This past June, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch traveled south of the border to strengthen the economic relationship between Wisconsin and Mexico, a growing interest the Badger State has had for the last 20 years.
The week-long trade mission featured stops in Mexico’s two largest economic hubs of Mexico City and Monterrey, with officials from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) joining Kleefisch to promote Wisconsin industries.
With the adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, trade between Mexico and Wisconsin has grown by 926 percent thanks to low trade barriers including minimal tariffs and overall little government intervention.
In just two decades, Mexico has become Wisconsin’s second largest export market in the world, with exports totaling more than the state’s exports to China, Japan, and Germany combined. This past year alone, trade with Mexico generated $3 billion for Wisconsin and accounted for 15 percent of all exports, an all-time high.
Despite being known as the dairy state, Wisconsin’s top exports to Mexico last year were motor parts and battery waste, followed by centrifuge parts and soybeans.
Increased free trade with Mexico has certainly sparked enormous economic growth for Wisconsin. Apart from the revenue generated from exports, 96,000 jobs in the state have been created or rely heavily on trade with Mexico. Nearly 5,000 of these jobs have been brought to Wisconsin by Mexican companies.
“Mexico is a vital partner to grow businesses and add jobs here in our state. As we’ve recently seen, Wisconsin is a top target for foreign direct investment that can create jobs and factories in our communities,” Lt. Governor Kleefisch told the MacIver Institute.
Free trade between Wisconsin and Mexico has also brought a larger variety of lower-cost products to Wisconsin. Since free trade creates an environment where companies specialize in products that they can cheaply produce in high volumes, goods become less expensive for consumers.
For example, motor vehicles in Wisconsin have become more affordable thanks to trade with Mexico. With a large labor force whose average wage is much lower than other countries, thanks to a very low cost of living, Mexico has become a hot market for vehicle assembly. In Mexico, a worker for a standard car manufacturer will make about $8 an hour, while a worker in the United States can make close to $60 an hour. Mexico’s lower average wage leads to lower prices for Wisconsinites and explains why motor vehicles remain one of Wisconsin’s top imports for 2016.
Importing lower cost products from Mexico has become popular in Wisconsin. Just last year $2.7 billion worth of goods were imported from our southern neighbor. Electric storage batteries, motor vehicles, and tractors were the state’s most popular imports in 2016.
Future trade between the two regions looks promising. Of Wisconsin’s current top 10 export markets, Mexico was only one of two countries that showed positive export growth in 2016. Since 2014, Wisconsin’s increase in sales to Mexico has been larger than its sales to any other country on the entire planet.
Mark Maley, WEDC’s Public Affairs and Communications Director, told the MacIver Institute that Mexico offers many business opportunities for Wisconsin and expects the relationship to continue in the future.
“Wisconsin and Mexico share a mutually beneficial and comprehensive trade and investment relationship. We have hosted three trade trips to Mexico in the last two years to help state businesses find new markets for their products, to encourage Mexican businesses to invest in Wisconsin, and to strengthen industry collaboration between Wisconsin and Mexico in areas such as advanced manufacturing, water technology, and food and beverage production and processing,” he said.
Despite having the pieces and mutual interest to strengthen trade in the future, the partnership could face some troubles within the next year. President Donald Trump aims to renegotiate NAFTA and potentially add a 20% import tariff on all Mexican goods to help fund his proposed border wall. These changes could hinder trade between both regions and ultimately hurt Wisconsinites and Mexicans.
With tensions high at the moment between the United States and Mexico, it is important to recognize the positive impact our southern neighbor has had on Wisconsin’s economy. With billions of dollars generated in sales, more job opportunities, and lower-cost products, free trade with Mexico promises to benefit Wisconsin workers and consumers into the future.
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No comments on A benefit to Wisconsin, no thanks to Trump
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Today in 1963, two years and one day after the Beatles started as the house band for the Cavern Club in Liverpool, the Beatles performed there for the last time.
Three years later, the South African government banned Beatles records due to John Lennon’s infamous “bigger than Jesus” comment.
Five years later and one year removed from the Beatles, Paul McCartney formed Wings.
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Wisconsin Democrats apparently have decided they’re going to oppose bringing 3,000 to 13,000 jobs, and at a minimum $170 million of annual payroll, and at a minimum $18.87 million of annual state and local tax revenue from those employee salaries from Foxconn.
That’s not counting the construction jobs nor the jobs created by businesses that will spring up (such as, reportedly, Corning) from Foxconn’s Wisconsin presence.
