Genesee bought its last fermentation tanks from across the river.
The new ones came from across the sea.
What was American steel fabricated in the USA is now foreign steel fabricated in China.
The company used to be locally owned by Americans, now it's foreign owned by Costa Ricans.
So enjoy your Genny, and know that the bitter aftertaste is not hops, it's economic reality. An economic reality that is more about our government than it is about a beer company.
Because it's not Genesee's fault that it's been picked up by foreign investors, or that it's largest capital improvement of a century relies on foreign manufacturing and enriches foreign workers.
Genny didn't do it, progressive policies did.
The background is that Genesee -- one of those iconic rust-belt hometown breweries, perched on the river whose name it bears -- has recently grown and expanded. As part of that, giant metal brewing tanks made in Rochester by Rochesterians two or threegenerations ago were taken out, to be replaced by bigger, state-of-the-art tanks.
Those were made in China, shipped across the seas, and brought to Rochester on a much-hyped trip along the Erie Canal, passing directly behind a New York fabricator who didn't get the contract for the job.
All of this leaves most of us a little pissy.
New York was once a great manufacturing state. Now it's hardly even a state. America used to be the foundry of the world. Now we export jobs and import crap. Big shiny tanks parading for the locals are big shiny reminders that Chinese workers got a paycheckoff that job and American workers didn't.
The Genesee tanks feel like a big shiny stab in the back.
Especially when you consider that the brewery's expansion is fueled by a multi-million dollar infusion of taxpayer money. It's the promise of state money -- taken out of the paychecks of welders and waitresses -- that helped offset the brewery's purchase of the tanks. So, to put a fine point on it, money taken from American workers paychecks is going overseas into Chinese workers paychecks.
Which sucks.
And has left folks angy at Genesee.
But that's misplaced anger.
Because those foreign tanks -- like the foreign owners who put them in -- are symptoms, they are not the disease. They are effects, not causes. They are natural consequences of economic conditions which have arisen as the natural consequences of progressive policies in government and labor.
In America, we have the highest business tax rate in the world. In New York, we have the highest business tax rate in America.
In America, we have the most-expensive burden of environmental and labor regulation in the world. In New York, we have the most-expensive burden of environmental and labor regulation in America.
In America, we have choked the life out of business to such an extent that we can't compete or even produce in broad sections of the economy.
In America, we have so laden the cost of business with extraneous expenses, taxes and fees that it is actually cheaper to make something 7,000 miles away and transport it halfway around the globe than it is to make it right here at home. The government demands so much, it imposes so much, from a myriad of fees and taxes for property, payroll and profit to supposed protections of environment and zoning and OSHA regulation that the goose that laid the golden egg has been bled to death.
And that's before you throw on the extra cost and inconvenience of organized labor.
These conditions combine to all but kill American business and American jobs. These conditions are a threat to the national prosperity generally and the average worker's ability to make a living specifically. These conditions are the enemy of America and its workers.
It's not Genesee that brought those tanks from China, it's Washington and Albany.
It's not heartless business, it's gutless government.
It's the all-powerful state glutting itself on the fruit of an ever-shrinking American prosperity. Every little uptick of the progressive state, every new regulation and fee, every additional concession demanded by activists and organizers.
Every union dollar siphoned off to pay for politics.
All of those little cuts have bled us dry.
Genesee would have been a fool not to buy its tanks from China, and we are fools for supporting a government that makes that necessary.
Taxes must come down, regulations must roll back, unions must be refocused on their original purpose. We must remember that business is not the enemy of society, it is the engine of society. We must get off the back and out of the pocket of the Americanworker and business. We need to get lean and mean and aggressive. We need to let the engine roar.
We need to put America back to work.
And we don't do that with government giveaways and incentives. We do that by getting government the hell out of the way.
And by recognizing why things are. By recognizing cause and effect.
By recognizing that decades of American policy have made China rich and America poor.
By recognizing that decades of government policies have choked American business and American jobs almost to death.
By recognizing that those shiny new tanks are a monument to the failed policies that cost American workers their jobs.