Jobs aren’t coming back rapidly in most parts of the country. They are, however, coming back slowly in most places. One major exception is Wisconsin. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that Wisconsin was the only state in the country to experience “statistically significant job losses” in the 12 months ended in March. And though most of these loses were in the public sector, it lost more than any other state in the private sector as well.
Let’s put this into a political context. Republican Gov. Scott Walker, now facing a recall vote in early June, promised to make his state more business friendly. His most noteworthy effort in this regard involved coming down on the union bargaining rights of public employees.This has made Governor Walker a hero to the right, and an example of what the country can expect if Mitt Romney wins the White House.
Take it out on teachers as well as the poor, in other words, and they will come — “they” being job creating businesses that supposedly love a state where taxes don’t help the needy too much or pay attractive compensation to the state’s own workers.
Such is the theory. Except that while this approach might work beautifully in an Ayn Rand novel, its doesn’t seem to work that way in real life.
Why? The answers are obvious. Most businesses have a local customer base. If a lot of these customers lose already very modest government benefits, or receive less compensation from state employment, they will have less to spend at most local businesses. You know. Real Life. Not ideology.
Most businesses, when they are looking for a state to relocate or to set up a new facility, also consider factors that might appeal to their employees. One such factor, as any relocation specialist will tell you, is the local education infrastructure. A state where school teachers are a particular target of the governor doesn’t appeal to these specialists. You know. Real life. Not ideology.
Most businesses also don’t like to set up shop in combat zones. This is why, for example, places like Damascus are not attracting a lot of foreign capital these days.
Wisconsin, of course, is not a war zone. It is, however, a state polarized by the ideology-based actions of a Governor and his legislative supporters — actions totally unnecessary from a fiscal standpoint because state unions accepted compensation limits before their right to bargain collectively was taken away.
Why didn’t businesses approve of this action and expand or relocate in the Wisconsin? Because they prefer to locate in happy places, not angry ones. With so many other parts of the country vying for any job creating business with incentives similar to the ones offered by Wisconsin, being in the news month after month as the state where half the people won’t even talk to the other half isn’t a big draw.
Other states with governors calling themselves “conservatives” may have made a lot of state residents unhappy. But none has made so many of their own people so furious toward their leaders and so many of their fellow citizens,
Say what you will about the politics of Governor Scott Walker. From the perspective of job creation, such politics have proven to be dumb, dumb, dumb…