HEADLINE ARIZONA, Monday April 27, 2009: “Nations race to contain swine flu” (large bold typeset, front page story), and below (in smaller type) “Don’t panic, Americans told”. Thank you Associated Press® for the uncredited ink about suspected (though unconfirmed) deaths purportedly from influenza down Mexico way. Also on the same page, immediately below the previously mentioned mixed-signal title (badly in need of document management), we find a second fear-mongering article titled: “Flu fear grows in Mexico City” in large bold type, subtitled: “”Public gathering places deserted” – this title and article attributable to a reporter for the Arizona Republic. Do you find these headings rational observations or full-throated cries of anxiety?
For the past week within of the same daily rag, we find several photos of people variously occupied. Vendors selling newspapers on the street, children walking to school, Catholic nuns in full habit walking together; all wearing surgical masks in open air as the common denominator. We have been bombarded with similar large set headlines for the past week, for example “Swine flu hits 3 more in U.S.” — AP, and “Deadly swine-flu outbreak in Mexico stris concern in U.S.” – AZ Republic.
Let’s recap some of the more alarming verbiage: “race“, “contain“, “deadly“, “outbreak“, “hits“, “fear grows” and “panic“, hardly the stuff of a rational skeptical press. Yet, this is what passes these days for public information — titillating garbage designed to sell newspapers and nothing more. Bird cage lining and compost fodder, even before the pages are unfolded and read. It’s embarrassing to pay money for this crap.
One of the past shining lights at the AZ Republic paper was Jon Talton. He left a few years ago for Seattle and writes a blog: Rogue Columnist where he turns (more than occasionally), a skeptical eye toward Arizona and Phoenix in particular. A recent article (24 Apr 2009) about the Phoenix real estate boom specifically and job growth in general, outlined troubles in urban planning for the Valley of the Sun.
jS
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How’d that boom work out for you? – Jon Talton
The data are in and most Phoenicians have to show for the Great Real Estate Boom…not much. The federal Bureau of Economic Analysis this week released its comprehensive survey of per-capita personal income for metro areas and counties in 2007. It’s the gold standard yardstick for measuring how the average person was actually doing after the Bush “boom” and as the nation prepared to slide into recession.
In metro Phoenix, per-capita personal income totaled $35,185, an increase of 1 percent from 2006 vs. the national average of 4.9 percent. From 1997 to 2007, income growth was 3.9 percent, vs. 4.3 percent nationally. More context: Phoenix’s 2007 income was only 91 percent of the national average. Although Phoenix is the nation’s 13th most populous metro area, it ranks 134th among metros in per-capita personal income. In 1997, it ranked 126th. This should be astonishing, if any one takes note.
Let’s drill down deeper. Phoenix doesn’t compete for talent and capital against the national average that includes Mississippi and Alabama. It competes against other big cities (here and abroad), whether it wants to or not. How did its competitors do?
–Seattle: $49,401, 128 percent of the national average, up 7.3 percent from 2006, and 5 percent over 10 years.
–Denver: $46,682, 121 percent of the national average, up 3.6 percent from 2006, and 4.6 percent over 10 years.
–San Diego: $44,430, 115 percent of the national average, up 4.0 percent from 2006, and 5.4 percent over 10 years. (And this in notoriously poor paying, “sunshine dollars” SD!)
–Portland: $38,842, 101 percent of the national average, up 4.5 percent from 2006, and 3.4 percent over the decade (the 2001 tech bush was especially hard on the Silicon Forest).
Now I know if this information is even reported in Phoenix, the “Goldwater” Institute and/or its sock puppet on the Republic opinion page will come out with some waterboarded stats to say “not so!” (A favorite trick back in the boom years was to use quarterly income growth percentages, distorted by heavy in-migration and a low baseline, as a sign that “everything’s fine” — even though every year per-capita income lagged). But these data are reality and they convey what ought to be sobering lessons for Phoenix.
First, population growth doesn’t translate into higher living standards, especially for the people already living in a place. The better performing places saw some population increases, but where they really grew was in such areas as attracting top talent, launching cutting-edge companies, luring venture capital, creating high-wage jobs, looking outward to the global economy, etc. All those are areas Phoenix ignored. It measured population growth and housing starts. Yet it’s per-capita income that economists agree is the best measure of how people are doing. Tragically, Phoenix and Arizona did much better in the 1960s and 1970s, when the economy was more diverse. That started to change in the ’80s.
