The Duluth News Tribune editorial board asked for questions to ask candidates. I was fortunate to have two of mine be selected. For city councilors it was, "Is it more important to attract businesses or people to Duluth?" For school board members it was, "Is it more important to have students pass reading tests or read and discuss?
I didn't see all the responses because I didn't read much about candidates whom I could not vote for. What I did see is competing school board candidates answer, "Read and discuss." Hurray! Long term thinking. I was really disappointed to see competing council candidates answer "Business". How short sighted?
Don't they remember all the fiascos of businesses that were attracted with big fanfare and they were going to provide jobs? Far too many of these businesses never provided all they promised, and too many left town or folded.
The "correct" answer is people because people create businesses but businesses don't create people.
I saw some vindication of this in "That used to be us" by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum.
Attracting a big plant is harder because there are fewer and fewer because of robotics. "What a town needs to thrive today is a hundred people starting companies that employ twenty-five people each, and twenty people starting companies that employ fifty each, and five people starting companies that employ three hundred people each."
Taking a different tack, how are you even going to attract businesses or people to Minnesota when many people don't want to move here because they think it is too cold? On the other hand, many people in Minnesota don't want to live anywhere else.
Many people forget that Minnesota once was a hot bed of creativity and still has many large corporations that are designing and manufacturing a wide range of innovative products. But given the political dominance of "no new taxes" and "cut spending" people, we have cut way back on our investment in creating and educating people who will carry on this tradition.
And if Minnesota regains its image as an innovative place to be, it will attract both people and businesses. The computer business in Minnesota and canoeing in the Boundary Waters attracted me forty-eight years ago.
