Archives: Reg Murphy Pubs

Creativity, freedom lead to tech that makes our lives easier

Written by Tedi Rountree on . Posted in Uncategorized.

Some of you may remember when MacBooks came in white plastic casing. If you do, I suspect like me, you are really old.

I had mine for about seven years and then it died. I turned it on one morning and the friendly little Apple symbol did not appear. I could hear turning and moaning but not much else. Plastic discs would not even go into their drive. I took it to the Mercer IT Department (my employer at the time), and they told me what I knew — it was dead. I was sad to see it go yet it had been wonderfully loyal — and I bought it over the phone and it came in the mail.

After it died, I went to Atlanta and to the new Apple Store at Lenox Square. There I saw what was going to become my new MacBook Pro.

In a silver metal case, seemingly indestructible, and it just made me forget my old plastic MacBook. Just like that I had forgotten my old friend.

My new computer was a number-crunching machine. It was with me during the best years of my publishing. I also had a good bit of consulting going on and the shiny metal case made everything I did look more impressive and more expensive. This new world was wonderful.

The only problem was setting it up and moving files from the old machine to the new one. After many calls later to Apple IT and the Help Desk, it was all good but it took a lot of time and the learning curve was quite steep.

For some reason, the other night I was cleaning out my desk and I found the original receipt for the Pro. To my disbelief it was 10 years old. Time had passed, and I was stunned that it was still working — a bit slower, however, just like me. We had grown old together, made a career and moved to the Golden Isles.

And then it happened. That night I had a dream. My dream was that my MacBook Pro died and that everything on it was lost forever. I woke up in a sweat. This could not happen. This omen was so startling, I made up my mind that I had to buy a new computer that day.

Almost instantly I started dreading the setup that I knew was destined to come. Also, I knew the sales person would look down on me and my lack of current computer knowledge.

I had to go to the doctor on Monday (my new hip is fine — thanks for thinking of me) and then on to the Apple Store at St. Johns Center.

This Apple Store was very different from the one at Lenox many years ago. Knowledgeable and friendly sales people everywhere, all of whom had some specialty. There I met my new machine upon which I am typing this article — a new MacBook Air. No more spinning hard drives, plenty of memory, lite, fast, thin and in colors – silver, gold or space gray. Space gray it was. Gold just seemed too over the top and silver seemed like something from the past.

Then the magic happened. “Would you like me to set it up for you? Should not take more than 5 minutes. Everything you have is in the iCloud. I can access it in just a few minutes.” (Cloud? I think it is a cave in Utah.) “Will this include all the passwords that I have forgotten but have stored in the old Pro.” “Absolutely!” She did not just say ‘yes.’ She said ‘absolutely.’ Her confidence was overwhelming and very reassuring.

She did not stop there. To experience all of my new computer’s features it should be connected in magical ways to my iPhone and to my iWatch. Bingo — I am now totally integrated across all platforms — even at my age. So many things in life are now so much easier, and the rate of getting easier is growing.

My point? Thank you, Steve Jobs. Thanks to all of the 47,000 Apple employees and the other 304,000 workers in U.S firms supporting Apple. Thank you for approximately 1.2 million workers in the rest of the world. Thank you for the average salary of Apple corporate employees of $124,053. Thank you for spending your income in many other places that creates jobs for other people. Thank you for freedom and entrepreneurship that led to the creation of all this.

Just think, Apple started in Steve Wozniak’s garage. Creativity and freedom made all the rest. Wealth was created and living standards raised. For those of you who think this is bad and immoral — you can simply kiss my space gray MacBook Air. I bet all those people who bought Apple stock for pennies a share are thankful too.

PS: I bet Amazon would love the Golden Isles. I know that 25,000 new employees all earning on average $150,000 would change the nature of this place. However, I would love to swap new problems for the old ones that we have now that, at times, we seem unable to solve.

  • Reg Murphy Center
  • Skip Mounts

Resiliency planning would benefit county’s future

Written by Heather Farley on . Posted in Heather Farley, Reg Murphy.

Last year, I participated with a group of academic researchers and environmental professionals from around the state of Georgia (e.g. Emory University, College of Coastal Georgia, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Georgia Tech, University of Georgia, Nature Conservancy, and the list goes on) to publish the results of the Climate Research Roadmap. Through a year-long information-gathering process and workshop, 40 experts from the natural, applied, and social sciences convened to construct a manuscript of the key climate research questions that could lay the groundwork for Georgia decision-makers to take effective, science-based action in our state.

