It was the 1990s that Clinton neo-liberalism captured the northern and western states that actually allowed all New Deal and War on Poverty funds reach citizens ----lifting the most people from poverty and building the largest middle-class in world history. The southern states didn't see this---and Clinton was installed to create the same Development Corporation structure in what were social Democratic cities across the nation. So, Chicago, NY, Newark, Oakland, Pittsburgh, LA----all socially progressive for several decades became captured by Wall Street Development Corporations. This is why all our US cities are third world and stripped---it all went to investment firms and expanding a few corporations globally.
Here in Baltimore, that was Johns Hopkins and Hopkins expanded not only globally with all that government funding for communities---it expanded into every industry. In Baltimore almost every industry in our economy has a Hopkins business controlling it.
Below you see these articles saying this comes from PROGRESSIVE ROOTS some tying it to FDR. Remember, the term progressive has an economic meaning and a social benefit meaning. Wall Street Clinton global corporate neo-liberalism ---empire-building is called PROGRESSIVE----GETTING PROGRESSIVELY RICHER. It is the opposite of what community development models were BEFORE these corporate development structures.
Springing from these Progressive roots, quasi-public entities modeled on private businesses and insulated from direct political control became the primary entities responsible for urban redevelopment in parallel with the growth of professional city planning, another offspring of Progressivism.
Wall Street is trying to make these current Development Corporations grassroots vs FDR's national infrastructure public works program and they are apples and oranges. FDR's community development centered on how to bring a nation from a GREAT DEPRESSION with no economic activity at all. His socially progressive solution was to fund public infrastructure projects like public schools, public universities, public hospitals and health clinics in communities....public streets, sewers and water pipelines to help communities WITH THE MORE COSTLY INFRASTRUCTURE. The result was stable housing for all citizens, stable local economies with a platform of public sector employment that was not controlled by Wall Street. Simple working and middle-class homes----small businesses able to move in with water and sewage hookups.
What we have today are development corporations tied to subsidizing business winners and losers in the 1980s-90s----to today where all goes to global corporations and global Wall Street.
THAT IS NOT GRASSROOTS UP. IT IS PROGRESSIVELY GETTING RICHER.
Below you see the FDR socially progressive ideas for public housing---nothing like the economic progressive model of concentrating poverty.
FDR:
'The purpose of public housing, as well as the financing and design, has
changed greatly since the passage of the 1937 Housing Act. Public housing was originally
built on a relatively small scale as two and three story walk-ups and garden apartments,
which were financed through bond initiatives and operated by setting rents to cover costs'.
We see the model for high-rise density of poverty was not from a social progressive---this was Wall Street taking the value out of public housing.
Beginning in the 1950s, high-rise building styles dominated the program. High rises failed
for families, in most cases, but served the elderly well. By the 1970s rents were tied to
incomes, tenants were more often poor and a financing gap emerged, which led to the
deterioration of many units.
Dwight D. Eisenhower---REPUBLICAN
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: THE EARLY DAYS
To Fight the Slums
The concept of community development originated in the late nineteenth century when reformers discovered America’s “backward” areas. Socially committed women and men in Settlement Houses and charitable organizations confronted the ills of industrial capitalism: poorly paid immigrant and racial minority wage workers crowded into tenement apartments, cottages, and shacks in seedy neighborhoods near docks, trains, and factories. During the Progressive Era of the early twentieth century, urban reformers connected poverty, overcrowding, crime, youth delinquency, and sundry other social ills to the unsanitary and unsightly slums where the working poor and indigents lived.
The sweeping Progressive agenda of political, social, and physical reform anticipated later comprehensive antipoverty strategies. The women who led many of the reform movements liked to call the totality of their efforts “municipal housekeeping.” Others talked of dealing with “the social question,” and historians later labeled it progressivism. But under any name, their wide-ranging attack on the evils of modern urban society embraced a welter of labor, education, and welfare measures, including attempts to improve the lives of the lower classes through better housing. But if Progressive reformers left the useful legacy of trying to counter the many aspects of poverty, they also handed down the less useful principle that outside experts would save society by imposing reforms on the people they were trying to help.
New Deal Community Building: Comprehensive but Top-Down
For the most part the Progressive reformers agitated in local and state government until the 1930s when the Great Depression and the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt gave outlets for their social programs in the federal government. True to its Progressive roots, Roosevelt’s New Deal encompassed a remarkably wide array of reforms, both visionary and practical. At times it seemed that he created a new agency to solve each individual social problem.
