One continues to hear disenchantment with the tourism industry. Back when our master planners had all wisdom, they waved their batons and directed the various elements, telling them when to chime in and how loud. They and they alone were maestros of prosperity, and they had a vision of turning the region into a mecca for tourism.
To this, the new generation says a nasal, “Eah!” Tourism is supposed to bring people from neighboring lands so they will spend their money here instead of there. But now we find they are spending less money here than they could have had we invested in manufacturing plants or 21st-century electronic technologies. Oil companies are making profits as they carbon-footprint their way from there to here and back, if only to ride their bikes and hike. What’s more, locals are going to the events and spending money they could have dropped at the local health food store at transient grease vendor booths. (While the resulting obesity puts a drain on scarce social services resources, 70 indirect and 420 induced jobs are created in the healthcare sector for every gyro salesman working thirty or more hours a day for at least twenty-one days a year.) Perhaps worst of all, as merchants had complained about Asheville’s Bele Chere for years, the festivities serve as a blockade for everyday business.
And so, my fellow Americans, now is the time, rather than the velocity, for the omniscient in this generation to identify which Procrustean bed it wants to incent. Whip up some stats, and pay no attention to collateral damage.
