Liberal Talk Radio

Readers know I never get tired of pointing out how a lack of national health care is crippling American industry. So of course I’m loving this story. Seems that Toyota wanted to open up a plant in North America, and, despite the fact that Alabama offered TWICE the incentives that Canada did, big T went with our neighbor to the north for all the predictable reasons. Check it:

Several U.S. states were reportedly prepared to offer more than double that amount of subsidy. But Fedchun said much of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs than are necessary for the Woodstock project.

He said 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.

“The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario,” Fedchun said.

In addition to lower training costs, Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said federal Industry Minister David Emmerson.

“Most people don’t think of our health-care system as being a competitive advantage,” he said.

How embarrasing.

Paul Krugman wisely points out that Fedchun’s a Toronto-based auto parts lobbyist, so his claims should be taken with due grains of salt. Still, the point stands. Our increasingly uneducated workforce and employer-based health care system are big disincentives to companies seeking to open plants here.