Wisconsin’s Radical Right – Believers in a Big Role for State Government?

Radical Right Wants to Guide Economic Development

An article in the Post-Crescent on April 25, 2013 described a new plan being promoted by Gov. Walker and the Radical Rightists in the legislature to create an organization that would funnel state and private funds into investments in start-up companies in Wisconsin. Under the proposed plan, the new organization could invest in a company if the public funds were no more than one-third to the total invested. The bill would target emerging companies in five industries: agriculture, information technology, engineered products, advanced manufacturing, and medical devices and imaging. According to the article, “… the state would be a limited partner in the program … it would share the risks and rewards with private investors.”

In other words, the new organization would do two big things. First, it would promote development of companies in certain industries,  and second, it would in effect become a shareholder or a partner in new companies.  By promoting this plan, Wisconsin’s Radical Rightists make it clear that they do not really believe that the free market economy left to itself will favor our state. Instead, we need a strong involvement by the state government, which will invest our tax money in private companies.

Radical Rightists in other states share this lack of faith in the private sector. I recently read that Alabama has invested hundreds of millions of dollars to bring the production of Airbus’s A320 to the city of Mobile. Not to be outdone, Kentucky awarded $146.5 million in tax credits to Toyota to induce it to produce the Lexus ES at its plant in the state.

I do not wish to criticize the politicians who propose to invest tax money in luring companies to their respective states, but I do find it hypocritical that they do so after stigmatizing progressive politicians as “socialists” because they want to invest tax money in education or health care. For a state government to guide our state’s economic development by investing in selected companies is as “socialist” as anything currently being done in Washington.

What Should the Role of Government Be?

 It is time for Radical Rightists to come clean. They know that in a global economy, the state needs to play a large role. The question is what should that role be? Well, our Constitution lays it out when it says,

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Some of these things are controversial but others are not. We can all agree that providing for the common defense and securing the blessing of liberty are among the roles of government, but what about the others? How can a government work to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility or promote the general welfare?

The Radical Rightists who control the government in Madison seem to think that if they give money to businesses, the businesses will create so much wealth that justice, tranquility and the general welfare will take care of themselves.

The Role of Government Should Be Broader Than Promoting Economic Development

We know that this is not true. Education does not happen automatically. Health care does not happen automatically, and wealth created by companies does not always trickle down to the rest of us. In fact, over the last 30 years, household incomes for most people have stagnated while the top 1% have enjoyed huge increases in their wealth. This sort of imbalance cannot be sustained. It does little to establish justice, and it will surely lead to social conflict and a loss of domestic tranquility.

 Moreover, companies in search of profits may damage the environment or even kill people as we see in the recent accident in Bangladesh, where more than 300 people died in the collapse of a factory, where garments were being made for popular, international clothing brands. The factory owners’ lack of concern for the safety of their workers was due to the corruption of Bangladesh’s regulatory agencies combined with the mercilessly low prices and tight schedules demanded by the clothing companies, who have shown in this incident that they will kill without mercy in order to meet the demands of a competitive market.

The dire effects of unregulated competition or government corruption are not limited to faraway places like Bangladesh. Here in Fox Cities, we know about the pollution of the Fox River with PCB’s, and we have just seen the Radical Rightists in Madison pass a Mining Bill that will allow Gogebic Taconite to develop an iron mine in our state without much environmental oversight.  We have learned that a competitive market without public regulation to insure the general welfare will lead to a loss of justice and of domestic tranquility.

Moreover, there are things like education and health care that cannot be provided effectively by the free market. We have always maintained public schools because we know that if we did not, many people would not be able to go to school, and we have recently come to understand that depending on the market to provide health care for people leads to radical inequity in its distribution. We can see that if we change a well-known song only a little to say, “If health care were a thing that money could buy, the rich would live and the poor would die.”

Clearly, promoting economic development, while useful, is not the only thing that our state needs to do. So, while I applaud the Radical Rightists’ belated recognition of the importance of government in a modern economy, I wait hopefully for the day when they will see that the role of government cannot be limited to giving money to business.