The Landry Administration, specifically LED, has announced a “whole of government” effort to reverse the out migration and economic lethargy that marked the Edwards years. It is a brilliant plan to focus on high paying 21st century jobs.
Unspoken, but always in the background, is that New Orleans once boasted the economic engine of the state, even the south. Today that is given over to a shriveled economy and leadership that shows no comprehension of the significance to what once was, or could be.
Let me be very clear, the leadership of New Orleans should be begging the state to show the city what it must do in order to fit into the state plan and to benefit from it. But my hunch is that the city will play the usual game of acting as if business has to come here and it will refuse to make the fundamental changes needed to be a competitive city. That attitude has existed through many administrations and has so much to do with why we are no longer a vibrant business center.
I can just hear it now, local politicians blaming state leaders as business goes everywhere but NOLA. Never looking into why the city has lost its significance, just always blaming the man behind the tree. Never accepting that a falling tide, lowers all boats.
Worst of all, perhaps, so locked into social populism that they don’t even understand the problem.
We will soon know if there is any possibility that the economic well-being of the citizens of New Orleans will ever improve. The first clues to a better future will be revealed if any candidate for mayor has the foresight and courage to tell the people the truth. That truth, a hard truth of such failed social populism, is that the good old days of politicians getting away with slicing a shrinking economic pie thinner and thinner has reached its end.
If New Orleans’ leaders don’t step up, then the rest of the state will take off and once again the people of the New Orleans region will suffer.