When the Wisconsin State Assembly came back into session to begin 2009, its mindset and course of action were more reminiscent of 1930 than anything seen thus far in the 21st century. Like the politicians of 80 years ago, they were confronted with a deteriorating economic condition unlike anything they had seen in their lifetimes. It was in 1930 that Congress reacted to the economic trouble of our nation with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, quite possibly the most extreme protectionist policy this country has ever seen, our state Legislature is likewise bucking all rational economic logic in favor of populist protectionist pieces of legislation.

Assembly Bill 1, the Wisconsin First Act, and Assembly Bill 2, the American Jobs Act, were the first two attempts made by our representatives down at the end of State Street to help further exasperate, I mean help turn around, our floundering economic conditions. The Wisconsin First Act attempts to encourage state and local agencies to purchase at least 20 percent of their goods and services from Wisconsin based companies.

The American Jobs Act places a requirement that state tax dollars only spent on contracts with companies who don’t outsource jobs to other countries. This act is a slightly less egregious endorsement of the flawed notion of protectionism than the Wisconsin First Act it that it does nothing to hinder interstate free trade, but still it seems odd to attempt to help the state’s economy by deterring international corporations from having headquarters in Wisconsin. Well, at least it’s not like we could use those tax dollars to help close a budget deficit.

The concept of attempting to prohibit the free flow of goods between states was realized to be a detriment to economic growth ever since the beginnings of our country. The founding fathers were fortunately wise enough to place the regulation of interstate commerce safely out of the hands of the states by making one of the enumerated powers given to Congress. Even though this proposition is well within the limits of the Constitution, it still represents the kind of destructive action that relegating this power to Congress was supposed to prevent.

As a first course of action in correcting this flawed logic, an introductory economics class would be a great step. In it they might gain some exposure to Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage. Though in reality it doesn’t take an economics degree to understand. Simply put, it states that the most production, and thus the most benefit, happens when everyone is free to do what they do best.

That’s why computer science majors are hired to program and biology majors to research cancer. If a student from each major had some programming and cancer research to be done, than it doesn’t make any sense for each person to do half of each task. Even if the biology major was a better programmer, more higher quality work will be accomplished in less time if they each focus on their specialty. The same logic applies to countries with respect to the production of various goods and services.

It would also be a good idea for our esteemed public servants to do some historical reading on the effects of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs and the retaliatory increases in tariffs imposed by other countries that all but ended international trade and served to plunge us further into the depression. Remember that just like Wisconsin can pass these laws, so can other states. Saving one Wisconsin job does no good if two jobs that were dependent on selling goods and services in other states are lost as a result.

Even if the Wisconsin First Act actually did anything to lower Wisconsin unemployment, it would still help to reduce our total economic output and make everyone in the state poorer. As this can be difficult to demonstrate with such a large economy, things can be simplified quite a bit if we follow the logic used to its full extent. If only hiring American companies is good for American and hiring Wisconsin companies is best for Wisconsin, why not take everything one step further and have each county enact protectionist legislation to keep jobs from leaving on a county level? Why stop there? Is it not in the best interest of Madison to keep jobs from leaving to Middleton and McFarland? This whole protecting jobs thing is starting to sound a whole lot less like it actually protects jobs.

The most simplified way to think of the effects of preserving Wisconsin jobs though these restrictions is to consider the most basic unit of our economy, the household. Just think of the jobs that would be created if each household had to produce 20 percent of the goods and services that it consumed. We’d all be put to work for countless extra hours a week as we all labored away helping to build our own houses or grow our own food. We might go a bit hungry sometimes, but hey, at least no one would be out of work. The same thing happens on the state level when we mandate that we purchase a certain amount of goods from within Wisconsin, sure we might help create more work, but we lower the standard of living.

While our state legislators hearts are certainly in the right place, good intentions don’t really count for much when the future of so many of our states workers are at stake. The only thing the Wisconsin First Act will help Wisconsin be first in is impoverishing its citizens in a protectionist race to the bottom that will decimate our already dwindling economic outlook.

Patrick McEwen ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in nuclear engineering.)