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Monday, July 25, 2005
Good business and good politics
Two related bits in the NYT Opinion section today. I (and quite a few lefty bloggers) should probably just post a permanent link to Paul Krugman but he's at it again today with the sort of clear headed economic thinking that seems to be completely beyond today's Republican party.
Someone at Daily Kos made reference to Toyota's decision last week and I meant to post something about it then but never got around to it which I now regret since it is always fun to claim you saw something on 3WN before you saw it in the NYT. The argument itself is not new, of course, and Toyota is only a recent and vivid example. One of the better 3WN threads involved a similar argument a few months ago.Modern American politics is dominated by the doctrine that government is the problem, not the solution. ... You don't have to be a liberal to realize that this is wrong-headed. Corporate leaders understand quite well that good public services are also good for business.
...
But last month Toyota decided to put the new plant, which will produce RAV4 mini-S.U.V.'s, in Ontario. Explaining why it passed up financial incentives to choose a U.S. location, the company cited the quality of Ontario's work force.
What made Toyota so sensitive to labor quality issues? Maybe we should discount remarks from the president of the Toronto-based Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, who claimed that the educational level in the Southern United States was so low that trainers for Japanese plants in Alabama had to use "pictorials" to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech equipment.
But there are other reports, some coming from state officials, that confirm his basic point: Japanese auto companies opening plants in the Southern U.S. have been unfavorably surprised by the work force's poor level of training.
...
But education is only one reason Toyota chose Ontario. Canada's other big selling point is its national health insurance system, which saves auto manufacturers large sums in benefit payments compared with their costs in the United States.
A second piece in the same section shows the Democratic governor of Virginia (no that's not a typo) doing some good for the people of his state with something other than tax cuts:
I don't know what bothers me more, the fact that Republicans have so screwed up the county with their anti-government mantra or that so few Democrats have been able to turn around and make said screwing up into a winning issue.Seeking to stem the job hemorrhage in rural southern Virginia as the region's textile plants were shuttered, Mr. Warner started creating one-stop worker-assistance storefronts in depressed rural towns in 2002. Beyond helping laid-off workers navigate the maze of federal trade adjustment assistance and unemployment checks, Mr. Warner backed a program to help workers without a high school diploma get a G.E.D. in 90 days or less. He put up incentive money to attract Nascar engine builders to the region. Indeed, the area's love for Nascar has been harnessed: state-sponsored ads tout the G.E.D. program at Nascar races.
So far, about 20,000 workers have gone through some aspect of the program, at one of the 131 centers in the state, Mr. Warner's aides say. The unemployment rate in one of the hardest-hit towns, Martinsville, was still a whopping 10.4 percent in May, but it was 15.7 percent in January 2002, when the program started.
[And please note that I passed up some easy snark about NASCAR fans and GEDs.]
