It’s a loose analogy (yet a useful one) to say that the opioid crisis is to the Great Recession as the Dust Bowl was to the Great Depression. These deep economic downturns did not cause, respectively, either the Dust Bowl or the opioid crisis, but each downturn did exacerbate the severity of its coincident calamity.…
Economy
Economy, Health
Society of Actuaries: Economic Cost of the Opioid Crisis
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In Whitewater, in the Midwest, and opioid addiction has been personally devastating and economically debilitating. In a recent study, the Society of Actuaries estimates the Economic Impact of Non-Medical Opioid Use in the United States: The estimated costs consist of the following: • Nearly one-third ($205 billion) of the estimated economic burden of the opioid…
CDA, Economy, Trump, WEDC, Wisconsin
Trumpism Brings Economic Decline
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
It was supposed to be jobs, jobs, jobs for the WEDC and miniature versions of it like the Whitewater Community Development Authority. Gosh darn it, the former chairman of the Whitewater CDA even thanked (in person!) multimillionaire gerrymandered congressman F. James Sensenbrenner for part of the Trump tax bill. And yet, and yet, one reads…
Dairy, Economics, Economy, Free Markets, Language, Newspapers
Does Anyone at the Janesville Gazette Have a Dictionary?
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Recently, the Janesville Gazette‘s editorialist tried to defend remarks from Trump’s secretary of agriculture, Sonny Perdue, about the demise of family farmers. See Our Views: Ag secretary’s reality check wasn’t callous. In that defense, one finds that the Gazette‘s editorialist neither understands the meaning of simple English words nor basic economics. The secretary of agriculture said…
CDA, City, Development, Economy, Local Government, Poverty, Taxes/Taxation
Trump Tax Bill is the Predictable Failure Sensible People Warned It Would Be
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In Whitewater, there’s a business lobby that amounts to a right-wing landlord or two, the dogsbodies who follow three paces behind, and the municipal officials who have been, variously, beguiled or browbeaten into asserting that government-directed capital spending means general prosperity. It doesn’t; it’s the great myth of municipal policy. A building here, a building…
Bad Ideas, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, Trump, Water, WEDC, WGTB, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN, Wisconsin
It Shouldn’t
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Anna Clark (author of The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy) asks Why should Wisconsin drain Lake Michigan for Foxconn?: The Great Lakes — five inland seas holding one-fifth of all the fresh water on Earth — are vast, but they are not limitless. So it is alarming that Wisconsin intends to send…
CDA, City, Development, Economy, Government Spending, Local Government, Poverty
Common Council, 8.20.19: Fiscal & Economic
by JOHN ADAMS • • 4 Comments
Yesterday, I posted about part of a Whitewater Common Council meeting that addressed a traffic signal at a dangerous intersection. See Common Council, 8.20.19: Misperception. There was another topic at that meeting: the annual audit of the city’s fiscal condition (link below). In another place and time, the fiscal condition of government might be decisive…
Economics, Economy, Poll, Taxes/Taxation, Trade, Trump
Americans’ Support for Free Trade Reaches New High
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
A strong majority supports free trade and rejects Trump’s anti-market trade wars and tariffs. Mark Murray reports that Amid President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, nearly two-thirds of Americans say they support free trade with foreign countries, according to the latest national poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal. That represents a…
Babbittry, Boosterism, Economy, Health, Wisconsin
The Rural Condition: Life expectancy for Wisconsin babies falls
by JOHN ADAMS • • 1 Comment
Boosters’ ceaseless distortions to ‘accentuate the positive’ – so common across the state and in Whitewater before, during, and after the Great Recession – meet their tragic refutation in life expectancy declines for Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Public Policy Forum reports on Troubling trends in Wisconsin: Life expectancy down; alcohol, drug and suicide deaths up: The…
Agriculture, Dairy, Economy, Wisconsin
The plight of a Wisconsin dairy farm
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Corporate Welfare, Economics, Economy, Federal Government, Government Spending, Trade, Trump
Wastrel
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Embed from Getty Images John Bresnahan and Burgess Everett report Deficit Don? Red ink gushes in Trump era (‘The president endorsed a bipartisan budget deal without any of the spending restraints previously demanded by Republicans’): With a new bipartisan budget deal that does nothing to cut federal spending, Trump is on track for another $1 trillion…
Bad Ideas, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, Scott Walker, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, Trump, WEDC, Wisconsin
Foxconn: Independent Study Confirms Project is Beyond Repair
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
[embeddoc url=”https://freewhitewater.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Costs-and-Benefits-of-a-Revised-Foxconn-Project.pdf” width=”100%” download=”all” viewer=”google”] Previously: 10 Key Articles About Foxconn, Foxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers, Foxconn Destroys Single-Family Homes, Foxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s Road Repair Budget, The Man Behind the Foxconn Project, A Sham News Story on Foxconn, Another Pig at the Trough, Even Foxconn’s Projections Show a Vulnerable (Replaceable) Workforce, Foxconn in Wisconsin: Not So High Tech After All, Foxconn’s Ambition…
City, Culture, Economy, Education, Health, Poverty, School District
School Board, 7.22.19: One Worthy Question
by JOHN ADAMS • • 2 Comments
Whitewater’s school board met in regular session on Monday night, with an agenda of 16 items, of varying importance. In a two-hour, open-session discussion of over a dozen items, with topics great and small (and at least one board member as interested in wheedling or badgering himself into future meetings as any deeper question), there…
Bad Ideas, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Foxconn, Government Spending, Scott Walker, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, Trump, WEDC, Wisconsin
Town Residents Claim Trump’s Foxconn Factory Deal Failed Them
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
The project has failed those residents, as it has failed Wisconsin, and become a cautionary tale for the rest of America. Previously: 10 Key Articles About Foxconn, Foxconn as Alchemy: Magic Multipliers, Foxconn Destroys Single-Family Homes, Foxconn Devours Tens of Millions from State’s Road Repair Budget, The Man Behind the Foxconn Project, A Sham News Story on Foxconn, Another Pig at the Trough, Even Foxconn’s…