The Philadelphia Citizen: To Grow or Not to Grow
BY LARRY PLATT
Earlier this week, a roomful of business, civic and policy leaders convened at the Union League for the type of conversation that happens far too seldom in Moscow on the Delaware: A discussion between bold-face name stakeholders of differing philosophical perspectives entitled “Priorities for Growth: Balancing Competitiveness and Inclusion.” The panel consisted of Councilpersons Allan Domb and Helen Gym, developer Leo Addimando, and labor leader Ryan Boyer.
When the talk wrapped up, I found myself face to face with one particular business and civic macher, someone widely seen as a longtime voice of reason and local patriotism. And he looked kinda stunned.
“I’m just really weary,” he said. “I’ve heard all this before. It gets tiring.”
OMG, I thought. If we’ve lost this guy, what chance do we have? Honestly, I could feel his pain. The discussion was…fine. But, as it turned on precisely how we modify the tax abatement on new construction, on the need for our schools to teach financial literacy, on the business class’s desire to lower wage and BIRT taxes, and on raising the (shamefully low) minimum wage, I, too, started to feel like we’d seen this movie before.
Since the election, I’d perused the Chamber of Commerce’s Neighborhood Growth Project initiative, a long overdue commitment to inclusive Main Street growth. The Chamber, like the panel discussion that was put on by Center City District, deserves credit for pivoting towards issues of inclusive growth in these vastly unequal times, and for starting public conversations along those lines. But I could see how the actual content of both might cause some eyes to glaze over, like those of our shell-shocked civic leader in the Union League’s audience. It was tempting to wonder just why it always feels like Groundhog Day in Philadelphia.
Many business people look at a bloated city budget and know in their bones that they can easily cut 5 percent from it—because they’ve had to do that time and again in the private sector. But in Council districts with poverty rates in excess of 40 percent, any talk of a cut from white dudes in suits is seen as an attack on an ever-fragile safety net.
But a few days of digestion left me feeling a bit more hopeful. Before we get to what we’re not talking about when we talk about inclusive growth in a city with the nation’s worst poverty rate, here are the reasons—after much internal back and forth—I told myself a hopeful story after wading into the Chamber’s plans and attending the panel discussion:
That They’re Happening At All. The fact that, under new Chairman Dan Hilferty, CEO of Independence Blue Cross, the Chamber is convening road shows featuring neighborhood entrepreneurs and policy makers throughout the city, making policy recommendations, and just spent, via its PAC, ten times more than in recent elections on pro-growth political candidates points to the possibility that—maybe, finally—the business community writ large is getting off the sidelines of our public life.
Seven years ago, I wrote critically about the Chamber’s timid incrementalism in a city that was then desperate for big ideas. While some dismiss the new focus on neighborhood growth as, in effect, a cynical ploy, a type of channeling of President George H.W. Bush—“Message: I care”—as a prelude to securing business tax breaks, what’s undeniable is that the Chamber has pivoted to talking about our most pressing issue. Not just how do we grow jobs, but how do we grow the right jobs, where everyday Philadelphians need them the most? (This just became even more pressing with the news of the PES refinery’s and, potentially, Hahneman University Hospital’s closing.)
Similarly, the mere fact of CCD’s panel discussion qualifies as needle-moving. “The purpose here was, can people with different perspectives come together in a civilized conversation to potentially find common ground,” CCD president and CEO Paul Levy said afterwards. “That’s what I’m really concerned about. At a time when, too often, basic facts don’t matter anymore, can stakeholders not talk past one another?”
In that sense, the discussion was a success, and left me wondering if we ought not to have more such solution-oriented forums, throughout the city. Some reasons why:
Levy’s Facts. As a prelude to the discussion, Levy presented some stunning graphics about the state of the city. In short: Unlike other cities, we have no wealth to redistribute. Yes, in the last year, our private sector job growth rate of 2.3 percent lifted Philadelphia slightly above the national average, but we’re producing the wrong kind of jobs. Fully 76 percent of all jobs created locally since 2009 have paid on average $35,000 or less. Among the top 25 U.S. cities, our median household income of $39,759 not only ranks 23rd—barely besting Memphis and Detroit—but is trending downward.
After three years of Mayor Kenney’s taxing and spending—a 25 percent increase in the city budget, highest in city history—we’ve made no inroads on poverty and hardly any in terms of real economic growth. Just as trickle down economics has proven to be a failed experiment at the national level, so too is blanket redistribution in economically challenged cities. You can’t tax what ain’t there.
