ALICE is reaching beyond the ivory tower for practical, progressive solutions to economic stagnation and inequality.
The lowdown on the economic high road
By
Andy Gussert
Last month, the national unemployment rate hit a nine-year high. More than a quarter of the members of America’s workforce earn a wage that keeps their families below the poverty line.
The economy fails a lot of people in Wisconsin and the rest of the nation, and it is time to find a new route. It is time to find our way to the economic high road. At the American Legislative Issue Campaign Exchange—ALICE—we are trying to map that high road. ALICE is a new Madison-based national economic development think tank that focuses on progressive policy for state governments.
A strategy for high road development values the worker by basing itself upon high-quality, high-wage, high-productivity jobs. It includes state policies that benefit workers and communities, such as providing education, paying a living wage, protecting the environment and participation in the decision-making process. It includes such things as access to health care, career training and affordable housing.
The choice between taking the high road or the low road is essentially a choice about the nature of economic development. On the high road, economic development includes community development, environmental development and human development. A high road government does not just promote business; it works to eradicate poverty and create a society that is economically, socially and environmentally sustainable.
We can choose the path that leads toward high-wage, low-waste, family-supporting jobs or we can choose a path that locks workers into low-wage, low-skill, dead-end jobs. One path allows businesses to help build communities while the other encourages them to take from our communities without giving back. We can promote jobs while protecting the environment and revitalizing our communities, or we can choose the low road that ignores job quality, erodes the tax base, pollutes the environment and lacks accountability to broader community interests.
We have seen the dilapidated scenery along the low road, where firms reap the benefits of tax breaks and subsidies, often giving little in return. It’s a road dotted with abandoned buildings, empty storefronts, poorly planned transportation systems and crumbling schools. Workers who live there are considered interchangeable, and investing in worker skill development is called “economically unfeasible.” You can see the low road stretching along our main streets and urban centers all the way out to big box stores and the industry of the sprawling suburbs.
Corporations accept money from the government for the same reason farmers, students, or a poor people take subsidies, scholarships or food stamps . . . because they can. The responsibility for corporate welfare and corporate accountability lies with the government, not the individual corporation. The corporation’s job is to follow the law and make money.
The key to achieving high road success is embracing an economic strategy that is worker friendly, family friendly and community friendly as well as business friendly. It moves beyond cutting business taxes and recruiting businesses that provide only low-wage jobs.
A high road strategy includes and promotes profit and wealth creation. It is an economic model that benefits business much more than the current, self-defeating models do. The strategy can best be described as a strategic alliance of government, non-profits, business, and labor working together to create wealth and distribute it fairly. On the high road, companies compete mostly on quality and distinctiveness -- securing premiums from happy customers in the process -- and better-trained and more involved workers secure a fair share of the economic benefit.
We can hit the road just as soon as we have everyone on board.
August 7, 2003
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Andy Gussert lives in Madison and is director of the Wisconsin Fair Trade Coalition.
