WisGOP-controlled Wisconsin - a place where the stats are consistently below-average

Another story from this week where it reveals that Wisconsin still languishes below much of the country in a key economic measure.

Growth in Wisconsin incomes has lagged the national average since the Great Recession, putting the state in the bottom third among the 50 states.

That’s the finding of a new report on personal incomes from the Pew Charitable Trusts. It finds Wisconsin ranked 33rd in the nation in income growth from 2007 to 2018.

If you go to the Pew Report, the difference between these stats and the typical income figures is that these figures take inflation into account, to see what "real" income growth is for a state. And it's not a great picture for Wisconsin in the long or short term, as we trail the US average by either measure.

Even more remarkable, the Pew survey notes that there was not ONE year out of the 8 that Scott Walker and WisGOP had total control of state government where Wisconsin had full-year income growth above the US rate (click here if you don't believe me). And it's not just incomes that Wisconsin has struggled in during the Age of Fitzwalkerstan, as the Wisconsin Public Radio report noted.

…Charles Franklin, a professor of law and public policy who is also director of the Marquette Law School Poll, said Wisconsin's economy is mired in the lower middle.

"We are not in the bottom rung on most economic measures," Franklin said, "but we are consistently at sort of the bottom third. ... That varies across different measures, of course, and it varies from time to time. But in population growth, we’re in the 30s. In gross domestic product growth, we’re in the 30s. In income growth, we’re in the 30s. And that’s a very common pattern."

Dale Knapp, the research director for Forward Analytics, part of the Wisconsin Counties Association, said Wisconsin's slow population growth is at the root of a lot of many of these measures. Knapp also said that when adjusted for per capita income, the state's personal income ranking rises to the mid-20s.

But the lousy population growth also reflects life under WisGOP. People with options have been choosing not to live in a regressive state run by Republicans who only care about corporate profits and campaign kickbacks, while tossing aside quality of life and investments in schools and infrastructure that used to make Wisconsin a state people want to live in.

Here's a sampling of comments that have come across this website and responses to some of my tweets over in the last week. All unsolicited.

It isn't just that our crumbling roads need to be fixed, some need to re-routed and/or reconstructed because they are now vulnerable to flooding due to climate change. Think about that and then realize that roads are not the only infra-structure affected by climate change. These GOP idiots are destroying the state for political points. Raise your hand if you are leaving to retire elsewhere. Raise your hand if you are moving for a higher paying job in another state after graduation."

"We have a home in Wisconsin. We were born and raised here. My husband has worked in different areas of the country. He spent most of the time in the great state to the west. Wisconsin was a wonderful state to grow up in, raise our kids, and work until Walker got in as governor. I find myself so many times now whispering under my breath how I hate this state. My husband has 2 more years and then he is planning on retiring. He is spending his last 2 years working out east. He is working here now, planned on staying until he retired but he doesn't like it so he is leaving. He didnt even tell me he was leaving at first but I knew something was really wrong because he always came home angry and that is not in his nature. Our daughter and son-in-law plan on moving to Minnesota from the east coast next year because that is where he was born and raised. They want us to move there. We are seriously considering it after my husband retires. I told somebody here that we would like to move to Minnesota and their response was do you think it would really be better there? That came from someone who has never been there. We had spent almost 6 years with an apartment near the Twin Cities in recent years. I can say with certainty that Minnesota is so much better. It is all I think about anymore. I get sick every time I see the faces of Fitzgerald and especially Vos in the news now. Talk about disgusting. There is so much wrong here."

"The Koch Brothers have largely succeeded. Wisconsin is now a place people say they came from. It used to be a place people moved to when they wanted to enjoy a higher quality of life, access to above average school systems, access to travel, leisure and cultural activities.
Now Republicans in the bedroom counties that border cities gloat over how they have it better than those lazy city dwellers who repair their cars and replace the roofs on their McMansions....

Wisconsin has become the seedy, dank country club of the Old Money set, a place where the well-off stew in their imagined triumphs at gatherings of the Mutual Admiration Society."

Four kids. Graduated UW Madison in 2006, 2010, 2012, 2014. Three left the state during Scotty's years. One moved to California, one New York and one in Chicago.

— Must act quickly! (@nancymconnor) May 10, 2019

All of the boomers are retiring and the kids leave the state for better lives and boom, unemployment is low.

— KathyK💎 (@kakempen) May 10, 2019

And WisGOP keeps trying to convince people that things are great in Wisconsin? And therefore we should stay on this same failing course with policies slanted to the rich and corporate at the expense of everyone and everything else? That strategy is yet another installment of the GOP game show "LYING OR STUPID?!!"