bostonbubble.com

[Boston ITer]

Here's the main macroeconomic question... since the advent of modern oral history (time keeping by local residents), the Boston area has been a jobs creation machine starting with let's say Polaroid in the early 1900s and then reaching epic proportions during the DEC/New Boston era, 1960 to 1990. Despite numerous financial panics and relatively whole industries vanishing (Textile manufacturing in Lowell {pre-WWII}, Automobiles in Sullivan Sq {post-WWII}, etc), the region was always known for Yankee ingenuity and making a comeback, regardless of the circumstances.

Today, I don't see any of it. All I see are people unwilling to acknowledge a housing bubble { thus rigged property taxes v/v equity extraction models }, local politicians trying to weave what Ted Kennedy [R.I.P] did (bring defense contracts to MA in mass) but w/o a clue, and very, very niche tech companies trying to siphon off MIT faculty/postdoc experiences or go to Uncle Obama for a *green*-friendly handout.

None of this is palatable. It's just a recipe for long term stagnation for everyone. And with cutbacks in Harvard headcount, even a billionaire institute can't be a near-socialist paymaster for its denizen worker bees. And I'm not even going to get started with the public sector.

[Crispo]

Good question. No doubt Boston's highly educated population is a huge competitive advantage, but without civic leadership its potential won't be tapped. The question is do you see any other areas doing better? I don't.

[Brian C]

One issue for companies wanting to come into this area is the certain salaries that are required for the cost of living in this area. At my current job, my site is a remote site thats headquartered in the North Haven area in CT. This means that we make the same amount of money as engineers working there. The problem is, our cost of living is 15% more. We have asked corporate to get a proper adjustment but they threaten to move us to CT if it continues.

This wasn't really an issue until I reached a management level position. I look around at other Mass companies and they are paying almost 20% more but you have to wonder when those good times will end. My father who is works as a consultant hasn't been payed in almost 6 months. He said this economic environment is worse than the disappearance of Wang and Digital back in the 90s.

I do think in about 5 years things will turn for the better. There are alot of older employees with fat salaries will finally retire and start freeing up new positions. But today we all know those salaries for people moving in will be ALOT less.

[Boston ITer]

[balor123]

I also see a lot of older employees who, while not getting raises like the rest of us, were able to capitalize on the last tech bubble and growth from when those companies were still around. If they're still employed, which many but not all are, then they seem to be in a much better position than the younger generation. With the rate of growth that most of us have seen over the past 5-10 years, it seems like we'll never reach their current incomes on an inflation adjusted basis! Many of these older employees are making $120k - $150k. It seems like companies are trying to make up for these highly compensated employees by paying younger employees less so that the average so the site looks competitive. And we seem to be accepting it because we've had to deal with 2 serious recessions in the last decade.

[Boston ITer]

[balor123]

At the micro level, those seem to be great choices. At the macro level, we have a big problem though because Chinese don't sell us cheap goods because we have lawyers that can fight in American courts and doctors who can heal Americans and pharmacists who give drugs to Americans. Those are services that are necessary for a functioning economy in a global workplace but they cannot sustain an economy. You need to have exports to get imports. We have some natural resources but America's strongest import has always been science and innovation and it's a real problem when our brightest students are discouraged from these fields to go into those other fields.

[Boston ITer]

[balor123]

In evolutionary terms, when the existing ecosystem is unable to adapt to a changed environment, the big complicated organisms die off so that the smaller more agile ones can adapt to replace them. The debt driven service healthcare government economy can no longer be sustained. Will America adapt or shrink?

[Boston ITer]