Among these 40 questions, a few stand out as particularly relevant in the Golden Isles where our geography presents at least two unique risks — a coastal ecosystem and rural communities. I call these features of our geography “risks” because from a climate change perspective, we are facing specific threats according to the Fourth National Climate Assessment released by the Trump administration in late 2018 — rising sea levels, increases in heat waves, more widespread droughts, increasingly intense storm events, and extreme precipitation events. These factors are unpleasant to deal with at best, but are costly as well.

In Coastal Georgia, we have $1 trillion of our national wealth held in coastal real estate and as a state, agriculture contributes $73 billion annually to our economy. As sea levels continue to rise and storms continue to increase in intensity and frequency, our coastal real estate and infrastructure have become vulnerable assets that are already costing residents and businesses dearly. Though rebuilding after tropical storm and hurricane events in the Golden Isles has thus far been relatively successful, costs will escalate alongside escalating climate impacts. Agriculture is already seeing the impacts of increasing temperatures on soil quality and food yields, which is likely to have an impact on food prices not just in our state but nationally. And while all of us feel these economic stressors, economically underserved and disadvantaged communities bear the largest cost as they are least equipped to adapt. Low or no access to savings or emergency funds make low income communities particularly vulnerable to long term effects like uninhabitable structures and health risk exposure (e.g. mold). This is not welcome news for the 18 percent of Glynn county residents living below the poverty line.

Climate change impacts are being felt now, but the costs of those impacts are going to be felt well into the future. It’s a long game policy issue. Unfortunately, bureaucratic systems (particularly in a democracy) are not well-suited to addressing the long game. Bureaucracies can be bulky and take entirely too long to get things done. Elected officials in democracies are increasingly forced to answer to the immediate concerns of constituents and have difficulty tackling long term issues that may fall outside of the scope of their elected term of office. Clearly this is not always the case, but it seems to be closer to the rule than the exception.

How grim, so where do we go from here? What rural and coastal Georgians could benefit from is resiliency planning. Resiliency planning is both reactive and pre-emptive. It addresses current and anticipated needs. Several coastal communities are already engaging in this process including Tybee Island’s Sea Level Rise Adaptation Plan and St. Mary’s Flood Resiliency Project. Glynn County and the City of Brunswick have begun talking about this need through events like the recent “Rising Sea Level Predictions: What They Might Mean for Glynn County” symposium, but concrete, collaborative resiliency planning is not yet a reality.

I mentioned before that the Georgia Climate project landed on several questions that can help provide coastal Georgia decision-makers with credible, relevant data that can inform planning and policy-making. These questions address issues such as planning for and adapting to extreme weather events, understanding coastal risk factors, agricultural impacts, and impacts to rural infrastructure and communities. This research has the potential to contribute both scientific and historical/cultural knowledge to the process of resiliency planning.

A good next step would be to connect researchers working on these questions with decision-makers who can use the information to create a more resilient Golden Isles. Using relevant data to inform our planning, we can position ourselves to efficiently deal with the impacts of climate change and perhaps avoid unnecessary costs in the future.

  • Heather Farley
  • Reg Murphy Center

Our local economy – the good and the bad

Written by Don Mathews on . Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

For the most part, 2018 was a good year for the economy of Glynn County, and 2019 looks to bring more of the same.

Business growth in 2018 was steady and balanced across most local industries. Construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail trade, health care and hospitality all posted increases in employment.

The job gains were especially impressive in construction. The sector added 120 jobs in Glynn in 2018, an increase of almost 9 percent.

The increase in manufacturing jobs here is a slice of the national trend. U.S. manufacturing employment has increased every year since 2010 — the longest sustained increase since the 1960s and a reversal of the downward trend that began in 1980.

Glynn’s manufacturing gains have been proportionally more modest than Georgia’s or the nation’s, but we are sharing in the larger trend.

Glynn’s unemployment rate now stands at 3.6 percent, down from 4.2 percent a year ago. Our current rate is below the national rate of 3.9 percent and dead even with Georgia’s unemployment rate.

Perhaps the most important labor market development is that the local labor force is growing again.

Between 2008 and 2014, Glynn’s labor force contracted by 9 percent — far greater than the 2 percent recession-induced contraction in Georgia or the 0.4 percent contraction in the U.S.

