Southern governors have a simple strategy for creating jobs.
They buy them.
The move by Rivian to locate its second car plant in Georgia is just the latest example. Governor Brian Kemp paid out a (so far) untold number of billions to get 1,700 manufacturing jobs. It’s like a deal former Governor Sonny Perdue signed 15 years ago to bring Korea’s Kia to West Point.
The idea has a history. It’s just what southern states did 100 years ago with textile mills. Offer “incentives” and cheap labor so manufacturers score a quick profit. Then hide when they find a better deal somewhere else and leave. There are two such mills within 5 miles of my office.
There’s a better way to economic growth, which is to build it.
For what Perdue and Kemp paid to get a few thousand blue collar jobs, Democrat Stacey Abrams could create a revolution in southern Georgia. Just announce that you’ll turn Georgia Southwestern College into a research institution, like Georgia Tech, Georgia State, and the University of Georgia.
Research universities are the economic engines of the 21st century. What started at Stanford and MIT has now spread nationwide. It’s not just an urban phenomenon. Lincoln, Nebraska is becoming as big as Omaha. College Station, Texas is becoming a second Austin. Iowa City, Iowa is growing into Cedar Rapids.
There’s a difference between a research institution and a college. Colleges teach people. They produce degrees. Research institutions also teach people, but their primary product is scientific discovery. They seek funding grants from government and private sources. They deliver patents that get turned into companies.
Georgia Southwestern is in Americus, at the center of Georgia’s agriculture sector. It’s 8 miles from Plains. Call the new place Carter University. Americus was a big deal in the 19th century and has a beautiful old downtown. If it were anywhere near Atlanta, it would be a showplace. Instead, it’s empty.
All you would need to start is a new lab building, a few key hires, some press releases, and higher tuition for more valuable degrees. Growth would be organic, as it has been for Georgia State over the last decades. Agriculture science is environmental science, and it is super-hot right now. As DNA becomes a programming language, biotech will become what computing is today.
The opportunity is there, and the cost would be low. It would be a marked contrast with Republican policies of handing taxpayer cash to billionaires. It would represent long-term thinking, rather than short-term.
Most of all, it would work.
