Bernard Lunn points to Wall Street as why there is so few tech startups in New York: "First, Wall Street absorbs too much of the talent. Second, Wall Street generates a short term in a New York minute mindset." (more)
Richard Florida notes that the burden of upside down mortgages means that internal migration in the US has dropped and that this is coupled with decreased immigration into the US; making for a very immobile labor market.
IIRC Florida noted in his book that companies travel to where the skills are, not vice versa, I wonder what pressures this will place on the market in skills that companies compete for.
Another issue that I was not aware of is the effectively carteled professions; such as law and union manufacturing jobs that are effectively immobile courtesy of their 'guildlike' structure.
The legal profession is highly carteled due to the bar exam. Other than Louisiana which has a continental legal basis, the remainder of the US states are common law, so passing one bar exam is more than sufficient. Especially as the bar is a made up and imaginary legal system. The bar exam forces lawyers to remain put in a place and raises the cost of intra-state migration.
Since I work in Software my mobility is more determined by living circumstance such as housing and being in upside down mortgages. My mobility is flexible enough, and my profession sufficiently commodified that I can work anywhere on the planet; Australia, America, Europe, India if need be.
The WSJ notes that migration around America has stalled with the dropping property markets. The areas hardest hit were the boom property markets; Phoenix being one of them.
The Census data show that the biggest falloffs were in the worst housing markets. In 2007-2008, the Phoenix area gained a net 51,000 domestic migrants, about half as many as two years ago.And:
The migration slowdown, if it persists, could further delay the economic recovery in depressed housing markets such as Phoenix and Las Vegas. These places generally have a larger amount of unsold homes, and a disproportionate share of the economy is dependent on construction and other real estate-related trades.Richard Florida also chimes in on the issue. I am part of the internal migration to Phoenix, so I find it all interesting, though I came for the sun and the tech work. It is interesting to compare the internal migration of the US to Australia. Most of Western Australia's gains were not skilled Australian hands heading out west, instead the state's growth came from direct immigration and births.
Richard Florida writes that creativity, and hence innovation, flourishes best where there is sufficient stability to allow continuity of effort, along with political openness to allow creative subversive in all its forms. Modern democracies are geared toward economic innovation that has stemmed from British liberalism in the 18thC. Technological innovation is fragile and heavily dependent upon social and political order; Japan and China are good studies on how it can quickly be dampened and even squashed into stasis by restrictive political and social policies. (more)
Current social conservative politics have led to a welfare state that is increasingly focused on working families with children. This is true of the Howard Government and more recently in the US the $300 rebate (to keep the economy strong or some rubbish) was an extra $300 per child. Richard Florida argues the inverse is true:
Furthermore, one group that has been neglected by most communities, at least until recently, is young people. Young people have typically been thought of as transients who contribute little to a city's bottom line. But in the creative age they matter for two reasons. First they are workhorses. ... [and] Second, people are staying single longer.He argues that young people are a driving force behind dynamic creative economies, and are more important economically than the traditional suburban nuclear family to economic wealth and success for a region. (more)
# adam commented : I thought it was Turnbull?
# cam commented : Turnball what? Sorry, don't understand.
# adam commented : Malcolm Turnbull. The spelling.
# cam commented : Oh. Haha. Yeh probably, the name is vowelly androgynous.
I was a bit skeptical about buying Richard Florida's "Rise of the Creative Class" but decided I should read it before cementing an opinion. One of the deciding aspects for Florida determining if an area is open to the creative class is a Tolerance Index. Basically if an area is tolerant to gays, bohemians, immigrants, etc; then it is attractive to the highly mobile and prosperous thought workers. (more)