But since 2014, Glynn’s labor force has increased by 6 percent. Local economic growth is finally pulling people back into the labor force.

Glynn’s largest industry — hospitality and tourism — is growing nicely. Activity in the sector was up a modest 2.5 percent in 2018. More than 3 million overnight visitors came to the Golden Isles in 2018, generating $39 million in local tax revenue and a full economic impact of $1.7 billion.

The government shutdown hurt our hospitality and tourism sector bad, however. Many groups associated with FLETC canceled their visits. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in hotel stays alone were lost.

Glynn’s retail sector is cooking. Retail activity jumped 11 percent in 2018, the largest annual increase since 2006. The jump was most welcome, for our retail sector has truly struggled since the onset of the Great Recession in 2007.

Even with the bump in 2018, Glynn retail activity, adjusted for inflation, is still below its 2007 level.

Glynn’s construction sector also had a nice 2018. Residential building permits were up 6 percent for the year, while the value of residential construction was up almost 11 percent.

Activity at the Port of Brunswick was strong in 2018, but off a bit from the previous year. 525 ships visited the port, carrying 2.3 million short tons of cargo.

Look for those numbers to take off in the coming years, as the port significantly increases its capacity.

That’s the good news on the local economy.

The distressing news is that Glynn’s poverty rates remain stubbornly high.

The nation’s overall poverty rate — the percentage of people in the population who live below poverty thresholds — is currently 12.3 percent. Georgia’s is 15.1 percent. Glynn’s is 17 percent.

Child poverty rates are worse. The nation’s child poverty rate — the percentage of people aged 17 or less who live below poverty thresholds — is currently 17.5 percent. Georgia’s child poverty rate is 21.5 percent. Glynn’s child poverty rate is 29.4 percent.

Glynn’s economy has grown each year since 2014. Over the same time, its child poverty rate has fallen from 30 percent to 29.4 percent, a mere 0.6 of a percentage point. That’s distressing.

  • Don Mathews
  • Reg Murphy Center

Like physics, there are also constants in economics

Written by Skip Mounts on . Posted in Reg Murphy, Skip Mounts.

I don’t know about my colleagues at the Murphy Center, but I have found over my professional career that everyone has an opinion about economics and no one has an opinion about physics. I have wondered why this is so for many years.

I have a guess as to why. See, the toolbox of physics has constants in it like gravity, the speed of sound and the speed of light. You can’t argue about these for they are what they are. I have never heard an argument over gravity. Also, much of the world of physics comes from constants and, as such, there is really nothing to discuss.

Economics, however, appears to be absent of constants and is, therefore, largely theoretical and opinion. Here, personal positions are easy to stake out, and there is plenty to argue over.

This is however, wrong. There are economic constants that are as constant as gravity. Unfortunately, these are largely ignored. It is, after all, more fun to have an opinion than facts driven by constants. I want to discuss a few economic constants.

The first economic constant is that people have unlimited wants. You might have trouble with the word ‘unlimited’ because I could have said ‘infinite.’ At the very least, our wants are sufficiently large so that we could treat them as if they are infinite. This is an economic constant so much so that I could have called it economic gravity.

The second economic constant is that the resources that we use to fill our unlimited wants are, themselves, limited. I could have said finite. Our economic resources — land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship — are combined in various ways to create good and services which we use to fill our unlimited wants. This, too, is like gravity. It is a constant that cannot go away. Your opinion does not change this.

Now if we combine our two economic constants, we create our third economic constant which could be called the economic problem. Combining the first two economic constants, we conclude that we can never fill all of our wants. We must make choices as to which ones we will fill. Choice is the outcome of two constants so it too is a constant.

Another way to describe the choice problem is to say that we must decide which wants will not be filled — which wants must we give up. This too is an economic constant. These unfilled wants are the true economic cost of our decisions. Money has no role in any of this other than to make exchange easier. After all, I simply use money to acquire goods and services I want and lets me avoid bartering.

Why am I using this space today for an opening economics lecture? I have tired a bit of hearing economic opinions that cannot be opinions. Let me give you an example — we need Medicare for all. A new Green New Deal. We need free college. We need free pre-k education. We need, we need, …… we need. This could have been presented as ‘changing priorities.’

Rather than tell us what they might give us or what priority is now important, I wish political leaders had the courage to tell us what they plan to take away from us, for take away they must do — more kindly, what priority is no less important.

