Goodyear bill – doing the math

I promise, this will be the last on Goodyear for a while, but…

I was doing a little math to figure out just how much of an impact the $60 million giveaway will have on Goodyear and Bridgestone.  And here’s what I came up with…

Each plant employs about 2200 full time hourly and contract workers (Goodyear has another 500 or so management types not covered by the union contract).

Let’s say that the two plants split the incentive and get $3 million each per year.  That means the government would be subsidizing about $1,363 per worker per year, or just enough to provide a 2.5% pay raise.
Say the union contract calls for a 5% raise per year, the state just split the difference with the corporation for paying workers.

Or to look at it another way, say that money went to pay for health care costs.  The two companies just blackmailed us taxpayers into hedging $1,363 per year against the increased cost of health care for those employees.  Voila!  We now have another government entry into the health care market, slouching us further towards a complete government takeover of the system.

Any way you slice it, it still stinks.