Carrier is going Galt.

So I see that Carrier (our old hometown Bryant, bought by Carrier/United Technologies half a century ago, and eventually looted for its best parts) is now going to move its manufacturing to Mexico from Huntington and Indianapolis.  This has pissed off one of our Senilators, Joe Donnelly (D) who apparently thought it made sense to ask Carrier to identify any federal regulations that were responsible for their move, and got a “we dunno” answer from the company.

Donnelly says he pressed Carrier to cite the burdensome regulations that were responsible for the relocation decision, but the company could not answer.   He also says taxpayers forked over more than $5 million in job performance related subsidies and he expects that money to be paid back.

In fairness, $5 mil is probably chump change to Carrier, but it would be instructive to find out when and why those subsidies were provided, and whether they had been spent for the stated purpose.  I’ve tried googling that, but I can’t find any evidence that any such subsidies were, in fact, provided, and if they were, when.  (If anyone can find it, let me know.)  (By the way, what the fuck is a “job performance related subsidy”?)

The point, though, is that the reaction to the decision on Carrier’s part smells not a little of an attempt by the pee-pul to force a company to keep doing business when it isn’t economically-feasible to continue doing so.  Donnelly, good Democrap that he is, is trying to strong-arm the company into staying by making stupid threats in the media.  In third-world countries and banana republics like Venezuela and Washington, D.C., this is called “nationalization”.  It’s tantamount to claiming public domain over a private company.

What seems to be happening — and I haven’t been following the story, so maybe I’m wrong — is that Carrier is losing its ass because labor costs are too high, probably because of unions, and they see no way to stop the hemorrhaging short of going Galt.

Yeah, that’s what I said.  It looks to me like Carrier is going Galt.  “Screw you guys; I’m going [elsewhere].”  In doing so, they are following an old tradition started years ago by Thompson and Whirlpool and other manufacturers who hung around hoping things would get better and finally said, “too expensive here, adiós, amigos.”

This is what happens when people get greedy and start acting like they own the company.  The response from the pee-pul now appears to be a boycott led by Carrier dealers.  Yeah, folks.  That’s really going to make Carrier feel like staying and being part of the Hoosier community.

Ultimately, in a democratic republic like ours, it’s Carrier’s (and its stockholders’) business what they do with their company.  People can bitch all they want, and boycott the product, and postulate gloom and doom about what’s going to happen to product quality after the move, but if they really want to see who is responsible for the company wanting to pick up stakes and move, they probably ought to look in the mirror.

I’m unconvinced, by the way, that the people who are bitching about this are actually adults.  Grabbiness is childish behavior.  Grow the fuck up, already.