‘What Connecticut politicians failed to do was focus on making their jurisdictions as attractive as possible to investors and entrepreneurs, so there would be a continuing influx of new jobs. Among other things, this means reducing the cost of doing business for everyone, large and small – prospective newcomers as well as investors and entrepreneurs already in the state.’
Over in Rhode Island, they tried a crony capitalist sweetheart deal to get in on that tech action with Curt Schilling’s 38 Studios. Taxpayers were on the hook. That didn’t work out so well:
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Boondoggle!
Hopefully, more Americans are coming around to the idea that you can’t keep squeezing a stone, neither locally, state-wide, nor federally. Many municipalities are drowning in pension obligations and they are looking for cargo-cult solutions to keep the status-quo going.
‘The last thing Detroit teaches us is that America too often doesn’t learn from its mistakes. Detroit’s troubles have been evident for quite some time, yet it’s hard to see that many other post industrial cities have managed to carve out a different path. Rather, they pretended that Detroit’s fall was somehow unique due to its auto industry dependence – and managed to ignore other failed cities as well – while embarking on the same turnaround strategy via conventional wisdom and silver bullets.’
This kind of thing is going on all over the country.
Of course, lower taxes, less regulation, less crony-capitalism, and a growing private sector are not in the interests of many in our society, and certainly not the current administration. I’d even say that we’ve got our work cut out for us given the potential overall drift of our culture, especially post-60’s:
Another quote, this time from Ira Stoll:
‘Indeed, if there is a single fact that sums up the state of American political economy at the present moment, it is this: the Boston office building once home to Inc. Magazine and Fast Company, which chronicled and celebrated small and fast-growing businesses, is now the headquarters of a publication called “Compliance Week.”’
Related On This Site: Mead takes a look at the blue model (the old progressive model) from the ground up in NYC to argue that it’s simply not working. Check out his series at The American Interest.
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