While this article gives kudos to our massive growth (mostly in people) and talks about taxpayers investing in business, what the article doesn’t mention is the massive separation of rich and poor and how the two largest growth groups are those who make over $100K and those who are living in poverty (working poor).
I will still argue that growth for growth’s sake will eventually bite us in the rear. We are already seeing this in our school system that has almost half of it’s student population on FREE or reduced lunches and the fast and steady growth of our food banks and homeless shelters.
So while growth does help to produce NEW wealth, it also has a see saw affect on the poor.
Sioux Falls is a window into the future, if don’t do something about it. There is a growing upper middle income sector in our country and our own city, while the middle class nationally and locally is declining; but unfortunately this upper middle income sector will never be as large as the once middle class was both nationally and locally, but the demands of this upper middle class sector are greater than the middle class ever was and are growing, and they demand a service economy which enslaves those below them to a lesser opportunity of economic potential.
That is why when we hear local political leaders using words like “vocational education” and “workforce development,” that we should be concerned. Because such calls for the channeling of many of our future adults into a world lacking a well rounded education are meant not so much to offer job opportunities as to offer a workforce of many, who are not upper middle income, nor ever will be, that are just trained to service and facilitate the needs of the upper middle income sector and the affluent, while the lacking, or void of a well rounded education for the many beneath the upper middle income and affluent, will make it harder for those “many” to organize and protect their rights as workers and citizens in their attempts to a greater and an equal economic opportunity in the future, that could, or should, revival the opportunities that the current economy, or the state of our economy, only now increasingly afford to the upper middle income and the affluent in our society today.
Thank you Governor Daugaard for the additional evidence….. Your Honor, I rest my case…….:
https://ktiv.com/2018/10/03/gov-dennis-daugaard-tours-beresford-sd-manufacturing-facility-talks-skilled-workforce-need/
(KELO has a story on this too, but it’s not published online yet….)
I don’t understand what’s driving the growth. The pay for most jobs her is inadequate to live on.
Are there that many medical and higher-end financial jobs to support the growth rate, or are people really moving here and working multiple, low-wage jobs?
Straigtht from the horse’s mouth:
(FF 01:10)
https://www.keloland.com/news/your-money-matters/manufacturing-a-top-industry-in-south-dakota/1495404561
You know, it was just fourteen months ago, when Federal Reserve banker, Neel Kashkari, spoke at the Sioux Falls Downtown Rotary Club, an organization that the “Newbie Democratic” Lt. Governor nominee was recently president of, where Kashkari told Club members to stop complaining there are not enough workers and start paying more to attract them. But apparently, leaders in South Dakota are still cheap and would rather compromise the educational experiences of our youth all for the sake of profit….
#JustRaiseWages
#RestoreTheMiddleClass