And lest you think that Wisconsinites are just really good savers, the report mentions that the 1997-2012 average increase in consumption expenditures in Wisconsin was 4.5%, not far off of the U.S. average of 4.8%. And it's not just a Great Recession slowdown in consumption expenditures, as Wisconsin went from the 2nd-largest increase in the Midwest for consumption per capita in the 3 years before Scott Walker took office in 2011, down to the bottom after Scotty "dropped the bomb" with Act 10.

Change in per capita consumption expenditures 2007-2010

Iowa +5.23%

Wis. +3.86%

Ohio +3.31%

Ind. +2.72%

Ill. +2.63%

Mich +2.50%

U.S. +1.95%

Minn +1.40%

Change in per capita consumption expenditures 2010-2012

Iowa +8.84%

Ind. +8.69%

Ohio +8.49%

Minn +8.01%

Mich +7.97%

Ill. +7.72%

U.S. 7.69%

Wis. +6.74%

Beyond the reduced take-home pay for the hundreds of thousands of public employees (and choices that they had to make in addition to lower consumption), let's talk about the effect of this lower consumption in 2011 and 2012. A 1% increase in total consumption expenditures in 2012 Wisconsin would come to nearly $2 million, which is what shops and restaurants and other Wisconsin businesses would have been getting if the state had merely kept up with the lower-than-Midwest U.S. pace. And quite a bit of that $2 million would likely have been reinvested into purchasing more goods and services, and possibly hiring more employees, making the cuts in consumption during the Walker years a whole lot more damaging than just $2 million.

That cutting out of consumption did a whole lot than any increase that came from the $5-$10 a paycheck tax cut that the average Wisconsinite got from the GOP Legislature - from a one-time surplus that came in no small part from the "savings" of Act 10. That surplus is now gone, with up to $2 billion in deficits looming for the next budget, which makes another cycle of cuts in services and higher taxes more likely in future years, which would likely reduce consumption even more. So how can anyone look at the clear drop in economic activity caused by Act 10 in Wisconsin and still think that kind of austerity is a good plan for growing an economy?

Because growing the economy is not the plan for Walker and his Koch backers, nor is it the plan for any ALEC/Koch governor. Instead, it's about making the vast majority of us destitute and having to work for peanuts while the rich and connected few hoard the extra profits for themselves. Any increase in jobs and prosperity for us 99%-ers is merely a coincidence.

As Gmoney points out, those BEA numbers are in millions, not thousands. So a 1% loss in consumption is $2 BILLION, not $2 million. Add in the multipliers, and you can see just how damaging Act 10 was.