Marketplace of Ideas Blog

These are Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorials from consecutive days last week:

June 25: “The marine business in Wisconsin has been taking on water since at least last fall, when the bottom came out of the U.S. economy. And now one of the state’s oldest and best-known marques of that industry, Mercury Marine, is reportedly considering moving at least some of its production from its ancestral home.

“The state Department of Commerce and local economic development officials should do all they can to persuade the company to stay anchored in Fond du Lac with its 1,900 workers.”

June 26: “The decision by General Motors Corp. to build its new line of subcompact cars in Orion Township, Mich. — and not in Janesville — was perhaps predictable, but it is nonetheless disappointing to the hundreds of out-of-work former GM employees and a community now struggling with an unemployment rate near 13 percent.

“Now the same energy that went into the incentives package for GM should be targeted toward attracting other industry to Rock County.”

One has to ask, after reading both of these opinion pieces, why state government has to be exhorted to “do all they can” and target “energy” to attract business to Wisconsin. One has to ask why it is, if the rumors are correct, that a marine engine manufacturer is considering moving the rest of its operations to a state with little, well, water. Or why a carmaker that closed its plant despite its employees reportedly doing whatever was needed to stay open wouldn’t take the opportunity to reopen the plant.

Could it possibly be that the various comparisons that give Wisconsin a low business climate ranking vs. other states are correct? (In one comparison, from the American Legislative Exchange Council, between 1997 and 2007 Oklahoma ranked 12th in economic performance, Wisconsin ranked 41st and Michigan ranked 50th.) And how is raising taxes $2.1 billion — including income and capital gains taxes — going to help?

If the majority of the Legislature understood this, or had understood it going back deep into the 1990s, the 2009–11 budget would look nothing like it will look when Gov. James Doyle signs it today.