The real reason, I think, for Democratic opposition is exposed by M.D. Kittle:
There’s been a lot of hoopla about Foxconn Technology Group’s White House announcement Wednesday that it plans to build a massive factory in southeast Wisconsin. And there should be.
But Foxconn’s proposed $10 billion development and the tens of thousands of jobs it is eventually expected to spur does not happen without three things:
– Conservative reforms over the past 6 1/2 years
– Wisconsin Republicans’ very prominent seats at the national political table
– President Donald Trump’s passionate pursuit to bring manufacturing jobs back to America, and his keen interest in vacant Kenosha land where a Chrysler/American Motors plant once stood.Of course, $3 billion in taxpayer-funded incentives doesn’t hurt, either. …
Gov. Scott Walker and his fellow Republicans running the state Legislature truly have opened Wisconsin for business since sweeping into power in 2011. They promised and delivered on billions of dollars in tax relief, robust regulatory reform, and a pledge to restore power to taxpayers. Those reforms opened the eyes to business, that the Badger State is a place to expand and locate – not flee, as Illinois firms have been doing amid mounting state debt and record tax hikes.
“We have created this environment where companies are looking to Wisconsin,” state Sen. Leah Vukmir, (R-Brookfield) told MacIver News Service Wednesday on the Vicki McKenna Show(Newstalk 1130 WISN).
Vukmir recalls the hostile days of Wisconsin’s Act 10 debate, when big labor and their friends on the left crammed the Capitol to disrupt Walker’s state collective bargaining reform initiative that has saved taxpayers billions and signaled to the world that reformers of big government meant business. Act 10 nearly cost Walker and several conservative senators their jobs. Their political survival emboldened conservative lawmakers across the country, convincing them that they could successfully challenge the bureaucracy status quo.
“I remember sitting in that room off the Senate chambers, just the Republican senators in our caucus listening to the vuvuzelas and the chanting and on and on and on,” Vukmir said. “There was so much pressure for us not to make the right decision. I remember standing up and talking to my colleagues and saying, ‘We cannot back down. If we do, no other state will consider doing the reforms we are trying to do here.’”
Those battles – and wins – put Wisconsin on the radar screen as “an epicenter of reform,” Vukmir added.
Walker calls the savings through “wise fiscal management” the “reform dividend.” Reform is paying off in myriad ways.
Wisconsin’s 3.1 percent unemployment rate in May was tied for the 7th lowest jobless rate in the nation, significantly lower than the national rate. And the state boasted the fifth highest employment participation rate. Private-sector wages soared 7 percent between September 2015 and 2016, among the strongest rates in a decade, according to the state Department of Workforce Development.
Earlier this summer, Chief Executive magazine rated Wisconsin as a top 10 state to do business. Not long before Wisconsin’s conservative revolution in 2010, the nation’s top chief executives ranked Wisconsin as one of the worst states for business, a state ladened with high taxes and stifling regulation. While the Badger State has a long way to go to improve its tax status (even troubled Illinois has a flat tax rate, although more than 1 percentage point higher as of this month, thanks to tax and spenders) conservative reforms have sent a powerful message.
“We have worked hard to get Wisconsin out of the worst states for business and into the top 10 best states,” Walker said in a statement. “We did it by cutting taxes, putting the power back in the hands of Wisconsin workers, and enacting common sense conservative reforms.”
For Walker’s critics who blast Walker for failing to hit his 250,000 new jobs goal he first campaigned on in 2010, the Foxconn deal is a breath-taker. Walker and his supporters have long said it would take time for their reforms to pay off. Foxconn, they say, is big proof positive
Wisconsin’s federal power brokers have played a big role taking the “Wisconsin model” to congress and to a significantly more receptive White House. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Janesville), Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Oshkosh) and White House chief of Staff Reince Priebus, are powerful political PR agents for their home states.
“Paul Ryan has said this over and over again, (that) we’re going to take the Wisconsin model and go national,” Vukmir said. “Paul Ryan is right. We have a huge opportunity here to take our reforms and emulate that on a national basis.”
And Priebus, regardless of the mainstream media’s five alarm reporting, still seems to hold considerable sway with Trump.
Priebus earlier this week told TMJ4’s Charles Benson that the idea to make Wisconsin a major player in the Foxconn deal began in April, following the president’s press event at Snap-on Inc. in Milwaukee. Trump and Priebus were flying over Kenosha, Priebus’ hometown, when inspiration struck.