The idea of comprehensive physical and social planning ran through the diverse array of New Deal community development programs. At the large scale, the Roosevelt administration strove to develop rural regions, most notably through the Tennessee Valley Authority, which built electric power dams, taught new agricultural methods, and planned new towns in the impoverished Tennessee River basin. At the local level in America’s cities and rural counties, New Dealers rebuilt slums with public housing projects, which they designed as small planned communities.
Although New Deal programs were idealistic and well-intentioned, their top-down administrative structure was undemocratic. Like their Progressive forebears, the New Dealers believed that enlightened experts such as themselves should dictate the terms of the bright shining new world they would create. Although they would work with leaders of labor, religious, and racial organizations, the reformers in the 1930s for the most part failed to include ordinary people in their decision-making process.
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While the rest of the nation was tied to Federal funding following New Deal and War on Poverty with strong, healthy economies, strong public schools, strong public health, strong public infrastructure and services----Baltimore was held by a very, very, very neo-conservative Johns Hopkins and its Development Corporations. I understand that conservatives in Baltimore may have liked this centralized power to what was then a small, private university -----Republicans always support Chamber of Commerce as government. What these same conservative and Republican voters did not know was the global empire-building goals for the city Hopkins and its Development Corporations had in controlling real estate and development. What we have had for these few decades of moving all wealth to the 1%----CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA was a direct result of this consolidation of all real estate and development into the hands of a BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT.
As I say, when industries left Baltimore the plan would have been to rebuild the local economy with small business and small manufacturing subsidy and sending all those Federal and state funds to upgrade and maintain ALL COMMUNITIES.
THE GOAL OF WALL STREET BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT AND JOHNS HOPKINS WAS TO ALLOW COMMUNITIES TO CRUMBLE TO BRING BACK GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES.
Although this is a private corporation it controls ALL economic and real estate development in the city. With a captured election system where only establishment candidates who will work for Baltimore Development---a Mayor appoints this board and our Baltimore City Council simply approves EVERYTHING THEY WANT.
William Donald Schaefer (November 2, 1921 – April 18, 2011) was an American politician who served in public office for 50 years at both the state and local level in Maryland. A Democrat, he was mayor of Baltimore from December 1971 to January 1987,
So, Schaefer set the stage---and in the 1990s you see what will become the global corporate expansion/global campus/global market restructuring of Baltimore Development.
History/Mergers
The BDC is the result of mergers between the former Baltimore Industrial Development Corporation (BIDC), the Baltimore Economic Development Commission (BEDC); merged with in 1974-76 to form the new Baltimore Economic Development Corporation (new BEDCO), later the Howard Street Market Place; Charles Center–Inner Harbor Management (CC-IHM) (descendents of the famous re-development public-private agencies from the 1950s and 60's which transformed the old downtown and waterfront districts of the City, under the D'Alesandro,[Jr.]-Goodman-Grady-McKeldin-D'Alesandro,[III] city mayoralties) and the Market Center Development Corporation (which had merged with CC-IHM in 1989 to become Center City-Inner Harbor Development, Inc.) The BDC was eventually formed out of these agencies, commissions, corporations and groups in 1991.[1][2]
The merger came in the wake of an expansion of the Open Meetings Act provoked by the City Council's frustration with the opacity of CC-IH.[2]
Structure
The BDC is not directly accountable to the municipal government of Baltimore. However, its Board is appointed by the Mayor, and many of its economic programs require approval from the Baltimore City Council.[3]
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The changes to the Baltimore Development Corporation in the 1990s came when a Master Plan was designed with city and regional development plans for real estate and community development. This MASTER PLAN has been enshrined as what WILL HAPPEN because as the article stated describing Development Corporations----they work to make development plans work over the long-term. They make it sound grassroots because back in the 1990s they brought communities out to voice their opinions on what community development should look like----then Baltimore Development designed their own plan---THAT IS GRASSROOTS PARTICIPATION.
The design set in 1990s saw surrounding communities gone, replaced by global corporate campuses. That design saw Johns Hopkins and its campuses----Homewood and East Baltimore Medical campus joined as ONE BIG GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS. This means back in 1990s they knew all communities between Hopkins Hospital, along 33rd St down to Fells Point, all of city center was to become HOPKINS' REAL ESTATE. The outer city communities by the city line were written out as the Baltimore City line was said to move in to this city center leaving all those Baltimore City communities unincorporated. With global corporate campuses encompassing miles of real estate those outer city communities will no doubt be part of those campuses or be eliminated as part of road and highway construction needed for a global Port of Baltimore with global corporate factories.
