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by itsoktocry 866 days ago
I don't think there is such thing as manufacturing investment without subsidization any more.

And it most often results in the Winner's Curse: the entity providing the greatest subsidies win's the "investment", but they give up so much in the process that the economic benefits are wiped out.

See: Tesla in Buffalo, VW in Ontario, FoxConn in Wisconsin.
4 comments
_ea1k 866 days ago
I'm not sure if I agree, tbh. You've certainly brought up some good cases of failures, but what about:

Tesla in Sparks NV, BMW in Greer SC, or Mercedes in Alabama and SC? It seems like those have more than paid for themselves by now. In at least one of those cases, they've had huge regional impacts.

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itsoktocry 866 days ago
>Tesla in Sparks NV

Ironically, you go to the website and there's a fake image of the factory, based on previous promises.

I can't speak to the others, but I'm sure there's some positive outliers!

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_ea1k 866 days ago
Why assume they are outliers? It seems like there are more successes than failures, just that the failures get attention.
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itsoktocry 866 days ago
>Why assume they are outliers?

Because when the government hands tax money over to profitable companies to "create jobs", you are inherently distorting the market.

>It seems like there are more successes than failures

Maybe, but I'm skeptical.

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onlyrealcuzzo 866 days ago
Foxconn in Wisconsin is the one people love to mention.

AFAIK - they got $3B in FUTURE benefits - of which none came to fruition.

Foxconn delivered nothing and also got almost nothing (~1% of that $3B).

Yeah - it was a dumb political stunt - and it unfortunately worked for the time. But it wasn't the massive financial disaster people think it was.

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psychlops 866 days ago
Overall, yes. But I suspect there are winners if we could follow the money trail.
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api 866 days ago
It's true globally too. China heavily subsidizes their industrial base as do many other countries.

When everyone else is subsidizing you have to subsidize too or you lose.

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newsclues 866 days ago
You can have tax policy that makes up for unfair subsidies or simply block those countries from your market.
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api 866 days ago
The first is a subsidy by another name. The second has a lot of knock-on effects unless you own the whole supply chain, and nobody does anymore.
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