Second, Phoenix couldn’t create broad prosperity in the biggest boom in history that played to its much-touted, one-and-only economic strength: real estate. That’s not to say that the elite of developers, lawyers, land bankers, etc. didn’t make out. But the general limited, low-wage economy remained — and most people failed to attain incomes or income growth even at the national average. Now they’re really screwed, by half of their 401(k)s looted — if they have them — and foreclosures on those houses they dreamed of flipping.
The great god Real Estate Industrial Complex turns out to be a rich old guy behind the curtain in north Snottsdale, pulling the levers on a failed machine.
Third, the most disturbing report nobody in Phoenix power read this week showed that Americans were less mobile last year than at any time since 1962, when the nation had 120 million fewer people. This will have immediate effects on the Phoenix economy, where every business plan is geared to huge in-migration. But the longer-term consequences will be more profound. The old system is not coming back, for reasons we often discuss on this blog. Yet Phoenix has nothing to replace the endless building of crapola subdivisions. Too bad the Meds and Eds strategy was tossed aside, and now the Kooks are totally in charge. Bottom line: Buckeye’s not going to have 1 million people — and if it did, you’d still be lagging behind. Metro Phoenix is not competitive and not ready for the reset of the future.
Now the lurkers and trolls who don’t have the guts or ability to post non-obscene counter-arguments on Rogue are thinking: It’s all the fault of the Mexicans. If this is true, it does not give absolution. It means that metro Phoenix has such a gigantic underclass that it is pulling down the otherwise stellar performance of all the Anglos. And that underclass is, at best, a huge waste of human capital — and at worst the brew for a future of lethal instability in the Appalachia of the Southwest. And any sane region would react with vigor to turn this underclass into an educated, talent-activated mainstream population.
But it’s not “all the fault of the Mexicans.” Years of digging into the real data and seeing life on the ground make it clear to me that the economic problem is color blind. And it’s not going away.
Tags: job growth, urban planning
The following viral email is just social non sequitur, but it does beg the following questions.
Is the defining litmus test for wing-nut membership a fixation on bodily functions? I know at one level we are but organic machines, but we have evolved to consciousness of our existence, right? So why do the most spiteful of us still wallow in imagery of procreation and elimination matters? Have we come no further than that? And if so, then what’s the point of civilization, et cetera?
(These comments are predicated on the hateful, narrow-minded mail posting below.)
jS
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Whoever wrote this OR thought of this should be running the Department of Economic Security (aka: WELFARE!)
THE JOB – URINE TEST
(Whoever wrote this one deserves a HUGE pat on the back!)
Like a lot of folks in this state, I have a job. I work, they pay me. I pay my taxes and the government distributes my taxes as it sees fit. In order to get that paycheck, I am required to pass a random urine test with which I have no problem.
What I do have a problem with is the distribution of my taxes to people who don’t have to pass a urine test.
Shouldn’t one have to pass a urine test to get a welfare check because I have to pass one to earn it for them? Please understand, I have no problem with helping people get back on their feet. I do, on the other hand, have a problem with helping someone sitting on their A–, doing drugs, while I work. . . .
Can you imagine how much money the state would save if people had to pass a urine test to get a public assistance check?
Pass this along if you agree or simply delete if you don’t. Hope you all will pass it along, though. Some thing has to change in this country — and soon!!!!!!!
I guess we could title that program, ‘Urine or You’re Out’.
Tags: conservative anxiety, fear mongering, liberty, rabid-right
So the question is: “What makes Obama more qualified to lead then Palin?”
Of course an answer can easily grow petty and small minded if one were to point out all the gaffes and the mis-steps of the Republican pick for candidate of VP. But that doesn’t really answer the question. A better answer focuses on the qualities of leadership, beyond debatable arguments of experience. So, what is leadership?
Leadership cannot be a desire for power, in itself. A leader of a nation needs a vision rooted in a plan to move the country forward, beneficial to all. Vision allows an achiever to ground his ambitions against the general welfare of the nation — a measure which thwarts the lust of power. Such a narrative rings clear in Obama’s response on major issues. It allows him to answer coherently with thoughtful calm. He exhibits knowledge, in depth about what he speaks — and he maintains a focus on the common good, through his narrative. Thus he both answers questions directly, and freely credits his opponent when competing ideas match the common purpose.
On the other side of the isle, Palin comes across diametrically opposed. Uncomplicated and dogmatic on most subjects, with a one dimensional call to good without nuanced description — as if all issues were simply good or bad. Hard to argue with such logic, since there are no concrete explanations to refute. Still, plain-spoken folk have earned the respect of the American people in the past, so we should not fault her education or deny her oratory skills, for she can certainly excite a gathering of supporters. Yet the ability to incite crowds to near riot is not leadership, that is cheer leading using a playing field that is all of America, with the stakes our American livelihood. Her only apparent plan is to elicit fever-pitch hero-worship among her adoring fans.