DO ANY OF THESE COMMUNITY ASSOCIATIONS WITH CITIZENS THINKING THEY ARE TRYING TO MAKE THEIR COMMUNITIES THEIR OWN FOR THE FUTURE KNOW THIS PLAN? OF COURSE NOT. THEY ARE LEFT TO BELIEVE THEY ARE GRASSROOTS CITIZENS WITH A FUNCTIONING COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION.
Below you see what is community association combining several communities just as exists in the west with SOUTHWEST COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIP. These associations may not have leadership tied to Baltimore Development early on---but as soon as the time comes to MOVE FORWARD WITH THE MASTER PLAN----that community association will have leadership and membership filled with politicians, Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins organizations ----moving that MASTER PLAN forward. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens buying homes to GENTRIFY----clearing the way to making these communities safer and encouraging people to come to the area----will not be there when Hopkins and Baltimore Development are ready to install the Master Plan. They are only being used as transitioning for global corporate campus development.
Board of Directors
The HECAC Board of Directors
is structured to ensure fair and inclusive representation from all of the coalition’s partners. There are over twenty-six community organizations that have joined the HEBCAC partnership and these member organizations elect seven Community representatives to the Board. Three City representatives are appointed by Mayor of Baltimore, three representatives are appointed by Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. One representative is appointed by the Governor of Maryland. The Board itself appoints one faith-based representative and one representative from the business community.
Board of Directors
Jean Booker-Bradley
Parents Against Drugs, Inc.
Councilman Warren Branch
Baltimore City Council
Sarah Broadwater, Second Vice President
Milton/Montford Improvement Association
Elroy Christopher, Second Vice President
Covenant Community Association
Ralph Gilliam
Office of Senator Nathaniel McFadden, Maryland General Assembly
Kenneth Grant
Johns Hopkins Hospital
Richard A. Grossi, Treasurer
Johns Hopkins Medicine
Nina Harper
Oliver Community Center
Del. Hattie N. Harrison, President/Board Chair
45th District, Maryland General Assembly
Mitchell Henderson
Madison East End Neighborhood Improvement Association
Efrem Potts
Monument Street Merchants Association
Major Melvin Russell
Baltimore Police Department, Eastern District/Field Operations
Elizabeth Thompson, Ph.D.
Kennedy Kieger Family Center
Reverend Milton Williams, Secretary
Community Association of Port Street
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After these few decades of moving all of Baltimore's revenue and assets to the 1% creating global Wall Street investment firms MOVING FORWARD towards installing the MASTER PLAN of bringing those global corporate campuses to replace our surrounding communities ----came the need for a GREATER BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT.
All of the supposed reasons for having community and development corporations----organizing and planning by citizens for their own ideas of community development was all the time simply a mechanism for this centralized capture of all real estate development by Wall Street and those few corporations made global and rich.
As they list Greater Baltimore economies they are not showing how consolidated all areas are to a few global corporations. All of this supposed economic activity and absolutely no tax base----the city government coffers have absolutely no revenue ---and all future tax base will go to building a few global corporate campuses and maintain global financial campuses.
All of what used to be Federal funding for higher-education ----for public K-12 is now funding private corporate research for patents bringing no value to Baltimore and very few jobs.
I do not see anyone happy with the future of employment or resident in Baltimore with these global corporate controls.
ABSOLUTELY NO RULE OF LAW---NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS----COMPLETELY FILLED WITH CORPORATE FRAUD AND GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION ALL TIED TO THIS CORPORATE PLANTATION OF WALL STREET BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT.
Greater Baltimore Builds on Diverse, Dynamic Economy
By Emily McMackin | September 24, 2015
The Greater Baltimore region has gained a global reputation for its flourishing health care, education, law, defense, and financial services sectors, but it is writing another chapter in its economic evolution built on fields of the future, from 3-D manufacturing to cybersecurity and next-generation technologies.
“Greater Baltimore is diverse,” says Don Fry, president and CEO of the Greater Baltimore Committee, an organization that advocates on issues related to economic growth, job creation, workforce development, transportation and quality of life in the region’s six counties.
Along with strong traditional industries, the region is rich with emerging innovation and technology companies.