“I saw my house. I pointed down to my house,” Priebus told Benson. “Then we got to the part over the city of Kenosha where the old Chrysler/American Motors plant was, and (Trump) said, ‘What is that? Why is all that land vacant?’ And I told the story about Kenosha and how it lost (the factory). And he said, ‘That land should be used.’ So, when Foxconn came into the White House, into the Oval Office, the president said, ‘I know a good spot you should go: That place in Kenosha.’ And then, all of a sudden, the conversation started and the governor came on board, and Walker has been doing a lot of work ever since.”
The story certainly fits with Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign pledge that helped get him get elected president in November, the first Republican to win Wisconsin since Reagan in 1984.
A big part of Trump’s slogan is underpinned by his “America First” push, a commitment to bringing jobs back to America.
The United States has seen the disappearance of 5 million manufacturing jobs since 2000, according to U.S. Department of Labor Statistics figures. Trump wants those back.
Earlier this year, the president worked out a deal with Carrier to keep its Indiana plant from shutting down. While the parent company has decided to move some 600 jobs to Mexico, it agreed to maintain the Indiana factory and retain 800 employees.
At a White House announcement Wednesday, Trump said the deal to bring Taiwan-based Foxconn to Wisconsin wouldn’t have happened without him.
“If I didn’t get elected (Foxconn) definitely wouldn’t be spending $10 billion … This is a great day for America,” Trump said.
There is much truth in that statement. Would a President Hillary Clinton bring arch enemy conservatives Paul Ryan, Ron Johnson, Scott Walker and Reince Priebus in on the Foxconn location conversations, even if the deal had come her way?
Trump and his administration say they have been in discussions with Foxconn executives for months. A senior administration official told the Washington Times that Wednesday’s announcement was the “culmination of many months of discussion” between the White House and Foxconn, the result of “numerous meetings” at the White House. The official said the company decided to invest in the U.S. due to Trump’s pro-growth agenda.
Business eyes opened when Trump, fresh in office, declared a moratorium on new federal regulations, and told federal agencies to identify costly regs for the chopping block. The president says he wants to hammer away at what the White House estimates to be at least $2 trillion in regulatory costs.
It’s a much different business climate than the previous eight years under President Barack Obama. A report by the Daily Signal late last year found that the Democrat imposed hundreds of billions of dollars in regulatory burdens on Americans, at an average cost of $1,300 per person, during his tenure. Hillary Clinton, who ran as Obama’s successor, campaigned on the same expanded-government policies.
The Foxconn deal, celebrated Thursday in Milwaukee by a host of political and governmental leaders, is massive by just about any economic development comparison. The tech supplier to Amazon, Apple and Google, plans to build a 20 million square-foot facility in southeast Wisconsin – the size of 11 Lambeau Fields. Ultimately, the tech giant is expected to create some 13,000 jobs on a $10 billion investment in the coming years.
The deal also comes with a hefty $3 billion incentives package, by far the largest Wisconsin has ever paid. About half would be targeted for capital costs, the other is tied to job creation. Walker said if Foxconn doesn’t hit the thresholds, it won’t collect incentives.
“When this investment is complete, Foxconn has the potential to create more manufacturing jobs than we’ve seen in many, many decades,” Trump said. “Foxconn joins a growing list of industry leaders who understand that America’s capabilities are limitless and that our workers are unmatched.”
As Walker and the rightful movers of the Foxconn deal do their victory dance this week, they are being joined by the usual tax-and-spend crowd more than willing to take a bow.
In an odd press release, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin blamed Walker for the deal while praising federal Dems, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, for “encouraging new economic activity in southeast Wisconsin.” These two ultra-liberals had nothing to do with the Foxconn deal. Their support and promotion of expensive government regulations and tax hikes have created the kind of environment that has for so long kept business away.
The same goes for guys like Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele and Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha). Barca, by his very position as a Kenosha representative, is a cheerleader for the development deal, but the Democrat has at every turn attempted to thwart the kinds of government reforms that caught Foxconn’s attention. Abele may have been involved in the periphery, but his leadership is a legacy of failed liberal, job-killing policies.
The real credit for landing this “once-in-a-century” deal are the people who said to do business, Wisconsin must be open for business. That means more than political platitudes and empty promises, and it certainly doesn’t mean growing government and class warfare platforms. It’s the Wisconsin model, and the rest of the nation is learning its powerful impact.
Pocan, by the way, doesn’t represent southeast Wisconsin. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R–Janesville) does. But you knew that.
