Tag: growth

Quantitative easing and structural unemployment

Globalization // Coming 2 a mystical cliffside near u - v.2That title really roped you in, huh?  Allow me to explain.

Earlier today I attended the Indiana University 2012 Business Outlook Panel in its visit to Richmond.  It's a group that "has presented national, state, and local economic forecasts for the coming year to business, political, and community leaders of Indiana" for the last 38 years.  I attended the same gathering back in 2005 and I have to say that today's commentary wasn't much different from what it was six years ago: "things are not great with the economy, but there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic."

As I noted in my reflections from the 2005 event, there were a couple of troubling ideas that permeated the remarks, especially from the panelists looking at global and national trends.

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Job creation at a human scale

ForgeIt's unfortunate that the act of finding or creating a job for someone has become a form of political currency.  Politicians around the country are clamoring about how many jobs they created with this program or that program, or boasting about how their job creation (or job loss) record compares to someone else's for a given time period, while many rightly ask if politicians can really even create jobs (answer: probably not).  When we set aside the political rhetoric, we remember that for most people, a job is not a statistic to be waved around in the media and that finding or creating a job is not the end of the story.

For most people, having a job is a means to other ends - making money to help provide for our families, a place where we go to be productive and feel a sense of accomplishment, a foundation on which to build a quality of life.  Most people don't want to live so they can work - they work so they can live.  And so it's disconcerting when politicians casually talk about job creation as the end in itself, without any concern for or follow-up on what that means for the people in a given community taking those jobs.

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Unchecked population growth costs $8 in NYC

Population MapI saw an article today about New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to introduce an $8 congestion fee for drivers who enter Manhattan below 86th Street. As someone who lives in a town where they'll just about pay you $8 to enter the downtown area, I'm not too worried about this trend reaching me anytime soon. But the plan itself is in reaction to a premise that drives so much of our economic development conversations these days:

"Advocates [of the fee] say it's crucial for a city that's expected to add another million people in the next 20 years."

The reactions include frustration at the economic implications, outrage at the imposition on personal liberties, concerns about the logistical implementation details, and an overall sense of "well, somebody better do something or we're going to grind to a halt."

But no one seems to question the idea that adding a million people to the city is what must and will happen, and everything else must work to accommodate that.
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Beyond sustainability

Thanks to Paul Retherford for pointing me to this essay, Beyond Sustainability: Why an All-Consuming Campaign to Reduce Unsustainability Fails. Highlight:

Our very approach to solving the “problem” of unsustainability is grounded in a mindset that prevents sustainability from emerging. Always anchored to the past, the future is envisioned as being bigger or better. But such an approach will always keep us rooted in the past. To escape from the past, one must think in an entirely different way.

The current ideal of sustainability, as sustainable development, is not a vision for the future. It is merely a modification of the current process of economic development that its proponents claim, in theory, need not cause the terribly destructive consequences of the past. Sustainable development is fundamentally instrumental. It suggests new means, but still old ends. Sustainable appears as an adjective; the noun is still development.

As I look at sustainability efforts in my own life and at sustainability as a local progressive value, it's important to me that someone out there has the right words to say what so many people are afraid to say: there are ways in which the survival of life on Earth is in conflict with traditional economic development, a.k.a. the continued growth of our civilization. Many sustainability efforts are purely or primarily anthropocentric, and therefore fail by definition.

This essay doesn't have all the answers, but it's got a good grip on that particular problem.

A conversation about economic growth in Richmond

IMG_0971.JPGIn April of 2005, I made a personal commitment related to my purchasing decisions here in Richmond. I published the text of my pledge online, and have since found that hundreds of others have come to share that commitment in writing, and many more have communicated their support in other ways, which is very heartening. It was never been my expectation that everyone should share this commitment, or that my point of view is the right one and that another point of view is the wrong one. I was and am and exercising the great civic freedom to choose how and where I spend my money, based on my values about the businesses and organizations that I want to support. And as I recently heard it asked, "what is the point of having values if you don't act on them?"

As a resident of Richmond for eleven years and a business owner here for
nine years, I'm very much invested in the growth of our community. But growth means different things to different people. Shortly after the newspaper coverage of my pledge, I received a message from a prominent Richmond businessperson and political figure indicating his frustration with my actions. I thought the conversation we had that proceeded would be useful to post here, more than a year later. (I've removed any identifying information from the exchange; he can identify himself if he so desires.)

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Approving Richmond's comprehensive plan

Window on N. 14th StTonight's meeting of the City of Richmond Plan Commission was an interesting peek into the world of how urban planning in towns like Richmond takes place. It was apparently one of the only times for citizens to comment on the plan in its final form, though of course the whole process of developing the plan has involved public input all along.
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Conversations with Rebecca Ryan

IMG_0636It's an exciting day for those interested in building a better Richmond. Consultant and speaker Rebecca Ryan is in town to talk to business leaders, civic planners, elected officials, community members, and especially young adult professionals about how to move from "Brain Drain" to "Brain Gain" in Wayne County. I'm usually cautious about having outside parties come in to a community to tell it what it needs (and the costs expended to do so). But after meeting and talking with Rebecca at a reception last night and hearing her speak to community leaders this morning, I know that she has some great things to say (and a really engaging way to say them) about the state of our community and how we can be better in ways that really matter for the future. Of course, I'm a little biased in that Summersault is a sponsor of the event and I'm on the planning committee that brought her here, but this is definitely far above the standard fare. In any case, if you're reading this on 2/22 and are interested to hear her speak locally, she's got another gig tonight at the 4th Floor Blues Club at 5:30 PM - e-mail info@richmondyap.com to RSVP. I'll hopefully get a chance to do another post soon with some thoughts on the substance of these conversations.

IU Panel's Business Outlook: Charming and Wretched

Last Monday I had the opportunity to attend the Indiana University Kelley School of Business's "Business Outlook Panel" during their luncheon stop in Richmond to provide a forecast of the national, state-wide and local economies for 2006. Sponsored by Bank One (er, Chase Bank) and Richmond Baking and well attended, it was an interesting event all around:
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The quality of public dialogue in Richmond

I'm a strong advocate of the general concept that good dialogue can work wonders for resolving conflicts, building community, and improving the world we live in. (That's dialogue instead of, say, violence, explosive angry yelling, paternalism or monarchy, snap judgments, knee-jerk fear-mongering, heated debate, or silence and avoidance.) As a result, I am constantly aware of the need for better dialogue in my own community of Richmond, Indiana, and for venues that facilitate that practice. I would go so far as to say that Richmond is, on the whole, handicapped by the poor quality of public discussion about the issues that matter to us, and that addressing this handicap is one of the opportunities most ripe for the picking in our community today.
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Oops, we ALL cut the trees down

I am hesitant to write more about the conversion of Hayes Arboretum land into commercial shopping space - so much has already been said. But I feel compelled to point out my sense that Richmond, as a community, is finding some good in a situation that, for a while, only seemed to have negative feelings and outcomes attached to it all around. Indeed, I am hopeful (perhaps naively so) that it may serve as a turning point in how we shape Richmond's future.
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