“There is tremendous amount of research and development taking place in the region, in areas from bioscience to cybersecurity,” Fry says.
Constituting the nation’s 20th largest metro, the region generated $168.8 billion in gross domestic product in 2014, and has experienced fast growth in both business and population over the past few years.
“As the economy has rebounded, Greater Baltimore has been an attractive place to come to,” Fry says. “We have a highly educated and trained workforce and economic activities occurring at public and private colleges here.”
Strong Talent, Transportation Base
The region’s pool of talented workers, with educational attainment in undergraduate and advanced degrees well above the national average, and its interconnected professional networks are key advantages drawing new investment. The area tops the nation in its concentration of information technology and bioscience workers. Its proximity to major research universities like Johns Hopkins and the University System of Maryland (USM), along with top government, military and health-care institutions, also enrich its knowledge base.
Another advantage is the region’s Mid-Atlantic location close to Washington, D.C., New York and Boston, and its integrated transportation infrastructure that offers access to I-95 and the Port of Baltimore – one of two U.S. ports capable of handling the world’s largest ships – along with commuter rail and the Baltimore/Washington International (BWI) Thurgood Marshall Airport.
“We have first-rate infrastructure that keeps the region connected to major U.S. and international markets via air, roads, rail and water,” says Tom Sadowski, president and CEO of the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore, a public-private partnership that promotes economic development, job creation and business investment across the region.
Low costs for land and properties compared to other East Coast cities also attract business.
“We may have a big-city feel, but we don’t have the costs associated with a big city,” Fry says. “We also have alternatives within the surrounding jurisdictions for those who don’t want the downtown experience.”
These assets combined create a supportive culture for businesses of all sizes, from entrepreneurial startups to Fortune 500 firms, Sadowski says.
“This kind of business environment, coupled with our high standard of living, sets us apart from other markets,” he says.
The Education Engine
Higher education is a vital economic engine for the region, which supports top-rated universities like Johns Hopkins, the University of Baltimore, University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), Loyola University of Maryland, Stevenson, Morgan State, Coppin State and the Naval Academy in Annapolis. These institutions are active in commercializing research.
“We have a critical mass of great minds with expertise in many fields, and that provides opportunities for entrepreneurial activities to develop out of those areas,” Fry says.
Federal agencies such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid and the U.S. Social Security Administration as well as installations like Fort Meade – headquarters for the U.S. Cyber Command and National Security Agency – also add to the region’s innovative clout, with some partnering with private industry to commercialize research.
Greater Baltimore is home to a growing roster of corporations headquartered in the region, including McCormick & Co., Constellation Energy/BGE, Erickson Retirement Communities, Allegis Group, AAI, CareFirst, Laurete Education, MICROS Systems, Joseph A. Bank, Ciena, and Acend One. Some include hometown startups like the nation’s fastest-growing sports apparel firm, Under Armour, which CEO Kevin Plank grew from a basement operation into a billion-dollar company along Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.
These companies, along with other leading employers like Northrop Grumman Corporation, Lockheed Martin and GSK, create job opportunities that keep graduates in the area and draw top talent. Greater Baltimore’s vibrancy, affordability and amenities are increasingly making it a favored destination for Millennials – a dynamic that is enhancing the quality and quantity of the workforce, says Beth Norton, head of talent acquisition for Baltimore-based investment management firm T. Rowe Price.
Millennials are also infusing Greater Baltimore with technology-based startups that are changing the dynamic of the region’s government-based economy, which is why “it’s up to us to make sure that innovation and entrepreneurial activities are increasing even more so,” Fry says.
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Baltimore Development has used pay-to-play for decades in handing out some millions to citizens allowed to have a small business or corporate non-profit for a while and then all that small business development is folded into existing global corporations. It literally is a start up city as they want citizens to put all the work in starting and making a business successful ------free labor for global corporations----in what will simply be forced to merge if successful. It is across all industries-----health care, education, transportation, public works, child care---the entire economic structure is designed to have people do the work of start up-----with corporations coming in if it becomes profitable. Our universities are now corporate research departments----what used to be corporate R & D is simply our university system. Corporations get free student labor paying huge tuitions while corporate executives as research faculty earn millions ------students graduate often with no promise of employment.
IF A PROFESSOR SPENDS TIME TEACHING I'VE FAILED IN MY DUTIES AS UNIVERSITY DEAN------SAYS MARYLAND UNIVERSITY LEADERS.
