No Loss for Words

I was listening to the television as I was working today and a commercial came on advertising how Toyota built a factory in Mississippi employing American workers manufacturing sophisticated consumer products.  That would be cars. 

It hit me that everyone in Washington D.C. is struggling to identify how we create family wage jobs in American today and the model that worked successfully in Mississippi was the one we all should be studying.

I don’t know all the particulars about how that factory was located where it was, but I would speculate that it had to do with a favorable regulatory climate in Mississippi coupled with a favorable tax environment.  Who woulda thought?  What did Mississippi offer to get Toyota to build their plant there?

Still speculating, I suspect that Toyota was looking for a community that would appreciate the investment they were making and the jobs they were creating and not view the company as either an enemy or exploiter but maybe as a partner. 

Successful businesses recognize the importance of worker satisfaction within the company.  Putting people to work in states that have suffered from long term under-employment can make a company somewhat popular.

I suspect that those workers in that plant in Mississippi appreciate the opportunity for long term prosperity that came to their town when Toyota could have gone almost anywhere else; but I bet it was the prosperity for their families they appreciate the most.

In addition, I suspect it will be cheaper for Toyota to operate a factory in Mississippi rather than Michigan or California for a variety of reasons?  Wouldn’t that be a Win/Win?

The amazing thing about this example of a Toyota plant in Mississippi is that if our priority for government is to create jobs and put Americans back to work, all we have to do is create a friendlier regulatory environment and start viewing job creators as allies rather than adversaries.  Instead of government listing all the requirements a company will have to comply with talk about how we can overcome the obstacles together to save time and money and get Americans working faster.

Boeing chose North Charleston, South Carolina to build the second assembly line for the Dreamliner because government in that state and county recognized the valuable partnership Boeing was offering to the region.  Will it be cheaper for Boeing to build airplanes in South Carolina than in Washington State; probably.

Who can remember when the Seattle Super Sonics were playing in the Seattle Center rather than Oklahoma City?  Team owners tried to make a deal that could keep the team in Seattle but the city council didn’t view the team as a valuable enough economic asset to put aside their personal views and keep the team in town.  Now when investors talk about bringing a team back to the Puget Sound region, Seattle gets upset when Bellevue or Renton are suggested as being friendlier hosts.  There is no doubt that Oklahoma City saw value where Seattle didn’t until the team was gone, then it was too late.

That old adage that it takes five times the effort to win a new customer as it does to keep an old one would suggest that we need to take a good hard look at why companies with good jobs are choosing Oklahoma, South Carolina, Mississippi, Nevada and Texas rather than Western Washington.

I’m not saying that there won’t be challenges, but if the goal is to create jobs that pay family wages then we need to focus on ways to make our community more attractive by stripping away some of the regulatory burden so companies like Boeing or Toyota will view us more favorably.

The key will be to stay focused on family wage jobs and the prosperity they bring to the community rather than fixating on a successful business ripe for the plucking.