We're near the end of the process, but we can still take back our power if we will work together, fight to educate ourselves and our children, and become active participants in our governing system. Nationwide strikes and protests may help, but the most important part is running caring, informed people for office and then voting them INTO office, and supporting afterward the changes they make to laws that allow this predation to exist.
Education IS vital... but some of the best you can get now is by doing legitimate research on the internet, seeking out good sources (like the Zinn Education Project), reading reports, etc.
For a long time there's been a subtle campaign of anti-intellectualism that scorned those with higher education, especially academics. Many have been taught to think that "homework ends when you get out of school"---they see learning as rote activity you are forced to do by the state, to learn mostly useless things in order to get a piece of paper (diploma) that is supposed to make you more worthy in the job market but often doesn't.
In this environment, people don't understand the value to *them* of learning things, of seeking out more and better information, of doing some work to keep up with what's going on, learn from history, learn how to identify honest and factual sources of information. They don't see how this helps them, so they don't bother to do it.
If we want to improve education, it's not just about the schools---it's about finding ways to tell and to *show* people that doing "homework"---researching, learning, growing---is vital to their lives and their children's lives, that it can help them change their lives and the world for the better, that it has VALUE.
The typical school system is designed to make learning seem like drudgery, and most of it useless. Learning for testing is just making that worse. We need to reconnect learning to lives, and not just tell but also *show*.
To a rural person, an unpaved road means that your local/state govt. doesn't care enough about you and your neighbors to pave it. I grew up on a dirt road. We asked for years to get it paved. We felt dismissed, that we were considered "back of the boonies" and "not worth it." Breathing the dust and dirt kicked up during hot dry summers was not fun, nor was the coating of dirt that would make its way *inside* your car. Jouncing ruts and potholes weren't fun to ride over, either.
There's a lot of validity to what you say.
It just kills me that the AL govt. didn't do this. Your people deserved better.
The point is not, "this fellow should have stayed where the jobs are," it's "there are places where people are trying to survive with practically NO jobs, because trade agreements and deregulation let companies move those jobs to wage-slave countries so they could make a bigger profit."
Of course, this story is also about state govt. corruption and the influx of foreign companies who *expect* wage-slave labor conditions here now. If we don't turn this around, we may start seeing industrial plants like some in China, where workers are "housed" at the facility and end up working behind barred windows (the bars are there to try to prevent employee suicides from jumping out said windows).
It boggles the mind that Alabama PAID this company to open there, when they'd previously had an American company there that did the same thing. Imagine what the area might be like if, instead of giving millions to this Chinese company to come here, the state govt. had put that money into helping residents re-open the old facility as an employee-owned company.
Fast forward today and places like Wilcox County can only compete for economic development projects is by giving direct subsidies or tax abatement which essentially means plants get built for free.
I live in one of these Red states where our governor turned it and the ACA down. As a result, insurance companies have had freer rein to up our co-pays and deductibles and premiums. We've had several hospitals have to close, because they weren't getting full Medicaid funding. Our healthcare system here is worse than ever, thanks to our governor and state GOP trying to make voting mileage out of an irrational hatred of "Obamacare."
The thing that really infuriates me is that, when opponents to the ACA were polled, and were asked "Do you approve of ______" followed by each main provision of the ACA, they approved of all or nearly all the provisions. But when they were told "Well, that's Obamacare," most of them jumped immediately into anger and refusal to believe it. The misinformation campaign the GOP put out about the ACA has done incredible damage to the health of millions.
If they were REAL, old-fashioned Republican politicians, they would have sat down *with* the plan's creators and worked through it all so that it did the best job possible. Instead, they did their best to screw it up, insisting on things that would make it worse, and not helping to catch any problems (I think if they saw the problems, they deliberately left them in there). Then they made up lies about it and sold them to the public. It's shameful. What we really need is a cost-controlled single-payer system in which EVERYONE can get medical care; it's cheaper in the long run as well as the right, humane thing to do.