It is easy to have an opinion about what we might need, it is another matter to have the courage to tell us what they plan to take away. You can’t avoid the ‘take away’ just like you cannot avoid gravity.

  • Reg Murphy Center
  • Skip Mounts

Income inequality, social mobility, and new politicians

Written by Skip Mounts on . Posted in Reg Murphy, Skip Mounts.

January 2019 not only brought the start of spring semester at the college with renewed expressions of hope by our student-scholars, it also marked the seating of a new Congress. This latter event brought a vocal minority of newly elected representatives to the House of Representatives who have a unique view of economics and economic success. First, they are calling for a new top marginal tax rate of 70 percent. Next, they cite the existence billionaires as an indicator of the immorality of the economic system.

I will not waste your time explaining that a 70 percent marginal tax rate destroys the incentive to do anything productive. If this is not, as a professor of mine would say, ‘intuitively obvious to the casual observer,’ then any explanation I could offer would do no good. I would, however, like to talk about bit about economics and morality.

As framed by the new politicians, my discussion will center around income inequality and social mobility. In recent years, the top income quartile (top 20 percent) earned 24 percent of personal income. This is up from 22 percent of personal income not that many years ago. Thus, income inequality is growing in the United States.

Social mobility refers to the probability that our children, when adults, will be in a higher income quartile than us parents. This is to say: will our children will be better off than we are today? Recent studies suggest that there is a one in three chance that our children will end up in a higher income quartile. This percentage has not changed in the past 30 years.

So, in the end, income inequality has increased but social mobility is the same. What are we to glean from this?

The first thing one needs to recognize is that the distribution of income is an outcome. It is what it is. It is the result of economic activity and many other variables. It is simply like a report of facts by an auditor. Social mobility, however, is probably a policy variable. There are things that can be changed that will enhance social mobility. In fact, this is probably desirable as we all want our children to be better off than we are.

Let’s start with billionaires and immorality. First, I know of no evidence that points to billionaires being billionaires because they did something to the rest of us. This would be the case in a zero-sum world. However, we know that the world is not zero-sum. Billionaires became billionaires because they did something special for the rest of us. Their income status is the outcome of doing things for others. Is this immoral? Or is taking something away from them because they simply exist immoral? (You can’t answer me using your iPhone, Facebook, Instagram, etc. or if you are holding a Starbucks Coffee from one of the 30,000 stores.)

Studies also show that increases in social mobility result from increases in human capital. The source of human capital improvement for most of us comes from education and training. So, should we limit the success of others or should we create an educational system that benefits everyone and allows the success of others to provide an incentive for the rest of us?

Where is the immorality? Access to education by everyone is probably one of the hallmarks of the United States. Why don’t we invest in it and promote access for all, encourage institutional efficiency and use this as a sign of our morality? I’m just saying.

Dr. Skip Mounts is the Dean of the School of Business and Public Management at the College of Coastal Georgia. He is also a professor of economics and an associate of the Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies.

  • Reg Murphy Center
  • Skip Mounts

Are the ‘Barbarians’ really at the gate?

Written by Don Mathews on . Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

Claims that “Barbarians are at the gate!” are prolific these days. One such claim has it that some barbarians are already within the gate. The barbarians in mind are Chinese imports.

The claim is that cheap Chinese imports have gutted U.S. manufacturing, destroying millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs.

There are many problems with the claim.

For one, U.S. manufacturing hardly appears to be in decline, never mind gutted. Federal Reserve data show that U.S. industrial capacity is greater than it has ever been. It is 18 percent greater than it was in 2000, when trade with China was liberalized.

U.S. manufacturing production, too, has reached an historic high. Despite falling by 19 percent during the Great Recession, U.S. manufacturing output is now 9 percent greater than it was in 2000.

The idea that U.S. manufacturing is in decline is based on the decrease in manufacturing employment. Manufacturing employment reached a peak of 19.4 million in 1979. It was down to 17.2 million in 2000, and down to 13.5 million just before the Great Recession.

The recession pushed it down to 11.5 million. But it has increased each year since 2010, and now stands at 12.8 million.

Are Chinese imports to blame for the decrease in U.S. manufacturing employment?

Doubtful.

By far the most significant reason for the decrease in U.S. manufacturing employment since 2000 is technological advance. To be producing 9 percent more output with 25 percent fewer workers is an extraordinary increase in productivity.

