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Your comment is valuable in that it makes the point that we need a DIVERSIFIED economy. The housing communities that Arizona developers were frantically building in the 1990s were largely being filled by three groups.
1. Retirees looking for a pleasant environment.
2. Californians and people from other prosperous states who could sell their homes in the housing boom for a shocking amount over what they had paid and buy a bigger, better house in Arizona with their cash profits (often overlapping with group 1). The fact that so many of these people were from California no doubt contributed the emphasis on California that the economic outlook meeting focused on.
3. People who came here because our employment outlook seemed quite bright, but was, in fact, dependent on the housing boom.
Right now the only houses we really need are still for retirees. The construction industry CAN'T come back the way it was, as long as people aren't coming here from other places for something other than retirement. Because as rude a it seems to point out, retirees die. And their still rather-new houses are going up for sale, leaving little need for acres of brand-spanking new ones. It's just as much of a vicious circle as the education system is.
Our preponderance of retirees also leads to the lack of interest so many Arizonans seem to have in improving our public education. Retirees naturally have a lack of interest in schools, as their children are long gone from them. Add to that retirees' emotional ties being way back in Michigan or Minnesota and you have double the lack of interest. Non-profit organizations of all types have the same problem in Arizona. Compare the budgets of our United Way groups and United Ways in states with far less transient population bases. Arizona United Ways have next to no money compared to those in places like Pittsburgh or Cleveland or Indianapolis ... places where people have deep roots and see the need for UW services. We also see this phenomenon in sports. Do Detroit Tiger fans come here and transfer their allegiance to the Diamondbacks? Do Chicago Bears fans root for the Cardinals with any intensity? No. And one final thing: we can't blame the lack of interest in Arizona public schools only on Baby Boomers. The so-called Greatest Generation that retired here didn't give a hoot about the schools (or the charities or the sports teams) either.
So back to the original point: we need to DIVERSIFY. How to do that? How do we attract businesses from other states when we are perceived nationwide (rightly or wrongly) as a bunch of obsessives dedicated to shutting down abortion clinics, building and filling private prisons, oppressing women and gay people, caring little for education, and fighting immigration (when, in fact, Latinos are going out faster than they are coming in). It's proven that tax cuts have not worked. So what else can we do?
I agree with just about everything you have said here. That was a very insightful description of the situation. Having said that, please don't use such a broad brush when describing Arizonans. I am a retiree who is passionate about supporting public education. I have worked on a couple of override campaigns in recent years and my wife serves on a School Board. I am also a transplanted Detroit Tigers fan who is a Diamondbacks season ticketholder. When the Tigers come to town in July I will be wearing Sedona red.
As one that moved from CO to CA, being from OC, for better job prospects, I looked at AZ and the jobs in high tech sales paid the same as Denver Metro so I don't get the low pay.
The anti gay law was really stupid. Sheriff Joe is extreme, but what does AZ do when you are flooded with illegals, wave them in? As a gun owner, and supporter of the 2nd amendment, your gun laws are too lax.
The reason I passed though, was the heat. I spent some time there years back in the spring and it was 85-90F no thanks. Throw in the scorpions/rattlers pass.
As one that moved from CO to CA, being from OC, for better job prospects, I looked at AZ and the jobs in high tech sales paid the same as Denver Metro so I don't get the low pay.
The anti gay law was really stupid. Sheriff Joe is extreme, but what does AZ do when you are flooded with illegals, wave them in? As a gun owner, and supporter of the 2nd amendment, your gun laws are too lax.
The reason I passed though, was the heat. I spent some time there years back in the spring and it was 85-90F no thanks. Throw in the scorpions/rattlers pass.
So here's an objective view from CA.
Thanks for your view. As I stated much earlier in this thread I'd bet the heat and the other items I listed have much more to do with why people and companies may look elsewhere then these silly social issues that people like to carry on about.
Gay rights and religious freedoms are great talking points for the media and those with a cause but I bet have little to do with what is talked about in the Board Rooms of the great companies of this nation.
Numerous tax breaks for businesses were passed during the Brewer administration. These corporate benefits have not helped one iota in attracting business to the state. That was one of the primary points made by the economists on the panel.
I find it interesting that you don't see the glaring inaccurate wording in your title......where do you get that Arizona isn't already growing???
Few states can boast what has been happening in Arizona since the recession ended 6 months into Obama's first term....what 5 years ago now.
Be happy that you are able to attract people from other states, who are bringing their money and job creation expertise with them.....Arizona could definately be doing worse like many other states are.
IMO you can complain after you've gone through a 66% tax increase in one year.....now that hurts.
Perhaps you ought to be reminded that many Catholic schools have closed over the last several decades. They don't have a presence in most communities. Some of their teachers are not able to be certified at the state level (its pretty questionable having a teacher in a Catholic school teaching chemistry who can't get a teaching license). They are often the opposite of creative. And yes, they don't have to take anyone they don't want to take. They can leave out all the children who aren't relatively easy to teach. They don't have to do special education. They don't have to teach the autistic.
In my school, some of the best and brightest also got suspended or recommended for short-term expulsion. What a shame it would have been had their education been ended.
We had a huge gifted/talented program...with a fair percentage of Black and Latino students in it.
You completely missed my point which was that Catholic and private schools historically provide the highest quality education, these are models for what work and they should be copied.
