Are Americans as stupid as the rest of the world seems to think we are? According to Katsuaki Watanabe, President of the Toyota Motors Corporation, we are. For years now I’ve read articles containing statistical data claiming we are not only lagging behind other industrialized nations when it comes to education, but that many areas of the United States are actually ranked poorer than some third-world nations. I don’t know if I believe that or not, but I do know that the worldwide perception of the lazy, uneducated American is being propagated more vigorously with a president like George W. Bush calling the shots.
Recently Toyota’s president, Katsuaki Watanabe, decided to build the latest Toyota plant in Canada, despite massive subsidy offers from American states, because Americans are too ignorant and illiterate to train; often needing directions in pictorial form. When I first read this article I simply could not believe what I was reading, I thought it was a joke, but it is no joke… Toyota believes it is far more cost effective to build their plant in Canada than to train ignorant Americans.
“The level of the workforce in general is so high that the training program you need for people, even for people who have not worked in a Toyota plant before, is minimal compared to what you have to go through in the southeastern United States,” said Gerry Fedchun, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association. Several U.S. states were reportedly prepared to offer more than double the amount of subsidy offered in Canada, but Fedchun said much of that extra money would have been eaten away by higher training costs.
“The educational level and the skill level of the people down there is so much lower than it is in Ontario,” Fedchun 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. For example, in Alabama, trainers had to use “pictorials” to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech plant equipment.
This article rips into many issues, perceptions and/or stereotypes like:
A) Southerners are, in general, uneducated.
B) National health care makes our country significantly less attractive to foreign investors.
C) The same asshats that voted for Bush appear to be the same people who are uneducated.
Seriously, look at the two maps below. The first is a map of the United States where the population has less than 9 years of education. The second map is a red state vs. blue state map of the 2004 presidential election results. I found the uncanny similarities of these two maps absolutely hilarious, and frankly - not at all surprising.
If you could superimpose these two map images over each other the red states would still be red, for the most part. It appears that, at least in the 2004 run for president, election results and educational level goes hand in hand here in the gool old US of A…
President Bush is doing everything he can to turn us into a third world country with nuclear weapons, er, sorry, I mean “nucular“. This article is a sign of why things must change in the United States if we are to remain a so-called superpower. It’s bad enough that we bully other countries without cause or provocation, but now we’re also a bunch of uneducated idiots.
I don’t want to be “that guy“. That guy always gets killed at the end of the movie.
You gotta’ be kiddin’ me!
You tryin’ to tell me THIS GUY ain’t smart enough to build them thar Toyota’s?
