Unfit Mitt’s Economic Performance as MA Gov Makes Mike Dukakis Look Good

OVERVIEW: As far as economic governance is concerned, Mitt Romney all to closely resembles former Ohio Governor Bob Taft, except that Romney wears better suits.

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In late July of last year, Andrew Sum and Joseph McLaughlin of the Center for Market Studies at Northeastern University (”about us” page is here) wrote a column for the Boston Globe about how the economy of Massachusetts fared under Objectively Unfit Mitt Romney while he was governor.

Quick answer — not well at all.

Some details (HT John Haskins in an e-mail) from this read-the-whole-thinger:

….. Our analysis reveals a weak comparative economic performance of the state over the Romney years, one of the worst in the country.

….. While the number of employed people over age 16 in the United States rose by nearly 8 million, or close to 6 percent, between 2002 and 2006, the number of employed residents in the Commonwealth is estimated to have modestly declined by 8,500. Massachusetts was the only state to have failed to post any gain in its pool of employed residents. The aggregate number of people 16 and older either working or looking for work in Massachusetts fell over the Romney years.

….. Between July 2002 and July 2006, the US Census Bureau estimated that 222,000 more residents left Massachusetts for other states than came here to live. This high level of net domestic out-migration was equivalent to 3.5 percent of the state’s population, the third highest rate of population loss in the country. Excluding the population displacement effects of Hurricane Katrina on Louisiana, Massachusetts would have ranked second highest on this measure. We were a national leader in exporting our population.

….. Between 2002 and 2006, the median real (inflation adjusted) weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers in Massachusetts is estimated to have fallen by $10 or nearly 2 percent. (From the info in this post, this figure clearly went up in real terms in the rest of the country during those years. — Ed.)

….. Real world experience has shown that a governor is limited in his power to influence the course of economic development in a state. A full-time governor who is deeply committed to the economic well-being of a state’s workers can, however, make some difference. The state unfortunately did not receive such leadership over most of the past four years. Jokes about Massachusetts may receive some half-hearted laughter on the national campaign trail, but few working men and women in Massachusetts should see anything funny about the state’s lackluster economic performance during the Romney years.

At least Democratic former Massachusetts governor Mike Dukakis had a few legitimately good years to brag about during his 1988 presidential run — though in 1988 itself the “Massachusetts Miracle” was beginning to implode, and in the last two years of his gubernatorial term went into a serious crack-up.

And if you think out-migration was a problem while Romney was in office, wait until you see what happens when RomneyCare’s costs explode, and the punitive fines for not participating in the Bay State Workers’ Paradises’s insurance scheme go through the roof — which, as noted earlier today, is already happening (”Massachusetts residents deemed able to afford health care, but refuse, that means facing new monthly fines that could (annually) total as much as $912 for individuals and $1,824 for couples by the end of the year.“)

If there is anything Unfit Mitt can realistically point to with pride about his performance while he was in charge in Massachusetts — economic or otherwise — I’d like to know what it is.

Yet he wants to be president, and is supported by alleged “conservatives” who should, and I suspect in some cases even do, know better.

Why?