Sorry but most public schools in this country have a documented history of decades of failure and just waste money. School needs to be strict, and disciplined for those that want to learn.
If kids cannot make it in a serious setting then they need to go to a school that will be even stricter until they get the message.
I'm a "moderate American" and "weighed my choices" when deciding where to plant roots when I left the military, I could have picked anywhere in the country when I retired and the military would have moved me there for free. I picked Arizona because it was Arizona and represents many of the things that made America great in the past. Is it perfect, of course not, but there is at least room to attempt to make it better and isn't so far gone as are most of the places that so many people are running from (to Arizona and Texas, etc.).
I was trying to keep politics out of it but you keep mentioning "politics"...the liberal experiment has failed over and over and people are fleeing the liberal bastions for more conservative places. For the most part I'm a fiscal conservative and socially moderate and don't concern myself with many of the social issues that the religious right pushes. I am smart enough to realize that big government & throwing more money (money we don't have to begin with) at every situation isn't the answer to our problems (just causes bureaucrats and administrators to waste more money). Personal responsibility, accountability and working hard to do our best and teaching and enforcing these values in our children will overcome most of the problems that the left wants to throw more money at. We still have the ability to do that in Arizona, other parts of the country are way too far gone to even attempt this and unfortunately are going to drag everyone down with them.
Then we have Mike Orr and the other "economists" trying to tell use that we need to be attractive (make our state more like the state they are fleeing) to these people that are fleeing. I've lived in three states that were attractive to these people fleeing California and it was great for the Californians that moved there but sucked for all those that used to call the place home and had to leave because all the jobs were taken by Californians and they couldn't afford to live there any longer. In each of these places there wasn't some big job boom that came with the Californians, they just sucked up the existing jobs so now every car salesman, secretary, grocery clerk is formerly from California.
I agree in so far as the last thing we need is more income inequality in AZ. So an approach that prices out the median income family out of their places to live is not acceptable. This is what has been happening to my home city of Cologne in Germany. RE and rental prices have skyrocketed so that many lower income professions are locked out. They have to haul in plumbers from way outside.
I agree in so far as the last thing we need is more income inequality in AZ. So an approach that prices out the median income family out of their places to live is not acceptable. This is what has been happening to my home city of Cologne in Germany. RE and rental prices have skyrocketed so that many lower income professions are locked out. They have to haul in plumbers from way outside.
That is exactly what these "economists" and Mike Orr are preaching...they want to attract all these wealthy people from other places (mainly California) that don't do anything other than make our place theirs and force us to move and find cheaper places to live. If you want to switch your work to a service industry servicing the Californians that take your current job then it's a great plan for you. I've lived it three times over, during two decades, and not excited about doing it again in Arizona. Luckily at the time I was secure in the military, however, those around were not as secure as I was. Not to mention, I'm no longer secure in the military so it would affect me directly.
Also, the Californians that come don't bring a job with them. They come with fat pensions from some poor municipality in California that will pay them $150,000 a year for being retired for the rest of their life. And a whole bank account full of money from selling their house in California at an enormously inflated price that allows them to make the housing here unaffordable for the rest of us. The ones that need to work will take your job, the rest will just survive of their pensions and live here like kings with the "great cost of living". It is a myth that Californians that flee CA for greener pastures are bringing jobs with them.
Sure we'll need more pool cleaners to clean their pools, more waitstaff at the restaurants to take their orders, more car salesmen to sell them cars, etc. There will not all of a sudden be a huge glut of high tech, high paying jobs waiting to be filled because the Californians arrived.
I have a brother that is a CEO of a company in California and he plans to get the hell out of California as soon as he sells his business (for tens of millions of dollars) and can move somewhere else and never have to work again. He's not planning on bringing any jobs with him yet his Stanford educated kids will probably take yours.
You completely missed my point which was that Catholic and private schools historically provide the highest quality education, these are models for what work and they should be copied.
Sorry but most public schools in this country have a documented history of decades of failure and just waste money. School needs to be strict, and disciplined for those that want to learn.
If kids cannot make it in a serious setting then they need to go to a school that will be even stricter until they get the message.
What decade do you want to go back to?
We're in the 21st century now. We know far more about learning than we even did in the 1980s.
We're in the 21st century now. We know far more about learning than we even did in the 1980s.
Oh really? Our education results do not indicate that at all. I was a product of the 80's and my education was far better than what my kids received in "the 21st century".
I also found this interesting from a 2012 Huffington Post Article...
"Still, the Harvard study found little correlation between increased per-pupil spending and gains in test scores. A similar analysis by 24/7 Wall St. last July yielded similar results. In 2009, the U.S. spent more than $10,000 per student, ranging from $6,356 in Utah to $18,126 in New York. Utah's high school graduation rate, however, was higher than New York's."
BTW, is this what we know now in the 21st century that we didn't know in the 20th century? I'm beginning to see your point and I don't think what we've learned is helping us. My daughter tries to explain this stuff to me and I just shake my head. I can't make heads or tails of how her packet teaches her to do math (notice I didn't say her teacher?) and she can't either. I show her my way, the way I was taught way back in the 20th century, and she always says "that is so much easier, why didn't they just show us like that?" to which I can't answer her.
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I can't make heads or tails of how her packet teaches her to do math (notice I didn't say her teacher?) and she can't either. I show her my way, the way I was taught way back in the 20th century, and she always says "that is so much easier, why didn't they just show us like that?" to which I can't answer her.
