In times of historically low unemployment, communities are simply wasting public money when they subsidize unskilled manufacturing jobs. The jobs, jobs, jobs mantra only makes sense in conditions of unemployment, unemployment, unemployment. Despite relatively low unemployment, ‘community development men’ in places like Whitewater still push business subsidies for companies using unskilled labor. Pretending that dead-end…
Employment
Bad Ideas, Business, CDA, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Employment, Government Spending, Scott Walker, State Capitalism, State Government, Taxes/Taxation, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC, Wisconsin
Walker’s Fundamental Failure
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Walker’s fundamental claim was that he would be a jobs creator, with a horde of operatives, development men, business insiders, and political cronies insisting that billions in state funds would somehow trickle down to create jobs. In his fundamental promise, Walker was a failure. Shawn Johnson reports Walker Never Reached 250,000 Jobs Created (‘Finalized statistics…
Bad Ideas, CDA, Economics, Economy, Employment, Government Spending, Local Government, State Capitalism, State Government, WEDC
The Empty ‘Jobs Created’ Pledge
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In Wisconsin, these last years, one has often heard – so often that it might as well be a mantra – that corporate subsidies are necessary for job creation, to reward job creators. This repeated justification ignores evident realities: (1) in times of low unemployment job-creation subsidies are less necessary, (2) wealthy corporate recipients are…
CDA, Economy, Employment, Government Spending, Local Government
Non-College Men in the Labor Market
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Adam Harris asks Where Have All the Men Without College Degrees Gone? (“Economists are trying to understand the steady decline of non-college-educated men in the labor market”): In the late 1960s, almost all prime-working-age men, typically defined as 25 to 54, worked—nearly 95 percent. That figure had dipped to 85 percent by 2015—a decline most acutely…
Employment, Mendacity, Trump
Did Ivanka Trump create ‘millions’ of jobs?
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Babbittry, Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Economy, Employment, Foxconn, Government Spending, Local Government, Scott Walker, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC, Wisconsin
Lost Homes and Land, All Over a Foxconn Fantasy
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Wisconsin State Senator Jon Erpenbach reminds that people lost homes and land over the Foxconn proposal, and communities spent far over one-hundred millions on an idea that was – to any reasonable, discerning person – doomed to fail. Doomed to fail: dozens of analyses and warnings from across America, of which merely one is Tim Culpan’s Wisconsin…
Babbittry, Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Economy, Employment, Foxconn, Government Spending, Local Government, Scott Walker, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, Tony Evers, WEDC, Wisconsin
WISGOP Assembly Speaker Vos Hopes You’re Stupid
by JOHN ADAMS • • 4 Comments
With the news that Foxconn plans to drop manufacturing at a plant that was supposed to hire thousands of workers, for which people lost their homes, and that was the centerpiece of Scott Walker’s corporate welfare and crony capitalism, Speaker Robin Vos blames…newly-elected Gov. Tony Evers. Oh, brother: Vos must hope that Wisconsinites are stupid enough to believe…
Babbittry, Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Economy, Employment, Foxconn, Government Spending, Local Government, Scott Walker, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC
Foxconn Talks of Folding Wisconsin Manufacturing Plans
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
No one who thought about Foxconn seriously would be surprised to read from a Reuters exclusive that Foxconn [is] reconsidering plans to make LCD panels at Wisconsin plant. The Taiwanese manufacturer has already broken its promises on the kind of panels it would build at the plant, and failed to meet even its low, first-year hiring…
Employment, Federal Government, Hunger
Food Banks Struggle to Replenish Supplies as Demand Increases
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Tom Philpott reports Food Banks Usually Replenish Their Resources in January. This Year, They Got the Shutdown Instead (“Food banks—from Chicago to Washington, DC, from California to Florida to New York City—are reporting jumps in demand for their services from furloughed federal workers, whose numbers hover around 800,000 nationwide”). Meanwhile, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross doesn’t understand…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Economy, Employment, Foxconn, Government Spending, Scott Walker, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC
Foxconn Couldn’t Even Meet Its Low First-Year Goal
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Here in Whitewater, the local private business lobby invited last year as a guest speaker a state operative to exaggerate wildly talk about Foxconn. See A Sham News Story on Foxconn. As it turns out, Foxconn hasn’t even been able to meet the low, first-year employment goals set for the publicly-subsidized project. Rick Rommel reports Foxconn falls…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Employment, Foxconn, Government Spending, Poverty, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC
In Whitewater and Elsewhere, Employment’s Only Part of the Story
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
In times of high unemployment, of course it makes sense to get people back to work. Jobs, jobs, jobs isn’t a bad mantra when people don’t have work. (Work isn’t simply about an income, but a place in society.) Today is not, however, the Great Depression. Listen to ‘development professionals’ go on about job-creation at…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Employment, Foxconn, Government Spending, Open Government, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, UW Madison
Foxconn’s Secret Deal with UW-Madison
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
These last several years in Wisconsin have seen a politics of corporate manipulation of public spending and a retreat from principles of open government. Businesses and business lobbying groups routinely expect public money for business projects that should be wholly private. (Scheming development gurus often refer to taxpayer money as their ‘tools,’ as though the…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Employment, Foxconn, Gov. Walker, Government Spending, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC
“Later This Year”
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
One reads that Foxconn [is] planning to buy land for innovation centers later this year. Read a bit closer, however, and one learns that ‘later this year’ is about as undependable as ‘the check is in the mail’ or ‘I gave at the office’: A question regarding innovation centers was one of many from Democratic Assembly Minority Leader…
Bad Ideas, CDA, City, Corporate Welfare, Development, Economy, Employment, Foxconn, Gov. Walker, Government Spending, State Capitalism, State Government, That Which Paved the Way, WEDC
Foxconn Deal Melts Away
by JOHN ADAMS • • Comments
Rick Romell and Molly Beck report Foxconn now declines to say it plans to build type of factory named in state, local contracts: But in a shift from its stance of two months ago, the company on Wednesday did not offer assurances that it still plans to build the type of liquid crystal display panel plant…