is, the rescue money becomes an investment, with a chance
of manifold payback over generations—not just a handout,
in which the money metaphorically dribbles through the
fingers of the recipients until it is gone.
Repairing infrastructure in a place that is irrelevant to
new economic realities is a poor investment. Creating what
are essentially tourist attractions in a place to which no
tourists come—now or ever—is costly window dressing.
One solution that we may not be paying enough attention to is the prospect, not of persuading industry to move
jobs into an area, but of newly trained (or previously appropriately skilled) workers moving to where the jobs are.
Perhaps the biggest socioeconomic change this country
experienced resulted from the massive movement of labor
from farms, primarily in the South, to industries in the North.
Think automotive in the upper Midwest, and steel in the same
areas. Consider the steel mill that built its own rail spur to the
Mexican border to relocate workers—nearly 100 years ago!
Granted, workers may be reluctant to pull up stakes until
the housing market has recovered sufficiently to let them sell
quickly and make enough profit to fund a move. But with
auto (and related) plants closing, with steel mills closing or
falling into the hands of foreign owners (and employing a
fraction of their former numbers), with manufacturing con-
tinuing to shift away from traditional bases (and turning
distribution solutions on their heads), isn’t it time to re-
evaluate possibilities for relocating to where the work is?
Your point is?
This isn’t totally about doom and gloom. There are going to
be cities that get it together, reconfigure and rebrand themselves, and find ways to embrace changed roles in a new
economy. We applaud them and their visionary leaders.
Those that wait for a handout, though, are going to be
disappointed, and those that won’t take off their rose-colored glasses, bitterly so. So, with all the talk about rebuilding the infrastructure, which has immense implications for
effective supply chain operations in the United States, the
answers may not be so easy. Our responsibility is to do our
best to make sure that politicians and planners at all levels
are doing the right things for the long haul, are spending
money wisely (i.e., investing), and have their eyes wide
open to realistic alternatives. Including knowing when to
turn out the lights.
Art van Bodegraven, practice leader at S4 Consulting, may be reached at (614) 336-0346
or avan@columbus.rr.com. You can read his blog at http://blogs.dcvelocity.com/
the_art_of_art/. Kenneth B. Ackerman, president of The Ackerman Company, can be
reached at (614) 488-3165 or ken@warehousing-forum.com.
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