There are a couple of interesting commentaries at the website Naked Capitalism that outline a problem both worldwide and in this country: that there are Places That Don’t Matter, but people still live in and are still attached to them. These places are characterized by “Persistent poverty, economic decay and lack of opportunities“, and in general, they are increasingly ignored by the more successful geographies in the country.
The commentaries outline the fact that people with power – primarily living in Global Cities – have shifted their attention away from these places, instead taking the position that attention should be paid to the Global Cities because those places are Very Important, and that the people in the Places That Don’t Matter should simply move to a Global City, telling them that they can just “eat some training” to become successful. So in other words, the State, as a unit, no longer matters – it is now all about the Global City as the center of power.
The people living in the Global Cities are ignorant of the social upheaval and resistance that a policy of relocation/training requires – ranging from the general lack of housing in Global Cities for this to occur, to the emotional attachment that people have to their homes and family, to the focus on credentials that largely prevent the people from lesser areas from competing (despite a focus on diversity, there is still a high correlation between attending a “top high school” and being admitted to a selective university). It should be obvious that once people reach a certain age and point in their life, it is no longer economically or logistically feasible to get educated in a different area, especially when age discrimination is fairly rampant in many of the “hot” industries.
This has resulted in an upturn of economic populism – from Brexit to the separatist movement in Catelonia (Spain) to Marine Le Pen in France to Rob Ford in Toronto and to Trump. It was especially easy for this to happen in the US because our political system is designed to give weight to those not living in a Global City.
The article postulates that economies centered on large agglomerations (i.e. Global Cities) is not a surefire strategy because Global Cities are often not very dynamic with respect to growth, and that it is foolish to put all your eggs in one basket. It suggests that a better strategy would be to work on policies that help grow the lagging and declining areas, noting that simply social safety nets result in a permanently dependent populations and regions. We are already seeing this effect: many poor people are fleeing Global Cities and locating in poor regions, and a large segment of people moving to Global Cities are already successful.
I urge people in this state to look at our own version of this problem. The state, along with the public sentiment of many of the liberal thinkers here, has increasingly bought in to this vision, characterizing the lagging and declining regions of this state as Places That Don’t Matter. It could do things – the easiest of which would be to decentralize state government out of Boston and use state jobs as an economic engine. It is worth noting that Donald Trump has suggested to do this very thing.
Just some food for thought for the thinkers in this state.
There are places that don’t matter within the “Global Cities” too. It;s a serious problem.
Not sure about spreading state government though. Agencies that need regional offices have regional offices (last I knew anyway).
Play along with me for a minute. Imagine that we had zero current state workers, and we had to create all 86,000 of them from scratch. Would it make sense to place them all in Boston, where the economy is overheated, where housing prices are through the roof, and ignore other corners of our state which have plenty of unused infrastructure, and a great need for economic development? Of course not. Spreading the workers into the depressed areas makes more sense.
I realize that it isn’t practical to take chunks of government agencies and just move them out of Boston, however when you look at all the various state agencies, and how different things evolve all the time, there are absolutely opportunities to do this – if the state simply had a vision statement in place that said “over time, we want to shift state agencies, when appropriate, out of Boston, and into struggling areas of the state”.
There is one perfect example, an agency that was created in the last 10 years: the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. As far as I can tell, there are around 1,000 employees in this new state department. Where are they located? 101 Federal Street, Boston. Ground Zero of the state’s economy.
Now I know that people are going to say “but it’s better if we put the state jobs in Boston – that’s where all the people are, that’s where everyone wants to be”. If you take that position though, you are taking the position of “let them eat training” – the position that economically depressed areas should stay that way, that these are the Places that Do Not Matter. I suppose I can’t blame people for trying to keep every last crumb of economic opportunity in Boston, but at least be honest that you are trying to do this at the expense of people and regions that are genuinely in need – don’t pretend otherwise.
That goes too far; no one is trying to keep government in Boston at the expense of Brockton. It’s more convenience and inertia than malice.
In most states, the capital is centrally located, which means Worcester would be our capital. I think that would be helpful on most matters,
Also — the Gaming Commission has 1,000 employees? What do they do all day?
I’m sorry, I was off by an order of magnitude – I found a better way to search which shows 106 employees, both full-time (74 of them), part-time (2), and contractors (31).