The public universities listed below will be defunded soon so the entire city center of Baltimore will become a Johns Hopkins corporate campus...the investment firm, the developers, the lawyers----all come with the global corporate campus.
Revised, August 1996 {Paragraph beginning "CDCs were joining local Chambers of Commerce..." changed.} Randy Stoecker Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Social Work University of Toledo Toledo, OH, 43606'B. The myth of community control
The assumption in the model that CDCs are independent community-based solutions to urban decay mystifies the reality of external control. While some argue that the degree of CDC capitulation to outside elites is overstated (Rubin, 1994), others note that CDCs "are 'based in communities,' but they are not 'community-based.'" (Medoff and Sklar, 1994:260). Many activists see big CDCs as "just a branch of city government, or a front for various corporate funding schemes." (White, 1993). The PBS documentary of CDCs (Vanguard Films, 1992), in its coverage of The Woodlawn Organization, never once mentions its militant Civil Rights movement and community organizing roots'.
Economic Development Committee
Committee Staff:
For information about this committee, contact Brian Levine |
Membership: Membership in the Economic Development Committee is open to all GBC members. Committee membership includes architects, developers, real estate lawyers, contractors, brokers, consultants, nonprofit housing organizations, foundations and planning and economic development agencies.
What does the committee do: The Economic Development Committee is an action-oriented committee that creates opportunities for its members to initiate and participate in projects and programs that will affect positive change to the region. Through this committee, GBC members can do such things advocate and promote for green building policies and sustainable practices, participate in projects that improve the built environment throughout the Baltimore region and meet and work with other members of the built environment and sustainable business industry.
The committee currently has three active initiatives. The Neighborhoods First Initiative works to identify and create opportunities that will encourage regionalism by working in areas that cross jurisdictional boundaries. The committee is currently working on Belair Road and has successfully brought the city and the county to work together on projects such as design, streetscaping, branding and releasing a market study. The Regional Gateways Initiative works to develop strategies and partnerships that create welcoming and inviting gateways into Baltimore. The Baltimore Bicycling Initiative supports biking programs in Baltimore.
2016 Economic Development Committee news:
The Economic Development Committee learned about Baltimore’s new bike sharing program at its May 10, 2016 meeting. The committee heard from Katie Kessler and Brian Esposito of Comcast Spectacor and Jay Decker from Baltimore City’s Department of Transportation.
The program, called Bike Share, is an innovative concept that makes short-term bicycles rentals available to the public. The concept has already been successfully implemented in other cities, including Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. This idea helps spur economic development by increasing property values around Bike Share stations, reducing traffic, increasing mobility options for tourists and helping employees get to their jobs or meetings efficiently.
A total of 50 Bike Share stations with 500 bikes will appear throughout Baltimore this fall with plans to expand in the near future. Forty percent of these GPS-equipped bikes will be electric-assisted, a technology that makes the barrier for use much lower for all types and levels of riders. To track progress and get additional details, click here.
On April 12, 2016, the Economic Development Committee held a joint meeting with the Transportation and Mobility Committee on the issue of Amtrak’s Baltimore Penn Station Master Plan. Three Amtrak officials made presentations, including: Rina Cutler, Senior Director, Major Stations Planning & Development and Brian Traylor, Infrastructure Planning Manager, Baltimore Penn Station.
Amtrak is in the midst of a three part solicitation for a private sector operator of the station and its surrounding property. The process includes a Request for Information (RFI) from businesses to act as a master developer who would be responsible for an implementable master plan; a Request for Quotation (RFQ), which is a standard business process whose purpose is to invite suppliers into a bidding process to bid on the specific elements of the master plan; and a request for proposal (RFP), which is the solicitation made through a bidding process by a company interested in procuring the right to participate in the Penn Station improvement plan to submit a business proposal.
Amtrak officials suggest referring to www.nec.amtrak.com which will soon have updates about the Baltimore Penn Station plan.
The Economic Development Committee heard from Don Fry, President and CEO of the GBC, Kevin Quinn, Director of Planning and Capital Programming for the MTA, and Richard Hall, Executive Director, Citizens Planning and Housing Association, at its March 15, 2016 meeting.
Fry presented an overview of transportation initiatives in the region, as well as key transportation bills being discussed in the current Maryland General Assembly legislative session; Quinn presented an overview of the new BaltimoreLink, a multi-phase plan to create an interconnected transit system; and Hall discussed if the Baltimore region is on the path for meaningful improvement.
