Here & Now

Todd Berry Gives History of Wisconsin Idea

Frederica Freyberg:

So, that inside business out of the way, we turn to Todd Berry, president of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance. Todd, thanks a lot for being here.

Todd Berry:

Good to be back.

Frederica Freyberg:

So we decided to go a little bit different direction and talk a little bit about thatWisconsin Idea. Scott walker changed that first sentence after all the flap, the first sentence to read, to meet the state’s work force needs. Is that the right first sentence of this mission?

Todd Berry:

Well, I think all of this flap is ignoring something. Maybe it comes down to, I think, a lot of people on both ends of State Street haven’t done their homework on theWisconsin Idea. I was asked to give a speech on theWisconsin Ideatwo years ago, and I started reading history. And I loved what Jack Stark at the Legislative Reference Bureau wrote a couple years ago, and that is that the whole part of theWisconsin Ideawas that the University provided practical assistance, and the citizens provided support to the University. And he even was more blunt. He said the professor building on what the farmer already knew was fundamental in an effective partnership. In other words, theWisconsin Ideawas always very practical, down to earth, people-oriented, prosperity-oriented. It was always based in economic progress and success.

Frederica Freyberg:

So how did we get to this place where there’s this divide between kind of investment in education and economic growth?

Todd Berry:

Yeah. You know, that’s a good question. If you go back to the years after World War II, a bunch of economists were scratching their heads because they couldn’t figure out why the economy was doing so well. If, you know, the financial investment in the economy and the labor investment in the economy were doing okay, but it wasn’t explaining all the explosion. And a professor at UW-Madison who then ended up at the University of Chicago, and several other people at Chicago, said, Hmm, there’s something else going on here. And what they said it was, was there’s an improvement in the training and the educational level of the work force and that human capital is adding something to the investment capital, to the physical capital, the machines. And they’re all working together, and they’re spurring economic growth. And so whether it’s creating more financial capital, which the Governor, to his credit, talks about, or more training in education, which he talks about, in part, it’s all about investing in the various forms of capital that make the economy grow.

Frederica Freyberg:

And yet investments cost money, and we seem to be going kind of from crisis to crisis and putting out fires in these budgets. And so that kind of investment in human capital in particular needs a longer view, right?

Todd Berry:

Well, but so do investing in angel investor tax credits or long-term economic block grants or whatever. I mean, it should all be done with some kind of overall view of where we want to get. The problem is, as you suggested, the state can’t budget for more than six months at a time. It’s always running out of money because it’s never saving anything.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. We leave it there. Todd Berry, thank you for the history lesson. Appreciate it.