Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:
Change Papers discusses the significance of North Carolina’s decision to appoint a commissioner and assistant commissioner of small business.
It’s not that we lack public and private agencies and organizations that can help. We have folks in the SBTDC, who generally work with fast-growing or technology-driven businesses, and the people at the 58 Small Business Centers on community college campuses, who generally work with smaller, community-based small businesses. We have the existing business employees at the state Department of Commerce, theirBusiness ServiCenter, and the electronic portal Business Link NC (BLNC). We have the NC Rural Center-spawned Business Resource Alliance. We have the process consultants from the Industrial Extension Service, some of our business or management schools, as well as the private sector. SBCN. We have the Institute for Minority Economic Development. We have regional entrepreneurial support organizations, like the Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED) and some of the NC Rural Center’s pilot projects, the entrepreneurial outreach efforts of the UNC system’s 11 entrepreneurship centers and other centers at private colleges like Elon University. And depending on what part of the state you are in, the local office of theCooperative Extension Service may well be able to provide some consulting for your small business.
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What we have lacked with all these agencies and organizations is coordination. And lack of coordination means inefficiency – rather than becoming great at core competencies, organizations are tempted to claim they can “do it all.” The Small Business Commissioner approach gives the state, for the first time, some folks with responsibility and permission to herd cats, to figure out what is and isn’t getting done, and to determine how to make it happen.
In an recent essay, William Frey of the Brookings Institution debunks several common myths about the American population. Among the more interesting of his points is the following:
If immigration stopped today, we would still see substantial gains in our minority populations for decades to come. Recent Census Bureau projections showed that under a “no further immigration” scenario, the minority share of our population would rise from about 35 percent today to 42 percent in 2050. The preschool (under age 5 ) population would become minority white. The greater minority presence would arise from higher natural-increase rates for minorities than for the aging white population. This momentum is already in place: Since 2000, natural population increase accounted for 62 percent of the growth of Hispanics, the country’s largest minority group, with immigration responsible for the rest.
Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:
At CBS Money Watch, economist Mark Thoma worries that policymakers have forgotten the unemployed:
I’d be less worried if it looked like a meaningful job creation package was about to emerge from Congress, but the proposals under discussion don’t do nearly enough, and what little that has been proposed isn’t happening as fast as needed. The legislation should be in place place already, not still under discussion. And while it’s good that health care reform is coming back onto the front burner, that means that a job creation bill is unlikely to be the main priority for Congress in the near future. Unless Congress can learn to walk and chew gum at the same time, which it’s unlikely to do, a side effect of the renewed attention to health care reform may be less job creation and higher unemployment.
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