State Economy | Press

Government can, should temper pain of recession

04.16.2008 | Everett Herald | It seems like the economic news keeps getting worse. Fuel prices still climbing, food prices soaring, foreclosures and layoffs. The only silver lining is that we're doing better in Washington than the rest of the country. Now a report has come out confirming what many of us suspected -- the rich are getting richer, while most of us are just getting by. | Read

Lessons to be learned in tanker deal

03.04.2008 | Seattle Times | Critics have pointed to a Seattle and Boeing smugness and sense of entitlement. To the extent that they are correct, it's in our forgetting this relatively new economic calculus. Talent and capital are the mobile prizes of the 21st Century economy and they can move. It doesn't mean they will move anywhere. In this fast-moving environment, Seattle awakes to a cohort of — gasp! — mature and perhaps hubris-bitten companies facing nimble competitors: Microsoft, Starbucks, Washington Mutual and Boeing. | Read

Area’s middle class is losing ground

02.21.2008 | Seattle Times | More people are flying high or falling into poverty while the middle class is shrinking, says a county report released Wednesday. Wages, adjusted for inflation, rose 1 percent per year from 2001 through 2006, but that gain "has not been evenly distributed among King County households," according to the 2007 Annual Growth Report, which compiles a variety of data from various agencies. The notion that fewer people qualify as middle-class is not new, but the numbers present a stark picture. | Read

Voters reject roads and transit, embrace red tape

11.14.2007 | Everett Herald | Last week we voted down a multi-billion dollar proposal for roads and transit. It got me thinking back to 1968. That was the year we had a chance in King County to build rapid transit county-wide. The federal government would have matched every dollar nine-to-one. The bond issue got over 50 percent of the vote. So how come there was no mass transit? As a bond issue it needed 60 percent. What happened to the federal match? If you go to Atlanta, you can ride their fast and efficient rail system, built with money targeted for Seattle! | Read

Finns show how prosperity, broad safety net can co-exist

10.31.2007 | Everett Herald | Earlier this month I led a group of policy makers to Finland to study how early childhood care is practiced in that country. The robust Finnish private economy is embedded in a democracy that emphasizes work, entrepreneurship, economic security and opportunity, and educational advancement. What this means is that as a resident of Finland, you don't have to worry about health coverage, the cost of child care, higher education tuition, a good vacation or a decent pension. So many of the things we worry about are not even up for discussion at the kitchen table of a Finnish household. | Read

Modest investment will help get our roadways unclogged

08.08.2007 | Everett Herald | Summertime. The fish may be jumping, but the driving is not easy. We spend a good portion of these few weeks of blue sky and fair weather stopping and going. It's going to get worse in the next week, with northbound I-5 in south Seattle being shrunk from five lanes to two lanes to replace worn-out metal expansion joints and repair the bridge deck. But that is a good thing, especially when you consider the bridge collapse in Minneapolis last week. | Read

State lays groundwork to share economic prosperity

07.25.2007 | Everett Herald | The chickens are coming home to roost in our state and they are productive. All this construction and airplane putting-together adds up to jobs, spending, growth, net migration, and in short, a boom for our economy. This month Forbes magazine also announced that we are one of the best states in which to do business, ranked No. 5 in the country. | Read

Costco understands its role as a good corporate citizen

05.16.2007 | Everett Herald | This idea of treating workers with respect is threatened by globalization. Whenever politicians or businesses want to justify the next lay-off or drop in wages or cut in benefits, they always talk about global competition from Asia. The weird thing is, if they looked in the other direction, that is, to Europe, they would see a continent that is also faced with globalization, but which is figuring it out without stranding its workers without jobs, income or purpose. We don't need to look east or west. | Read

State lawmakers can fight big oil's raid on our wallets

02.07.2007 | Everett Herald | Aren't we supposed to give corporations a free hand and get out of the way? But what happens when those corporations suck money out of the local economy? Just in the past month, Washington businesses and citizens have handed over close to $1 billion to the oil and gas industries. It doesn't go to building our own renewable energy resources, it doesn't go to energy conservation, it doesn't go to better transit. It goes out of our state and out of our economy. | Read

Don’t be tricked into voting for costumed Initiative 933

11.1.2006 | Tacoma News Tribune, Everett Herald | One ballot initiative, Initiative 933, is masquerading as “protecting farmland.” In fact, the initiative goes in the opposite direction, enabling farmland to be cut up, paved over and converted into mini-malls unless the public pays the property owner to abide by the land use laws that have been in place for the past decade.  | Read (Tribune) | Read (Herald)

We must figure out a way to balance economy in state

09.20.2006 | Tacoma News Tribune, Everett Herald | One chapter of the ongoing narrative about Washington’s economy can be told in two words: Manufacturing down. But a second chapter would show jobs in education and health care, business services, information technology and construction all up. So as a whole, how are we doing in our state? At best, we are treading water. | Read (Tribune)| Read (Herald)

We must take action to ease sticker shock at the pump

02.08.2006 | Tacoma News Tribune | Businesses and families are feeling the impact of the gasoline price increase and its $12 million weekly drain from Washington’s economy. This past week has also been full of headlines announcing latest oil company profits. Exxon made $36 billion in net income in 2005. Shell made $23 billion. It’s easy to connect the dots. | Read

We must learn from Grays Harbor's globalization losses

11.16.2005 | Tacoma News Tribune | Is Weyerhaeuser trading away good jobs that create profits to keep already wealthy shareholders content? That’s what leaders in Grays Harbor are wrestling with and are all stepping up to the plate to keep that pulp mill open. It is profitable. Even if Weyerhaeuser abandons it, there may be a way to keep it going, keep those jobs and keep that investment in the community. | Read

Health care, hospitality jobs can't sustain state economy

08.28.2005 | Tacoma News Tribune | Recent news reports would have us believe that organized labor is disorganizing and that employment trends are up in our state. But digging beneath the headlines reveals a far more positive story for union workers and a far more complex story for overall employment. | Read

State of the State: Are we better off now that we were four years ago?

09.13.2004 | EOI | EOI's newest report on job growth & economic security since 2000 has found some improvement but little to cheer about as workers continue to struggle. | Read

Wal-Mart nation: the race to the Bottom

02.18.2004| Seattle Times | We live in a nation in which the real-dollar income of an average family has declined for years, while corporate profits and executive pay have skyrocketed. The gap between rich and poor has widened at an alarming rate in the past 20 years. In 44 states, the gap has increased not only between rich and poor, but between rich and middle-class families. None of the six exceptions is a Northwest state. Oregon has one of the worst gaps, Washington is about average. | Read