David Michael Miller
There is no more beautiful place in the world than Madison in the summer. I am especially aware of it this year, as I pack up my family to move to a small, dry, mountain town in Mexico. The breeze off our lakes, the leafy green trees, the bicyclists and joggers cruising through our lovely parks make our city a kind of paradise.
A lot of the world’s problems, even the problems in our own state, can feel remote here. We have Epic and the university, high-wage jobs, good infrastructure, and a gorgeous environment. Sure, the lakes get a bit stinky, and the state’s plans to loosen regulation on runoff threatens to make that problem worse. Our great public schools and our top-tier university have been affected by budget cuts, the attack on teachers, and privatization, but the impact here is not nearly as severe as in other areas. And while we have a serious problem with racial disparity and the achievement gap in our schools is a scandal, white Madisonians seem untouched.
We are living in a lovely place with a healthy infrastructure and public sphere. How long can we keep it up?
The tide is moving against us in both state and national politics. The majority of Wisconsin voters who handed Donald Trump and Scott Walker their election victories view Madisonians as a bunch of out-of-touch, elite, liberal snobs.
Union-busting, tax cuts, and handing over public property to private corporations in the hopes of generating jobs sounds good to pissed-off private-sector workers who feel they are not getting much out of the “new economy.” And they have a point.
Up north, communities are hanging on to the idea of bringing back mining and other extraction jobs, and feeling resentful of canoers and backpackers who want to preserve the beauty of nature so they can take nice vacations.
We need an economic program that creates sustainable jobs — not just a plan to poison the environment with short-term dirty energy projects, and not just a model based on minimum-wage jobs in tourism, either. We badly need to invest in public infrastructure and education for the future.
Keep that in mind as you consider the big announcement by Gov. Scott Walker and President Donald Trump that Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that makes the iPhone, will open its first American plant in Wisconsin. The Foxconn plant is huge news — and a political coup for both the president and the governor.
The plant will reportedly generate 3,000 to 13,000 new jobs, with an average salary of $53,000 plus benefits. The new manufacturing campus will be the size of 11 Lambeau fields, placed end-to-end, as Walker deftly described it. And it will be located near U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s home in southeastern Wisconsin, where the flight of manufacturing has devastated once-thriving middle-class communities.
During the presidential campaign, Trump travelled to Janesville to slam Ryan for supporting job-killing trade deals and abandoning working people. He also tweaked Walker for failing to deliver on his big jobs promises in Wisconsin, and for leading a state with a tanking economy.
But here were the three politicians standing side by side at the White House, basking in the glow of the Foxconn deal, which Trump asserted would never have come together without his expert deal-making.
There is real reason to worry that there is less than meets the eye in the Foxconn deal, and not just because the three men who are selling it have such poor records when it comes to delivering on their jobs promises.
“The bottom line is this company has a concerning track record of big announcements with little follow through,” says Sen. Jennifer Shilling (D-La Crosse). In 2013, Foxconn abandoned its promise to build a big plant in Pennsylvania.
“Given the lack of details, I’m skeptical about this announcement and we will have to see if there is a legislative appetite for a $1 [billion] to $3 billion corporate welfare package,” Shilling told the Wisconsin State Journal.
Scot Ross, executive director of One Wisconsin Now, points out that, under the terms the state is offering Foxconn, “Wisconsin would get $181 million a year in state and local tax revenue, and we only have to pay $250 million a year to get it. Talk about the ‘art of the deal.’”
Ultimately, the Foxconn deal is just a deal — not an economic development strategy. There is little reason to believe that the company will establish a local supply chain, sourcing its parts in Wisconsin.
“This is a company that is infamous for its poverty-level wages and horrible working conditions, with riots, worker suicides and violence at the Foxconn plant in China,” writes Milwaukee blogger and Isthmus contributor Bruce Murphy.
Keep in mind that the $53,000 salary is an average — meaning it could be comprised of a few high-paid executives and a lot of low-paid workers. And it is likely the company will continue to rely on a low-wage workforce outside our state rather than bring more good jobs here.
We need more than a flashy deal to build a sustainable economy in Wisconsin. We need citizens and politicians of both parties to work on a vision to keep our state livable and beautiful for all of us.
Ruth Conniff is editor-in-chief of The Progressive Magazine.