Bloomberg has an interesting piece today...

...that provides some background on the situation in Wisconsin (and the rest of the Rust Belt). Heck, you could apply it to the whole country (my emphasis):

The loss of people and power in rural and small-town Wisconsin is helping fuel the state’s showdown over public-sector union rights and benefits.

Rural Wisconsin counties are losing residents, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released yesterday, as a lack of jobs pushes young people to Madison, the state capital, and its suburbs. Twenty of the state’s 72 counties lost population between 2000 and 2010, the census found.

Resentment in those areas helps explain support for Republican Governor Scott Walker’s push to restrict the collective bargaining rights of some unions, said Katherine Cramer Walsh of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She noticed the bitterness while doing research in 27 communities, where many residents work multiple jobs without benefits while local government employees have health coverage and pensions.
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Polaris Industries Inc., the Medina, Minnesota-based maker of snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles, this month begins closing its plant in Osceola, a village of 2,568 in northwestern Wisconsin. About 480 jobs will be cut, according to state labor records. NewPage Corp., a closely held paper maker based in Miamisburg, Ohio, said in December it will cut 360 jobs with the closing of its paper mill in Whiting, home of 1,724 people in central Wisconsin.

Those closings are fueling the resentment that Walker and his allies in the state Legislature have cited in their three-week-old clash with Senate Democrats. Wisconsin’s Assembly yesterday passed the bill curbing collective bargaining for most unionized government workers as Democrats condemned its passage and labor leaders planned more protests.

“If you look at who’s shared the brunt of this recession in Wisconsin, it’s been the private sector,” not government employees, said Matt Seaholm, 27, the Madison-based director of Americans for Prosperity’s Wisconsin chapter. The Tea Party-aligned group is supported by billionaires Charles and David Koch, the brothers who control Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries Inc. “It’s time that they pay their fair share.”