Thursday, April 20, 2006

Massachusetts is still losing population and the matter

has finally made it above the fold in the Boston Globe.

So at the very least the matter will become part of the gubernatorial debate at one point or another. We can also look forward to the usual rightical chic shrieks for the shrinkage of "big government" on the basis of falling census rolls.
It seems pretty clear though, that four straight dilettantes and smirking viceroys in the corner office has done exactly nothing in the area of job creation. If you add to that the loss of skilled manufacturing jobs and the end of wage pressure from below, you get a healthy component in today's depopulation crisis.
My own community illustrates another toxic trend, real estate over-valuation, a town that once housed a goodly portion of civil servants and small business owners is now dotted with $800K mini-mansions. Those same civil servants and small tradesmen are now shoved into what amounts to shanty-towns above and below the New Hampshire border or elsewhere.
What Humble Elias doesn't understand is this, if the population is falling and the high tech jobs are shifting out of state, why are real estate prices still rising?
They should be less people with the scratch to buy half million dollar three bedroom colonials in Menotomy therefore prices should fall...
But so far, prices are holding steady.
I'm not an economist so I won't speculate on the phenomenon.
But it does require watching....

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