A prominent 2013 study estimated that Chinese imports accounted for as much as one million of the four million decrease in U.S. manufacturing employment between 1990 and 2007.

More recent research suggests that estimate is incorrect.

The more recent research takes into account the fact that the bulk of U.S. trade in goods is in industrial supplies and capital goods, products that you and I, as consumers of retail goods, never see.

In 2017, 54 percent of goods imported by the U.S. were industrial supplies and capital goods; 23 percent were consumer goods. In the same year, 65 percent of goods exported by the U.S. were industrial supplies and capital goods; 12.5 percent were consumer goods.

Which U.S. firms import industrial supplies and capital goods? To a large degree, U.S. exporters. Purchasing lower-priced, quality inputs makes U.S. exporters more competitive and able to export more.

Which foreign firms import U.S. produced industrial supplies and capital goods? To a large degree, foreign exporters. Purchasing lower-priced, quality inputs makes foreign exporters more competitive and able to export more.

A consequence? U.S. imports and exports of goods stimulate each other.

The data show it. Since 2002, inflation-adjusted U.S. goods imports have increased by 88 percent, while inflation-adjusted U.S. goods exports have increased by 101 percent.

The same is true of U.S. trade with China. Since 2000, U.S. imports of goods from China have increased by 405 percent, while U.S. exports of goods to China have increased by 697 percent.

That also means that goods we import often have a significant amount of U.S. content, while goods we export often have a significant amount of foreign content.

That is especially true of Chinese imports. A Federal Reserve study published just two weeks ago found that 56 cents of every dollar in U.S. imports from China actually goes to U.S. firms and workers.

Taking all that into account, recent research suggests that Chinese imports have had little effect on U.S. manufacturing employment.

At times, there truly are barbarians at the gate. Far more common are cries of “Barbarians are at the gate!” when, in fact, there aren’t.

  • Don Mathews
  • Reg Murphy Center

Meetings can be useful when done right

Written by Melissa Trussell on . Posted in Melissa Trussell, Reg Murphy.

The week before classes start is a busy one for professors. There are syllabi to write, course websites to update, lessons to plan, and last-minute advisees to direct. But, last week, when I needed to be doing those things, it felt nearly impossible to get anything done at all.

I spent most of my working hours last week in meetings. The few days before students return to campus are always meeting-packed. All-campus meeting, all-faculty meeting, department/school faculty meeting and multiple optional meeting opportunities for training and professional development.

And just prior to starting these on-campus meetings, I attended the annual meetings of the American Economics Association in Atlanta. This is the largest economics conference in the country and consists of three days of non-stop meetings for research presentations and panel discussions.

I am exhausted of meetings. And, according to an article published in the Harvard Business Review last summer, I am not alone. In fact, even in the meeting-packed week before classes start, my job is a relatively meeting-light job according to the report.

The article cites research finding that CEOs work an average of 62.5 hours per week and spend over 60 percent of that time in face-to-face meetings.

It would be easy to take the rest of this space to write about how much productivity is lost while we sit in meetings. Indeed, a complementary study described in the Harvard Business Review a year earlier showed 71 percent of senior managers think meetings are unproductive and inefficient, and most say meetings keep them from doing their own work.

But, I have been in some really good meetings in the last week and a half, and I want to spend the next couple hundred words focusing on what is good about meetings.

There is not a lot that economists agree on, but almost all economists agree that long-term growth of an economy depends on technological advancement, which always starts with a good idea.

Research shows that good ideas are made even better when a diverse group of individuals collaborate. And, in a business world overrun with emails and instant messages, America’s top businesspeople still recognize the value of face-to-face meetings to encourage collaboration.

In his YouTube video “Where Good Ideas Come From,” author Steven Johnson says, “Good ideas normally come from the collision between smaller hunches, so that they form something bigger than themselves.”

One of my favorite examples of such a collision — or, more accurately, a series of collisions — is in the case of psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amons Tversky. The very first meeting between the two, who were reportedly polar opposites in personality, was at a seminar in which Tversky presented his work on how people learn. Kahneman challenged Tversky’s experimental design, and the two began meeting to discuss Tversky’s work and Kahneman’s objections. The two continued meeting and sharing hunches, and the result was a Nobel prize winning body of work establishing the field of behavioral economics.

This is what meetings are good for. When done right, face-to-face meetings provide spaces where hunches can collide to become good ideas.

