Walker still waiting for Manufacturing Renaissance, which ain't happening!

I once wrote back in August of 2015: "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."

So Scott Walker decided to put out this braggadocious tweet thinking this would cinch his reelection:

Look, "#2" would be great if we were talking about a large number of jobs, with the promise of even more jobs to come in a growing industry:

In March of 2017, WPR reported that Wisconsin lost "4,000 Jobs in 12-Month Period Ending In September 2016. A total of 27 states lost manufacturing jobs over the same span, and so did the national economy:"

University Michigan Labor Economist Don Grimes: "No political leader if they had looked at the data and understand what's going on, should ever bet their future on manufacturing job growth. Because it's not going to happen."  

But wait, there's more: Walker also said this about the weak manufacturing jobs numbers, that incredibly, makes the manufacturing tax credit even more irrelevant:

Gov. Scott Walker said fewer manufacturing jobs might not be such a bad thing for Wisconsin, as long as wages are increasing.

"It's not just how many jobs — it's are those jobs paying at a significant level. If we see wages go up in manufacturing, to me, that's my ultimate goal. Overall, it’s just a different type of manufacturing – you’re going to see more and more automation. You can have successful manufacturing companies that don’t necessarily match all those (previous) numbers."

You gotta wonder who Walker is listening too:

Check out the 6 reasons by the manufacturing tax credit should be deep-sixed here, from the Wisconsin Budget Project. I'm not done piling on either...

Urban Milwaukee: The Manufacturing and Agriculture Tax Credit reflects the danger of letting nostalgia for the past drive economic policy, of succumbing to the hope that we can return to when manufacturing drove the Wisconsin economy. While it is important not to write off manufacturing, it is also a mistake to expect a return to the days of well-paid, but low-skilled and highly repetitious mass manufacturing jobs. Those jobs are either being automated away or migrating to nations with much lower labor costs.

In its fixation on manufacturing jobs, Wisconsin runs the danger of neglecting the investments needed to build a new economy. It blocks serious planning for what comes next. Ending the manufacturing tax credit would free up roughly $300 million that could be directed to more productive uses.

Even Trump's former National Economic Council director Gary Cohen knows the basics, it's all about the service economy now. That's why we need a minimum wage hike now. Besides tariffs, people are leaving manufacturing:

Cohen: "We create jobs through services...the big increase is we saw more need for workers in business services...not manufacturing. In fact, we saw more voluntary leavers from the manufacturing industry, because as the job market tightens, people will volentarily leave the manufacturing industry and go into the service industry." 

Today service employment has grown to around 130 million, while goods producers have been stuck at 20 million for the past 80 years.

Finally, this from Michael J. Hicks, professor of economics and the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University:

MSN: Over the past 50 years, American jobs have steadily moved away from factories, mimicking the shift from farm to factory in the 50 years before that. The cause of each phenomenon was largely the same: technology, automation and the associated productivity growth meant we needed fewer workers to produce even more goods.

The causal factor in the decline of many Midwest places was simply dogged, stubborn, almost prideful ignorance about century-long changes to the world economy ... it has mistakenly convinced millions of Midwesterners that factory jobs may once again be plentiful. They won’t; even as manufacturing production will continue to expand, employment will not.

Peak manufacturing employment in the Midwest is nearly five decades behind us, when Chinese and Mexican exports were trivial. Yet far too many communities continued to pursue “jobs attraction” policies that failed them since the 1960s.

Nationally, manufacturing employment growth has slowed since April, and here in Indiana, it dipped into negative territory for two consecutive months. The manufacturing portions of the Fed’s Midwest economic index have been negative for four months. To be clear, the worst is yet to come as both tariffs and their lagging effects will plague us well into 2019.

And, in an underappreciated farewell speech, President Obama made it quite plain “. . . the next wave of economic dislocation won’t come from overseas. It will come from the relentless pace of automation that makes many good, middle-class jobs obsolete.” Like him or not, that statement is as true and obvious as the rising sun. 

