The only thing that gets me angry anymore is driving. Well, maybe not the only thing, but people seem to think they're in NASCAR as they tailgate you at way above the speed limit.
I don't care if you want to go speed like some maniac and end up in hell 10 minutes sooner, but you don't have to tailgate me to do it.
Give me some time (and space) to get out of your way. Look ahead of you. Get off the phone. I'm not watching my rearview the way I'm watching where I'm going. Maybe you could do that too.
Tailgating is bullying, but there's no national campaign to end it, no politically correct program to teach people how to drive like they don't own the road exclusively.
One friend of mine purposely slows down when someone tailgates him. I'm not into that, but it's so tempting because you know what, I may be slow, but I'm ahead of you. Accept it.
Just as I finished writing an article on efforts to combat unemployment and underemployment brought on by the Great Recession and other economic blows in the Arizona marketplace, the state's Department of Commerce issued its twice-annual job forecast — and it’s not good news. (For a copy of the full report, click here.)
The department revised upward its estimate of job losses for the year 2010, estimating that 50,400 nonfarm jobs will be lost in the state this year. The department’s previous estimate (made in October 2009) for job losses this year was 17,300, and the reason the forecast was changed? “This is because the observed losses of nonfarm employment have been greater that the forecasted job losses,” which is essentially a way of saying either “we spoke too soon” or “we were just flat-out wrong.”
Although it forecasts a slight job recovery in 2011, projecting a gain of about 23,100 nonfarm jobs next year, the fact is that we don’t know whether the forecasters will be wrong again.
Even if the forecasters are correct, that slight uptick represents a recovery of less than half of the employment to be lost in 2010, and it won’t come close to making a dent in the 189,900 nonfarm jobs that were lost in Arizona in 2009, let alone the 300,000 lost since the Great Recession began in 2007.
Reading between the lines a little bit, the most salient point of the report is that the chief cause of Arizona’s woes is its lack of economic diversity.
“Housing construction was a significant driver of the Arizona economy during the boom in 2001-2006,” the report says. In June 2006, construction employment represented 9.5 percent of the Arizona nonfarm workforce compared with 5.7 percent in the nation as a whole. Today, construction represents about 4.6 percent of the Arizona workforce, compared with 4.3 percent in the nation as a whole.
“Arizona benefited from the expansion of the housing bubble as suggested by leading economic indicators such as employment growth and home price evaluation,” the report says. “With the contraction of the housing bubble, Arizona has some of the highest rates of job losses, home price devaluation and home mortgage foreclosures in the nation.”
The need to diversify Arizona’s economic base was stressed by the Republicans in the Arizona House of Representatives when Speaker of the House Kirk Adams prepared to introduce Arizona’s job recovery act, or HB 2250, in January. The bill, which includes tax cuts to businesses as incentives to bring more jobs to the state, was based on research by Scottsdale-based economist Elliott D. Pollack.
Although people may disagree over how to create more jobs in the state — opponents of the bill said that Arizona could not afford to lose the tax revenue while the state’s budget is so fragile and that the bill could not guarantee job creation, while proponents said that the incentives would be tied to actual job creation and the state’s budget problems will not go away without job growth to foster more revenue — the fact is that this is the most important issue facing the state today, and the bill stalled in the Arizona Senate. (The video below from KAET's nightly "Horizon" program features the opposing points of view on HB 2250.)
This State Legislature put items like being able to carry concealed weapons and the immigration enforcement bill on a fast track, like these were problems that needed immediate relief, while doing nothing of substance to solve the state’s budget or unemployment crises.
No economist has linked Arizona’s massive job losses — about 300,000 and counting since the Great Recession started in 2007 — to illegal immigration.
HB 2250, which passed the Arizona House, never made it to the floor of the Senate for a vote. Expressing disappointment at the bill’s fate, Paul Boyer, spokesman for the House majority party, told Business Banter, “I think at some point, we’re going to have to address the job losses.”