Second, I am amused by all the commenters who use an article like this to bash the South. They don't have a clue what the South is like today. Much of the South is at the sweet spot where good wages, good climate, and reasonable-cost-of-living all converge. More Fortune 500 headquarters are now located in the South than any other region of the country. Keep griping about the South and shoveling snow, and we'll see your kids when they enroll at the University of Alabama and Georgia.
Third, I followed the GD Copper project and never thought it was a good deal, but the poorest county in the US doesn't have many options.
Fourth, there is some contributory negligence here. Your story says the main character left a much better paying job to move back to his rural home. If you move to the middle of the Sahara Desert, don't expect to land a high-paying job. Wilcox County has only 11,000 people and less than 13 people per square mile. What can you do with such density? If the article photo is accurate, the subject of your story is smoking a cigarette (expensive habit) and driving an extended cab Ford F150 (gas guzzler), yet he complains about lack of money for gas. He buys a home (probably stupid at his age and income level) and moves in with his pregnant girlfriend.
Fifth, if people from South America, Central America and Mexico can immigrate thousands of miles to the US for a better life, surely people in the Black Belt can move a hundred miles or so for a much better life. I can assure you that a certified machinist in the Birmingham-Tuscaloosa area, where Mercedes and Honda are located, can have a good life. Also In Mobile, where Airbus is located.
First
Your comparison of the population is skewed due to the geographical size of the black belt compared to its inhabitants
Second
You skipped that one so is it safe to assume you count 1345?
Third
I can slightly agree I have never been comfortable with a Chinese facility in our back yard
Fourth
There are 6+ mills within a 50 mile radius that pay 25$+ an hour plus. You are blatantly uneducated in the area. You go on to prove my point of the "density" of the black belt compared to the population. You also prove that you didn't take time to read the story fully to understand that I drive a crown victoria. (Maybe there werent enough pictures for you) Hardly stupid that I have achieved the credit to purchase my second house by 29 wouldn't you say?
Fifth
Your unknowing of our geographical business layout showed more of your lack of studying into the facts before you came here with a finger happy comment you little thumb warrior.
1. If you're poor or working-class poor, how are you going to amass the money to pay for a move, when you're barely covering essentials? Moving is expensive. You not only have to rent a truck (no one poor can afford van lines to move stuff for them) and pay for the gas for it, you also have to have money in advance for first and last month's rent at whatever apartment you get for your move, money in advance to open utilities, and other expenses that are related to moving.
2. The "move to a better place" argument basically writes off an area. What you're really saying is, "If your home area sucks for jobs and living, move away and let it rot by itself." So all those people who live there who *can't* "move away" should just die off under rotten conditions, right?
It's funny how so many people are fans of "urban renewal," where governments and businesses work to make an urban area more attractive to new residents and new business/companies... but no one ever thinks rural poor areas are worth having the same thing done there. It's like they think rural is *supposed* to be poor, to be deficit in education, to lose jobs and businesses and not complain.
I'll tell you a secret: rural areas are full of people willing to work hard, people willing to stand by and care about each other (even if they don't always like each other). They are filled with people who believe in a good work ethic, and the idea of "honest work for honest pay."
Rural poor areas are one of the most untapped resources for workers and production in this country right now, and a major place where we could turn things around and improve the lives of many. Rural may be less well-paid than suburban or urban, but it is not supposed to be that rural = poor.
We don't need to turn rural areas into huge industrial parks; just to bring in some business and good education, and get them on their feet. They'll do the rest.
That's what you get when you look for the low bidder.
We change laws and trade agreements so that it's more costly to companies to move or run their manufacturing overseas, and less costly to just suck it up and follow labor laws and pay and do it here. Any company that decides they're going to "become a foreign company" instead by moving their operations/HQ to a foreign company FORFEITS their facilities here. Period. Govt. takes it over (nationalization) and offers it for an employee takeover as an employee owned and run facility.
I'm TIRED of multinational corporations running the world (and this country!) like they're spoiled rich kids in a candy store, saying "I'll take one of these, and one of these," etc. It doesn't have to be this way.
The U.S.'s #1 export *used* to be manufactured goods---now it's raw materials. That's how far we've fallen.
