Still Paying the ‘Wheeler Tax’

[Commentary] Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler is still claiming that his 2015 internet takeover has encouraged innovation, investment and economic growth online. That’s not what the evidence shows. The US economy continues to create jobs, but there’s a big exception. Companies making computer and electronic products and in the telecommunications side of the information industry employed 29,000 fewer workers in August than they did a year earlier. Internet broadband networks have become a growth-free zone for investment and jobs. If this jewel of American technology and opportunity now becomes an innovation-free zone, consumers, investors and workers will have every right to blame Chairman Wheeler.