Very sad:
Whirlpool Corp. announced Friday it will close its Evansville, Ind., factory next year, moving the plant’s production of top-freezer refrigerators to a facility in Mexico.
Citing the need to trim manufacturing capacity, Whirlpool said the mid-2010 plant closure will eliminate 1,100 full-time jobs.
Whirlpool’s stock gained 2.4% on the news – because the money men are not interested in anything other than quarterly balance sheets, and this switch to Mexico will improve same. Meanwhile, Obama’s plan has been to bail out failed banks and failed corporations…anyone see something wrong here?
Now, you can go all lefty on this and try to place punitive taxes on Whirlpool for moving jobs to Mexico…as if that would do anything worthwhile. Such actions would just place Whirlpool in a position to fail, completely. At which time Obama would step in with bail out money. Or, you can stop being stupid.
First step in the process – figure out a way to make it more profitable for Whirlpool to keep the jobs in the US. Best guess, right off the cuff, would be to lower business taxes to whatever level is necessary to make moving the jobs out un-necessary. If you can’t do that, award grants for those willing to start up new appliance factories in the US, even if its foreign-owned companies. Whirlpool is a grand, old American company…but if they are giving us the finger no matter what we do, then we’d be worse than fools to not seek alternatives. Main thing – do something to keep the manufacturing capacity in the US.
Until we learn the lesson, we won’t get out of this. We have to learn – from Obama through corporate board room to American living room – that we must make it, mine it and grow it, here; in the United States. With our own hands, using our own resources. If we don’t learn this lesson, then we’ll just see more and more of America out-sourced while more and more debt piles up until it completely collapses (which almost happened in September – and will happen, soon, if we don’t change course). The choice is ours – I hope we choose wisely.
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