But---who said exports are the only way to be successful? How about instead we concentrate on manufacturing, growing crops, etc. for our *own* use first, and only looking to exports for selling the excess? Why is it that nearly every product on our shelves is made in China, India, Polynesia, or some other place where said products were made with wage-slave labor? Simple: it's because trade agreements, deregulation, and tax laws allowed these corporations to make greater profit in moving manufacturing to those countries, wiping out countless jobs HERE. If they won't keep the jobs here, kick them out. Let them "take their toys and go home" somewhere else.
If you think this won't work, you underestimate the fighting spirit and work ethic of the average American. Trust me---we would kick butt at this, and re-learn about caring about each other, and working toward a common goal, in the process.
1. Cap executive pay grades. Work out some system where we figure it based off of company productivity and the lowest paid employee salary and the average salary at the company, so that the big bosses get paid not more than a certain percentage... for instance, most people think a CEO making 7x the amount of the lowest paid employee is fair... when actually their pay is nearly 350x that amount, on average.
2. Get rid of tax laws that allow corporations and wealthy individuals and financials to use off shore tax havens. We lose trillions of dollars every year to this practice.
3. Quit subsidizing successful industries. Fossil fuels, Big Ag, and companies like GE rake in millions or even billions via subsidies.
4. Raise the minimum wage. This needs to be done with care and certain compensation for small businesses (like Mom and Pop operations that are barely getting by---perhaps tax credits for them), but companies like Walmart should NOT be using govt. food and housing aid programs as part of their employee pay, which they do: they refuse to pay a living wage and *actively* point their desperate employees at govt. aid... all while the Walton heirs rake in millions and billions, and are among the richest individuals in the country.
5. Break up the big banks and monopolies like Comcast and Time Warner. The latter two pretend they're competing to avoid monopoly laws, but they don't compete with each other at all: they divided the country and each take part of it. They're congruent monopolies.
There's a few other things that need doing (i.e. medical/pharmaceutical/healthcare, repairing infrastructure) but I'm running out of word count *again*.
We CAN turn this country around, if we take back control of it. We've got to, and we've got to elect people who will help us do it, people like Sanders and Warren and some others. We need people participating in the system again.
Also, sentences begin with a capital letter.
http://www.al.com/specialreport/birminghamnews/ind...
You get what you vote for.
Better pay for teachers.
Quit allocating money to schools by testing and quit pushing "learn to take tests" education. Push instead the idea of how learning helps you all your life, and get children invested in learning---parents, too. Teach the idea that you should *always* keep learning, researching what's going on the world, learning more about economy and government and health and science, etc. because IT AFFECTS YOUR LIFE AND THE LIVES OF YOUR KIDS. :D
Quit letting the Texas school board determine what's in our textbooks. Set up a system where qualified and well-skilled college professors and K-12 teachers review the books for factual, comprehensive, and well-balanced education at age-appropriate levels. (I'd also involve the Zinn Project in history books.)
Change allocation so that very upper-class neighborhoods don't get the biggest amount of local tax funds, as is the case right now.
Institute programs for parent education and community involvement, both in the schools and with schools reaching out to do the latter---not just the kids, but also the school staffs.
We also need better programs for community improvement and business, and programs that address domestic violence and abuse in families in a real way. Both of those things impact how a child learns---it's the rest of their world.
For college education, first it should be free (as an investment in our future), and second, we need a new system to help graduates find jobs in their field or related fields.
Basically, in parts of our country public ed does a very good job, and in other parts it does not. All these things I listed above are *some* of the factors that are having negative impact. There have been small programs that address one or more of these that show improvement in students, but none of them ever seem to get nationalized.
Here's one: a school where kids watch lecture videos at home, and do homework in class where teacher is there to help.
That was the brainchild of a principal who noticed that families had a lot of stress helping their kids with homework. He realized that
a) kids are more tired at the end of the day, with less energy and attention span for homework
b) parents often struggle with helping their kids---some just weren't good students themselves, while others may have forgotten a lot, or that their kids are learning things in a method that they themselves don't understand (i.e. Common Core math).
c) they found that the kids *did* devote more attention to (and liked better) watching video lectures, rather than doing homework.
