The following is excerpted from W.E. Heasley's response:
"Read the entire twenty two page report by Keith Debbage. The following comes from the executive summary:
“Public policy makers and economic development practitioners have become increasingly concerned with maintaining and improving the quality of life of their political jurisdictions as a way to maintain their competitive advantage. Greensboro is no exception to this rule.
The overall purpose of this report is to provide an annual update of the Greensboro performance metrics first identified in the 2003 State of the City Report. The 2014 Update focuses only on the Greensboro metrics. In 2016, a more comprehensive State of the City Report will be published that compares Greensboro to our peer cities.
Part of the agenda is to stimulate discussion and to educate the general public about the overall performance of Greensboro. The long-term goal for the city of Greensboro is to see increased efficiency, progress and improvement over time for each of the selected metrics.”
Hence Debbage is stating that the central planners [Public policy makers and economic development practitioners], technocrats advocating ‘the one best way’ as it were, are concerned with maintaining and improving items, and not so coincidentally in their political jurisdictions.
Since the supposed reason for the report is “purpose of this report is to provide an annual update of the Greensboro performance metrics” then the metrics are a report card on the abysmal failure of technocrats advocating ‘the one best way’. Oops!
If in fact the report is “to educate the general public about the overall performance of Greensboro”, then one has been educated that policy makers and economic development practitioners, otherwise known as central planners, have failed yet again, like they did last time and like next time.
Better yet, Debbage is a technocrat. "
I suspect you'll be reading a lot about the State of the City Report in the coming days and most of it will not be good. As I have written countless times, Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. Greensboro's "leaders" and economic development "gurus" have done the very same thing over and over again for the last 30 years and as reported by Dr Debbage, it still isn't working.
Continue reading State Of The City: Part 3
About W.E. Heasley
Mr Heasley has a BS Economics, cum laude, Private and Public Sectors, 1979, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV. Undergraduate minor in General Insurance.
Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU), Huebner School of Economics, American College, 1992, Bryn Mawr, PA.
Life Underwriter Training Fellow (LUTCF), 1986, National Association of Life Underwriters, Washington D.C..
Currently enrolled and completed one half of Chartered Property and Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) from the American College.
31 years insurance industry experience. He also writes the blog, The Last Embassy.
I often disagree with Mr Heasley's political views but always find his work to be brilliant.
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