Caterpillar has ruled out building a planned new plant in Illinois due to the negative business climate, via AP:
“Please understand that even if your community had the right logistics for this project, Caterpillar’s previously documented concerns about the business climate and overall fiscal health of the state of Illinois still would have made it unpractical for us to select your community for this project,” the email, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, says.
Caterpillar CEO Doug Oberhelman last year complained to Gov. Pat Quinn about the state’s business climate after Illinois raised income taxes. Oberhelman noted that Caterpillar is regularly courted by other states trying to lure away the company’s headquarters, though he later said the company has no plans to leave.
The plant will be located closer to Caterpillar’s division headquarters in North Carolina:
The company will instead focus on a location closer to its division headquarters in Cary, N.C., Peoria County officials were told in an email sent to them shortly after the close of business and later obtained by the Journal Star. The plant stood to bring with it from Japan roughly 1,000 jobs manufacturing track-type tractors and mini hydraulic excavators.
I have to wonder for how long companies will have the option of picking and choosing states based on business climate. The entire thrust of the Obama administration’s policies, from health care to energy to labor relations, is to nationalize negative business policies such as those which exist in Illinois.
Rather than modeling best practices such as right-to-work and low tax structures, the Democratic Pary solution is to model worst practices and seek to impose those worst practices uniformly throughout the country.
How long before we hear that it is “unfair” for Caterpillar to “discriminate” against Illinois?
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Wait till they start talking about bailing out states (of course they won’t phrase it this way).
America is two separate countries, and as long as we are all under the same DC roof we conservatives are screwed.
Right. It will be called, “investing in …”.
How long before we hear that it is “unfair” for Caterpillar to “discriminate” against Illinois?
My guess: hours or days.
But they’ll get serious if Obama is reelected. Meanwhile, he is assured to carrying Illinois but would like to pick off a purple state or few.
If we start chasing companies like Caterpillar out of this country, we will truly be a 3rd world country. This is just about the best run company on earth and they provide very thousands of very high quality jobs. And they pay a lot of payroll, sales, income and other taxes. But CAT is taking the unions on head-on everywhere they can and winning.
Good for Caterpillar!
Standing up to the unions is the only way to stem some of their power.
I own stock in this company and “I approve of their actions.”
It isn’t the unions–it is the onerous taxes that Idiot Quinn raised yet again in our state. I loathe the man. Not only at, I read today that the majority of Illinois residents would vote yet again for Dear Leader. Illinois is so scr**ed.
So you’re thinking they’re going to get the Boeing treatment? Yeah. That’s probably a safe bet.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/284623/obama-vs-boeing-wars-not-over-mario-loyola
It’s not just the political climate in Illinois that is forcing companies like Cat to make these kinds of decisions. Illinois is losing people. Illinois Policy has documented the migration out of Illinois. If a company doesn’t have access to quality employees in a state, it will go somewhere else that does.
It stands to reason that a company has to look at two things: the cost of doing business with a particular state and the expenses it will encounter there. If a state is a union locked state, with a high cost of living, employees have to be paid more to provide them with a livable wage. $20/hr in Detroit is less net income than $20/hr in Houston.
BIG GOVERNMENT ruins.
Markets make efficient use of scarce resources, provide choice, and RAISE the standard of living for all.
Just that simple. Works every time you try it.
Illinois: The next Michigan.
The United States: The next Illinois.
I assume the anti-Caterpillar press releases are being prepared as we speak, along with an email to Barry demanding he do something.
Will the last person to leave Illinois please turn out the light.
“Three county Quinn” we called him … he only won three counties, but squeaked out a win because Cook County is Chicago. We “down-staters” don’t count for much.
Illinois law required funding of the public union pensions, but they never got around to that part of the deal. Does that negate the pension contract validity, or are IL citizens on the hook for the $80 billion plus, idly promised by our Democrat vote-buying overlords?
We keep sending our governors to prison, but the Chicago crime machine keeps cranking out more corruption. Perhaps the Chicago mayors are really “The Boss”, or “The Godfather”, as they call Rahm Emanuel.
Caterpillar can run but can they hide? Chicago has their man in the White House now … will he sue the Big Cat for seeking to escape the tyranny? With Obama promising to fundamentally transform our country, we better not give his administration of radicals four more years of surrendering our freedoms. Just look what the Chicago mob has done for Illinois …
I would LOVE to see Madigan voted out–a perpetual case of hope springing eternal!
I live in a Chicago suburb and work in downtown Chicago. I would be out of here except for my kids and my job both being here.
Illinois has Democrats: Governor Pat Quinn, Sen. Dick Durbin, Rahm “Tiny Dancer” Emmanuel, David Axelod, Mike Madigan (Speaker of the Illinois House) and his daughter Lisa (Illinois AG) and casinos, tax increases, red-light cameras, cameras watching cameras, taxes on top of taxes… and the fix is in.
Illinois is no longer the land of Lincoln. But, it is returning to its prairie status.