So he flipped the system: the teachers began recording the lectures they'd normally do in the classroom. The school set up access to these for the students to view at home. The kids watch the recorded lectures in the evening when normally they'd do homework, then the next day they do the homework that would have been assigned to that lecture. The teacher is right there, so that if a kid is having problems or needs to ask a question, the teacher can help them right away.
The net result was that grades improved, the parents, kids, and teachers all loved it much more than the old way, and learning increased.
So, it made a great "school interest" story. A few schools around the country (those that actually heard of it) have begun implementing it as well... but why isn't every school doing it?
Perhaps because in some areas, certain interests want public schools to fail so they can push for charter/private schools.
Perhaps because our education system is very much of a dinosaur, with a very large body and a lot of little brains (controlling systems) and not a lot of cohesion.
Perhaps because those who should be spreading this information haven't been doing their jobs.
Perhaps because we've allowed a lot of inertia to creep into education, and insisted on umpteen trials and reports and committees before we institute change.
What if instead, the state had invested all that money in helping the locals buy out the old plant and refurbish it, helping them open it as an employee-owned company? I'm sure there were plenty of former employees of the old company there who could go back to work there and help train new hires. This has been done in other places and is quite successful, because the employees have a strong personal interest in making the company succeed.
If the state had done this, AND had raised the quality of the local schools, the area would be a lot better off, the state would see increased prosperity in the area... and it would be moving *away* from a wage-slave status.
The best answer as to why they didn't do this? Somewhere, one or many people in government made money off this deal.
Trump is feeding off the misery of these folks. Shameful.
No difference between Sunny South and the Sudan. The "joke" still applies.
The title of this article is misleading. That Chinese company that moved in is a disgrace. It was not Thomasville's only hope for financial survival. For those of you who don't know, the mayor even said that they should be glad they are receiving the wages they are working for. They were lied to.
My husband is an extremely talented, smart man who deserves to be making $20+/hour. He has a degree. He has certifications. When I finish nursing school would someone expect me to settle for $10 or less an hour, with a degree? No.
I'm going to stop while I'm ahead. But if you read this article, just know that it has been dramatized.
Not providing a good public education, outlawing unions while giving tax breaks to Chinese corporations that the $10 an hour slave laborers have to make up in their tax bills. Not providing health care (turning down the billion$ to provide Medicaid to poor) while allowing people to go bankrupt when they get sick.
But these are the choices the people on the deep South made...much of it the result of the inherent racism of the white majority in those states.
I learned today that this region of the country essentially still practices segregation. Of course the white republican don't want to raise taxes to afford better job opportunities or education, they have effectively refused to integrate and wouldn't want 1 cent of their dollar going to support someone or a community outside of their race.
He's getting paid good money for that area (a lot more than working at Walmart and more than minimum wage) and was able to buy a house for $22,000. In this area that same house in the type of state that he bought his in would probably sell for $400,000 or more. The cost of living where he lives is practically nothing. He also could move to another area that had better employment.
There really is no excuse for people there not knowing how to write at the level of a third grader. Any really why should he expect to be paid $30/hr for a no-skilled job when he lives in an area where the cost-of-living is practically nothing? And if seems that half those who applied were either felons and/or couldn't pass a simple drug test.
If he wants to earn more, maybe he should follow his father's example and join the military and then go back to school.
Things might change if the citizens there would vote Progressive instead of the GOTP. They did it to themselves.
http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/median-annual...
It lists all states by median annual income. 28 are above the U.S. median and the rest are below. Notice that ALL of the states that are below the US median annual income are red, while most of the states that are above the US median are blue (Texas is just above it).
-------------------------------
Before anyone gets on their liberal high-horse, let's not pretend this is some "red state" phenomenon.
When NPR wanted to move into bigger headquarters a few years ago, it sat back and allowed the DC City Council and Silver Spring, MD duel it out over who was going to give NPR the biggest tax breaks for their new digs.