Foxconn’s even considering Wisconsin shows that today’s Democratic Party is not capable of creating anything other than public-sector jobs. Democrats had nothing to do with getting Foxconn here, and their putrid economic development record shows that Democratic policies don’t work to grow private-sector jobs.
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The Wall Street Journal prints some inconvenient truth about our global climate
Climate change is often misunderstood as a package deal: If global warming is “real,” both sides of the debate seem to assume, the climate lobby’s policy agenda follows inexorably.
It does not. Climate policy advocates need to do a much better job of quantitatively analyzing economic costs and the actual, rather than symbolic, benefits of their policies. Skeptics would also do well to focus more attention on economic and policy analysis.
To arrive at a wise policy response, we first need to consider how much economic damage climate change will do. Current models struggle to come up with economic costs commensurate with apocalyptic political rhetoric. Typical costs are well below 10% of gross domestic product in the year 2100 and beyond.
That’s a lot of money—but it’s a lot of years, too. Even 10% less GDP in 100 years corresponds to 0.1 percentage point less annual GDP growth. Climate change therefore does not justify policies that cost more than 0.1 percentage point of growth. If the goal is 10% more GDP in 100 years, pro-growth tax, regulatory and entitlement reforms would be far more effective.
Yes, the costs are not evenly spread. Some places will do better and some will do worse. The American South might be a worse place to grow wheat; Southern Canada might be a better one. In a century, Miami might find itself in approximately the same situation as the Dutch city of Rotterdam today.
But spread over a century, the costs of moving and adapting are not as imposing as they seem. Rotterdam’s dikes are expensive, but not prohibitively so. Most buildings are rebuilt about every 50 years. If we simply stopped building in flood-prone areas and started building on higher ground, even the costs of moving cities would be bearable. Migration is costly. But much of the world’s population moved from farms to cities in the 20th century. Allowing people to move to better climates in the 21st will be equally possible. Such investments in climate adaptation are small compared with the investments we will regularly make in houses, businesses, infrastructure and education.
And economics is the central question—unlike with other environmental problems such as chemical pollution. Carbon dioxide hurts nobody’s health. It’s good for plants. Climate change need not endanger anyone. If it did—and you do hear such claims—then living in hot Arizona rather than cool Maine, or living with Louisiana’s frequent floods, would be considered a health catastrophe today.
Global warming is not the only risk our society faces. Even if science tells us that climate change is real and man-made, it does not tell us, as President Obama asserted, that climate change is the greatest threat to humanity. Really? Greater than nuclear explosions, a world war, global pandemics, crop failures and civil chaos?
No. Healthy societies do not fall apart over slow, widely predicted, relatively small economic adjustments of the sort painted by climate analysis. Societies do fall apart from war, disease or chaos. Climate policy must compete with other long-term threats for always-scarce resources.
Facing this reality, some advocate that we buy some “insurance.” Sure, they argue, the projected economic cost seems small, but it could turn out to be a lot worse. But the same argument applies to any possible risk. If you buy overpriced insurance against every potential danger, you soon run out of money. You can sensibly insure only when the premium is in line with the risk—which brings us back where we started, to the need for quantifying probabilities, costs, benefits and alternatives. And uncertainty goes both ways. Nobody forecast fracking, or that it would make the U.S. the world’s carbon-reduction leader. Strategic waiting is a rational response to a slow-moving uncertain peril with fast-changing technology.
Global warming is not even the obvious top environmental threat. Dirty water, dirty air and insect-borne diseases are a far greater problem today for most people world-wide. Habitat loss and human predation are a far greater problem for most animals. Elephants won’t make it to see a warmer climate. Ask them how they would prefer to spend $1 trillion—subsidizing high-speed trains or a human-free park the size of Montana.
Then, we need to know what effect proposed policies have and at what cost. Scientific, quantifiable or even vaguely plausible cause-and-effect thinking are missing from much advocacy for policies to reduce carbon emissions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s “scientific” recommendations, for example, include “reduced gender inequality & marginalization in other forms,” “provisioning of adequate housing,” “cash transfers” and “awareness raising & integrating into education.” Even if some of these are worthy goals, they are not scientifically valid, cost-benefit-tested policies to cool the planet.
Climate policy advocates’ apocalyptic vision demands serious analysis, and mushy thinking undermines their case. If carbon emissions pose the greatest threat to humanity, it follows that the costs of nuclear power—waste disposal and the occasional meltdown—might be bearable. It follows that the costs of genetically modified foods and modern pesticides, which can feed us with less land and lower carbon emissions, might be bearable. It follows that if the future of civilization is really at stake, adaptation or geo-engineering should not be unmentionable. And it follows that symbolic, ineffective, political grab-bag policies should be intolerable.
