The Last Entrepreneurs
Clark, Jack
Books: THE WARS BETWEEN THE STATES IN the 1970s, America discovered— and sometimes reveled in—new regional conflicts. The chronicler of SDS, Kirkpatrick Sale, churned out an ambitious and...
...The problem rested on "business climate," the sum total of wages, benefits, taxes, costs of regulation and general karma facing business...
...The public officials bid with the only stake they have: our money...
...Not so, says Robert Goodman in a provocative and fresh discussion on this very worn topic...
...Differences in climate and culture were examined, and sometimes a commentator would claim that the regional conflict was other than what it appeared (East-West, rather than North-South or to follow one exotic example, the Pacific Northwest overall...
...On the other side of the barricades, Norman Podhoretz blamed a Southern literary clique for debasing genuine liberalism and leading us toward the New Politics...
...In fact, much of the regional warfare will be conducted in Washington and in the emerging planning processes Goodman discusses...
...If the "winners" in this struggle to keep or attract jobs and businesses tend to be low-wage, low-tax, anti-union cities and states, the pressure on the' 'losers" in the regional struggle is Commonweal: 440 well-nigh impossible to resist...
...Tax favors, relaxation of regulations, free land, state-sponsored employee training programs, harassment of union organizers are offered as inducements...
...1 percent of all corporations control almost 65 percent of all assets...
...The city of Dallas, Texas, for example, has lost population since 1970...
...Carl Oglesby, one of those chronicled in Sale's earlier book, wrote of the Yankee-Cowboy conflict within the ruling class...
...A highly developed area is left fallow as investment is planted in new soil...
...Goodman quotes then Vice President Rockefeller arguing for massive public investment in energy development: "Given the uncertainties which exist in this area, no one should blame private capital for not taking risks...
...Business and government are, in the modern scheme, partners...
...at least 80 percent of the value of goods shipped is controlled by four companies in the following fields: autos, typewriters, railroad equipment, refrigerators, batteries, sewing machines, glass, tires, wallboard, turbines, and engines...
...Goodman has researched thoroughly, thought originally, and written well on the problems of regional economic conflict...
...Goodman marshals the statistics of oligopolistic concentration...
...After paying some careful attention to the role of the federal government, Goodman ends up posing a latter-day Jeffersonian vision of self-sufficient communities federated loosely...
...As the title implies, Goodman argues that the market has been turned on its head...
...But if his analysis is solidly grounded and accurate, his prescriptions seem vague and uncertain...
...Even more fundamental, business leaders are proclaiming the virtues of planning and cooperation...
...Goodman compares the process to crop rotation in agriculture...
...Though attractive, his vision of regional socialism is both unconvincing (is it really better to grow wheat in New England rather than to ship it in from Iowa...
...On the state and local level, entrepreneurship by government feeds the corporate coffers even more directly...
...Sale, Oglesby and Podhoretz...
...Of course, discussion of theSunbeltSnowbelt conflict was not limited to Messrs...
...the government will indeed be taking business risks...
...Despite the paeans to the Sunbelt's climate and culture, the investor's calculus rates New Hampshire or northern Vermont (rural work forces with historic memories that the unions drove the jobs away with their excessive demands) as better bets than Atlanta or Fort Worth...
...The New York Times covered the newest New South and the wider Sunbelt extensively...
...Such is the rule of the market...
...New York City might go the way of Lowell or Newark...
...Congressional caucuses were formed, and governors and mayors THE LAST ENTREPRENEURS: AMERICA'S REGIONAL WARS FOR JOBS AND DOLLARS Robert Goodman Simon & Schuster, $11.95, 292 pp...
...and Utopian (is there any current or potential political force that can get us from here to there...
...As our government units compete with each other for business's favors, business itself is moving away from competition...
...2 percent of all corporations control 90 percent of all profits...
...This business climate in turn determined which regions grow and which atrophy...
...his book deserves a wide audience...
...Thus, after nearly a decade of high unemployment, the New York City bricklayers' union agreed to a fourteen percent cut in 1977...
...Business leaders and economists picked up the new regional conflict and applied its lessons enthusiastically...
...Before the democratic and socialist decen1 August 1980: 441 tralization Goodman envisages can become possible, those national planning mechanisms need to be wrested from the corporations and used in the interests of the larger population, urban and rural, North and South...
...Neither should anyone be surprised that where actions are necessary and private capital cannot take them, government must step in...
...The same dynamic explains why Southern metropolitan areas are growing more slowly than either Southern or Northern rural areas...
...After awhile, the new area begins to resemble the area the investor left: the fallow area becomes more fertile for investment...
...Commonweal: 442...
...The chronicler of SDS, Kirkpatrick Sale, churned out an ambitious and influential bestseller proclaiming a Power Shift away from the declining Northeast-Midwest and toward the booming Virginia-California Sunbelt...
...the late entrepreneurs are the cities and states bidding against one another for the favors of corporate location or relocation...
...The relationship is clear: government takes the entrepreneurial risk, private capital takes the profit...
...Jack Clark clashed with each other and with national administrations in fights to allocate federal tax money regionally...
Vol. 107 • August 1980 • No. 14