Yes, NPR. That NPR.
"the District granted $40 million in tax abatements and froze property taxes on the site for 20 years as part of a deal to keep NPR from moving out of the city."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/npr...
This region of the US literally still practices segregation. The public schools are all black and white families send their children to "white academies" that STILL EXIST and are remnants from the push back against the federal mandates to integrate. But the schools were never integrated..... So how can you expect people to work together of different races, who wont even raise their children in multi-racial environments? And then the cycle continues.
Make education and job training more affordable so that people like Deshler can afford to improve their skills
Build infrastructure, which will increase jobs and competition for labor and therefore raise wages as well as lifting the productivity level of the economy as a whole
All the Red State Economic "Miracles " start to implode ............Well, at least the Rich got their Tax breaks while they could........
The guy seemed like he had other opportunities, more lucrative, but turned them down because he didn't want to move, a quality of life decision that meant taking less money for intangibles but in any case, his choice. Seemed like he had a budget or spending problem. At $14/hour he probably was taking home $2000 per month. His mortgage on a $22,000 house can't be more than $200/month, leaving him with $1800 per month to spend. His father's lesson should be you need to get an education.
It's simple economics, really.
That or just stop working and let Uncle take care of you like the citizens of the major cities.
*trying not to crack myself up*
Apparently, this region of Alabama, "the Black belt", literally still practices SEGREGATION. The majority of the county is black and so is its public schools, but then there are a few "private white academies" around the region which are literally schools that were set up in the 1960s to avoid the federal mandates to integrate the schools, AND THEY STILL EXIST. With this type of extreme backwards thinking and stone-age mentality, it's not surprising they can't even capitalize sentences.
Forbes:
"...economic growth in the South has outpaced the rest of the country for a generation and the area now constitutes by far the largest economic region in the country. A recent analysis by Trulia projects the edge will widen in the rest of this decade, sparked by such factors as lower costs and warmer weather.
But some of this comes as a result of conscious policy. With their history of poverty and underdevelopment, Southern states are motivated to be business friendly. They generally have lower taxes, and less stringent regulations, than their primary competitors in the Northeast or on the West Coast. Indeed this year the four best states for business, according to CEO Magazine, were Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Tennessee. They are also much less unionized, an important factor for foreign and expanding domestic firms.
Despite a tough time in the Great Recession, overall unemployment in the region now is less than in either the West or the Northeast. As manufacturing has recovered, employment has rebounded quicker in the Southeast than in the rival Great Lakes region."
Keep voting Republican, keep voting for every freaking idiot that has a (R) besides his name, just because..........
"even as the old Confederacy’s political banner fades, its long-term economic prospects shine bright. This derives from factors largely outside the control of Washington: demographic trends, economic growth patterns, state business climates, flows of foreign investment and, finally and most surprisingly, a shift of educated workers and immigrants to an archipelago of fast-growing urban centers.
Perhaps the most persuasive evidence is the strong and persistent inflow of Americans to the South. The South still attracts the most domestic migrants of any U.S. region. Last year, it boasted six of the top eight states in terms of net domestic migration — Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia. Texas and Florida alone gained 250,000 net migrants. The top four losers were deep blue New York, Illinois, New Jersey and California."
Apparently, this region of Alabama, "the Black belt", literally still practices SEGREGATION. The majority of the county is black and so is it's public schools, but then there are a few "private white academies" around the region which are literally schools that were set up in the 1960s to avoid the federal mandates to integrate the schools, AND THEY STILL EXIST. With this type of extreme backwards thinking and stone-age mentality, it's not surprising they can't even capitalize sentences.
Stay Red Alabama.
"even as the old Confederacy’s political banner fades, its long-term economic prospects shine bright. This derives from factors largely outside the control of Washington: demographic trends, economic growth patterns, state business climates, flows of foreign investment and, finally and most surprisingly, a shift of educated workers and immigrants to an archipelago of fast-growing urban centers.