One of the progressive mistakes of the 1960’s Supreme Court was to rule in favor of “one-man-one-vote”. States were once set up with Senate Districts which were geographic, not demographic. Yes, citizens of less dense districts had greater sway than those of more populated districts. But having senate seats equal in population means that a few counties control the state. My recollection is that in the last Illinois statewide election, one person won by carrying one county, and another carried 6 counties. Cook County rules Illinois. The moochers in the big city want the workers down state to provide for them.
We having “dying counties” where the population is continually shrinking. Perhaps if those counties had some political power, they wouldn’t be shrinking.
A few years ago I started buying shares and a few calls in CAT when shares were going for betwwen $30 and $40.
Today CAT is down a wee bit … to around $114.
Rock on, CAT!!! Keep making the right decisions and locate your operations wherever is best …. before it’s too late!!!
I always suspected you were a fat-CAT.
Professor,
I wish! In my situation, in which my wife plays the part analogous to the federal government … we don’t necessarily have a revenue problem … we have a huge spending problem!
LukeHandCool (who enjoys few things more than teaching single moms, and others who have never invested, about investing. He’s spent many enjoyable hours during breaks at work going over all aspects of investing with ladies who previously barely knew what a share of stock was, let alone how to go about actually buying stock. One lady who is a custodian in our building asked me if I would mind teaching her a little … I replied that not only would I not mind, at times I would probably get so excited that she’d probably have a hard time shutting me up. We’ve got to get people who think corporate America has no meaning in their lives feeling like they have a stake).
[…] […]
Professor:
That business climate thing is symptomatic of other problems. Liberalism run amock. New York probably shares those problems. Which is why Ithaca, New York will probably never ever see a new Chick-fil-a. Sorry.
Luke, if you’re good at teaching about stocks, PLEASE, PLEASE make some You-tube videos that the rest of us can point people to! If you want to save Capitalism, you need to explain it to people, AND let them see how they can make money at it. All they hear is how they’re getting money taken away.
radiofreeca,
I lend my “students” my books, explain the basics, and introduce them to various websites.
I LOVE your idea about using youtube videos. But not with me in front of the camera!! I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of that before! There are already youtube videos out there. I’m going to start saving them in my favorites so I can use them.
I saw a couple of nice videos on basic option strategies like iron condors made by Zacks. Very easy and clear.
Thanks for pointing out what was right in front of my nose!!
LukeHandCool (who has many dreams for the future, but one is to work with innercity kids and get them learning about investing).
Search “Milton Friedman” on youtube.com. He says it all in clear, concise language. And without a teleprompter or beginning each sentence with, “Let me make this perfectly clear.”.
Doing well with stocks is simple. Just get elected to congress. You’ll be provided with all the insider info you’ll need.
Henry does few stocks. COMMODITIES.
You got that right Our ‘Enry!
I mostly work with options.
LukeHandCool (whose best buddy at work is an Apple fanatic. About five years ago I was trying to get him interested in investing. I used Apple as an example (it was around $70 a share at the time). He didn’t get started. So now, about once a month, I yell over to him, like I did today, “Hey Jon … let’s check and see what Apple closed at today … remember when I told you to buy it at around $70? Dude, it’s almost at $500.” I just love doing that 🙂
This will not be the last move for Cat I am sure. They purchased a company with large land holdings in Texas with more than enough room to move corporate operations quickly. I would be stunned if they have not given the idiots in Springfield an ultimatum complete with a timeline. If they are willing to fight off the unions time after time, why does Illinois think they will hold them hostage? Or any of it’s residents either for that matter.
On the other hand, the State of Illinois granted Navistar some $65 million in tax credits to encourage the truck-maker to locate its corporate headquarters in Lisle.
In the process of buying an American Express office complex and paying for the relocation of a thousand of so jobs from the company’s design center in Fort Wayne, IN, Navistar doomed its transferred employees with income and property tax rates double that of Indiana, while paying out $30 million in relocation and severance costs. Worse, the continuing costs of operations in Lisle will be $30 million higher than Fort Wayne on an annual basis.
So you believed that private business spending decisions are superior to those of the government – not so here.
“On the other hand, the State of Illinois granted Navistar some $65 million in tax credits to encourage the truck-maker to locate its corporate headquarters in Lisle.”
gad-fly, you make the typical Leftist mistake of confusing corporatism, where government has way too much power to encourage rent-seeking, with actual private sector capitalism.
[…] […]
The more high-tax, pro-union states the better, says this North Carolina resident who reaps more benefits from state taxes paid in IL, MI, IN, PA, NY, NJ, etc., than the taxpayers in those states ever do. Thanks, Yankees! And we appreciate your gift of the Caterpillar Corp, Illinois! Thanks to CA too, whose high taxes helped create NC’s growing film industry!
Will Caterpillar cave like Ford did when the public response to the commercial of the Ford owner saying he bought the Ford because it didn’t take a bailout was overwhelmingly positive?
Obama’s NLRB will probably refuse Caterpiller THEIR right to build THEIR plant where THEY choose. I wish Caterpiller and Boeing would both move to Texas where they can exercise THEIR rights, freely.