The state’s glitterati may regard the Inland area as a backwater, or maybe as a hotbed of bold innovation. Take a wild guess as to which view you think predominates in the tony coastal political and social circles of California.
But some influential Inland people embrace the latter view, the one where we are a place of creative advancement. They say state officials really do care about us and take issue with the assertion in this space a couple of weeks ago that coastal elites generally regard the Inland area as a basket case socially, culturally, economically.
In considering whether these Inland leaders are on the right track, we can examine what they’re saying about the state and our region and evaluate that against what we know empirically.
Inland supporters of the “state’s-our-buddy” view praise Regions Rise Together, an initiative of Gov. Gavin Newsom, and other organizations such as Inland California Rising, a group co-founded by UC Riverside professor Karthick Ramakrishnan, for pushing objectives like “racial inclusion and sustainability.”
Such groups, backers say, aim to foster what they call “inclusive economies” in our Inland regions producing stable jobs that pay higher wages than Inland workers, on average, earn now. They say we will “grow investments” that will bring us better air quality, improve community health and enhance quality of life. Also, they call for racial equality in educational attainment and economic achievement. That’s a lot of asks for a place that’s not a basket case.
In an op-ed in these pages last Sunday, Ramakrishnan protested the basket-case view, arguing the state will “ultimately empower regional coalitions” to build more inclusive economies.
Ramakrishnan added other key assertions:
• Local leaders are growing more powerful in their insistence that job growth – in and of itself – is insufficient.
• It is not simply about getting the economic analysis right.
• We need to reach beyond the standard economic and political stakeholders.
Bill Mueller, chief executive of Valley Vision in the Sacramento area, wrote a rejoinder that added a new point: “The much harder job facing the Newsom Administration and lawmakers will be constructing a coordinated policy framework that respects and aligns with individual regions and their economic aspirations.”
Just focus on “coordinated policy framework.” It sounds as though the state would hold an umbrella over all the regional groups, under which they’d have some unspecified level of “empowerment” to operate. This may not be “central planning” but it sounds related, like maybe “central steering”?
Back to Professor Ramakrishnan’s three substantive points:
First, as to the notion that the kind of job growth we have isn’t cutting it. This is probably a knock on logistics.
The context is that the area was once a construction worker’s paradise, with developments going up everywhere. Then, housing crash, recession, huge unemployment. But today there are so many other jobs, we don’t have the workers to fill them all. Our workforce isn’t especially well-educated and not available in great numbers for specialized high-tech work.
And we are situated geographically at Ground Zero for the transformation in retail that’s changed how we live — logistics. That means trucks, rail, air freight, warehouses, distribution and fulfillment centers, ubiquitous delivery vans … logistics. With that come big buildings some consider eyesores, transport vehicles that expel engine exhaust, more congestion.
That has spawned a vocal local industry of logistics-haters. Although logistics is the area’s fourth largest employer (behind government, health care, and leisure/hospitality), it’s an object of intense scorn.
If Regions Rise Together or its offspring have ideas on what would replace logistics jobs with higher-paying ones, Inlanders would be all ears.
Second, our objectives cannot be met simply by getting the economic analysis right. Agreed. But economic analysis is useful.
Finally, how to interpret “reach beyond the standard economic and political stakeholders”? It sounds like a less blunt way of saying, anybody who has any pull around here, kick them out and let’s have some new big shots. And who can say past or current leaders have been any great shakes? Some great ones, but you’ve seen the drift. Unfunded. Pension. Obligations.
We must govern ourselves accordingly.
Addendum: The professor’s op-ed referred to a racial component to all this, suggesting something like a systemic distemper toward some race or races.
Always helpful are the words of the oracle Milton Friedman:
“The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.”
Reach Roger Ruvolo at rruvolo@att.net