The new Foxconn factory will stretch 20 million square feet, the size of 11 football fields — and Wisconsin will shell out serious cash for it, if all goes according to Gov. Scott Walker’s plan.
On the table is up to $3 billion in state tax breaks. The Legislature could approve the economic incentive package as early as August.
These payouts, state officials said, come with lofty expectations. As long as Foxconn — an electronics titan that makes gadgets for Apple, Google and Amazon, among other firms — keeps hiring U.S. workers at the new flat-screen manufacturing facility, Wisconsin would cut the company $200 million to $250 million a year for up to 15 years.
That works out to a rough cost to the state of about $230,700 per worker, assuming the factory goes on to generate 13,000 jobs.
The coming plant represents a political victory for Walker, who bills himself a jobs creator and who faces re-election next year, as well as for President Donald Trump, who has made U.S. manufacturing central to his economic agenda.
Buying elections leads to buying factories and jobs? From the Chinese? From Chinese fascists. With taxpayer money. Crazyland. What would Ron/Rand Paul say?