  • Melissa Trussell
  • Reg Murphy Center

Some questions for Sen. David Perdue

Written by Don Mathews on . Posted in Don Mathews, Reg Murphy.

A couple weeks ago, Sen. David Perdue had lunch with the Golden Isles Republican Women. It must have been a tough lunch for the Senator. He said some things that I can’t imagine our local Republican women would leave unchallenged.

Since I am not a Republican woman, I did not attend the lunch. But The Brunswick News covered it well.

According to The News, one matter Sen. Perdue discussed was the closing of U.S. automobile factories over the years. The senator lamented the closings and said, “I don’t know how to bring those back, frankly, when you’re dealing with $3 an hour labor in China.”

As my colleague Dr. Skip Mounts points out, running a business and understanding economics are two very different things, and knowledge of one does not translate into knowledge of the other.

With his “$3 an hour labor in China” remark, Sen. Perdue provided local Republican women with a case in point. I’m sure they pounced on it.

The notion that firms in a country with high wages can’t compete with firms in a country with low wages is a zombie: it’s dead wrong but refuses to die.

In the 1800s, Britain was the world’s leading manufacturer. Its firms paid the highest manufacturing wages in the world. The same was true of the U.S. in the 1900s, and it’s still largely true today.

Contrary to what some say, the reason manufacturing prowess and high wages go hand in hand is not tariffs. It’s productivity.

Worker productivity depends on capital, technology and the way production is organized. The better the capital, technology and production organization, the more productive workers are.

And the more productive workers are, the more firms pony up for them.

In the U.S., wages are high because worker productivity is high. In China, wages are low because worker productivity is low.

Plus, on a global scale, a manufacturing wage of $3 an hour isn’t bad. In plenty of countries, manufacturing firms pay workers less than $3 a day. So why aren’t manufacturing firms in those countries driving Chinese firms out of business?

Sen. Perdue also told local Republican women that though it’s common for countries to protect certain industries within their borders, he would prefer not to play favorites.

Indeed, the government should not prop up some industries at the expense of others. But the senator contradicts himself, and no doubt our Republican women called him on it.

If the government should not “play favorites,” why is Sen. Perdue all in for the president’s nationalist trade policies?

Imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum amounts to giving domestic steel and aluminum producers fat welfare checks, paid for by domestic manufacturing firms that make products out of steel and aluminum and domestic residents who buy those products.

Nationalist trade policy is the government deliberately overriding domestic businesses and individuals because “it knows best.” I’m sure our Republican women are against that. They used to be, anyway.

Sen. Perdue also expressed dismay about the amount of U.S. government debt owned by China.

Whoa. Our Republican women couldn’t have let that go by. (China owns $1.1 trillion of the $21.9 trillion U.S. national debt, by the way.)

If the senator is so concerned about China owning $1.1 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds, why are he and his party so unconcerned that the national debt has grown by $2 trillion in the two years his party has had control of the presidency, senate and house?

We are fortunate to have party members willing to hold the feet of one of their own to the fire.

  • Don Mathews
  • Reg Murphy Center

Quality of life is the true measure of development

Written by Melissa Trussell on . Posted in Melissa Trussell, Reg Murphy.

This month, as I have continued thinking about how our values shape economic policy, I am reminded of a statement shared with me by Brunswick’s Economic and Community Development Director, Travis Stegall.

He said, and I paraphrase, there are two types of development economists: those who focus on money, and those who focus on people.

I remember how shocked and disappointed I was when I stepped out of graduate school and into “the real world” and discovered how many fall into the former category.

I had recently come home from my third trip to West Africa, and I had just completed a dissertation wholly focused on improving lives of individuals and communities who had experienced conflict. I was bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ready to change the world with what I had learned.

But then I started talking with others about local development in the U.S. and Canada, and I started noticing a disturbing theme. To many here in the developed world, economic development is all about attracting and keeping businesses and raising Gross Regional Product (GRP).

Business development and GRP are certainly a large part of economic development, but they should never be the sole focus of a development plan. When development becomes synonymous with improving GRP, we miss the point entirely.

In Chapter 6 of their book Essentials of Development Economics, Edward Taylor and Travis Lybbert assert that income is but a means to an end. A region’s true level of development is measured not in production or income but in its residents’ quality of life. Income certainly contributes to quality of life but does not define it.

