Thursday, August 7, 2014

Another Reminder That Government Actions Moved Jobs From Milwaukee

The extensive and on-going expansion at the Milwaukee County Research Park, like the government-assisted hospital and related facilities' growth at the Medical Complex - - as well as the close-by new UW-M engineering school and research center - -  are reminders that the movement of well-paying jobs and clean industries to the suburbs is not a simple, market-driven, private-sector-centered phenomenon.

Government agencies' planning, decision-making and spending on many levels made the fresh location or earlier movement of employers out of the City of Milwaukee a continual reality, exacerbating and embedding city-suburban wealth-poverty/employment-jobless disparities around here.

Government is heavily involved in picking and reinforcing winners and losers.

Throw in government spending on highways along with pro-suburban tax and housing policies and urban transit cutbacks, and you end up with vastly different worlds side-by-side, as close as Tosa/Milwaukee, and certainly Milwaukee/Waukesha.

The imbalance brings with it an entirely new costly set of public-sector consequences.

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