Gov. Haley Barbour has long been bullish on Mississippi’s business environment, announcing every new business his administration brings into the state—large and small—and every new development with great fanfare. Like every governor in the nation, he knows that job creation is on his constituents’ minds, and he’s been busy making sure every Mississippian knows how hard he’s working to get that job done.
The governor gives away lots and lots of goodies to companies who want to put down roots in the Magnolia State. Just say the word, and the state will hand your business all kinds of incentives to open or expand your business here—from infrastructure improvements to exempting your company from state income taxes to creating a legal atmosphere that is heavily skewed to favor corporations. Barbour understands that in a world where business is king and jobs are manna from heaven, this is how states play the game of business. He’s a master.
But beyond Barbour’s cheerleading lies a state full of people with little to offer a modern, high-tech operation. Our prospects are not particularly bright when it comes to attracting companies that are looking for an educated, healthy and highly skilled work force. If you’re looking for factory workers, Mississippi is the place to be. If you’re looking for knowledge workers, not so much.
As R.L. Nave’s story on page 10 points out, Mississippi is in the absolute bottom tier of states as far as being attractive for business. Look a little closer at what makes a state a good place to operate a thriving 21st-century business, and an educated work force is high on the list. Yet schools haven’t been high on Gov. Barbour’s list of priorities.
In another story in this issue, Lacey McLaughlin looks at poverty in the Jackson area. Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. announced a program to find jobs for former offenders and reduce recidivism. That program looks at individual needs to resolve larger problems of crime in the city.
We think that’s the right approach: Begin with the individual to fix big societal problems, one human being at a time. It may be the only way something ever really gets accomplished, from the bottom up.
As long as our leadership insists on looking at every problem from a 10,000-foot view, we’ll continue to get solutions that focus from the top down. Of course Mississippians need jobs. But like Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics, top-down corporatism has failed to work in the long term.
It’s time Mississippi puts its emphasis on building our future through early childhood education and other programs that focus on individual people. And the best time to start is now.
