Jul 22
“A recent Milken Institute report found that between 2000 and 2007 California lost nearly 400,000 manufacturing jobs, all this while industrial employment was growing in major competitive rivals such as Texas and Arizona.”
From Joel Kotkin’s “The Blue-State Meltdown”.
July 22nd, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Plenty of fodder for armchair economists to feed their favorite theories. Kotkin’s analysis relies on a diet of red-meat for his conservative sponsors at AEI. He barely mentions that some of those exemplary red states are resource economies subject to recurring boom-and-bust of world commodity prices for as long as their resource lasts. Anyone remember Texas in the 1980s as oil prices plummeted which in turn brought on the S&L debacle and bailout? And what is Arizona’s asset base beyond sunshine for retirees and a pathway for economic refugees (illegal immigrants) heading for jobs in Utah and beyond? The bad news for red Texas is the Hispanic growth rate that threatens to turn Texas blue in the not too distant future.
July 22nd, 2009 at 3:51 pm
So, at least, you admit that blue is bad for your economy. A good first step.
BTW: The “plenty of fodder” is actually the blue state economies themselves. CA, NY, MI, IL are largely ruined.