Ignoring almost the whole of those truths, today we pursue a trade war. It is ironic that the very places that ignored the economic changes of the past half-century will be the first to feel the spreading pain of this bad medicine. 

Walker Wreaking Havoc in Wisconsin Part 2: Failed Manufacturing Jobs Comeback, Income Inequality Highest Level Since Great Depression!

Scott Walker is still playing up his vision of a "manufacturing Renaissance" in Wisconsin, and he's now betting $3 billion of taxpayer money so he could add 3,000 Foxconn jobs, with a promissory note for 10,000 more, maybe? Is Walker trying to hide something?

Maybe! It's interesting...no, it's shocking to note:

Funny thing, PolitiFact bent over forwards trying to get Walker off the hook, saying he became governor well after the Great Recession, and that governors have little impact on creating jobs. That's not what Walker himself says daily, going as far as to blame the recessions job losses on Gov. Jim Doyle's liberal policies.

Back to the Great Depression: Walker likes to brag about the low unemployment numbers, Executive magazines anecdotally high opinion of Wisconsin's business climate, and those promised 3,000 Foxconn jobs, but that means squat for the future:

The state hasn't seen such striking levels of inequity since the Great Depression. Wisconsin is seeing a growing income gap between its top-earners and the average worker, according to a report released earlier this month from the Wisconsin Budget Project and the Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS) in Madison.

The top 1 percent in the state has seen their income rise by 131 percent after adjusting for inflation. At the same time, income for the remaining 99 percent grew just 9 percent. The richest 1 percent in Wisconsin made -- on average -- 19 times as much as everyone else in 2014 ... Most people in Wisconsin made less than $50,000 a year on average while the top 1 percent brought in around $933,000 each year.

So what can Walker do? In the past he discounted a hike in the minimum wage by saying he wanted people to just get better paying jobs. I know, idiotic right?

The report makes several recommendations ... The state can avoid a growing disparity by removing barriers to work, improving access to health care, continuing support for workforce training and increasing the minimum wage.

"Most other states have set a minimum wage that is higher than the federal minimum wage, including many states that are controlled by Republicans," she said. The National Conference of State Legislatures lists 29 states with a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour, including Minnesota and Michigan.

Walker hands Millionaires +, 77% of Tax Cuts, costing state an estimated $736 million over 5 years, up from low ball $360 million.

If you thought you were happy getting a whole $1-$10 tax cut this year, you won't believe how happy farm and manufacturing businesses are.

The whole point of Scott Walker's supply side statewide agenda is to make tax policy as unfair as possible, on purpose, while maintaining a steady stream of campaign money from business. And as money drains out of the general revenue fund without any offsets, Wisconsin becomes the Mexico of the Midwest. Just the way Republicans want it.

Thankfully, more and more people in the top 1% get to keep most of their money, while everyone else can't keep any of it living paycheck to paycheck:

And the Walker trolls are still happy!

11 taxpayers making more than $35 million to reap $21.5 million from tax credit: The report from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau comes on the heels of a similar report from the liberal Wisconsin Budget Project finding most of the state's Manufacturing and Agriculture Tax Credit this past year went to 77 percent of the total individuals earning more than $1 million.

The tax credit is available to farming and manufacturing companies, but also to individuals who own a stake in companies set up S corporations.

The tax credit was introduced late in the 2011-13 budget process. It was initially projected to cost the state $360 million over the first five years, but the estimate has been revised to $736 million.

A slight miscalculation, but business is happy.

Walker's Wisconsin takes Private Sector Jobs Hit.

You'd think after Act 10, right-to-work, zero taxes for agriculture and manufacturing, and about $50 in average middle class tax cuts, businesses would be rushing into Wisconsin on the say-so of Chief Executive magazine’s annual “Best State for Business” survey of CEOs. Guess not...

Wisconsin's three-month run of job growth was halted in April by the largest one-month loss in jobs in nearly seven years. The state lost 11,500 private-sector jobs in April, 0.5 percent of the workforce, according to preliminary, seasonally adjusted estimates by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

If the figures stand up to revisions, it will be the state's biggest monthly jobs drop since July 2009, during the Great Recession. In April, Wisconsin lost 4,200 manufacturing jobs, 0.9 percent of the total for the state's largest job sector, to return to a flat level of growth since last October.

