Mayor Jenny Durkan appears uncomfortable interacting with the business community and has lost power to an assertive council. That body is obsessed with defunding the police without a viable Plan B. Its membership is stuffed with career activists and pols, with thin business experience at best.
No wonder the council is hostile to business. Even the smallest shop is exploitative capitalism. The council’s loudest voices are running a “revolution.” Only in a city made so prosperous by hated capitalism could this intellectual Ponzi scheme be tolerated or seem without consequences.
Never mind small business and retail shops. Big business in Seattle isn’t very happy either. Boeing announced today that it plans to discontinue manufacturing its 787 Dreamliner plane in Washington state and consolidate 787 production in (nonunion) South Carolina.
The governor is reported to be considering punitive tax consequences.
9 comments:
Washington State and Seattle: How DARE you reject our politics! We will punish you until you don't!
Using the government to punish citizens until they behave — though they are legally and constitutionally free to choose otherwise— is the essence of progress. Right?
The punitive taxing move is a reason for Boeing to leave Washington altogether.
Eric Hines
Which is really what makes me scratch my head. "If you move production of this one plane out of Washington State, we'll tax your remaining production facilities more heavily!" Like, that's actually incentive to keep on moving out, NOT to stay.
And Boeing already has objected, if only largely symbolically, to being singled out for such treatment by moving its corporate headquarters from Seattle to Chicago.
Eric Hines
Moving their management to Chicago was the start of Boeing's problems, in my opinion - that will always become the case, when you have a highly engineered product; once you separate management from engineering, you no longer have engineers entering the management cycle - they all turn to money men and Human Resources. The outcome is that management will spend too much time on their relationships with investors, too much time placing demands on production that they don't understand, and too little time understanding how their company works. The 737MAX is a good example of these outcomes.
Boeing has moved production of their newest airframe and left the 737 in Washington. That will send a very strong message about their thoughts about the future. If they're smart they will move management to the Carolinas as well.
It takes a lot for a company to close, or even to move. But liberals nationally don't see the connection. It's all happening somewhere else. Then when it finally comes to them they will have some local cause to blame instead, usually tied to conservatives. The free market is not a "system" in the sense of an imposed order. It is a force like gravity that operates among individuals and groups. It is, however, dependent on rule of law, or it is not a free market.
They think they have a property interest in their jobs, even if property otherwise is illegitimate. The idea that an employer too has freedom is anathema. It's like reverse slavery, and based on the same sickness of spirit: freedom for me but not for thee.
It's like we're playing out the themes of "Exit, Voice and Loyalty."
Aggie, re Boeing's move to Chicago...I think it's significant that Boeing has two major divisions, Commercial Aircraft and Military Aircraft, each with its own engineering and sales as well as manufacturing. So it would not be possible to colocate top corporate management with *both* of them unless you moved everything else as well (Military is in St Louis, IIRC)
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