In the 1990s, the U.N. Development Program established the Human Development Index (HDI), a numerical measure of how well-developed a nation or region is.

The HDI is calculated using four proxies for quality of life: life expectancy at birth, expected years of schooling for children, average years of schooling for adults, and gross national/regional income per capita.

Truly developed economies are economies in which people have access to quality health care and education and are therefore free to make choices that both productive and fulfilling.

Free. There’s the key word. Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen described economic development as just that — freedom.

When we value individual freedom over money, it changes how we do economic development. We start to see plans to develop humans rather than industries. Education and health care are no longer simply footnotes in the workforce development chapter of our strategy to attract firms.

We educate and train individuals because quality education expands one’s career options and extends his or her freedom to choose.

We ensure top notch health care so men and women are free to provide for themselves and their families without the physical, emotional, and financial burdens of sickness.

And when we develop these communities where individuals are free to pursue happiness and emotional and financial stability for themselves and their families, I suspect we will find these are exactly the communities in which businesses thrive and GRP soars.

  • Melissa Trussell
  • Reg Murphy Center

What is the margin of something you buy?

Written by Skip Mounts on . Posted in Reg Murphy, Skip Mounts.

One of the things you learn about in the economics of consumer behavior and the theory of the firm is product differentiation. In a competitive market all goods and services are essentially the same. Competitive pressures assure this.

However, consumers must still choose among the alternatives. Choice is made on things/attributes that seem inconsequential yet determine uniqueness and lead to selection. This is product differentiation. Pizza is pizza – flour, cheese, meat, tomatoes, etc. – but my favorite is tossed as the one tossing sings.

Certainly small things, but they differentiate my favorite from others.

Remember pizza is pizza. While small things are small, they are also the ultimate factors that drive consumer choice. It is the difference that matters.

Theory tells us that choices are made at – let’s call it ‘the margin’. What is the differentiation — ‘the margin’ — of some of the things you buy?

We were in Thomasville, Georgia a few weeks ago. Like many cities Thomasville has shopping centers around the community with TJ Maxx, Publix, Lowes, food chains and on and on. (No Starbucks for some reason?) What is unusual, however, is that they surround a viable, exciting, amazing downtown.

While many cities with the same layout have dying central cores, Thomasville’s is thriving. You find a wide variety of retail, restaurants, bars, and most important, many shoppers and downtown residents. Heritage is also on display. This past weekend was their annual Victorian Christmas that brought 30,000 people to downtown. Yes, 30,000!

What is their margin? What differentiates Thomasville and its downtown from so many other cities and their failing and dying cities cores?

Being the economic sleuth I am, I decided to talk to someone in every store we went in — and I mean every store. I also talked to city, community, and business leaders.

Here is their ‘margin’ I think? Thomasville has a unique economic development model. Their premise starts out simply — the quality of life is dependent on economic development. However, what follows is not that simple.

While many cities take economic development wherever and whenever it occurs, Thomasville assumes that it begins in downtown and works its way out in the community.

Development begins at the center and moves out. Most cities develop randomly — we take our victories wherever they occur. In Thomasville, downtown drives everything else.

If public investment is called for, the first places to set priorities is downtown and surrounding communities. From what I can tell, everyone is committed to this model.

Another point that was stressed was total inclusion of all interested parties.

They talk to one another all the time. Government also tries very hard to be service oriented toward the small business owner. Big businesses looking at Thomasville as a potential location see that small businesses matter to government.

Therefore, the big business knows that it will matter too.

I could go on and on. Better yet — go to Thomasville. Eat at Jonah’s Fish and Grits — the wait is worth it and the hushpuppies are a gift of love.

What does this tell us about our home? First, I love Brunswick and the Golden Isles. Our entrepreneurship program and downtown go hand in hand.

Several years ago, a community vision statement was created by a some folks.

It reads: “Working together to make Brunswick and the Golden Isles an exceptional place in Georgia to live, work and visit by strengthening our communities and enhancing the quality of life.” It is being adopted by many organizations in the community.

Maybe, just maybe, we need to focus less on adopting it and more on talking to one another about the issues it raises. Another thing that I learned from the folks of Thomasville: this all takes time. A young lady said to me, “We love our children and grandchildren more than we fuss with each other.”

So let’s talk. Let me worry about how to encourage this conversation.

I may have an idea or two in my next column.

  • Reg Murphy Center
  • Skip Mounts