The numbers just aren’t good for Ohio: 152,000 fewer jobs than nearly 20 years ago, lower household income, high student debt, falling behind in education – almost every measure used to define quality of life is going in the wrong direction.
People don’t have to see the numbers – they see it in neighborhoods. Auto parts stores, payday lenders and deep-discount stores in almost every town are evidence of cash-strapped households. There are entire vacant blocks in once proud residential areas of Youngstown, Mansfield, Dayton. County-coroner morgues often overflow with drug victims. New moms and babies increasingly are in the hospital due to complications.
At one time an attractive, thriving state, something now is terribly wrong.
Local news organizations want to help by holding conversations about solutions – to see where people agree, to let citizens drive the identification of what is most likely to work.
The Your Voice Ohio media collaborative that began small in late 2015 to try to bring voice to the people in the 2016 presidential election has grown from about 10 participating news outlets to more than 40 print, broadcast and online news organizations across Ohio and into West Virginia.
For the past year, we sponsored community conversations about the addiction crisis that is killing 4,000 Ohioans annually. Nearly 1,000 people participated and helped identify consistency in what people believe are the solutions. Those ideas were delivered to state officials and are available online. Ohioans can point to those ideas as they question candidates for state office this fall or use them in the community to launch effective solutions.
For the Your Voice Ohio project, newsrooms set aside their competitive instincts and share resources to report on solutions offered by the public and to hold public officials accountable to what the people said.
Now, we’re turning to the far more complicated issue of the economy, which Ohioans identified in the Your Voice Ohio/University of Akron poll in 2016 as the most important issue.
We’ll hold nine community meetings before the election to get us started, evaluate and then expand to more communities. The first sessions are the week of Sept. 23 in Columbus, Dayton, Springfield and Lima and five the following week in the Cleveland area, Warren and Akron area. Exact times, locations and sign-up information are available here.
The word “economy” can be intimidating because it means so many different things. In the statewide poll, Ohioans used the words jobs, overall economy, debt, poverty, income inequality, trade and perhaps even the cost of health care.
We’ll ask people in each community to think about these ideas: What does a vibrant community look like? What strengths are there in the community that can be applied to achieve vibrancy? How do we get started?
Everyone has a stake in this. Consider:
- Ranked by median household income, Ohio dropped from 19th in the nation in 2000 to 37th in 2016, tying with Missouri and Delaware for the second-biggest drop in ranking in the country. Where does your community fit into this equation?
- For the first time in at least a half century, Ohio did not recover jobs from one recession before it entered the next recession. Even more ominous is that we are long overdue for another recession and we have yet to reach the peak set in 2000. One county lost nine out of every 10 manufacturing jobs. How did your community fair?
- An entire generation – the millennials – came of working age in Ohio when population was growing but the number of jobs was in decline. How are people in their 20s and 30s in your community doing?
- There is a correlation between economic struggle and the addiction crisis, which is claiming lives and sucking financial vibrancy from families, communities and the state. The opioid epidemic has spared no demographic group.
Over the next few weeks, the Your Voice Ohio news organizations will roll out data on each county so that Ohioans can see where they fit in the big picture. There are a few counties that have done well, but most have not.
Your Voice Ohio also will ask a small group of people demographically representative of the state at a three-day session in Columbus to discuss what they want their local news organization to do for them as they navigate the questions of vibrancy, and how do we get there.
The media group will report the community gatherings in real time to help Ohioans think about the election and to consider long-term solutions to the real-life struggles facing most in the state.
I am an economist with years of experience in tax-fueled development. It drives me crazy that every time cities, states, or counties give away $1.00 in tax revenue, the business (or social service) they are trying to support receives at best 55 cents in benefits. What kind of idiot flushes a $1., much less millions of dollars, down the toilet on the hope that someday, maybe, the people they are trying to help might get 55 cents?
I have two comments:
1- Let’s be careful when using metrics, at least qualify your comments. Median income loss must be adjusted for cost of living or cost of housing for example. Counting jobs is not a measure of success, if they do not provide living wages. The living wage also depends on how the community is organized: with community provided child care, no health care expenses, free college education, collectively organized retirement structures, subsidized housing maybe $15/hour could be sufficient. So how to measure outcomes, the metric to be used is the fundamental question. Is having 3% unemployement across the State with $12/hour jobs success? Or is a magic number for median income a target? What is that number in Franklin County versus Vinson County? So here is my punch line: I believe the target must be to increase the well-being of the maximum number of people. I use « well- being » interchangeably XI the « happiness ». However to avoid subjective conversations I propose we measure happiness using Gallup’s « Well-being Index ». Please Google it. These are measurable outcomes that can be sought after and become the measuring stick for economic and political decisions.
2- What makes Ohio vibrant? I submit that a vibrant community is one where the well-being of the maximum number of its citizens is maximized. How do we do this? We do this by maximizing the five pillars of well being as identified by Gallup. I was educated as an engineer in France, where we still study philosophy. So the solution is really a mixture of actions, some based on the Marxist analysis of the economy, Hegelien view of society, Adam Smith’s explanation of the market forces and Ayn Rand’s defense of freedom. There is more to say on all this. But what does this means for making Ohio a vibrant State? It requires two things coming from philosophical opposites: 1- The structures, rules and regulations of the State must be coordinated to unshackle and encourage the creative forces of entrepreneurs. 2- The State must intervene to eliminate waste and maximize outcomes in areas where market forces result in collectively inefficient outcomes: high education, health care, retirement, early child care, etc.
Sorry, for the long email. But these are serious issues for which we need to build a strong intellectual foundation that will undergird our actions. I am the President of ULI-Columbus. We are driven by this agenda in areas of land use in Central Ohio. I am yet to come across anyone who disagrees with our goal of maximizing well-being. In this era of divisions at least agreeing on a goal is a good start.
Thank you and be well.