The continued destruction of the Northland...and America

Regular readers will recall that I repeatedly focus on the apocalyptic city of Detroit as an example of what Leftist policies have done to a once-great nation.  Now, let's look at the neighboring state of Wisconsin, courtesy of my newest TIB addition, Dr. Tim.

In the last decade alone we have lost 150,000 manufacturing jobs in this state – over 25%.  And it’s not just jobs that have been lost; the companies that provided them are gone.  Those jobs are not coming back, no matter how long we extend unemployment benefits pretending they are.  The 450,000 people who still work in manufacturing in Wisconsin are damn good it at, but we are now outnumbered by people who work for government.  A significant number of the latter are tasked with taxing, regulating, and generally harassing the former.  While it is true that many manufacturers chased low-wage opportunities on their own, many more were driven out of the state by the increasing cost of doing business here.

It is a myth that unions improve wages.  If you consider only the 1,000 jobs in a closed shop, you might think an average union wage is, say, $30/hr.  But if you add in the zero wages of the 10,000 jobs lost in companies chased out by union harassment, the average of all 11,000 union workers is reduced to $2.72/hr.  Do you know the average wage of union iron miners in this state?  Zero.  And the left is fighting hard to keep it that way in Northern Wisconsin - looking out for the working man, they call it.    

It is also a myth that free trade causes job losses.  Over the past three years, U.S. manufacturers sold $70 billion more goods to our Free Trade Agreement (FTA) partners than we bought from them.  Conversely, we suffered a $1.3 trillion trade deficit with countries where no FTA’s exist.  I doubt that kids are going to learn that in our government-union monopoly schools – it doesn’t fit the narrative.

Go thou forth and RTWT.