Wisconsin was once a manufacturing powerhouse. But since we heard that giant sucking sound, where jobs and manufacturing left the U.S. via our disastrous free trade agreements, those days aren't coming back anytime soon.
But you can't tell that to Scott Walker, and voters should find that unsettling. Walker is stuck in the past, working on a manufacturing renaissance in Wisconsin. In fact, Walker is attacking, vilifying and stopping emerging industries he feels aren't part of the Republican Party platform, like wind, solar and mass transit. And that doesn't bode well for a Walker led U.S..
Here are two charts Walker will never look at, to the detriment of everyone else looking for some leadership:
Add to that the GOP push for tax cuts and user fees, as an answer to the complaint, "I don't want to pay for someone else's trip to the state parks; someone else's public college education; someone else's health insurance; someone else's community entertainment facilities; and someone else's freeway improvements.
It's a national movement too. Republicans refuse to pay for a massive job creation no-brainer rebuilding the nations infrastructure. They are also big on new free trade agreements that gave us the horrific looking charts above, all the while resisting a higher minimum wage that will increase demand.
As the Economic Policy Institute's Robert Scott advises:
Taken together, steps to eliminate trade deficits (by ending currency manipulation and unfair trade) and rebuild U.S. infrastructure could easily generate sufficient demand for manufactured products to return most or all of the 5 million manufacturing jobs lost between 2000 and 2014. Growing trade deficits and the shortfall in demand caused by the Great Recession, and not productivity growth, are the major causes of manufacturing job loss in this period.
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