Local Economic Stimuli: The Case of SSI

James Duvall, M.A.
Director
Big Bone University

This week I have been working at one of the great jobs our local government brags about bringing into Boone County. In this Teaparty essay I would like to discuss some of its economic implications and see what you think. In this essay I will be calling this factory the Solo Soupcan Inferno (SSI), and I will only say that it was built about three years ago on prime Boone County farmland — which is in itself a loss of important wealth to our county. In fact I consider it part of a program of economic terrorism.

This job is hot and sweaty — I know now what the muckrakers meant by the term sweat shop — I work with nice people — about half of them are aliens — legal I presume — and the wage is $7.50 an hour; which is about enough to keep my family in food and toilet paper. Hopefully aliens can live on such a wage, as they are better adapted to poverty conditions back home. It is this high wage that is drawing them here. We call it(in the local government-speak)“job creation”. For about every fifty or so of this "high-level" job, we also create one supervisor's position, at (I would guess) about $45,000 a year — a bonanza for someone. ECO-NOMIC-GROWTH!

As an interesting aside — interesting to me, anyway — I will mention an exchange I had with a little guy in a green shirt and a paunchy stomach, who claimed to be the big boss over the whole outfit. He was standing on our line — the only person doing nothing — with a puzzled look on his fat little face, while the rest of us busily, sweatily, and carefully lined up soup cans on pallets, and sent them to be shrink-wrapped.

Nobody, but me, thought the entire enterprise might be a colossal waste of time and resources (this enterprise is similar to soup cans in certain ways, but much more wasteful — using tons of plastic products — and the tons of material produced, that are not absolutely perfect, go straight to the landfill). So, I say to this guy, “Sir, why don't you fire all of us, and find a more efficient way to get this done.”

Mr. SSI looked at me coolly (he was the only guy not sweating in the Inferno), and indicated with a nod that he thought that was a very good idea. “Something is all whacked up here. Those people on that line over there are just standing there doing nothing.” I was a bit shocked at that, and only replied: “Well, sometimes the stuff doesn't come at the right time.” End of conversation — but there's a point. These wonderful jobs our local government has created through tax incentives have accomplished two things: (1) destroyed farmland — acres of it, for sweat shops (there is another plant very similar to SSI withing seeing distance of it), and (2) provided totally expendable jobs for aliens and the few local people unfortunate enough to have tumbled to the bottom of the economic ladder.

So far we have established that the Inferno — SSI — a subsidiary of a non-local company, provides income to the local economies of Boone, Haiti, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic, and perhaps a few and sundry other collapsing Banana Republics — that, I suppose, is one plus side. Go figure.

Is there another side, and is it the plus side? I am asking, Are there any negative economic benefits?

I already mentioned the tax incentive — I suppose it was a whopper; the equipment in the Inferno is expensive, state-of-the-art; the head engineer — a very nice guy — told me so. I suppose this is an economic “Boone” for him. This son of the far north is working 12-hour shifts (the aliens and I only work ten-hour shifts!) and when I asked him if he got a lot of overtime pay, he smiled and said it would be nice, but it doesn't happen.

Are there other costs to the local economy? Certainly. Do you think that the only aliens that come here are those I see in the Inferno? Well, several of them are couples who work together. I don't know who is watching their children while they work, probably grandmother (who probably gets a nice little SSI check every month); but she won't be doing sitting around long: the children will be going back to school. You get to pay for that too.

Since these sons and daughters of the “deep south” probably do not speak English (at least not very well; most of their mothers speak only Spanish; their fathers usually speak a little better — all nice people — I love to talk to them. Most of them have wonderful smiles (— at least during break time); as I was saying... — You get to pay a bilingual teacher to reinforce their Spanish, and teach them the English they would learn just as well on the playground. In fact, you get to pay for the education of these bright-faced children who are soon going to change the political, economic, and cultural face of our nation — educate them well; they may be our next rulers — at least they weren't born in Kenya! (As far as I can tell, anyway.).

What else? Who pays for hospital emergencies for all of these uninsured workers and their families? Yes, temporary services offer health insurance, payable by the week, but that won't matter much longer, since Mr. O. and you are going to pay for it soon — I sure wasn't interested in purchasing at the weekly rate for my family — so we are not covered.

What else do you get to pay for as “hosts”, since it goes along with job creation, which your local government head-honcho thinks is pure economic gain. (There is no such thing.) The services and amenities are quite wide-ranging. Besides schools, there are parks, libraries, health services; and then there is the crowding in parking lots, stores, and drive-throughs. You let them help you pay taxes for roads, 911 services (which they use, probably more than you do), and of course, Sheriff “services” — ask the next deputy you see about that; they are why we have so many deputies — and they even help pay for it, a little. Sometimes they use the services of the local jailer — ask about that the next time you are in the hoosegow — but we are “creating jobs” — for jailers! Then you, me, they, get to pay for court services — ever been in District Court? You never see an honest face there — I can assure you that none of the hard-working aliens of the SSI sweatshop ever have time to end up in court, so it must be the locals — I mean the original Anglo-American locals, descendants of the pioneers — who are crowding the courtrooms with their shiftless ways, while our brethren of the “deep south” work hard to pay for the system. (A lot of people blame the rising cost of services on aliens — I blame it on false “job creation.”)

That is about all I can say about “Local Economic Stimuli” today — I probably missed something in my analysis — I face another ten-hour day at Solo Soupcan beginning at two this afternoon, and I am a bit tired. The hazy thought comes into my mind that the only people who seem to benefit from this system are the operatives of our local government, and the little guy in the green shirt; but surely there is a flaw in my reasoning — I offer it only as a working hunch.

My training as an historian is not useless as I work at SSI — I think of Rome slowly but surely absorbing the people of the ancient world. As the population of the ancient city rose, became swollen, and came to rely on slave labour, free bread and the circus, its character changed so much that when the barbarians finally took over there was not one true Roman left, perhaps only a little of their blood had trickled down, and that is a great consolation.

Written 6 Aug 2010.

Big Bone University: A Think Tank, Research Institute, & Public Policy Center
Established 2000 A. D.
Big Bone, Kentucky
Nec ossa solum, sed etiam sanguinem.
jkduvall@gmail.com

Note: According to my subtle calculations, $7.50 an hour is worth about $4.00 an hour twenty years ago; but, as I remember, I was making about $6.25 an hour for similar work, at a plant that actually produced a commodity. I learnt the name of nearly all the several hundred people who worked there, and only a handful were Hispanic. Please do not misunderstand; I have lived in Mexico, and love people from the “deep south.v I think they are happier at home — it is we who have allowed our government and economic “leadership” to create massive incentives for them to leave home, and sojourn in an alien land — ours.

For the sequel to this essay see A Note & Good-bye to the Solo Soupcan Inferno