Today at four o’clock, the Joint Review Board is scheduled to review Whitewater’s tax incremental districts. Views of tax incremental financing – especially in a place like Whitewater – are a good test of someone’s basic understanding of economic development. Indeed, the test reduces to a simple relationship: the more one contends that tax incremental…
Economics
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Economics, Economy, Free Markets, Government Spending, Innovation Center/Tech Park, Local Government, Politics, State Capitalism, Taxes/Taxation, That Which Paved the Way
The Trump Tax Bill: The Illusory Pay Bump
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In the spring, before and after a local election, the Whitewater Community Development Authority issued two press releases praising a part of the Trump tax bill as good for Whitewater. CDA executive director Dave Carlson presumably wrote the releases, and Larry Kachel, the CDA chairman, stars in one of them as offering gratitude for gerrymandered congressman…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Economics, Economy, Government Spending, Innovation Center/Tech Park, Local Government, Politics, Taxes/Taxation, That Which Paved the Way, Trump
The Trump Tax Bill: Massive Federal Deficits
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
The Whitewater Community Development Authority’s press releases flacking a part of the Trump tax bill for Whitewater show only that they either don’t understand what the Trump bill means for America, or that they hope others won’t understand. (See press release 1, press release 2.) This bill will drive the federal budget deficit to astonishing and…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Economics, Economy, Politics, Taxes/Taxation, That Which Paved the Way, Trump
The Trump Tax Bill: The Wrong Incentives
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority twice touted a part of the Trump tax bill as good for Whitewater. (See press release 1, press release 2.) Continuing a general look at the bill, it’s clear that it’s bad public policy, producing the wrong incentives. By its very nature, a tax bill is a government policy, favoring some allocations…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Economics, Economy, Politics, Taxes/Taxation, That Which Paved the Way, Trump
The Trump Tax Bill: That’s Not Reform
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority represents a specific part of the Trump tax bill as beneficial to this city. (See press release 1, press release 2.) For today, looking at the bill generally, it’s bad for America: it’s a sham reform instead of a beneficial restructuring, and it makes this country’s outlook worse. Benjamin H. Harris and Adam…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Economics, Economy, Local Government, Politics, Taxes/Taxation, That Which Paved the Way, Trump
More About that Trump Tax Bill
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In the spring, Whitewater saw two Community Development Authority press releases touting a specific part of the Trump tax bill. (See press release 1, press release 2.) In response, this website replied (1) with a link to a Congressional Budget Office study implying that, overall, the Trump bill will boost incomes for foreign investors but not…
CDA, City, Conflicts of Interest, Corporate Welfare, Economics, Economy, Education, Local Government, Marketing, Mendacity, Politics, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, Tony Evers, WEDC, Wisconsin
Redefining Reality
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Tony Evers, State Superintendent of Public Instruction and candidate for governor, has a new video about a political effort to redefine reality. The video is about Scott Walker, but it might as easily have been about any number of local politicians in Whitewater or other small Wisconsin towns, with tax breaks for out-of-towners and cronies…
Bad Ideas, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Economics, Economy, Free Markets, Local Government, State Capitalism, Trump, WEDC
The Mercantilist
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Veronique de Rugy contends that one should take Trump at his word on trade. It’s doubtful that anyone should take Trump’s word for anything, but that’s too literal a reading of her claim. She’s right that, in effect, Trump truly opposes free trade no matter what he says: As we embark on a trade war, let’s…
Economics, Economy, Employment, Trade
Promising Gain, Delivering Loss
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Here in the Midwest, in America’s Dairyland, in a small college town surrounded by farms, Trumpism’s economic promises, never likely to do a body good, now slowly curdle: U.S. business groups say hundreds of thousands of American jobs are at stake as newly imposed trade barriers cause an abrupt slowdown of cross-border trade. The fallout is…
China, Economics, Economy, Foreign Affairs, Health, Lifestyle, Trade, Trump
A Metaphor for Trump’s Trade Policy
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Wisconsin businesses are bracing themselves for European Union retaliation against Trump’s trade tariffs (“Harley-Davidson motorcycles, dairy products, ginseng, cranberries and other Wisconsin goods are likely to feel the sting of retaliation from steep tariffs announced Thursday by the White House on foreign metals”). Meanwhile, there’s no better visual metaphor for the difference between Trump’s trade…
CDA, City, Development, Economics, Foxconn, Government Spending, Local Government, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way
Another Pig at the Trough
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Jason Stein and Rick Romell report Foxconn: Glass maker could want hundreds of millions of dollars to locate alongside massive Wisconsin factory: To locate in Wisconsin, a key glass supplier to Foxconn wants financial help from the Taiwanese electronics giant or state taxpayers that could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. … Corning…
City, Conflicts of Interest, Corporate Welfare, Economics, Economy, Ethics, Gov. Walker, Local Government, Mendacity, Paul Ryan, Politics, State Capitalism, That Which Paved the Way, Trump
The Price of Trumpism is Ruin
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Craig Gilbert looks at the careers of Priebus, Ryan, and Walker: They led the “Cheesehead Revolution,” the GOP’s audacious conquest of Wisconsin. They offered a model for bridging Republican frictions between establishment and base. They became national figures. They ran into Donald Trump. They suffered. They bent to his rise. Now one (Priebus) has left…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economics, Economy, Government Spending, Local Government, State Capitalism, Taxes/Taxation, That Which Paved the Way
‘Crony Capitalism and Social Engineering: The Case Against Tax-Increment Financing’
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Whitewater’s residents may have heard, as I have, ignorant and false boasting about the benefits of tax incremental financing. It’s variously described as increment or incremental financing, but either way, it’s a plan to entice developers with taxpayer funds by segregating from the general fund, if any, the revenue generated from a development to pay…
CDA, City, Development, Economics, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, Local Government, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way
A Sham News Story on Foxconn
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
About a month ago, a local business lobbying group in Whitewater invited an operative of the Walker Administration to the city to talk about Foxconn. The nearby Jefferson County Daily Union sent a stringer to cover the presentation. See Foxconn impact outlined in Whitewater. In the 38-paragraph story, the paper simply reproduces – without the…