VERBATIM POST
Foreign companies are increasing their industrial investment in the United States and concentrating their growth in the Southern states due to their “most hospitable business climates,” according to a new report.
Industrial investment by overseas firms in America rose $30 billion between 2009 and 2010 alone, much of it concentrated in the chemical and automotive industries.
“It is heavily focused on the southeastern states and Texas,” according to Joel Kotkin, executive editor of NewGeography.com and a contributing editor to the City Journal in New York. He cites a study showing that the five states with the best business climates and 10 of the top 12 are from the old Confederacy.
He also notes that foreign companies generally invest in those “right to work” states to avoid troubles with unionized workers.
The largest Mercedes plant in the United States is in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and last year the German company invested $350 million in the plant.
German automaker Volkswagen announced it will build a new assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. Nissan, Toyota, and Kia have also announced major new plant openings or expansions in the South.
The average cost of building these facilities is over $1 billion, and they bring not only higher-paying jobs at the auto plants, but also employment at parts suppliers and other related industries. For instance, Germany’s Thyssen Krupp has invested $4.6 billion in the steel industry in Alabama, reports Kotkin, whose article originally appeared in Forbes.com.
He writes that managers in foreign firms believe Southern workers “have not picked up the bad habits and work rules common among their unionized Midwestern brethren.”
Only 7,100 auto workers in Alabama are unionized, and less than five percent of workers in Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia belong to a union.
And according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, foreign industrial firms are far less likely to impose layoffs on their workforce than their domestic competitors.
If yankee owned American companies were smart they too would move South for the same reasons.
ReplyDeleteHeck yeah.
ReplyDeleteAs a native Floridian born in 1947 who can still recall when Florida was a Southern State, I can tell you first-hand that being overrun by Yankees may be financially lucrative, but it certainly does destroy a State's Southern Heritage when you end up with more Yankees than native Southerners.
ReplyDeleteImagine going into a major supermarket like Publix in a Southern State where you have been living for 64 years, and having the store manager tell you that he did not know what hushpuppies were, and whether or not they carried hushpuppy mix. Imagine going into a Denny's restaurant and discovering that they do not serve grits with breakfast--you have a choice of hashbrowns or potato casserole.
You start asking yourself, "What planet am I on, and how did I get here, because this certainly is not the South?"
You start asking yourself, "What planet am I on, and how did I get here, because this certainly is not the South?"
ReplyDeleteSuch a shame. I remember when the wage for those drive through milk shops was $1 an hour and when I worked 10 hours on the farm for $6 a day which was the top wage, but money went so far back then.