Perhaps the most persuasive evidence is the strong and persistent inflow of Americans to the South. The South still attracts the most domestic migrants of any U.S. region. Last year, it boasted six of the top eight states in terms of net domestic migration — Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia. Texas and Florida alone gained 250,000 net migrants. The top four losers were deep blue New York, Illinois, New Jersey and California."
Welcome to the Republican new world order
but at least those living in the South got to have their PayBack on Obama by voting for every freaking idiot with an (R) beside their name. They got that to eat and raise their children. The warmth of getting one against Obama!
Ride a bike and save a fortune. No need for a gym membership, either, and enjoy better health.
Addendum: I live in NVA. I only know one person who grew up here. Everyone else (including me) is from somewhere else. You have to go where the work is.
Soon we will be competitive with the rest of the world.
What's the hourly wage in Bangladesh?
Deal with the consequences of your political choices.
That should drive life span down, so an extra bonus will be all the savings on retirement services. The states will use their portion to enrich those poor put-upon CEOs.
Increase foreign company profits at the expense of the American worker.
I wonder when these morons will realize that stupid trickle down theory is never, ever going to work.
White southerners forced to live the way they made black folks live in the 1940's and they fail to see the irony in that and still vote Republican.
No worries, Mr. Trump will make America great again right?
Since being Republican controlled has done so much for the deep South already.
In spite of the wealth in the county we still have a HUGE segment of the population with nothing more than a high school diploma and they live at or just above poverty level by choice and yes they don't follow what bills that are being passed in the State House, Nascar, wrestling, beer and football are their only intellectual pursuits and blindly vote against their own best interest.
Then Republican Southerners always have the nerve to brag about great they are, and criticize our President endlessly. You guys want a better life, with strong unions, higher wages and healthcare? Vote Democratic.
“You really need to go to the South,” Cheng recalled saying in one phone conversation with the chairman of Golden Dragon, Li Changjie. “You need a lot of land. You need cheap labor. You need to establish in friendly ground."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/1...
To quote Maximilien Robespierre, "The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant."
Which political party is dominant in Alabama and which political party want do do things like close the Department of Education? #justsaying
I would not doubt that working conditions at this plant do not meet OSHA standards and that the pay is not fair for the work done. But Senator Sellout Shelby and the rest of the congressional clowns in AL and the south keep getting re-elected. It matters who you vote for.
We also need to realise that if we want to produce anything in this country, it is going to be at foreign labor rates. This means a whole bunch of people are going to have to see a reduction in their income, including landlords and other property owners. We could end all of this, but government does not have the stomach to put US citizens first and protect our jobs like every other country on earth does. Nope, we will be the world's pizz boys.
The issue is education and the desire to live where you are from - the smart ones moved away whereas the not so smart stayed ... HOPING for something. Even Communist Chinese look like saviors when you have so little hope.
It is sort of a land that time moved on from ...even the older locals with the education of life believe the people are uneducated ...I see their philosophical counterparts in southern Virginia and down through NC, SC, GA, MS, and FL driving around in their pickups with confederate flags flying ... walking in and out of Walmarts either in clean camouflage hunting clothes or dirty civies ...long hair and beards ... tatted up ... hoping to get the good jobs ... reminds me of a line from Christmas Vacation when Beverly D'Angelo notes that Miriam Flynn had told her that Randy Quaid's worthless character was "holding out for a management position."
Yeah - a rant. But, when I do visit my relatives ... the most ignorant, silly nonsense escapes their mouths.
Long winded - photos would tell the story better - I am from the area ...have seen so much ...have heard so much I could write a book .. of sad humor.
My circle is small - most everyone's circle is small - but, the theme is what is clear ...education is not occurring effectively enough ... lots of reasons and I don't know them all. I can tell you large numbers of white southerners do send their kids to private religious schools to escape the public (read bad, or read mixed races, etc...it is still a fact) ... obviously more prevalent in smaller towns than real cities ...is certainly that way in Dothan, Andalusia, Luverne, Montgomery ...
The fellow who is the focal point of the story had a job that paid well in Birmingham but elected to leave it. So, apparently the peace and quiet of this poor county were worth the loss in income to him. He made an economic decision and now he's living with the outcomes of that.
