Economic Growth

Ask a tech titan what the next “Big Thing” is and odds are he or she will proclaim it is AI – short for Artificial Intelligence.

The proposed budget for the city for 2021 would reduce public safety spending by $9 million as compared to fiscal 2020.  Doing so would be dangerous for Jacksonians.

Defunding the police will not help Jackson’s crime problem but ensure that it increases and forces even more residents who seek personal safety to leave the city.  Businesses will also leave to follow their customers.

As the book’s subtitle suggests, the economic hyper focus on innovation has been to the detriment of maintaining the trillions of dollars of investment across the country in buildings, equipment and infrastructure.

The shuttering of the economy has done very real economic damage to the state’s economy and to state and municipal revenue streams. The longer it stays in place the harder it will be for governments at all levels to make ends meet and deliver the services citizens have grown to expect. Tax streams from sales, property and income are predictable in normal times but none of those models include nation-wide lockdowns.

Much is unknown about the future of the U.S. economy, but any plan for recovery must start with an honest, yet visionary, assessment of the assets on which a local or state economy could be built.  This is the right approach under any circumstances, but recovering from an almost-total shutdown of the world economy offers both the challenge and the opportunity to do it right as we begin the long road to recovery from the COVID-19-related economic crisis.