From the Globe this morning, two articles that raise the question: Exactly what has our governor accomplished on our behalf over the last 3+ years?
Massachusetts losing population, trailing in jobs:
Paul Harrington, an economist at Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies, discounted housing prices for the exodus. “I think that’s a tired excuse for poor performance,” he said, criticizing Governor Mitt Romney, saying he failed to turn around the jobs market. The governor, a venture capitalist, swept into office promising to woo CEOs and their jobs to the state. Since the third quarter of 2003, the nation has added jobs at four times the rate Massachusetts did, said Harrington.
To be fair, I don’t see how you can divorce the job market and the crushing real estate market when it comes to population. The state is becoming house-poor; but wouldn’t it have been great if Romney was the guy he said he was?
And an op-ed from NewEnglandFutures.org guys Neil Peirce and Curtis Johnson lays out what enormous tasks lie before the next governor, especially MA:
The perils are hidden in plain sight. The seedbed of a nation is now an old blue corner, the six states mustering fewer people than Florida alone. Massachusetts and Rhode Island are losing total population — a rarity in today’s America and a red flag for employers. Youth are fleeing to other parts of America. The region is aging rapidly — Maine is soon to be America’s oldest state. Major New England corporations sell out and aren’t replaced. Scarcely any firms (except occasional catches in the hot biotechnology sector) consider moving in. Acute problems range from excessive housing costs to thickets of inhibiting state and local regulations.
Look at their evaluation of the energy issue in particular, and the shortcomings of Romney’s approach — wait a minute, does he have an approach? — are obvious.
So… do you want a governor to follow in Romney’s footsteps? Or something completely different?
Now that we’ve seen why it doesn’t make sense to hire a money-driven CEO to do the people’s work, we need to look for true leaders.
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Cam Kerry, new co-chair of the State Dems Victory 06 campaign, made a great statement on WBUR this morning. He said people are looking for good government that works (my apologies for butchering the quote.) Frankly, it’s one of the first Democratic messages I’ve heard from anyone other than Deval that resonates in my gut. It’s a values statement, and it works.
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Good government is the solution to this BS from Romney, Bush and all their lackeys.
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If I paid someone to do a job, I’d expect it to be done. If they came back to me and told me they couldn’t fit the bill, I’d find somebody who could. I think it’s time we find someone who can do the job.
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Oh, and maybe Romney and Healey ought to make like the other 42,000 or so people who left Massachusetts, and get outta here.
What the hell does “good government that works” mean? It’s sillytalk, political jibberish which means everything to everybody. It’s empty intellectual filler.
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“It’s a values statement, and it works…”? Huh? You think that’s a substantive response to this state’s economic issues? Do you work for a living?
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A minority govenor, with no sustainable veto power, can’t do squat to fix the Commonwealth’s job creation EMERGENCY. We’re a high tax, high cost state, one of the most expensive in the nation, and the blame falls squarely on the nanny-state liberals in charge, i.e., the legislature.
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You can add to our state’s burden rapidly escalating contingent liabilities created by the bloated pension and benefit packages the self-serving public sector demands. And for retirees too! They’re growing so big, towns can’t even estimate what future obligations look like. Or they’re too frightened to.
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No amount of pleading and begging by any governor, D or R, will convince employers to relocate to Massachusetts. As a matter of fact, employers are leaving MA for more business-friendly states. I had to laugh when Bank of America tried to relocate 800 people from their HQ in Charlotte, NC … I think 50 people opted to move to Boston! Even Rhode Island is beating us now (see Fidelity’s 1 million square campus planned for Warwick.)
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And don’t tell me what a draw all the great educational institutions are for employers. Students graduate, then follow the jobs.
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We’re in the housing industry. Our mega-billion-dollar pension fund financing sources have all told us “forget Massachusetts, especially Boston.” They’re worried about job creation. We have none.
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At the next US Census, 2010, we’re going to lose another congressional seat.