The flip side is that, while many elect to reside docilely in poverty in rural Alabama or Anacostia, millions find a way to overcome huge barriers and get from Guatemala or Mexico and find well-paying jobs in, meat packing plants in Iowa.
It's a choice, not only to get job skills but to put yourself in a place where you can get paid for using them. Or don't do that.....
Insult was added to injury when Americans were asked to take temporary jobs in the new countries by their companies to train their foreign replacements.
North Carolina, once an international powerhouse in furniture and textiles lost tens of thousands of good paying jobs that were directly attributable to NAFTA.
Clinton gave us NAFTA, Bush gave us CAFTA and now Obama the Asian-Pacific Trade Agreement - APTA.
Each and every time we do this Americans lose manufacturing, service and technology jobs. Why do they do it? The national Chamber of Commerce and BIG business lobbies congress and the white house with campaign donations, threats of no votes and no donations and promises that the bottom line will grow enough to offset the losses.
So far there is no evidence that is true. Are the products now made overseas cheaper than they the ones that were produced in the USA? In some cases that's true and cannot be denied; clothing is one example. Often the quality is equal due to modern manufacturing methods and commitment to quality by the retailers who order these products.
But, in the long run, the US manufacturing and job bases have shrunk, business and personal tax revenues have shrunk, jobs have been lost, communities devastated or stagnated, second and third generation loses mount to demonstrate the long term loses exceed anything ever predicted. That family who lives paycheck to paycheck is unlikely to send their children to college, trade schools, professional education, etc.
=====================================
You mean like in California, southern Oregon, and Upstate New York?
(I hope you can get the sarcasm.)
Besides, Airbus and Boeing have both settled in the Stupid South.
http://www.breitbart.com/california/2015/11/23/cal...
They vote for social issues and smaller government and what they actually get are tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation of big business, and lousy wages for themselves. They get bamboozled every time.
Fixed it for ya
Easy for the people in academia in their ivory towers to pontificate about what works best. The only downside is the southern states unwillingness or inability to drive a harder bargain with GD and others looking to relocate corporate operations.
I have no problems with that because I'm not going to be taking those jobs. If these people think it's a step up from backwoods poverty, go for it.
Just don't whine about average wages being stagnant. Inviting Chinese factories into your state is not going raise averages wages. Pick a strategy and live with it.
Now, a friend told me of a devastated area of WVa with an aluminum plant closed because of the pressure to stop using coal. Aluminum smelting is really energy-intensive. The town's dominant employer went dark. A buyer came forward to put the plant back on line using natural gas. Unfortunately, the EPA reviews and approvals regulations for re-energizing the plant were going to take over 6 years and the buyer moved on.
It would be nice if we could solve that.
Think about being a landlord, renting a building with no damage deposit? Not smart.
Yes, there's no dignity in labor -- it's of no value; only CEO, white collar positions are worthwhile.
If you're unemployed or at a dead-end "struggling quick mart" job, then that supposedly "slightly better version" may really be a vast improvement. For example, working for a stable company is far more satisfactory and reassuring than working for a tiny, struggling quick mart (not to mention higher pay, chance of promotions, etc.).
After admitting that "Mercedes, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Airbus and Boeing now have plants in the Deep South", WaPo laments that "experts say tax breaks often are used for the many companies offering lower-wage work [in 'depressed areas']."
Oh no, the horror! What possible value can there be in lower-wage work in depressed areas? Are jobs for "lower-wage" folks worthless, maybe even harmful? Better to foster dependency, a culture of poverty?
If lower-wage employees had ZERO income, no jobs, they would qualify for and need more government assistance, more welfare. Taxpayers are better off that they are employed at all; employees are better off working than being wards of the state, even if they can't move to WaPo neighborhoods.
Some years my income *was* barely more than $20,000, others 4 or 5+ times that. And, yes, in the lower--income years, I preferred earning lower income to earning less or nothing!
