I attended a SBANE breakfast meeting this morning where Mike Saul, the new Director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation spoke. He hit on several key points: (1) a need for regional (within RI and with RI's neighbors) planning and development; (2) a full range of options for capital financing from start-ups through attracting businesses to relocate into the state and every step in between; (3) streamlining and rationalizing the regulatory environment to reduce the costs of doing or keeping business in RI.
One member of the audience raised a question about RIEDC's role and ability to lead. Mr Saul observed that there have been 29 Directors in 39 years. While the early Directors laid out the basic economic development strategy for growth, over the years the agency's authority and responsibilities have been diluted as these have been shifted to new agencies and power centers.
My feelings are that Rhode Island as a state has tremendous potential. As a community, however, it is too insular and provincial to make the sacrifices and compromises necessary for the common interest. And in this class and a territorial warfare, waste and inefficiencies are the rampant way to maintain the petty warlords in the legislature. As long as we look at Rhode Island as a zero sum game, it will trail behind its immediate competitors Massachusetts and Conneticutt.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Rhode Island's Pride ????
The headline reads: The Economy in Crisis JOBLESS RATE: 10.3%
Subtitle: The number of unemployed in Rhode Island grows by 4,500 in a single month.
For some reason, most likely to sell papers and attract viewers, the local media seems to be taking pride in the fact that RI is nearly first in Unemployment. Its a race between RI and Michigan except that the points are scored by percentages as opposed to number of real people effected.
Certainly we need to be concerned in RI but lets face it, we are only the size of Detroit Population: 1,027,974. (Rhode Island 1,048,319 while Michigan is 10,095,643) Each unemployed person is worth counting and certainly worthy of concern. However when the press emphasizes the negative as something to be proud of it creates for a false picture of the down side. When the economy turns around RI will definitely grow faster than Michigan because there are fewer Rhode Islanders without jobs today.
In January RI lost 4,600 jobs while Michigan in December, 2008 lost 59,000 (latest figures I have at the moment)
I guess my point here is that with roughly 57,000 job seekers in Rhode Island and 519,000 unemployed in Michigan, Rhode Island is in a better position. we only need to find or create 1/10th of the jobs Michigan does to fully employ our work force.
While this is an oversimplified statement -- there are the discouraged workers who no longer show up in the unemployment estimates -- it does present a manageable problem, if the legislature and executive can get their act together to work on this problem.
Rhode Island is a small business state. If the tax and regulatory system were more inline with the needs of small business -- maybe we could over come our problem.
Data about the number of actual small businesses at any one moment are hard to come by.
However, the website SmallBusiness.com
http://www.smallbusiness.com/wiki/Rhode_Island_profile#Number_of_Businesses
carries this message.
If each of these 32,000 small businesses were to hire one person we could reduce the unemployment rate significantly. So what are we doing about --????
And where is the press -- isn't this a story?
Subtitle: The number of unemployed in Rhode Island grows by 4,500 in a single month.
For some reason, most likely to sell papers and attract viewers, the local media seems to be taking pride in the fact that RI is nearly first in Unemployment. Its a race between RI and Michigan except that the points are scored by percentages as opposed to number of real people effected.
Certainly we need to be concerned in RI but lets face it, we are only the size of Detroit Population: 1,027,974. (Rhode Island 1,048,319 while Michigan is 10,095,643) Each unemployed person is worth counting and certainly worthy of concern. However when the press emphasizes the negative as something to be proud of it creates for a false picture of the down side. When the economy turns around RI will definitely grow faster than Michigan because there are fewer Rhode Islanders without jobs today.
In January RI lost 4,600 jobs while Michigan in December, 2008 lost 59,000 (latest figures I have at the moment)
I guess my point here is that with roughly 57,000 job seekers in Rhode Island and 519,000 unemployed in Michigan, Rhode Island is in a better position. we only need to find or create 1/10th of the jobs Michigan does to fully employ our work force.
While this is an oversimplified statement -- there are the discouraged workers who no longer show up in the unemployment estimates -- it does present a manageable problem, if the legislature and executive can get their act together to work on this problem.
Rhode Island is a small business state. If the tax and regulatory system were more inline with the needs of small business -- maybe we could over come our problem.
Data about the number of actual small businesses at any one moment are hard to come by.
However, the website SmallBusiness.com
http://www.smallbusiness.com/wiki/Rhode_Island_profile#Number_of_Businesses
carries this message.
Number of Businesses
There were an estimated 95,390 small businesses in Rhode Island in 2004. Of the 33,253 firms with employees, an estimated 96.5 percent, or 32,098, were small firms. In 2004, the estimated number of employer businesses increased by 2 percent. The number of self-employed persons (including incorporated) decreased overall by 2.6 percent, from 53,380 in 2003 to 52,004 in 2004. Non-employer businesses numbered 63,292 in 2002, an increase of 4.6 percent since 2001, based on the most recent data available.
(Sources: U.S. Dept. of Labor, Employment and Training Administration; U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Census Bureau; U.S. Dept of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
If each of these 32,000 small businesses were to hire one person we could reduce the unemployment rate significantly. So what are we doing about --????
And where is the press -- isn't this a story?
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