My point remains though, with 100 new hires over the past few years, why not put that office in Worcester, Lawrence, Brockton, Fall River, North Adams, Holyoke, or Springfield? Maybe they could even pay, for example, the Director of Communications a salary less than the $132k associated with that position if the job was in Western MA.
Added up, in 2015, the MGC paid out $6 million to its employees and contractors. That money went primarily to the Boston area. Imagine if it was spent, instead, in Gardner – it would have made more of an impact to that city’s economy.
I don’t think it’s good enough to argue for “convenience”, or “you’ll find better talent in Boston” because the idea of the “state” matters here, and that means looking to help the welfare of struggling regions. That’s the point of these commentaries that I linked to though – what this country, and to a larger extent, the world is seeing is the rise of Global Cities which have taken control of their respective governments to make the system more favorable to those cities, and who have lost touch with the idea that a “state” is a group of regions which all must be tended to, ideally in a way that equalizes them.
Great post.
The capital of New York is……not Manhattan, it’s Albany. We ought to make Springfield the location of all new government agencies. Maybe then we’d get high speed rail from Springfield to Boston?
It wasn’t that long ago that similar arguments were made about cities being neglected in favor of suburbs.
How concentrated are state workers in the “global city” of Boston ? Maybe all the gaming bureaucrats are there, but the State Troopers? The professors and employees of UMass?
That’s a really good question, and would be helpful to know to further this discussion. Here is some data that I pulled from the state website.
In 2017, there were 130,462 employees paid by the state. This is not positions – if a person left a job mid-year and was replaced, that would be 2 employees, but one position. The total payroll was $7.31 billion.
The top departments were UMass ($1.37bn), the trial courts, the Department of Correction, State Police, Developmental services.
Clearly most of those jobs are spread across the state because that is where the work is. I also noticed that there are already a number of satellite offices, so the work is already not all in Boston.
For example, there look to be about 2,000 employees of the Department of Revenue. When I search for that in Google, it shows me locations in Pittsfield, Springfield, Worcester, Hyannis, and a lot of sites in the Boston area. I could not easily find a list of each office and what functions are performed there though.
The fact that there are already a number of offices shows that shifting workers out of Boston may not be as difficult as it seems. If there is duplication between offices, and the job is not dependent on physically being in Boston to serve people personally, the state could put forth a policy that says “any new hires for these positions will be done outside of Boston, with the goal being that the function is ultimately shifted to another part of the state”.
But the state doesn’t do this. A couple of years ago, the state was faced with reducing the number of employees who handled unemployment claims – a call center. Since there were fewer claims from an improving economy, there was less need. There were offices in Boston, Worcester, Lawrence, Brockton, and Springfield. The state closed the Springfield office and shifted the work to Boston. 57 workers in Springfield were laid off. Worcester was also closed.
The decision was made by Robert T. Cunningham, director of the state Department of Unemployment Assistance. On its face, it made sense – he chose Springfield because “its rent is high: $250,000 a year. The state owns the Brockton and Boston locations outright and Lawrence is cheaper rent.” But at the time, Springfield’s unemployment rate was 8.3% and Boston’s was 3.7%. Throwing 57 ex-call-center employees into the Boston economy would be a lot better than throwing them into the Springfield economy.
The article at the time also mentioned that a lot of this work is being transitioned to a different format: online. I don’t know where the online work is being done, but that’s another opportunity for the state to have shifted employees outside of Boston – just an example of how, if the state had the willpower, it could help underperforming regions.
The overall crux of my point, though, is that it would be really helpful if the state stops focusing on Boston as the Really Important Global City Which Must Be Helped At All Costs Otherwise We Will Lose Everything and focus its attention on other areas. This is the same trickle-down philosophy of helping out too-big-to-fail corporations because it would be really bad if they failed.
I am all for creating massive amounts of government sponsored employment in the least employed parts of the state. Maybe they can rebuild infrastructure. My great uncle got a dignified out of the Great Depression by joining the CCC. He built dams and beaches out in Marlborough, the first time he had gone that four out in the city and he fell in love with the community. We could do that for all sorts of young men and women lacking opportunity today. They won’t abuse drugs or commit crimes, and it will allow them to connect with other people in other communities bringing us closer together in a truly national project.
This is just an argument for taking the jobs away from diverse cities and giving them to unqualified white people in the suburbs. F- that noise.