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Today in 1961, the Beatles made their debut as the house band of the Cavern Club in Liverpool, before they had recorded music of their own creation.
Birthdays start with Edward Pattern, one of Gladys Knight’s Pips …
… born one year before Doris Kenner of the Shirelles:
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The latest installment in As the White House (and Your Stomach) Turns came yesterday when Anthony Scaramucci was fired as White House communications director two weeks before he was supposed to start as White House communications director.
At this point it seems that working for the Trump White House is similar to owning a boat — your two best days are (1) your first day and (2) your last day.
Conservatives continue to comfort themselves with the belief, which happens to be true, that Donald Trump, bad as he can be, is not Hillary Clinton. Erick Erickson:
If you will recall from a few weeks ago, there was polling showing Donald Trump at 50% or higher in counties he won and further polling that showed Hillary Clinton even more unpopular than him. Republicans and Trump supporters should not get overly confident from the data as the President’s overall popularity in states he won is headed in the wrong trajectory. But there is increasing data showing that, contrary to conventional wisdom or anything you’d get on television or in newspapers, Democrats are actually viewed less favorably than the President in the places that matter.
Salena Zito had a piece in the New York Post over the weekend highlighting the struggles of the few remaining Blue Dog Democrats — the so called moderate to conservative Democrats in districts that lean right. Now
Josh Kraushaar has data from a Democrat pollster who conducted a poll for Democrats.The poll surveyed working-class white voters in pivotal districts that Democrats are targeting in the midterms. Despite the Trump turmoil in Washington, Republicans held a 10-point lead on the generic ballot (43-33 percent) among these blue-collar voters. Democrats hold a whopping 61 percent disapproval rating among these voters, with only 32 percent approving. Even Trump’s job-approval rating is a respectable 52 percent with the demographic in these swing districts.
Democrats maintain that with robust economic messaging, they can move those numbers in their favor. But the results show how difficult that task will be. By a stunning 35-point margin, blue-collar white voters believe that Republicans will be better at improving the economy and creating jobs than Democrats.
I remember one of the survey points from the election exits that showed, among Obama voters who voted for Trump, they thought Clinton was more interested in putting men in women’s bathrooms than in putting people back to work. You would think the Democrats would have learned their lesson on this, but they have been so busy blaming Russia for stealing the election they cannot fathom there are voters who hate them more than Trump.
But there are and they are in the crucial districts Democrats need to take back the House. They are also majorities in states where Democrats will be on defense trying to hold Senate seats next year. Democrats, with the rise of Barack Obama, thought they could conclude the culture war by putting men in women’s bathrooms, gays in the military, and forcing every Christian bigot in the country to bake cakes for same sex weddings. Turns out these voters really do just want to be left alone and left to be able to disagree. They are not supportive of the Democrats’ cultural, leftwing homogeneity.
So long as the loudest voices on the Democrat side want to persecute Christians, claim boys can become girls, and demand you turn off your air conditioner to save the planet, they are going to have a hard time connecting with a lot of voters. On top of that, if President Trump played his cards right, he could potentially persuade a small but meaningful number of black and hispanic voters to head in his direction too. Ironically, it would all be because of cultural issues.
To be sure, the President is the least popular President we have seen six months in to an administration. There is no getting around that fact. But there is also no getting around the fact that polling in places that matter — and San Francisco, Washington, and New York do not — the President is vastly more popular than the people who would take your guns, turn off your air conditioner, shut down your coal mine job, and make your daughter shower with a dude. Making the situation even more dire for the Democrats, they do not only not get this, but they hold all these voters in absolute contempt, truly seeing them as bitterly clinging to guns and religion. It is hard for Democrats to find common ground with these voters when it is so obvious the Democrats despise the other side. They see these blue collar voters not political opponents, but destroyers of the planet, would be slave traders, and homophobic, close minded bigots.
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Today in 1964, the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” went to number one and stayed there for longer than a hard day’s night — two weeks:
If you are of my age, this was a big moment in 1981:
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As you can imagine, the announcement of Foxconn’s building a southeastern Wisconsin plant and bringing with it 3,000 to 13,000 jobs reverberated throughout Wisconsin.
