Workers in the U.S. South Too Uneducated to Build Cars? Automobile manufacturer Toyota announced that it would build a new car factory in Woodstock, Ontario, even though several US states offered greater subsidies and tax breaks to the company. The reason?

[M]uch of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project... Nissan and Honda have encountered difficulties getting new plants up to full production in recent years in Mississippi and Alabama due to an untrained - and often illiterate - workforce. In Alabama, trainers had to use 'pictorials' to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.

(Also a contributing factor -- Canada's national health service, which apparently drives down the overall cost of each individual worker.)

To be fair to the US South, the problem may be more apparent there because of the region's zealousness in competing for automobile factories. But the point remains -- Toyota is saying US workers are so poorly educated that it's not worth the effort to train them. Whom to blame? And how many more factory (and other) jobs will have to be lost to better-educated workforces in other countries before this pings on the national radar?
posted by jscalzi on Jul 3, 2005 - 87 comments

Movies for Music
From the press release: "Movies for Music" (moviesformusic.org) is an online film contest with a simple aim: to give the public a clear and honest look at the music industry. As more people learn how the music business works, major label CD sales will plummet faster. The contest launches Monday.

The short film contest launched today, and first place is a ZVue handheld video player.
posted by bob sarabia on Jun 14, 2004 - 3 comments

"We have entered the Century of the Environment, in which the immediate future is usefully conceived as a bottleneck: science and technology, combined with foresight and moral courage, must see us through it and out."

Or so says Edward O. Wilson in February's Scientific American. Consumption and production can NOT be infinite, no matter what "near-horizon timelines" predict. But will capitalism rise to the occasion and will the free market fix the wrongs it's committed?
posted by taumeson on Jan 16, 2002 - 18 comments

Intel has a terrible quarter. Is the PC industry in the toilet, or is it just Intel executing badly?

It's just Intel executing badly. (Reports of the demise of the PC industry are greatly exaggerated.) AMD has another great quarter and appears to be stealing Intel market share.
posted by Steven Den Beste on Oct 11, 2000 - 9 comments