This piece was originally published on the California Economic Summit blog.
For the past several months, we at the California Economic Summit blog have been reporting on the important work of the Summit itself. Today (Monday July 2), the Action Plan that is designed to fix California’s economy was announced. It is ambitious, and it’s doable.
We have been talking to Action Team Leaders who have continued to work since the Summit and will continue their work in the weeks and the months to come.
They are committed to getting things done that will, in the short-term, spur more job creation in the state and in the long-term will improve the state’s ability to compete for business.
Related: Read the Action Plan here
But simply holding a summit and issuing a report is no reason to pat ourselves on the back. There’s lot of work to do. What’s very exciting is the commitment of literally hundreds of Californians to lend a hand in doing that work.
There are two main areas that need to be addressed:
1. We need to invest in people, infrastructure and innovation in creative ways to prepare California and our regions to compete in the 21st Century global economy.
2. We need to streamline our complex regulatory processes to reduce the cost of doing business without sacrificing our environmental standards.
Let’s put it more bluntly.
Californians are very concerned, even irritated, about what has happened to our state’s economy. California has always been a state that has led the U.S. economy, and for that matter, the world’s. In many ways, we still do. But our unemployment rate is high, our young people are looking for work and many jobs go unfilled because people are lack the necessary training.
We’ve become sloppy and other states and other countries have taken advantage of us.
This Action Plan is a roadmap to recapture the Golden State’s rightful economic leadership. It addresses the big issues through the signature initiatives and then suggests dozens of ways to improve our too-long neglected infrastructure, revitalize our construction industry, train workers for our rebounding manufacturing sector and help the numerous regional businesses that comprise our state’s economy.
We invite you to read the report, and react to it. If you want to complain about the way things are, go ahead. But the more interesting comments from our point of view will be ideas about how to achieve these goals. Let us know what you think.