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Does anyone think we have a problem? It’s not a political one, it’s economic. I’ve heard no credible words from anybody about why we’re in this spot, and how we’re going to get out of it. Instead, let’s pass “Health Care For All.”
1. The population in MA is decreasing.
2. Some housing is being built.
3. Less housing is being destroyed.
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Why aren’t prices stable or even falling? Demand should be falling since the population is shrinking. Supply should be climbing since more housing is being created than destroyed.
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So, what’s up?
is that new housing is not being created evenly throughout the state. Most likely it’s not going up in the already built-up or zoning-restricted areas that are most desirable. Hence, prices in those areas keep going up, and price declines elsewhere don’t make up for it.
Where in Massachusetts are people moving from? Where are they moving to? It’s not like everyone is leaving Boston and moving to Phoenix. In teh past, many people in Boston and vicinity are moved to the burbs, pushing up demand there (or should I say here).
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I think there’s been a pretty steady population loss in the western part of the state over a period of time.
I’m in the housing business. The strength of the national economy created very low long-term interest rates, and the lowest consumer mortgage rates in the past 25 years.
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This has been the prime factor causing prices to skyrocket. This increase in affordability has also stimulated household formation, a measure which can increase even while population remains flat: students hit the job market, kids move out of home, the affluent buy vacation properties, and, yes, divorces happen.
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Beware of fallacy of “median home prices” you see quoted everywhere. They’re averages and do not reflect how soft the broad middle-market for single family homes and condos is … the $400,000 to $900,000 range. Soft, and getting softer.
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On the other hand, the low-end, entry market is robust, as is the high-end $1,000,000+ sector.
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We predict, generally, as interest rates rise (30-yr fixed now above 7%), everything except the high-end will come to a screeching halt. Prices will soften. Sales will stall, then disappear.
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Already, foreclosures in lower-priced neighborhoods are at historical highs (see today’s Herald. This will spread upward. It doesn’t take too long for a professional couple to be short by $25,000 of income — repeat, income — and suddenly be unable to qualify for that $500,000 mortgage.
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One worrisome sign for the Commonwealth … people are fleeing MA. But who in particular? MassInc did a comprehensive study (can’t link) recently. It’s retirees, recent grads, first-job professionals and middle-income families. Total outflow is somewhere in the 100,000 to 150,000 range annually the past couple of years. They’re going to NH (lots), FL, NC, SC, AZ, NM and CA mostly.
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Here’s the bad news … that outflow is being replaced by 100,000 to 150,000 of mostly job-seeking foreign immigrants, and a few high-income “eds and meds.”
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Why is that bad news? While losing a net of 3,000 or 15,000 people doesn’t seem too critical, look at the lost earning power and tax revenues that leaves with the relocating middle-class and young professionals. It isn’t replaced by the incoming.
I wonder if part of the reason, or maybe the whole reason, why we’re gaining jobs at a slower rate than the rest of the country, is that we lost jobs at a lower rate than the rest of the country during the recent recession. I don’t have the figures to determine how much of a factor that is. All I have is the feeling I remember from the recession that things weren’t getting bad as quickly here as elsewhere, and also a general sense that Massachusetts has a higher portion of its economy tied to stable long term institutions like universities, hospitals, and banks. A lot of the heavy fluctuation in jobs during recessions and recoveries has been in manufacturing and service, and I think those are a significantly smaller portion of our economy than they are in most other states. (We do have a fair bit of high tech, of course, which is also unstable – but we get lots of startups because of our universities)
… if he believes a govenor, even Mitt Romney, has the ability and power “to turn around the jobs market.” Is Harrington an actual professor at Northeastern?
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I don’t believe it, so he needs to post an illustration proving he understands freshman college microeconomics. Will he get the “S” and “D” curves backwards? Let’s see.
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The US economy has expanded briskly the past 5 quarters. Why not Massachusetts? Because Romney hasn’t spent money on bogus “job training” programs, or because there aren’t enough public works projects?
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There’s something else wrong with the Massachusetts economy. Maybe Deval, Tom and Chris can explain it (doubt it.) Paul Harrington obviously cannot.