And beyond. The Chicago Tribune editorialized:
Early this month, when they hit taxpayers with a 32 percent jump in the individual income tax rate, many legislators broke a promise they had made: No more tax hikes without major reforms to help Illinois’ moribund economy. Don’t worry, said Democrats who pushed the tax hike. We’ll get to those reforms soon enough.
But not soon enough, we now see, to keep electronics giant Foxconn from bypassing Illinois to make a jobs-rich investment in southeast Wisconsin. This is a huge win for Scott Walker, the Republican governor of Wisconsin whom Illinois Democrats loathe. Just as this is an embarrassment for Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton.
Once again, the people of Illinois see how Madigan and Cullerton, with their combined 86 years in Springfield, have left Illinois ill-prepared to compete for 21st-century jobs. Their agenda is about raising taxes, not about delivering those reforms. As we wrote a few days ago, every other state on Foxconn’s short list looked better than Illinois by the basic measures of financial stability and pro-growth economies.
No wonder, then, that Illinois is starved for jobs. We expect to learn more in coming days about Foxconn’s thinking. We don’t know details of whatever federal, state and local government incentives lured the company Beyond the Cheddar Curtain. And we can’t be certain how many billions of dollars in investment, and how many thousands of jobs, Wisconsin will gain.
But we do know this: Wisconsin boasts a freshly burnished global image. One of the planet’s largest tech firms, with a million workers worldwide, says its search led it to bet a fraction of its future on Wisconsin. Assuming that happens, expect robust economic growth from suppliers, subcontractors, construction companies and other businesses that will serve Foxconn and its workforce.
Cranky Springfield apologists for Madigan and Cullerton will say we’re overreaching, that Gov. Bruce Rauner is somehow to blame for losing Foxconn to Wisconsin. Except Rauner has been pushing exactly the kinds of employer-friendly reforms that Madigan and Cullerton have resisted, often to please their allies who lead labor unions. …
Enough of their games. Foxconn’s choice of Wisconsin offers a fresh opportunity to act on what’s wrong with Illinois:
We await the reforms legislators promised, so that Illinois doesn’t keep driving employers to other states.
RightWisconsin compares and contrasts:
So here’s the deal. Wisconsin gives Foxconn $3 billion in tax incentives over 15 years, provided they meet their performance targets, and in return Wisconsin gets a manufacturing facility that will have a $7 billion annual impact on Wisconsin’s economy.
The factory will eventually employ 13,000 workers earning on average $53,875 plus benefits. The new Foxconn facility will bring 22,000 “indirect and induced jobs” to the state. In addition, the construction of the new Foxconn facility will mean 10,000 construction jobs as well as 6,000 indirect jobs.
Let’s compare that to “the one that got away.”
Wisconsin Democrats will never forgive Governor Scott Walker for rejecting the proposed high-speed rail between Milwaukee and Madison. That project would have cost the federal government $810 million. That amount did not include local costs for building stations, the cost of former Governor Jim Doyle’s secret train deals with Talgo, and other ongoing costs.
Despite Democratic false claims that the high-speed rail (which was slower than taking a car) would lead to more economic development, that project would have only created 55 permanent jobs.
It’s amazing how many jobs the private sector can create while manufacturing 21st century technology for consumers compared to the government using 19th century technology to create a service that would have to be subsidized by the taxpayers. We’ll take the factory manufacturing LCD screens over Democratic toy trains.
Foxconn will pay, based on a minimum 3,000 and a maximum 13,000 jobs, $161.625 million to $700.375 million in payroll. That is not counting those estimated 22,000 “indirect and induced jobs” from companies that serve Wisconn Valley. Nor does that count those 10,000 direct and 6,000 indirect construction jobs that building LCD World will create. As stated here and elsewhere, those tax incentives cost the state nothing, because nothing stated in this blog would have happened without Foxconn choosing Wisconsin.
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Today in 1964, a Rolling Stones concert in Ireland was stopped due to a riot, 12 minutes after the concert began.
Today in 1966, Alabamans burned Beatles products in protest of John Lennon’s remark that the Beatles were “bigger than Jesus.” The irony was that several years earlier, Lennon met Paul McCartney at a church dinner.
Other than my mother (who was a singer, but never recorded any records, unlike my father’s band, which released a couple of them), birthdays today include Kent Lavoie, better known as Lobo:
Bob Welch, who before his solo career was in Fleetwood Mac before they became big:
Karl Greene of Herman’s Hermits:
Hugh McDowell played cello for Electric Light Orchestra:
REM drummer Bill Berry:
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Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 