Under the deal with SolarCity, the state will spend $350 million to build the sprawling factory on South Park Avenue and provide $400 million in funding for equipment, with the state following the economic development model that it used to build up the semiconductor industry in the Albany area.
Under that model, the state invests in state-of-the-art facilities and equipment that typically are too costly for companies to acquire on their own and then signs agreements with companies, like SolarCity, that want to access it. . . . [emphasis supplied]The "economic development model" is State ownership of the factory and State ownership of the equipment. . . . i.e., "public" ownership of the means of production -- a hallmark of Communism. Although one or two factories may not mean NY has gone communist ...
SUNY Poly has also sought to use this same model in Marcy where it owns a site that is being developed in hopes of attracting up to three computer chip manufacturing plants.
We certainly have not had armed revolutionaries taking over factories like in Russia a century ago . . . But we have had over-regulation, taxation, and trade laws shut down factories here sending the jobs overseas to the benefit of large transnational corporations that are cozy with the government. . . . and now we are trying to "lure" jobs back and reopen factories with taxpayer financed incentives like the deal discussed here plus a loose immigration policy that drives wages down.
Whether by armed revolution or by laws and regulations, isn't the end result the same? Elites (rather than the public) will control the means of production . . . and the people working in the factories will be nothing more than serfs.
3 comments:
NYS seems to have developed an economic theory not considered by Karl Marx. Under classical Marxism as brought to us by Lenin, communism was the system in which the means of production were owned by the people. Socialism was the transitional system in which the means were owned by the state until the state withered away. NY is now developing a system under which the state builds the means of production and then give them to someone not state or the people to operate.
NY also has developed a political system not covered in most civics books, that of elected monarchy. This is different from a constitutional monarchy in which the monarch has a title but no real power to govern. In NY the monarch has no royal title but great power to rule.
Very well put Keith. This is hybrid model of Socialism. This economic development scheme does not totally fit into the Communist model, but seems to fit better into the Socialist model. Under Socialism, worker’s have a fixed wage. They are usually minimally compensated for their work, but granted benefits like vacation time, universal health care, subsidized child-care, etc. without any of the capitalistic free enterprise enticements. Worker productivity suffers because they quickly realized that they would not benefit from working harder, so most gave up. The incentive for industrial research and development does progress solely due to the fact that the rewards are returned solely to the business owners profit coffers. In New York, the system is a Socialistic hybrid because all profits are allowed to be amassed by an elite class of business owners. In return for producing relative marginal employment numbers, all of the government funding of the industry is never reimbursed. This method of economic development is fertile ground for corruption at all levels of the society.
The state has been in the business of funding private industry for a long time. Cuomo has taken it to a new level by placing state, taxpayer, money in primary as opposed to secondary positions. This is basically state ownership and control. It is also what our local nanocenter is, a state owned, state financed facility that may attract some level of private users. There is no private sector risk at all. The risk and bills are all backed by the taxpayer. And, our politicians including the brain dead Republicans trumpet it as some panacea to our economic ills. Go figure.
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