RIGHT LANE Scott K Fish
An easy way to tackle this topic is to draw from existing conservative economic development ideas on:
- Keeping more of the money you earn;
- Making it easier to start/expand a business;
- Job creating;
- Providing quality, affordable health insurance. But here's the rub. Absent certain major changes, none of those ideas will happen. So here's my short list of essential first steps toward true private-sector economic development:
- Throw out big-spending politicians in all levels of government.
- Elect in their place people who know government that governs least, governs best.
- Bring civics -- the study of the rights and duties of citizenship -- back to classrooms.
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One reason may be that the majority of Maine voters don't reward such politicians. We need to fix that. For 30 years, most voters freely elected big spenders to all levels of government. Big-spenders = Big government. Big government kills the very people who drive economic development: innovators, job creators.
Government has two economic development roles. Either 1) government takes our money and redistributes it to people government thinks worth funding, or 2) government gets out of the entrepreneur's way, encouraging and unleashing a creative spirit statewide. Maine, like America, is built by pioneers, not planners. We need to elect and keep electing politicians who understand the creative spirit and how and why it works. My third point, restoring the teaching of civics to classrooms, is as key to America's survival as it is to Maine's economic development. America cannot thrive with generations of people ignorant of the rights and duties of citizenship. That includes knowing what type of government we have, why, how it works, and our role in it.
"The simple tasks of citizenship -- taking an earnest part in home duties, helping the unfortunate of one's neighborhood, earning one's living, voting intelligently -- many persons believe it makes little difference how well or ill they do them. This spirit of indifference is the nation's greatest danger."
"A nation [or state] succeeds or fails not on the battlefields, but in the preceding and succeeding years in the homes, schools, and places of work." These words are from a civics textbook taught in Maine grade schools 80 years ago.
We need to get back to teaching "the simple tasks of citizenship" to get off the death spiral: undereducated voters electing big-spending politicians taking more and more money from workers and job creators, to spend on failing programs geared towards undereducated voters.
Heave-ho big-spenders, vote for common-sensers, teach civics. Otherwise, all economic development bets are off.
Scott K Fish is technology director/marketing manager for the Maine Heritage Policy Center and the owner/editor of www.asmainegoes.com. You can contact Scott at info@asmainegoes.com.
LEFT WING Sean Faircloth
I'm a capitalist. No other system works as well. That's where Bill Gates comes in. Bill Gates spoke to a legislative group this summer regarding how best to develop jobs in our respective states. The richest man on earth specifically rejected taxes as the pivotal factor.
The top priority according to Gates? Research institutions -- university and nonprofit. Gates said R&D and a pool of people with four-year degrees are the catalyst for high-wage jobs.
I'm perhaps more conservative than Gates when it comes to taxes. I sponsored a bill a few years ago creating an R&D Tax Credit. Such tax credits boost businesses that create high-wage jobs. Lowering state tax rates generally is a good goal. (Some retired Mainers become residents of places such as Florida to avoid taxes here.) But make no mistake: A low average income population means the tax burden will be higher to support the same services.
So the world's richest man is exactly right regarding the most important goal: Foster high-wage jobs. And nothing is more important than following the Gates plan to reach that goal: 1) invest in research institutions; 2) attract Mainers to top-quality four-year degrees.
I hope, when you read this, Bond Questions 4 and 6 will have passed, pumping around $20 million into biomedical research, marine research, the University of Maine system, and the community colleges. Advocates for those bonds deserve great credit, but the bonds are a pittance compared to the proportional investment by other states. Don't get me wrong. The Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at UMaine and the Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health in Brewer are exactly what we must do. But we must triple that effort.
I serve on the Maine Economic Growth Council. On page 10 of our report, Measures of Growth in Focus, read this tidbit: "Maine ranked 50th among the other states in university R&D." Show this quote to friends and legislators. Quibble if you must ("We're 50th!" "No, we're 47th!"), but this number tells an ugly truth.
We must invest far more in our only graduate research institution: UMaine. Exponentially expand collaboration between UMaine and Jackson Laboratories and MDI Biological Lab. Southern Maine might get by on spillover from MIT, Harvard, and Route 128. Not us. Triple Maine's R&D effort-or we'll fall further behind.
According to a State Planning Office report, the average per capita income in states with high R&D investment is about $7,000 more than here. Adding $7,000 to Maine's per capita income will attract educated natives and immigrants alike.
What if all the energy Maine expended publicly moralizing about private sex lives this last election was invested in promoting the Gates plan? What if Maine decides to join the 21st century instead of the 19th?
Next time you talk politics, skip political handicapping, skip social issue distractions, and say, "I'm giving money to a PAC supporting increased UMaine research. I'm only voting for candidates who pledge in writing to make UMaine research their top priority."
Rep. Sean Faircloth had the idea for the Maine Discovery Museum in the summer of 1996 and led the project through to completion.
