Boeing's free-market move is going to cost Kansas big-time

[kurt_cagle]

7. Massively Funny

Boeing decided several years back to move their corporate headquarters out of Seattle to Chicago, along with plans to move a significant part of their development efforts to more "labor friendly" facilities. If they are in fact moving back to Seattle, I suspect that they've probably found that, among other things, the labor in Seattle is generally much better trained and with more advanced degrees, as well as being unionized.

However, there are also several ironies here. One of the reasons that the defense industry has been so successful is that it has distributed production and development plants in just about every state, even if such plants are relatively tiny, in great part so they can go to Congress and say that any move against them will result in jobs being cut in that representatives state/district. This is the defense industry equivalent to the financials' TBTF strategy. The Republicans attempted to use the hoary tactic of clamoring for reducing the deficit when the Dems are in power, even though typically it is the Republicans that have been most inclined to raise spending without corresponding revenues being derived elsewhere. Obama has called their bluff here, and has forced a situation where mandatory cuts will be made, most heavily in that GOP sacred cow of defense. Given a scaling back and ending of Iraq and Afghanistan, this isn't that surprising, but it is now hitting the defense industry hard. As these companies often tend to heavily back REPUBLICANS, this will in turn serve to reduce the GOP financial base.