The Eighth Wonder of the World (failed Foxconn project in Wisconsin)

[lanlady]

Really interesting article about the giant con that was Foxconn deal in Wisconsin:

Hopes were high among the employees who joined Foxconn’s Wisconsin project in the summer of 2018. In June, President Donald Trump had broken ground on an LCD factory he called “the eighth wonder of the world.” The scale of the promise was indeed enormous: a $10 billion investment from the Taiwanese electronics giant, a 20 million-square-foot manufacturing complex, and, most importantly, 13,000 jobs.

Which is why new recruits arriving at the 1960s office building Foxconn had purchased in downtown Milwaukee were surprised to discover they had to provide their own office supplies. “One of the largest companies in the world, and you have to bring your own pencil,” an employee recalls wondering. Maybe Foxconn was just moving too fast to be bothered with such details, they thought, as they brought their laptops from home and scavenged pencils left behind by the building’s previous tenants. They listened to the cries of co-workers trapped in the elevators that often broke, noted the water that occasionally leaked from the ceiling, and wondered when the building would be transformed into the gleaming North American headquarters an executive had promised.

The renovations never arrived. Neither did the factory, the tech campus, nor the thousands of jobs. Interviews with 19 employees and dozens of others involved with the project, as well as thousands of pages of public documents, reveal a project that has defaulted on almost every promise. The building Foxconn calls an LCD factory — about 1/20th the size of the original plan — is little more than an empty shell. In September, Foxconn received a permit to change its intended use from manufacturing to storage.

https://www.theverge.com/21507966/foxconn-empty-factories-wisconsin-jobs-loophole-trump?utm_source=pocket-newtab

[luv2fly]

1. Yeah, hardly a "wonder"

Everyone knew it was going to fall flat based on Foxconn's record, but Snotty Wanker and his accomplices rammed it through anyways. Wisconsin taxpayers will never recover the costs.

[eppur_se_muova]

2. Scott Walker is a putz. Hope WI Dems are using this in a barrage of ads before the election.

Shows the "pro-business" GOP is really pro-grift.

[CaptYossarian]

3. The whole project was destined to be a disaster.

Foxconn had a reputation of having "off the charts" employee suicides in its overseas manufacturing plants.

They estimated using one million gallons of Lake Michigan water per day.

They promised to put Wisconsinites back to work, yet built the plant near the Illinois state line. It should have been in the Manitowoc area, so the jobs would have gone to the people whose taxes paid for these breaks.

Now, the size of the plant will only be 25% of what was promised. That probably means only 25% of the jobs will be created.

Just another Republican business failure. Wait until the offices get condemned.