Luke Hilgemann of Americans for Prosperity–Wisconsin wonders what is so progressive about Wisconsin.

Many on the Wisconsin Left like to beam with pride about the state’s “Progressive past.” Such a stance would imply the state has been an unenviable pillar of progress for over one hundred years.

Hardly.

Would you call it “Progress” that Wisconsin has one of the highest tax burdens in the country?

Where is the “Progress” when even after Illinois raises its income taxes by 66% as it did in 2011, it still has a lower tax rate than most Wisconsinites pay?

How is “progress” five tax brackets designed to punish success?

Is it “Progress” when earning $30,000 annually makes you eligible for a tax rate of over 6 percent?

How is it “Progress” when for over the past one hundred years, state politicians in both parties have felt the best way to achieve competitiveness for Wisconsin was to carve out tax credits for favored industries or connected lobbyists?

In reality, there is little about Wisconsin’s progressive tax code which helps aide it in being competitive for the 21st Century economy. It has stiffened growth. It has let opportunity be wasted. It has sent jobs packing, kept jobs away from the Badger State and only added to “Brain Drain.”

Remind me once again, where all the promised “progress” in that progressive agenda went exactly? …

It always amazes me how quickly – and solely for political gain – many Wisconsin liberals and progressive jump on the policies of Gov. Scott Walker and the Legislature for everything economically wrong with the state, but never seem willing to turn the examination table on themselves. We’re still living under tax rates passed by Jim Doyle in a system that dates back to the days of “Fighting Bob” La Follette.

That can’t have an effect on things, could it?

A hundred years later, it blows the mind how this kind of thinking and these kinds of policy are somehow still labeled as “Progressive.” Frankly, it’s time to be honest and call it for what it truly is: Antiquated.

I would have used the word “wrongheaded” instead of “antiquated.” The fact something is old doesn’t necessarily make it wrong. (See Constitution, U.S.) But for a state with an economy between 20th and 25th among the states to have the fifth highest state and local taxes makes it obvious that the way the state has been doing things since possibly the beginning of the Progressive Era isn’t working.