View Quinn’s presentation here.
At its February 29, 2016 meeting, the Economic Development Committee heard from Michael Cryor, Chair of OneBaltimore. Cryor provided an overview and update of OneBaltimore’s initiatives for 2016.
2015 Economic Development Committee news:
At it’s November 19, 2015 meeting, the committee received a biking in Baltimore status update from Jon Laria, a member of the GBC Board of Directors and chairman of Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Commission. In his presentation Laria outlined the commission’s work to promote bicycling as a sustainable, safe and economically sound mode of transportation and recreation in Baltimore. View the presentation here.
At its September 16, 2015 meeting, the committee heard from Leon Pinkett, assistant deputy mayor for economic and neighborhood development, and his colleagues. They outlined the various greening efforts taking place along the Amtrak line into Penn Station.
John Renner of Cross Street Partners and Herb Miller, chairman of the Easton Economic Development Corporation’s board of directors, presented to the committee on March 18, 2015 about food hubs. Review John’s presentation and Herb’s presentation.
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It is important for the American people and especially for US cities deemed International Economic Zones like Baltimore to step away from those national news headlines about unemployment rates----they have not been accurate for a few decades. We are at the lowest point of employment in modern history --if we look at this graph we see from the 2008 economic crash there has been NEGATIVE JOB GROWTH----meaning we went from around 10% unemployment in 2009 to what is close to 35-40% unemployment today. This is especially true in US cities. Think now, with another economic crash deliberately created from a bond market fraud coming soon----deeper, broader than 2008---these unemployment figures will soar. They are expecting unemployment next decade to be close to 60%.
Meanwhile, Baltimore Development Corporation---now Greater Baltimore Development Corporation and all kinds of official Economic Corporations telling us they are building a great economic engine for our future----REALLY??????? Next decade will see further expansion of existing global corporate campuses fueled by global labor pool movement of human capital. No local, community economies----total monopoly of our Baltimore economy.
Baltimore is one of the worst in unemployment so if these are the official figures ----we know
WALL STREET BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT IS LOOKING FOR FREE LABOR.
As Baltimore Sun prints articles written by the Baltimore Development Corporation about economic gains all national indicators show Baltimore has not had ANY ECONOMIC GROWTH. The only thing happening in Baltimore is expansion of already existing global corporate campuses. Unemployment heading towards 40% for Baltimore citizens-----youth unemployment at 50%----communities still without a single local economy. All the buzz comes from global corporate connections being made by Hopkins and a few other corporations.
The failure of economic development in Baltimore – and Milwaukee
May 22, 2015
By Marc V. Levine Milwaukee Wisconsin Sentinel
Thus, for all intents and purposes, outside of the Inner Harbor and Gold Coast redevelopment zones, work has disappeared in Baltimore's inner city neighborhoods (to borrow Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson's famous expression). Today, almost 50% of working age black males in the city do not hold a job (44% of black males in their prime working years, ages 25-54, are not employed). And 38% of Baltimore's 20- to 24-year-old black males are neither in school nor employed — the disconnected youths whose restive gathering at the Mondawmin Mall marked the beginning of Baltimore's disturbances.
'According to the April jobs report, that increase has paused, with the labor force participation rate dropping 0.2 percentage points to 62.8%'.
Labor force participation falls
- May 6, 2016, 8:38 AM
Since about the turn of the millennium, the labor-force participation rate, or the share of American civilians over the age of 16 who are working or looking for a job, has dropped pretty dramatically, with an acceleration in that drop after the 2008 financial crisis and the ensuing Great Recession.
There are several causes for that drop and for the rate to continue to be low. An analysis in August by the President's Council of Economic Advisers suggests that about half of the drop comes from structural, demographic factors: The baby boomers, an immensely large cohort of Americans, are getting older and starting to retire.
The Council of Economic Advisers found that the other half of the drop in labor-force participation came from cyclical factors tied to the Great Recession. In addition to the normal falloff in participation seen in other recessions, the depth and severity of the Great Recession pushed millions of Americans to the sidelines, discouraging them from even looking for work.
In recent months, the labor-force participation rate has steadily ticked up, possibly indicating a tightening labor market as people who were previously discouraged from looking for work move back into the labor market.
According to the April jobs report, that increase has paused, with the labor force participation rate dropping 0.2 percentage points to 62.8%.
Business Insider/Andy Kiersz, data from Bureau of Labor Statistics