"You have missed the point entirely." -- Letsbefrank
1. But, you've created or invented a "point". The article does not state that all or even most new jobs paid only $10 an hour; you just made that up. For example, "Sue Thomas ... now makes $16 per hour at Golden Dragon."
And, as stated in the WaPo article, " 'Nobody wants to go back to less than nothing,' Boykins said."
2. Now, Letsbe..., it's you who seem to have missed my point, actually several points (not to mention some raised in the article).
First, "$10 an hour" is better than $7.40/hr. (the state's minimum-wage); and "$20,800 a year" is better than $15,392/yr.
Second, a job with a stable company is far more satisfactory and reassuring than working for a tiny, struggling quick mart (not to mention a chance of promotions, forming a union, etc.).
Third, see the last paragraph in my comment, ("If lower-wage employees had ZERO income, no jobs....").
Capicé?
Republicans. Enough said.
If Deshler thinks getting a 32% raise after a little over a year with a company is unfair, perhaps he should find him another job somewhere else.
How many company in the US gives 32% raise within a year on the job?
But this guy wants all of the perks and none of the costs. He wants to free-ride. Either for personal financial gain (at the expense of others) or the ideological goal of making it impossible for anyone to unionize. No thanks.
Being a RAP or HIP-HOP Student in a Conservative Republican University in a Conservative Republican State, I know THE FEELING for many of these Southerners.
For instance at MY Conservative Republican University, The Student Body & Administrators EMBRACED The Concepts of RIGHT-TO-WORK Labor Laws that limits The Power of Labor Union.
At many Blue State Universities, many of The Students & Faculty belong to a Labor Union.
Through our fear of socialism, we've created something far less efficient.
Confucius
Why is this "free-market" solution preferable to welfare again?
I moved away from my home to town to spend decades in the "big city" putting myself through school and learning skills. I then moved cross-country to move up into management. Finally, I live in a peaceful, pretty place and make a wonderful living. If I had stayed home, I'd be poor.
Because if your house has a mortgage, there's no guarantee you can sell it in an economically depressed area and have any money left after you've paid off the mortgage?
Because it would take several thousand dollars to relocate? If the guy with $1.15 in his bank account had several thousand dollars, he'd spend some of it on putting gas in his car.
Were you childless and single when you relocated? It's harder to do when you have a spouse and children.
Sure, many of us would rather live in a bucolic rural setting, away from the fast paced nature and noise of big cities. This Deshler fellow walked away from a job in Montgomery that would've secured him a middle class life, but he didn't like city life.
Welcome to the club. I can't tell you how many friends I've made over the years who arrived in Washington from places like southern Virginia, the Appalachias or rural counties of Pennsylvania. They all complained at first about traffic, increased noise, lack of ties to their communities like they had back home. And of course, they missed hunting.
But they stayed, and the reason was the money. One friend, who 30 years ago was working at a Zenith TV plant in rural PA for a little over $4/hr., moved to Washington, finished his GED, and eventually got a job in a machinist shop where computers ran the lathes. After first working on the floor, he trained himself to learn how to operate those computers, got promoted to a supervisory position and is now making more then $55,00 a year. It's not great wealth, but with a wife who makes approximately the same amount, he's solidly in the middle class.
Big city life has its drawbacks, but the pay will always be better. There's no good reason for some of these young people to hang on to a dream of living where they prefer when that dream guarantees living barely above the poverty line. Head east young man to Atlanta, or west to Houston, San Antonio or Dallas.
If you save your money and invest it well, you can always retire to the places you love---if there are any doctors and/or hospitals left in some of these blighted rural counties in the future.
A woman who had previously commuted two hours every day for a $7.75-per-hour job at a corn dog factory. A couple with five children that had roamed the country for years, filling in anywhere manufacturers were on strike. A single mother who had worked back-to-back eight-hour fast food shifts, rising every day at 3 a.m.
Was WAPO too busy to check the economic impact on the area? Where are those numbers?
What is WRONG with these people???
The third world drainage ditch below us is lifting just fine.
http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/JFK-o...
Perhaps it wants to tell us something about the company's culture.