Friday, March 20, 2015

Struggling WI job, housing markets belie Walker success meme

Walker is criss-crossing the country touting his Wisconsin record, but anyone taking a serious look at the state's housing and job markets numbers would interpret Wisconsin as the Capital of Stagnation Nation:

*  Many Wisconsin homeowners are still stuck in homes with mortgages under water. The national average is 16.9%, but check out the interactive chart at this real estate site and the breadth of the problem in Wisconsin, where Walker is Governor, correct?

Milwaukee 35%
Marquette 28%
Racine 25%
Kenosha 25%
Rock 21%
Pierce 20%
Juneau 20%
Sheboygan 19%
St Croix 19%
Dodge 18%
Manitowoc 18%
Walworth 17%

*  And the latest data shows Wisconsin's job creation ranking has sunk from 31st to 38th, with new jobs added at half the national rank. Imagine where Wisconsin would be without the economic engine in Dane County at the UW-Madison, which he singled out for deep and counter-productive cuts.

*  Plus, an independent study showed twice that Walker's troubled job-creating agency, which he chairs, has had almost no net impact on the job market despite having spent (and lost track of) millions of state dollars. The jobs numbers might have looked better had not some of the money gone to job creation overseas, as reported by a Madison TV station.

In a nutshell, Wisconsin gets little benefit from the national recession-recovery in four years under Walker and his trickle-down fiscal planning defined by ideology, not practicality.

People in Iowa or South Carolina might ask if this is the sort of leadership they think is in their interest.




3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The jobs that have developed under his watch pay under $10 an hour; not the kind of jobs that will allow for increased consumer spending to increase demand and to warrant companies to hire more people. Walker continues to sell the idea that corporate tax cuts and tax breaks will cause companies to hire. He can't get it through his brain that working and middle class people are the job creators by virtue of their spending that stimulates demand and grows jobs. His entire time in office has been about attacking the very classes of people he needs to make the economy work. One would have thought his Act 10 cuts in take home pay to public employees and teachers that took out nearly $ 1 billion in purchasing power from Wisconsin consumers and shrunk the Wisconsin economy big time would have given him a clue that tax cuts don't grow jobs, living wage employees with discretionary income beyond the basic needs make the economy work! Instead we are left with the real possibility that companies and individuals making $ 250 million a year could pay less in state income taxes than a full time minimum wage worker by 2016!

Anonymous said...

Really, all of this success comes about, because, you know, "The Reforms are working."

Jake formerly of the LP said...

By the way, if you pinpoint the numbers further, it's 40th in job growth and 42nd in wage growth. And yet he was saying to SC GOP dopes that he's "turned Wisconsin around" and has a surplus.

Can we have somebody start crashing Walker speeches with a few mic checks of truth for the out-of-staters please?