EDITORIAL – Economics n’at

Even though spring has finally sprung, Pittsburgh’s economy is stuck in a long winter…. Even though spring has finally sprung, Pittsburgh’s economy is stuck in a long winter. According to the 2007 Allegheny County census, the county lost approximately 6,000 residents from the 2006 population, and the year before that the county lost more than 9,000. Surrounding counties such as Beaver and Westmoreland also lost people, clearly showing the growing trend of Pittsburgh’s stalling economy.

If this tells us anything, it’s that electing a poster-child mayor and changing Pittsburgh’s image isn’t enough to fix the problems in the economy, just like President George W. Bush isn’t going to make the recession go away by denying it exists, no matter how much he tries. Pittsburgh is in need of a new political machine that isn’t built to serve the steel boomtown the city no longer is.

Take the recent troubles with the Port Authority. Pittsburgh’s mass-transit systems were designed and built with the intent to transport thousands of industrial workers to and from their jobs every day and to regions far beyond the city limits. But with those jobs long gone and the workers no longer filling the buses, it simply doesn’t make sense to keep pouring money into a transportation service that is vastly larger than the needs of the population it serves.

Instead, though, we get unproductive drink taxes and service cuts that can’t hope to keep the Port Authority from hemorrhaging taxpayer money. The city leadership needs to realize that, instead of trying to “fix” infrastructure that is no longer appropriate or economical, they need to use foresight to develop Pittsburgh’s infrastructure in a way that takes advantage of how the city’s economy is already moving.

Pittsburgh rapidly is becoming a center for health care services and research technologies, as well as the home to regional branches of major technological corporations like Apple Inc. and Google Inc. The government should support this shift with tax incentives to attract businesses and jobs on an economic level.

Concurrently, city leaders should also focus on keeping young people in the city to take advantage of potential jobs and give new employers a ready workforce. The huge concentration of recent college grads combined with Pittsburgh’s low cost of living should be attractive to young people. Instead young people leave in droves because of the lack of employment.

But Pittsburgh’s leaders are not the only ones who need to alter their strategies. With the wider economic meltdown only worsening, presidential candidates Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York have chosen to focus not on a remedy for the recession but instead on personal attacks against each other. But just because the economy is a complex and confusing issue doesn’t mean it should be ignored, and with Pennsylvania becoming one of the most important battleground states in the Democratic nomination race, the population should be demanding solutions for the recent problems.

Ultimately, what Pittsburgh needs is a combination of leaders looking to the future and people and companies willing to make the city strong again. We don’t have to stand by and watch the economy bleed itself dry when there might be solutions to make it work. And just because Pittsburgh has a history as a steel town doesn’t mean the city leaders have to treat it like it still is.