Local Grants – Local Jobs – Local Economy

The news is bad. Whether you have a college degree or not, its not pretty. You’re lucky if you have a job – and there are many well-educated, smart, capable people out of a job, unemployed – due to the general downward trajectory of the economy. So here’s a proposal that I think needs to be thought about a bit more.

Instead of the chants of “Global” “Global” that we’ve gotten used to over the last several years – we should look inward “Local” “Local”. That does not mean we should adopt an isolationist approach – I’m talking about the local (city – town) outlook and not on a national scale.

The problem is that we don’t have jobs and companies are moving jobs overseas. Cities face dwindling tax revenues and that’s going to get worse if there are less jobs (less jobs = less spending = less tax revenue). So if we can come up with a solution that allows cities to provide their young residents college grants to local universities and maybe even in partnership with private universities to foster a better society for their own city that would be great.

For example, a city can provide say cover 50% of the cost of going to an in-state institution with the condition that the student will work for the city for a few years or atleast stay in the city and find a local job. I know this is not the greatest idea, and it definitely needs a lot of revision and thinking – but I’m not above throwing out a less-than-perfect idea to foster debate.

The rough idea is that we should focus on developing strong local economies that will in turn have a positive affect on the national economy. That can be achieved through a partnership between local companies, municipalities and educational institutions all of which have a stake and interest in their local economy functioning well. Why? Because increasing multinationals will intrude on the space of local companies.

If we can develop a nice system that levels the playing field somewhat and fosters partnership between these 3 key areas – it would go a long way in making our economic woes better and it might take longer and the climb might be harder but it will be a permanent victory and not a temporary one.