Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Conference Chairman Speaks Boosterism Gobbledygook
“A lot of myths that people think about Pittsburgh are just factually not the case. We're moving in the right direction.” So sayeth the Chairman of the Allegheny Conference at its annual meeting, reassuring us that high taxes, lackluster growth, poor performing schools, and high costs at the Port Authority are mere figments of the imagination.
This “right direction” is so good, in fact, that the business where the Chairman does his daytime work needs $50 million in public money to build a new office building Downtown. The virtues of Pittsburgh are not readily evident when one of the region’s major employers comes to the public to seek free money and not put up more of their own.
The Chairman said that region needs to better promote itself (it has done plenty of that) and consider its benefits compared with larger and glitzier locations such as San Francisco or Boston. Does the Chairman realize that Boston’s public schools spend much less per pupil than Pittsburgh’s schools do, or that the City of San Francisco is losing its football team to the suburbs? How can they possibly survive?
“Do you want a long commute? Do you want it to be less safe? Do you want to increase your cost of housing by 30 or 40 percent to get up to the average? You don't want to trade any of those, so we have to realize we have a lot of wonderful things here.” Really? No one wants to make any tradeoffs? Talk about putting words into people’s mouths—plenty of people trade locations if better opportunities arise. They are willing to commute longer and increase housing costs if their salary increase beats the cost of living increase. And not all workers live in far out suburbs and commute to a Downtown location to work. Indeed many live fairly close to their work.
Real change, not boosterism rhetoric, will fix Pittsburgh’s problems, especially when that rhetoric comes from a major beneficiary of corporate welfare.
This “right direction” is so good, in fact, that the business where the Chairman does his daytime work needs $50 million in public money to build a new office building Downtown. The virtues of Pittsburgh are not readily evident when one of the region’s major employers comes to the public to seek free money and not put up more of their own.
The Chairman said that region needs to better promote itself (it has done plenty of that) and consider its benefits compared with larger and glitzier locations such as San Francisco or Boston. Does the Chairman realize that Boston’s public schools spend much less per pupil than Pittsburgh’s schools do, or that the City of San Francisco is losing its football team to the suburbs? How can they possibly survive?
“Do you want a long commute? Do you want it to be less safe? Do you want to increase your cost of housing by 30 or 40 percent to get up to the average? You don't want to trade any of those, so we have to realize we have a lot of wonderful things here.” Really? No one wants to make any tradeoffs? Talk about putting words into people’s mouths—plenty of people trade locations if better opportunities arise. They are willing to commute longer and increase housing costs if their salary increase beats the cost of living increase. And not all workers live in far out suburbs and commute to a Downtown location to work. Indeed many live fairly close to their work.
Real change, not boosterism rhetoric, will fix Pittsburgh’s problems, especially when that rhetoric comes from a major beneficiary of corporate welfare.
