Do Red States have stronger economies than Blue States?

That is one of the discussions making its way across the blogosphere in the last few days, thanks to a NYT column by Ross Douthat (whose last name is pronounced--one can only hope--"doubt that"). The Economist's "Free Exchange" blog summarizes the situation nicely:

[The] state level is a very poor place to be doing these kinds of comparisons. New York state is home to Manhattan...and Buffalo. Texas has the remarkably successful metropolitan areas of the "Texas T-bone"...and 17 of the poorest 100 counties in the country. California is home to both San Mateo county, home of Silicon Valley and among the richest in the nation, and Imperial county, largely agricultural and poor. State policy isn't entirely irrelevant, but metropolitan policy and regional geography (and the history of that geography) are far more important in determining economic success.

And in recognising this, economists should also have a certain humility in making policy recommendations. Yes, other things equal a low tax rate and favourable business rules will have an attractive force on people and jobs. But is it wise to make these policies the focus of a developmental effort? What does the economic history of the country tell us?

Well it tells us that one of the best things you can do to improve your economic prospects is pack up your town and move somewhere close to other rich places. It tells us that if you have a lot of well educated people in your city, your economy will prove to be dynamic and resilient. Can those people be attracted by low tax rates? Well, if you are in a multi-jurisdictional metropolitan area like Washington or New York, then the highly skilled may be persuaded to adjust their residence based on tax rates, yes.

But low tax rates will rarely be sufficient to pull the well educated to a new city altogether. . .

The full post is worth a read, if only for the fact that it is written with clarity and without ideological cant.

Technorati Tags: economy, talent

Is Web 2.0 worth it?

Since this is the 500th posting on this blog, it seemed like a good time to address the question raised above.

This blog has been an experiment in using this technology to compile information on important issues related to planned change and change management. It also is intended to be a promotional tool for Fairweather Consulting. What have we learned over the last 499 posts?

It is a reasonably good promotional tool, only because it is so cheap. Visits to the site run between 10 and 40 per day, with most of the traffic coming via search engines (and much of that originating from college students looking for an easy way to finish a term paper). But it has helped introduce us to new potential clients, and--as mentioned earlier--is so inexpensive that it is probably worth it on that count.

Second issue: blogs as devices for compiling information on important topics like innovation and change. The results are much more mixed. This site has become an important "scrap book" for our work. We can keep track of and retrieve past articles, report or posts from other blogs easily and effectively. That part is great.

The downside: information is continually atomized and wrenched out of context. If you believe that an important part of any human endeavor is continuity and the creation of new ideas from a reflective analysis of past practices, this medium is not for you. The fast pace of the blogosphere obliterates the possibility of reflection and makes it seem like a weakness. There are days where I am convinced that gathering and deploying information in this way turns us all into the equivalent of hyperactive five-year-olds with attention deficit disorder. As this style of communication becomes more ubiquitous, will it leave us unable to think or feel deeply?

We will be going on a bit of a hiatus to consider this.

All Marketing. . . .all the time

Trendwatching is touting the rise of "foreverism:"

FOREVER PRESENCE, with its effortless getting and staying in touch, is already facilitating a deafening (well, metaphorically speaking) conversation, that will continue between friends, family, strangers, foes, and yes, brands, in every possible combination until the end of times.

And while we have no intention of re-hashing the benefits of co-creation, we just want to point out that, ten years after the cluetrain manifesto (‘markets are conversations’) was published, it took a real-time publishing / conversation platform like Twitter to entice (big) brands to finally publicly interact with their customers.

Are you prepared to be in touch with and selling to your customers and prospects 24/7?  (Neither am I.)

Technorati Tags: innovation

The Scourge of Economic Fundamentalism

I am old enough to remember when it was not uncommon for college sophomores to fall into the worst kind of simplistic,fundamentalist Marxism. They could be found almost anywhere on a college campus. Scruffy fellows (they were almost all men) with beatific expressions on their faces. They couldn't wait to tell you all about dialectical materialism, the system of thought that explained everything. A few of these people went into adulthood convinced they were riding the red tide of history. Everyone else seemed to snap out of it.

Which is why I remain completely mystified by the cult of Ayn Rand. I'll admit, I've never read Atlas Shrugged. But every discussion,summary or account of her thinking sounds free-market fundamentalism run amok. But here's the really strange part of the story.

This isn't just a fascination with 20-year-old social science majors with bad skin and limited social lives. Responsible adults actually believe this claptrap. (Remember Alan Greenspan's mea culpa over his naive belief that markets were always self-regulating?) This Sunday's New York Times featured another acolyte in high places: BB&T CEO John Allison who is a full scale evangelist for this stuff. It's a wonder the financial sector didn't melt down years ago.

Technorati Tags: economy