A very good piece on this week’s “This American Life” radio program about job creation (in Collaboration with the excellent NPR “Planet Money” team). A number of key ideas in the episode resonated for me:
- How hard it really is for government to “create” a job, and to measure if you’ve really done it
- The challenges in trying to recruit employers, including the potential for this to be a zero-sum game between jurisdictions – or worse – a race to the bottom
- The trends (or fads!) in economic development, some of which we have definitely followed here in Portland
- The probable wisdom in instead working hard to grow from what you already have
It reinforced for me what I think is a fundamentally solid plank in the draft Portland Plan strategy on Economic Prosperity and Affordability, highlighting neighborhood economic development – doing the hard work to help Portland’s wealth of small businesses grow and prosper.
Follow the Portland Plan at http://pdxplan.com as the draft strategies mature and develop, and let us know what you think about the strategies.
