Harvard Economics Prof Says “Don’t Count Atlanta Out”
Decatur Metro | March 10, 2010There’s a new post on the New York Times’ Economix blog by Harward Economics professor, Edward Glaeser, which gives a concise overview of Atlanta’s economic history and weighs in on the city’s future.
Though Atlanta has higher-than average unemployment and is suffering from the real estate market coma, Glaeser is still putting his chips on the ATL.
Yet there are three key reasons to think that Atlanta will weather this storm and continue to thrive.
First, Atlanta benefits from the fact that it is the dominant agglomeration in the region. The continuing vitality of large cities is a remarkable feature of our age and Atlanta benefits from that fact.
Atlanta also benefits from its business-friendly politics, which will continue to attract plenty of companies.
Finally, Atlanta also benefits from being highly skilled — something that outsiders too often forget.
Nearly 43 percent of adults in the city of Atlanta have college degrees, as opposed to 27 percent in the nation as a whole, and 41 percent in Boston. The figure is even higher in surrounding Fulton County.
Skills have long led to urban success, especially when mixed with large urban size.
Smart money never bets against the ability of a huge concentration of smart people to weather an economic storm. Don’t count Atlanta out.
h/t: Terminal Station
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Hooray! We’re a “dominant agglomeration!”
I had to look it up. Clustered together but not coherent. Sounds pretty accurate.
That’s a very strange term to describe why something should succeed.
A dominant agglomeration of monkeys with keyboards have yet to type out “Romeo and Juliet”.
(though Vido, my helper Capuchin does well with my DM responses)
How about that point of Atlanta having “business-friendly politics”? That often means anti-union and anti-environment politics. Are we all happy about that?
I personally am happy that so many of us have college degrees. But did those degrees give us the education we need to think critically about the politics we follow?
And it’s a “right to work” state (aka “right to be terminated with no cause” state), even for state and local government and school system employees. No reason need be given to terminate even a 22-year state or school employee on the spot, no matter how good their performance. Meanwhile, top government or school administrators can give themselves salary increases and bonuses while furloughing and terminating the folks getting the work down. Couple that job insecurity with low salaries compared to other states and the private sector and we expect high quality service? I know we can vote the bums out but that’s a 4 to 10 year process and not one that the individual taxpayer has much control over given big politics.
I’ve never understood why– in a “no cause” state– the ATL is so often reluctant to drop the hammer on folks when their outrageous actions make the news.
No reason should have to be given to fire an employee in the private sector. In the govt. sector, no one is fired without cause anyway. You have to really try to get fired from a govt. job.
Mr. Walrus: You wrote: “In the govt. sector, no one is fired without cause anyway”. You are very wrong on that! Give me some examples or maybe you can quote Fox news. I have worked for 25 years for the state and have known many people fired “without cause”.
A little defensive there, huh? And wow, you even made the incredible leap that I watch Fox News. You must be magic!
And there is a difference between being let go for buget cuts, etc. and just being fired for no good reason. Why don’t you give some examples to your original point that the govt. does fire without cause.
Actually, just about every state and county employee has a very good chance of being terminated in the next year unless they are lucky enough to be working on a federally funded project. All state employees are currently furloughed one day out 20-24 work days a month. Luckily they are paid so low compared to the private sector that it won’t be that hard to find something in the private sector, even part-time work, that will pay as much. The only place with job security right now is the federal government. Or being one of the top three folks on top of a government or school agency.
Letting people go for budget reasons has nothing to do with the “for cause” argument.
Why not? I’m not being facetious. To me, job security–i.e. a process that makes sure that who is let go is based on fair criteria, not cronyism or where in the organization one sits– is especially needed in tough economic times.
Like everything in life, a balance is needed—in this case between “business-friendly” which the original thread maintains attracts companies and being anti-employee which can provide insecurity to most taxpayers unless they are self-employed (in which case they can be both if they want!
) I suspect that most of us support the concept of a balance–no one really longs for the days of sweatshops and child labor or believes that worker-utopias can exist anywhere but rural upstate New York in the 1800s–we just differ on where that balance lies.
“No reason need be given to terminate even a 22-year state or school employee on the spot, no matter how good their performance.”
I can assure you that is untrue. In all but the most egregious cases, it takes two years of warnings regarding poor performance to fire a public school teacher.
Teachers, school nurses, counselors, paraprofessionals just don’t get offered another contract. Am I wrong?