Such egocentric display blinds one standing in its light. There is no vision possible when you are the end justification. There is no public agenda, there is only blind trust to reactive motives, without benefit of predictive models or interactive assessments shaped and evaluated to a shifting environment. With an attention deficit toward current events, decisions follow preconceived notions — unyielding and dogmatic.
Palin is unable to judge herself to the same standard she judges others. Take her self exoneration in the “troopergate” investigation — full denial while an impartial legislative committee finds her guilty of ethical lapses. Listen to her repetitive boast of fiscal responsibility, “thanks but no thanks” to the bridge to nowhere (while she kept the funds allocated specifically for the bridge). Try to comprehend her sports-like analysis of the complexity which is the Iraqi conflict. War is something to either win or lose. It is never an expensive and unproductive theater from which we might wish to disengage — as a large majority of Americans now believe. The simplicity of winning is all encompassing; any alternative suggestion risks branding: “waving the flag of surrender”.
It is not that ethically dishonest people cannot become leaders. But as leaders, they generally exercise judgment in an arrogant unproved manner. (ie: G.W. Bush). Thank goodness more and more, folks in this country are reaching similar conclusions about our current administration. As a people, we are ready for a more liberal interpretation of the national narrative and a more humble exercise of power.
Pick out any current media commentary and you will find the new common given: among consumers (quoting) “the constant drumbeat of negative news was becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.” And “..all but guaranteeing that the economic situation will get worse.” Hit “select” in your memory for your favorite source and any quarterly report over the last five years, it will be there, the implied blame on the consumer for the slide of the economy. Were we to cast off our demons of “doubt” (read ‘uninformed naivete’) the wheels of industry and finance would retread and pull out of the ruts.
In contrast, there have even been comparisons of Warren Buffet’s purchases into GE and Goldman Sachs to J.P. Morgan’s Central Bank in the early 1900’s, lauding it as “profitable patriotism.” The same truly is to be ascribed to T. Boone Pickens’ folksy clarion call to wind power.
Perhaps we “doubting consumers” are in dire need of courses in interpretative logic. In our limited grasp of the published data we just fail to understand, hence keep sliding into an abyss of “doubt”. Worse, we begin to presuppose connections among the following:
- The hundreds of thousands of jobs lost in the country over the last two years.
- The insecurity of existing jobs due to mergers, constrictions, and unannounced closures.
- The loss, for instance of thousands of jobs in Florida in 2010 when NASA shuts down its shuttle program and begins to purchase services from Russia.
- The report this week that 70% of U.S. airlines outsource their services to other countries.
- The will-o-the-wisp political promises that the new, clean automobile will be built in Detroit.
- The recent drop-in-the-bucket stimulus was a worthless palliative.
- ad nauseam.
It’s axiomatic for manufacturers and their admen that when all else is faltering undigested, flying the flag and spewing praise at the attributes of the American worker in front of the issues will work wonders. J.P. Morgan made a lot of money. Mr. Buffett admits that he just dealt in very favorable terms; I submit that when the executives of those companies chart the use of Mr. Buffett’s or Mr. Pickens’ funds they will allocate them not along “profitable patriotism” but to the column that displays the greatest “cost efficiency”. The veins of which flow through China, India, Singapore, Viet Nam et al. and the banks for which may be waiting in the Cayman Islands or Dubai.
There is one issue on which we paltry, unconvinced, uneducated consumers will have no doubt: those components and appurtenances for the “green” infrastructure will ride the same conveyors of globalism. The wind blades will be made in Korea, the motors in China, the transmission lines in Mexico, and the service spreadsheets monitored in India or Pakistan. The cycles of the U.S. economy are relics of history, evolved into sine curves, with closer and closer wavelengths. In the grand scheme the U.S. has been assigned its place and dubbed with the moniker “consumer”; other countries with that of manufacturer and producer.
For those who forgot, or never heard it first hand as I did, the greatest indictment of the industrial revolution came from Walter Reuther to the president of General Motors as he was proudly displaying his new robotic technology: “Robots don’t buy automobiles.” Mr. Reuther did not know that his prescience would portend the more lethal impact of globalization on the U.S. worker and economy. The last ten years have proven him right.
Tags: globalization, outsourcing services, self-fulfilling prophecy