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Brookings Institution:
The Great Lakes region stands today in a precarious position.
During the past generation, globalization, and the intense competition it has engendered, has diminished the region's economic primacy, leaving its states and communities struggling to find their competitive niche.
With one foot planted in a waning industrial era, the other in the emerging global economy, the region is teetering between a future marked by growth and innovation, and one that conforms to the "Rust Belt" label applied to the region due to the decline of its factory-based economy.
The time is now for Great Lakes leaders to articulate a meaningful agenda for what the states of the region and the federal government can do together to ensure that this economic giant steps in the right direction.
Still heavily reliant on mature industries and products, its aging workforce lacks the education and skills needed to fill and create new economy jobs.
Its metropolitan areas are economically stagnant, old and beat up, and plagued by severe racial divisions.
And its legacy of employee benefit, job, and income security programs---many of which the region helped pioneer---has become an unsustainable burden, putting its firms at a severe competitive disadvantage in the global economy.
As 2008 approaches, the moment is ripe for regional leaders to forge a compact with the federal government around a series of policy innovations that will put the region on sure ground in the new economy.
These innovations, if implemented, will help the 12 Great Lakes states to surmount their common challenges, leverage their common assets and opportunities, and together reassert their economic leadership in the nation, and the world.
Posted on November 2, 2006 11:29 PM
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