Wisconsin: Plain Talk: What’s good for fat cats is bad for rest of us

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/dave_zweifel/article_79810259-86f6-5a7d-aeb6-96cc280b59f0.html



<snip>

Gov. Scott Walker never misses a chance these days to take credit for Chief Executive Magazine moving Wisconsin up 17 notches — 41st to 24th — in its ranking of the best and worst states for business.

Although the poll of 500 CEOs, the fattest of America’s fat cats, was conducted less than two weeks after Walker became governor, it’s clear that the Wisconsin governor’s war against public employee unions and ever-greater tax breaks for the interests of big business have impressed the ranks of those who typically get multimillion-dollar end-of-the-year bonuses whether their companies do well or not.

The more a state does to make sure corporations pay few taxes, while relegating workers to the short end of the stick, the better the folks who read magazines like Chief Executive like it.

I pointed this out a couple of months ago when I noted that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is now ranking the state of Mississippi high on its list of places with good labor and employment practices. Big business really likes that state. It has no state minimum wage and few unions to bother with, and its employment anti-discrimination laws are the bare minimum that the feds require states to enact. Meanwhile, a state like Pennsylvania, which has strong child labor laws and where workers earn above the national average, is considered a bad place for business.

The fact that Mississippi, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, has the lowest per-person income in the country, the lowest life expectancy and an education system ranked 47th among the 50 states doesn’t enter into the big business equation.


<end snip>