September 6th, 2011. The View From The Farm. It’s Tuesday morning in Palo Alto and the sun is breaking through the morning cloud cover – revealing the oak and eucalyptus trees filling in the open grounds on the Stanford campus between the old sandstone and tile architecture and the newer glass and concrete structures.
I haven’t been on and around the campus for some years save for an occasional foray for a football game or reunion event. One of my daughters and her family recently moved to Menlo Park – literally across the ditch (San Francisquito Creek) from the campus. Visiting with them these last few days and discussing, among other things, the local economy, gives one a totally different perspective on one of the paramount issues being debated in political and economic circles, namely, jobs, jobs and more jobs.
Contrary to most of the country, the jobs issue here is filling the expanding number of job openings needed to staff Silicon Valley’s growing and thriving tech industry, and all the resulting satellite goods and services resulting from the growth. These are not your uncle Olaf’s jobs either. The valley’s venture capitalists, tech innovators, educators, research institutions and the like require a prodigious supply of highly educated professionals and staff all of whom, up and down the ladder, are well paid with substantial benefits, which almost always include company aided opportunities for educational advancement in their field of interest.
None of this happened overnight – it resulted in decisions made over generations beginning with Leland Stanford’s visionary founding and endowment of the university bearing his son’s name, the hands on mentoring and encouragement of Dr. Frederick Terman in the 1930’s, and ultimately the skills, curiosity and creativity of those drawn to the intellectual hub growing and fermenting throughout the area, particularly during the second half of the twentieth century and continuing today. The bottom line is that tremendous resources, both private and public, were invested on an ongoing basis, spanning generations, educating children, young people, young adults and adults of all ages, equipping them to create to participate in and to enhance, the unprecedented economic prosperity which resulted. It didn’t come from lowballing projections, from shortchanging schools, and focusing resources primarily on “safe” and proven historic industries. Otherwise Silicon Valley would still be known primarily as the prune capital of California –big difference.
Idaho needs to do far more than simply “hunker down” and wait for change to come to us – we need to be a leader, not just a hanger on, waiting for the good times to return. We are better than that.
August 22, 2011. The Dog Days of Summer. As August draws to a close, the weather continues to remain hot, not really unseasonably hot, but definitely uncomfortable, though perhaps not as uncomfortable as some of the news coming from legislative leadership. The good legislative news this summer was the upswing in the state’s general fund revenues, ending the year some $80 million ahead of forecast. The bad news is that the state’s economist’s forecast (Mike Ferguson - now retired) predicted this result last year, but was ignored by both the Governor and Legislative leadership; they opted for a substantially lower figure resulting in unnecessary cuts to Idaho’s K-12 schools, Medicaid assistance, higher education and other state funded programs.
Certain members of the House leadership have opined that reducing income tax rates should return this “surplus” to the taxpayers. The reality is that the “surplus” is bogus, having been produced by low-balling the revenue forecast. Unfortunately, if the leadership has their way, these program cuts could become permanent, producing long term systemic weakening of our pubic schools and safety net programs, hardly a strategy for ensuring the long term success of Idaho’s economy and the well being of seniors and others in need of help. Considering the state’s majority party, both locally and nationally, has made the phasing out of Social Security, Medicare and publicly education a part of their long term policy, one can only hope that the voters will eventually realize the dangers to our collective future and reject these leaders and their misguided and destructive policies at the voting booth.
