A forum, news site and archive begun in February, 2007 about politics and the environment in Wisconsin. And elsewhere.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Employment In Walker's Wisconsin Going In Reverse
New negative numbers are making Walker's 250,000 new jobs/10,000 new businesses pledge looking, what...rhetorical at best? Or politically-inspired, unattainable, or fill in the _____________.
I'm also disappointed in the latest numbers. Surely Walker and the legislature can be doing more in the form of business tax breaks to encourage hiring.
Why not ask your friends in the administration to simply send every 'job-creator' a check for $100,000 from the treasury, and do away with all this sound and fury about tax breaks and credits and preferences.
Even if the legislature passes the "Strip Mine Wisconsin" bill, the promised jobs will not appear. That's because tax breaks for companies do not encourage either new businesses (that's the work of stem cell and other research at top notch universities) or jobs creation: what is needed is more customers to drive demand for products and services. With every good teaching, public sector or union job lost, that subtracts customers for small and big businesses alike.
Big corporations say they need certainty, but they take huge risks all the time--and usually with our money. The middle class needs certainty and confidence that today's automobile or appliance purchase won't cut off the last family fingernail with which they are hanging onto solvency. No business is going to create a job without the customer base driving the need for that job, no matter how many ways Fitzwalkerstan devises to hand them our taxpayer money.
Perhaps it's best in the short term that the Walker administration is having its way with deregulation if only to prove what should be obvious: that customers create more jobs than business handouts.
Too bad that lesson will come too late for Wisconsin's educational future, its people and its natural resources.
I'm also disappointed in the latest numbers. Surely Walker and the legislature can be doing more in the form of business tax breaks to encourage hiring.
ReplyDeleteWhy not ask your friends in the administration to simply send every 'job-creator' a check for $100,000 from the treasury, and do away with all this sound and fury about tax breaks and credits and preferences.
ReplyDeleteJust go for it.
Even if the legislature passes the "Strip Mine Wisconsin" bill, the promised jobs will not appear. That's because tax breaks for companies do not encourage either new businesses (that's the work of stem cell and other research at top notch universities) or jobs creation: what is needed is more customers to drive demand for products and services. With every good teaching, public sector or union job lost, that subtracts customers for small and big businesses alike.
ReplyDeleteBig corporations say they need certainty, but they take huge risks all the time--and usually with our money. The middle class needs certainty and confidence that today's automobile or appliance purchase won't cut off the last family fingernail with which they are hanging onto solvency. No business is going to create a job without the customer base driving the need for that job, no matter how many ways Fitzwalkerstan devises to hand them our taxpayer money.
Perhaps it's best in the short term that the Walker administration is having its way with deregulation if only to prove what should be obvious: that customers create more jobs than business handouts.
Too bad that lesson will come too late for Wisconsin's educational future, its people and its natural resources.
If only we could learn from history. . . .