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Thursday, October 2, 2014

Boeing moving 2000 jobs from Washington state

Via @BlogWood, I learned that Boeing is going to move 2000 skilled jobs away from Washington state, despite just receiving $8.7 billion (with a B) in subsidies for the years 2025-2040. Really, I'm speechless. "Chutzpah" is one of the more printable words I can think of to describe this.

You will recall that the state's legislators were angry when their $2 billion (present value of $3.2 billion over 20 years) 2003 subsidy for the Dreamliner did not stop Boeing from putting a Dreamliner assembly line in South Carolina. So the 2013 subsidy was supposed to guarantee that Boeing couldn't do this again.

Boeing's response no doubt will be that these jobs are in the Defense division, not in civil aircraft. Thus they are not covered by either the 2003 or the 2013 subsidy. This has already been hinted at by a commenter on the Business Week article, wraiths13@yahoo.com.






5 comments:

  1. This is I'm sure very upsetting for many people.

    If there's no incentive to perform, what exactly is the incentive incenting?

    The original subsidy wasn't an incentive, then. It's a prayer. Perhaps an almsgiving. Perhaps I missed something, but if an incentive isn't incenting anything, is that a misnomer?

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    Replies
    1. It kept Boeing from moving everything out of Washington.

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    2. @Jack... that's true! That's the silver lining I guess for Washington residents.

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    3. Boeing should have pulled a Henry Ford and raised the wages of these workers, so they could all buy their own cruise missile.

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  2. Could these state incentives be forbidden in the USA, pure and simple ? (as they are or will be in the EU, if I understand correctly)

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