Making sense of the Triad’s dire economic situation is not easy. Let’s start with Yes!Weekly’s Greensboro City Council candidate profile of Wayne Abraham, who notes that “funding to the Greensboro Partnership was cut by 10 percent, a move he sees as detrimental to attracting businesses.”
Yet in the N&R’s dire analysis of the Triad’s economic outlook, we read this:
Pat Danahy, president of the Greensboro Partnership, shares that concern, especially when someone tries to project when the area will regain lost jobs.
“If anybody claims they know that,” Danahy said, “they don’t have much credibility with me.”
In mind, that quote right there undermines Danahy’s credibility and certainly doesn’t recommend more funding for the Partnership. Today we read that the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce will launch a plan modeled on a similar plan in Atlanta where any company that hires one new employee will be listed in an advertisement in a business publication.
What interesting is the plan was recommended by conservative council council member Trudy Wade, yet is being panned in the N&R by liberal UNCG economics professor Andrew Brod as ‘cheerleading.’
So it’s clear we’re grasping straws here. What’s the answer? I tend to agree with JLF president John Hood, who took note of the Triad’s grim economic forecast. Best anybody can do, Hood says, is skip the “Keynesian claptrap.”