Well, let’s expand this from a city to a state and take California as our example. Relatively well educated. Very pro-union and pro-environment. And very, very broke. See also: New York, New Jersey. Have all the educated citzens of those states thought critically about their politics? Seems not.
Well, state government in Georgia is now broke as are most local governments and we will soon see massive service cutbacks. I do not think there is much of a strong relationship between being a “right to work” state and our local economy. Must be something else.
Anti-Union? Yes, very happy with that.
I’m guessing you’re not a plumber or electrician or auto worker.
Unions are gangs…gangs set against the richer, better endowed gangs called corporations.
The difference is one of those gangs creates employment and the other one stifles it.
Unions maintain employment for their gang members, perhaps they stifle it for outsiders, but they also ensure their members don’t get the shaft every time the corporation feels it’s not making enough profit.
I guess corporations, in their zeal to create employment, move jobs out of this country because of the stifling behavior of those wicked unions?
That’s a silly argument. If they do move jobs out of the country, then they are still creating jobs, just not here. There are many reasons why corporations move jobs over seas and, yes, unions contrubute to that. What is wrong with employees negotiating their worth to their employer on an individual basis? Why should the guy next to me get paid as much as me when he does half the work? And how do they get the shaft? You get paid what you are worth to a company. If you don’t feel like you are being paid enough, find a company that will pay you more. If you can’t find a company that will pay you more, then maybe you aren’t worth more. If you want to ensure you don’t get “the shaft,” then maybe you should start your own business or find a career path where you are in more control of your future. All this “corporations are evil” talk is getting so tiresome. They create goods and/or services that people obviously want or they would not be in business. In doing so, they create jobs. Do they all treat their employees well? Of course not, but having a general hatred for corporations is just plain ignorant.
I never said corporations are evil. They are the backbone of this country…but I can turn this around and ask you why all anti-union talk?
“What is wrong with employees negotiating their worth to their employer on an individual basis?” Nothing’s wrong with that–what’s wrong is that without unions a lot of employees get tossed because the corporations, naturally, don’t want to pay more–as in, you’ve been with us for 15 years, we owe this, this, and this–so, go find another job based on your individual merits, we owe you nothing.
“Why should the guy next to me get paid as much as me when he does half the work?” Now this is an odd question, if we should all negotiate our worth on an individual basis–why would this matter? It has nothing to do with you how much the guy next to you makes–and, what if he makes more than you? and does half the work? Where’s your recompense? A least with a union you both are getting a scale.
“If they do move jobs out of the country, then they are still creating jobs, just not here. There are many reasons why corporations move jobs over seas…” But they’re not creating jobs for people in the US, and there is one reason corporations move jobs overseas, profit margin. Doesn’t make it wrong–everyone’s in business, but it doesn’t help the working man here.
Unions are similar to the guilds in Europe during the Middle Ages, they helped maintain a work force, ensured they got paid a living wage, and they financially protected their members from the church and aristocracy–that is, they helped the little people. There’s nothing wrong with that.
“…there is one reason corporations move jobs overseas, profit margin.”
Be fair. There are two sides to jobs moving overseas. The first, as you say, is maximized profit but the second is equally important: American’s unrealistic expectations as it relates to price cannot be met by a fairly compensated American workforce. But no one wants to admit we’ve screwed ourselves.
“American’s unrealistic expectations as it relates to price cannot be met by a fairly compensated American workforce.” Other than sounding like a expanded version of maximized profit, it seems we are stuck in a perpetual cycle of cheaper cost, higher pay, more profit that will lead to a degrading cycle of more profit, higher cost, cheaper pay. Sounds like capitalism is eating itself. And, yes, we have screwed ourselves, and, please, no fascist communist comments.
Of course it’s profit margins! But instead of blaming the corps., maybe we should look at the fact the we have one of the highest corporate tax rates of the industialized countries. Lower, if not eliminate corporate tax, and not only will prices go down, but companies will stay in the US and foreign corps. will want to set up shop here as well.
Take a look at this column:
http://www.georgiatrend.com/neely-young/03_10_neely.shtml
[...] “Ridgelandistan” from Atlanta, commenting on the Decatur Metro blog var linkwithin_site_id = 36181; (function () { var elem = document.createElement('script'); [...]
Ridge! See the link above. You’re monkey quote is on Creative Loafing!