Reply All: Negative Mount Pleasant

This recent episode of Reply All from Gimlet Media highlights so much of the power imbalance between multinational corporations, especially tech giants, and local communities that are desperate to find new opportunities for employment.

Reporter/producer Sruthi Pinnamaneni with the math:

Wisconsin will give Foxconn almost three billion dollars in incentives, and then, Mount Pleasant itself will chip in another 760 million dollars.

…Foxconn says that they’re gonna create jobs that pay an average of 50k a year, but the state is paying them $200,000 for each one of those jobs.

There is also an interview with Sruthi on the Verge about everything.

The deal was made behind closed doors with the village council and Foxconn representatives, and many locals are livid. In the face of rising inequality, why do we let capital run roughshod over us?

In my milieu growing up, politics was something private and for election day. But politics, with the cognizance that real consequences and benefits are at stake, is the solution. A politics that doesn’t devolve into profit or growth but rather a system that elevates us all.