A Smattering of Good Ideas. The Chamber plan contains some good ideas. I particularly like its tying of any windfalls from tax abatement reform to the establishment of “Neighborhood Renaissance Funds,” and its emphasis on a more responsive government, including calls for a mayoral annual report and a real time online dashboard on the city’s progress, as well as calls for Council members to hold public town halls and “office hours” to meet with non-donor citizens.
Truly inclusive growth can only happen when the plutocrat class sees its own self-interest as inextricably tied to a working guy getting a raise and not having to worry about whether he can afford to make next semester’s ballooning tuition payment. And it would likewise require of the average worker that he not resent capitalists making a fair share of scratch.
Likewise, when, at the Union League, Gym talked movingly about why we needed Fair Work Week legislation and the fight for a $15 minimum wage, and when Domb talked about teaching financial literacy and entrepreneurship in our schools, they weren’t wrong. But do those prescriptions qualify as bold, innovative strategies for growing the tax base? Yes, predictive scheduling is fair—and should be done on that basis. But it doesn’t lift anyone out of poverty. Sure, financial literacy should be taught, but I’ve both had money and been poor; it’s amazing how much better I was at paying my bills when I had it. Poor people don’t need lessons in budgeting, they need something to budget. In the 21st Century, both the mindset of local political leaders and the Chamber plan may be coming at things from a point of view that suffers from too narrow a lens.
To wit: “I see my role as not being a megaphone for those who already have,” Gym said. “Growth on its own is not equal. Growth left to its own devices will favor the powerful over the weak, the connected over the disenfranchised, the bank over the individual. Our goal on City Council is to make sure that those things don’t go on that natural course. We are the balance to that.”
That’s a vision of elected official as regulator, not partner, and certainly not stimulator. When FDR passed the GI Bill of Rights, (over the objections of socialist opposition from the likes of Father Coughlin), creating arguably the most vibrant economy in history, he was shaping capitalism toward progressive ends—not just inhibiting it.
After three years of Mayor Kenney’s taxing and spending—a 25 percent increase in the city budget, highest in city history—we’ve made no inroads on poverty and hardly any in terms of real economic growth. Just as trickle down economics has proven to be a failed experiment at the national level, so too is blanket redistribution in economically challenged cities. You can’t tax what ain’t there.
A Smattering of Good Ideas. The Chamber plan contains some good ideas. I particularly like its tying of any windfalls from tax abatement reform to the establishment of “Neighborhood Renaissance Funds,” and its emphasis on a more responsive government, including calls for a mayoral annual report and a real time online dashboard on the city’s progress, as well as calls for Council members to hold public town halls and “office hours” to meet with non-donor citizens.
Truly inclusive growth can only happen when the plutocrat class sees its own self-interest as inextricably tied to a working guy getting a raise and not having to worry about whether he can afford to make next semester’s ballooning tuition payment. And it would likewise require of the average worker that he not resent capitalists making a fair share of scratch.
Likewise, when, at the Union League, Gym talked movingly about why we needed Fair Work Week legislation and the fight for a $15 minimum wage, and when Domb talked about teaching financial literacy and entrepreneurship in our schools, they weren’t wrong. But do those prescriptions qualify as bold, innovative strategies for growing the tax base? Yes, predictive scheduling is fair—and should be done on that basis. But it doesn’t lift anyone out of poverty. Sure, financial literacy should be taught, but I’ve both had money and been poor; it’s amazing how much better I was at paying my bills when I had it. Poor people don’t need lessons in budgeting, they need something to budget. In the 21st Century, both the mindset of local political leaders and the Chamber plan may be coming at things from a point of view that suffers from too narrow a lens.
To wit: “I see my role as not being a megaphone for those who already have,” Gym said. “Growth on its own is not equal. Growth left to its own devices will favor the powerful over the weak, the connected over the disenfranchised, the bank over the individual. Our goal on City Council is to make sure that those things don’t go on that natural course. We are the balance to that.”
That’s a vision of elected official as regulator, not partner, and certainly not stimulator. When FDR passed the GI Bill of Rights, (over the objections of socialist opposition from the likes of Father Coughlin), creating arguably the most vibrant economy in history, he was shaping capitalism toward progressive ends—not just inhibiting it.
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