Scott Walker, like all the other GOP governors, don't mind being willing dupes of big business CEO's who keep making promises they don't intend to keep. And they're laughing all the way to the bank. Every year Chief Executive magazine praises Walker's Wisconsin, and every year nothing happens.

And it's crazy too, because Walker continues to focus on manufacturing, instead of diversifying the state economic options.

Note: Economist John Koskinen just gave us a little insight into one of Walker's biggest bragging points, that the labor participation rate is higher here than it is for the rest of the country. Hint: labor is leaving the state... 

One of the things that contributes to this increase is that Wisconsin has a fairly low population growth which gives us stronger per capita GDP growth than the rest of the country, “Since 2010, that’s what’s been happening,” Koskinen said.

Walker ignores educated workforce leaving Wisconsin, as he tries to revive old Manufacturing base!

My head hurts when I hear Scott Walker brag about his low unemployment numbers, while at the same time claiming his low job creation numbers are due to fewer jobs lost during the recession. Crazy!

Walker has received little criticism for trying to revive Wisconsin's flagging manufacturing base, all the while discouraging a new generation of businesses that will not only bring with it manufacturing jobs, but also high tech employment. Personally, Walker's governorship came at exactly the wrong time, when the economy readjusted itself after the Great Recession.

That's why the next generation of educated workers are leaving the state; they're seeing nothing but under-appreciated low paying jobs. Here's the latest research proving that point:

WSJ: Why is Wisconsin in the bottom third of states when it comes to creating jobs? UW-Oshkosh economics professor M. Kevin McGee thinks … Walker hasn’t been able to create jobs because there aren't enough workers to go around.

Walker’s focus on big business ignored the other half of the equation; employees. And guess what, people seeking employment don't like the GOP's attitude toward labor and the added difficulty getting when people are between jobs.  

"We are no longer attracting workers to come to Wisconsin, and are indeed losing workers at nearly every age level over the prime working years. If this continues for long, it would not bode well in the long term for the state."

"I see no evidence that he's (Walker) had any positive impact on the state's economy. Yes, the unemployment rate is low, but Wisconsin's unemployment rate is always low ... ironically, that may be a reflection of the underlying problem. People who leave the state often do so when they are between jobs, so an out-migration will artificially lower the unemployment rate." The state is having trouble attracting and retaining workers, particularly in the 18-26 and 36-44 age groups.

“Wisconsin’s anemic labor force growth rate has resulted in the lowest job growth rate in the area in the last year — May 2014 to May 2015,” he writes. “As a result, in June 2015 Wisconsin had roughly 58,000 fewer jobs than it would have had if it had kept up with its neighbors.” McGee found that Wisconsin's population growth has fallen behind projections for just over four years. "But I don't think you could easily categorize state policy over the last four years as having been particularly 'worker friendly.' To determine whether that has mattered, we'd need to survey a whole lot of those state emigrants -- and I don't think that's likely to happen."

Let's not forget the other big reason for our slow economic growth:

Several economists, including McGee, have in the past blamed the state’s anemic recovery from the recession on Walker’s move to effectively cut the take-home pay for the massive public sector workforce.

This interesting letter to the editor about the above research summed it up well:

I think one can directly attribute the reason people are leaving the state to Scott Walker and his cronies demeaning young people, educated people, state employees, etc., etc. I am writing this from Chicago where my wife and I moved three years ago after the Act 10 was enacted and the recall failed. I am a retired state employee who got out when I could and my wife took a good job here in Chicago.

Why would anyone want to stay in Wisconisn when highly educated hardworking people are vilified at every turn. Walker and his Republican idiots are trying to dumb down Wisconsin so they can keep pulling the wool Wisconsin.

Roger James    Chicago, Illinois

Walker/Republicans are their own worst enemy in Manufacturing Decline, and it'll only get worse.

The nation could learn a lot from the way Scott Walker is managing Wisconsin, and none of its good.

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.