You're working from an assumption that were it not for those states, those jobs would be union jobs. It is more likely that a good number of those plants would be built in Mexico were there not RTW alternatives in the United States. Estimates are that the cost of UAW labor adds approximately $2000 to the price of a new domestically assembled car, but no additional value.
I still don't know what you're complaining about. The cost of living in most of the south is a steal. The "low paying jobs" that you're complaining about will provide for a very nice standard of living here that rivals (if not exceeds) what you'd get from a union job in the Detroit area.
Let's educate a dummy. Most of the tax breaks are abatements on property taxes in which the company pays property taxes on the value of the undeveloped property for several years and gradually (or all at once, depending on the agreement) starts paying on the fully developed value of the land. Some agreements provide for paying money for initial worker training.
In return, these companies provide plants that cost as much as $1 billion to build. So hundreds of construction workers build the plant and earn money that they use to buy things and pay taxes. Then the plant opens and employs a couple thousand people who earn money that they use to buy things and pay taxes. Most of us can do math and realize that the tax abatements cost the government little if anything. We can also figure out that outlays providing for some worker training can be recouped in a relatively short period of time. There may be some infrastructure improvements, but those costs can also be recouped relatively quickly. Everything beyond that is gravy.
A plant that employs 2000 and pays an average wage of $15/hour will have an annual payroll of over $60,000,000/year. I can imagine you in a position of leadership saying that you don't want to pay a pittance for an extra $60 million in economic activity in your town. And that doesn't include the satellite economic activity generated by that plant.
The level playing field that gets you billions in federal money?
Let me educate a real dummy. By catering to Big Business and giving them the RTW gift, perhaps there will be a rise in relatively low-paying jobs that aren't really middle class. The "gravy" all goes to the businesses who locate there. They either get the land for nothing or very little, and then the
taxpayer pays for the infrastructure that will serve the plant...off-ramps, transit lines, etc. By the time the plant finally opens, each of the jobs created actually cost taxpayers a bundle.
I live quite close to a huge manufacturer that employs over 150,000 people locally, and they've been in existence since the early 1900's. They still get huge tax breaks, and don't have to pay anything but a small portion of the environmental damage they have caused, which has cost billions to clean-up and is still ongoing. The Federal Government is picking up the tab because this ultra-profitable company threatens to relocate to the Mid-South if they don't get their way.
Whenever they introduce a new product line, they blackmail the state government into new perks lest they relocate that product line elsewhere. State politicians inevitably cave and the company gets it's way.
I'm glad you'd be happy at a career that pays $15 per hour. And yes, I've been to the South and seen how you can get a house for far less money than in most parts of the country. I've seen the mini-mansions in Collierville and Germantown that would cost 2-3 times that much in California, for instance. The great thing for companies though is that they get to create new equivalents of FedEx Express, where the workers are "at-will" employees and the company holds all the cards. Just like FedEx, crummy retirement plans and oppressive work rules are the order of the day. And with RTW, anyone who wants to organize can be targeted and eliminated, just like at FedEx, because there is no union to protect your job or guarantee some decent level of employee rights.
Sure, unions sometimes protect workers that should be fired...that's a given. But, overall, union workers produce a better product and have higher levels of productivity than their non-union counterparts. Just ask anyone in the construction trade "who gets the job done right---the first time", and they will say "union workers". I have a friend who is a project manager for a major construction company that builds universities, hospitals, schools etc. They only use union labor, because they have learned the hard way that having to re-work a project is far more costly than doing it right the first time.
RTW also lowers the bar..for everyone but Big Business. Maybe Billy Bob in Smyrna was able to move out of his single-wide because he got a job at the Nissan plant for $15 per hour. But that's about all that Billy Bob is ever going to make, and maybe he's OK with that. It's like FedEx, where our wages never keep pace with inflation any more. We go backwards every year, and have been for many years, and that's fine with Fred, because he not only saves and makes more money, but he gets to slap a new layer of rules on us continually...and we have no choice but to accept them, or leave.
Republicans and Libertarians are always crowing about "freedom", "self-reliance", and "exceptonalism", and then they support policies like RTW, which create mediocrity and jobs that go nowhere. Sure, maybe Billy Bob will get his AA from the local JC and become a foreman, but probably not. He'll work there for 30 years and then retire with his puny annuity...back to the single-wide from which he came.
The GOP is nothing but a front for Big Business, a clearing house for putting Republican policies into action. Snyder, Scott, Walker, and the rest are nothing but operatives for Big Business, who put them into office and will take care of them when they leave. That isn't the way our government is supposed to operate, is it? Is that freedom? No. it isn't. It's a corporatocracy, which you dummies interpret as "freedom" and representative democracy. The only thing really getting represented is business, not the people.
You're too dumb to see it.
