I’ve always tried to balance optimism and pessimism with
realism. I don’t like being a pessimist. It certainly doesn’t win
friends.
I’ve always tried to balance optimism and pessimism with realism. I don’t like being a pessimist. It certainly doesn’t win friends. I’d much rather be an optimist. But as a thinking person, I try to be a realist. So, when I saw The Dispatch’s Jan. 19 headline “Council entices industry” it triggered in my mind the analogy of some beautiful woman trying to get help from a bunch of deaf old men.
Now while the “beautiful woman” might be compared to Gilroy (the gem of Pleasant Valley), I’m afraid in this situation “industry” might be likened to the deaf old men. Little potential for the fair lass’s success, no matter how she asks for help.
From the article that followed the headline, Bill Lindsteadt, Executive Director of the Gilroy Economic Development Corporation (GEDC), was quoted as saying “I think Council stepped up and said ‘We want industry,’ … We’re out of the competitive game right now.” Well put, Bill. But the Council’s wish is apparently nothing new.
Referring to a two-page paper published by GEDC entitled “The Gilroy Advantage” (published in 2002), it states that for Gilroy, [the goal for] “industrial growth is centering on high tech software and their support industries.” Now unless I’m living in a fog over on the west side of town, I don’t observe or read about any positive pattern of sustained industrial growth in Gilroy. In fact, Gilroy took two big negative industrial hits in 2003 with the demise of Indian Motorcycle Company and the relocation of the California Door Company to Morgan Hill.
But I raise a question. Is the Gilroy City Council living in Neverland (Peter Pan’s, not Michael Jackson’s) when it comes to its goal for industrial action in Gilroy? Is this enticement thing an exercise compared to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic? I mean, who’s kidding whom?
How can the Gilroy City Council and the GEDC really entice industry (using job credits and waived traffic impact fees) when the shackles that chain Gilroy’s industrial success are (1) the State of California, which is setting one record after another in driving business out and into the arms of nearby states, and (2) the Federal government, whose policies are driving U.S. businesses offshore, destroying jobs and putting entrepreneurs out of business? Where is realism in this whole local enticement vision? How far can Gilroy rise above the regulation restraints imposed by state and federal government?
I’m going to speak Republican economic heresy now, but I just don’t see the rosy outlook for the U.S. economy that the president shared in his State of the Union speech on Jan. 20. Our national economy is sailing in a sea of “iceberg” trade deficits and yet “Captain” Bush seems to be asleep at the economic helm. We continue to import far in excess of what we export, and our trade imbalance continues to grow greater and greater. To our ruling class of globalists, it doesn’t matter where manufacturing is done or by whom because they still profit. If it can be done at lower cost abroad, let foreign workers take the jobs from U.S. workers. This betrayal is justified in the name of efficiency.
As for the U.S. $450-plus billion merchandise trade deficit, our government seems to ignore it. Apparently trade deficits don’t matter. And as far as labor-cost efficiency goes:
• “Up to 14 million jobs … are at risk of being shipped over seas, two UC Berkeley economists said … in a research report.” – Contra Costa Times, 10/30/03
• “We’re trying to move everything we can offshore,” HP Services chief Ann Livermore told Wall Street analysts at a meeting Wednesday.” – Forbes, 12/5/02
• “But as the U.S. economy has slowly shifted toward service jobs, factory jobs have been steadily lost – in fact, in just the past 39 months, some 2.8 million have vanished.” – Christian Science Monitor, 12/11/03
I hope the 2.8 million number includes the 360-plus jobs that went down the drain when Indian Motorcycle closed last September. But as I wrote in my Oct. 14 column, even if Indian Motorcycle had withered the economic storm here in Gilroy, there was reasonable probability that it was going to move its headquarters to a cheaper location like Alabama with its lower property taxes. So much for Gilroy and California business incentives and enticements.
Adding insult to injury, it now appears that some companies are even moving their customer service jobs overseas to benefit from the low wages. Jay Leno joked about America’s job losses recently saying “Bush said American workers will need new skills to get the new jobs in the 21st century. And some of the skills you’re going to need are Spanish, Chinese, and Korea because that’s where all the jobs went.”
You say I’m being a pessimist and not a realist, and what’s my solution? Sorry, I don’t have one. This is an opinion column, not a solution column. That’s realistic, right? But maybe the GEDC needs to publish a monthly “business report card” in The Dispatch indicating businesses that have come to Gilroy and left Gilroy. At least we locals could see what’s happening on the “enticement” front.
In the meantime however, power to the City Council and the GEDC to keep pursuing an enticement plan. At least it’s a way to keep busy. And who knows, maybe there’s hope out there somewhere. That makes me some degree of an optimist – I think.
