Jobs: Creating Them / Keeping Them : If You Could Do Only One Thing . . .
The current recession, and associated job losses, in California is one of the severest in recent memory. How to reverse the state’s economic slide is a question on everyone’s mind. The Times asked a variety of people what they would do to restore economic health.
WOLFGANG PUCK, Chef, restaurant owner
More aggressive promotion of tourism in California, not just for Disneyland and Universal Studios. Build more hotels/restaurants along the beach and promote them in Europe, since most Europeans still regard California as a dream vacation land. Ditto for winter sports and California’s mountains. Hotels/restaurants are service businesses, thus labor-intensive.
JOHN RECHY, Author
I marvel at how few minority students I get at USC, where I teach. Because writers are always looking to augment their income, employing them in some kind of creative program that would reach out to minorities is one way to create future employment possibilities for minorities and, without too much expense, provide work for writers in the short term.
STEPHEN LEVY, Director, Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy
In the short run, job growth in California depends on federal government actions to end the recession. Long-term prosperity depends on our willingness and ability to invest--to develop a competitive work force, to build a competitive physical infrastructure and to create a competitive quality of life. Government rules that are fair, flexible and efficiently administered are also a positive force for prosperity.
ROBBIE CONAL, Artist
We could disperse the art collection of MOCA into all the mini-malls throughout the city, and turn Bunker Hill into an affordable, low-income housing project, thereby creating jobs for more construction workers and, as a byproduct, urban beautification and jobs for all those curators in mini-malls. Dispersing art collections could be applied to every art museum in the state.
DR. JERRY BUSS, Owner of the Los Angeles Lakers
We have to ease up on bank regulations regarding lending.
ROBERT POOLE, President, Reason Foundation
California needs to stop being the high-cost place to do business. We’re simply not competitive. To get competitive, we’ve got to: reduce costly regulations on business; scrap growth controls that have made housing unaffordable, and cut the size and cost of government.
IVAN LIGHT, Professor of sociology, UCLA
Wondering how to create more jobs in California is like wondering how to get a better deck chair on the Titanic. More jobs in California would just bring the unemployed from other states to take them. California’s prosperity requires an internationally competitive, civilian economy of the whole United States. To get that, we need a President who will divert $200 billion from the defense of Europe and Japan to rebuilding the country’s civilian infrastructure.
FRED HAYMAN, Businessman, Beverly Hills
California has always been the heartland of the American dream, the epicenter of the “good life.” Business should be flocking here, not initiating an exodus. It is time to actively court new industry and encourage those that are established in California to remain here and, most important, to reform the restrictive laws that cripple our future and export jobs.
JACK KYSER, Chief economist, Economic Development Corp. of Los Angeles County
Re-examine all regulation and regulatory practices of both state and independent agencies with an eye toward making them more user-friendly to business. This would include the total costs and time required to obtain all permits.
FRANK O. GEHRY, Architect
Remove the obstacles--psychological and legal--that have created a cocoon of self-protection from personal liability and have driven into the ground the ability to take risks and to creatively address the problems of the future.
WILLIAM G. OUCHI, Professor of management, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA
Do everything possible to accelerate the development of mass transit in our region, not to create jobs in mass transit itself, but rather to solve our transportation problems. Do everything in our power to accelerate the reform of the Los Angeles Police Department, not to create jobs in the department, but rather to deal more successfully with our problems of public safety. Do everything in our power to assist the Los Angeles Unified School District in its efforts to streamline and to decentralize, not to create jobs within the district staff, but ensure the nation that our education is the best. Then new businesses will come here.
KATHLEEN BROWN, State treasurer
Under my new CAL-VEST program, state investments would be used to buy existing loans from California banks in order to provide more cash for small-business loans. The result: business expansion and capital investment, while at the same time giving California a fair rate of return on its investments.
WILFORD D. GODBOLD JR., President and CEO, Zero Corp., and chairman, California Chamber of Commerce Task Force on Saving California Jobs
The state Legislature must convince employers that it will act to reduce workers compensation and health-care costs, enhance K-12 education, coordinate environmental regulations, speed permit processing and preclude tax increases. The Legislature should listen to the employers and employees who voted for them and make California more competitive with its neighboring states.
DOUGLAS J. MCCARRON, Secretary-treasurer, Los Angeles County and Vicinity District Council of Carpenters
It is an outrage that politicians would even consider spending tens of millions on automated Japanese rail cars. We need a coherent policy that invests in local production of rail cars and maximizes the miles of transit we can build. We need solutions forged in the cold, hard light of today’s economy, not gold-plated pipe dreams that waste our tax dollars subsidizing foreign workers.
JOHN VASCONCELLOS, Chairman, Assembly Committee on Ways and Means (D-Santa Clara)
We must immediately generate a credible and enduring public-private partnership to develop trust, discern the facts and develop a working agenda to address smartly and expeditiously the most pressing issues concerning California’s business climate, economic prosperity and job creation. From this all else proceeds!
LINDA J. WONG, Executive director, the Achievement Council
California has an important asset that few people value--its diversity. A rich mix of cultures has produced an entrepreneurial energy, ranging from high-tech firms in Silicon Valley to immigrant businesses. We need to tap this entrepreneurial energy more aggressively.
VIVIAN ROTHSTEIN, Executive director, Ocean Park Community Center
We must recapture the California talent that has gone into aerospace and defense and redirect it to making California a world-class provider of innovative low-cost housing, public transportation, medical care and cleaning up the environmental mistakes of the past.
MICHAEL VENTURA, Regular contributor to L.A. Weekly
Many thousands of adult Californians can’t read this newspaper. In a high-tech world, an ignorant population hasn’t got a chance. We need a WPA-style program in which presently out-of-work readers are paid to teach, and out of work illiterates are paid to learn, so that when the economy begins a true recovery, California will be ready for it with a work force capable of meeting 21st-Century demands. This could probably be paid for with the cost of one now useless Trident sub.
LARRY B. MCNEIL, California director, Industrial Areas Foundation
Create an educated work force: Give each school board member a salary of $1 million a year. Deduct $5,000 for any kid who can’t read and write by the third grade; $3,000 for each high-schooler incapable of higher-order thinking; $10,000 for each dropout and $25,000 for attendance at more than four board meetings a year.
WILLIAM P. BAKER, Former vice chairman of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee (R-Danville)
Cut spending and lower taxes, thereby boosting available capital. If we lower the capital-gains tax and eliminate all taxes on savings (money we’ve already earned and paid taxes on), businesses will have the impetus to grow. Consumers will increase savings and make capital available to home buyers, car buyers and businesses.
MARVIN DAVIS, President, Davis Companies
Establish a public-works program to improve both the education and transportation infrastructure in California.
LINDA GRIEGO, Deputy mayor of Los Angeles
Look to small entrepreneurs to create jobs. But innumerable bureaucratic obstacles hamper their efforts to open new businesses. Government should set up trouble-shooting offices to cut through red tape and expedite the permitting process so that business can start hiring as soon as possible.
SAFI QURESHEY, President and CEO, AST Research
California has become like New York City, with its high taxes and high housing costs. The state needs to create an environment that allows current businesses to grow and to provide incentives for those wanting to start new ventures. California must also lower taxes, deregulate and cut red tape.
MARK RIDLEY-THOMAS, City Council member, chairman, Community and Economic Development Committee
We’ll have more jobs when corporations, especially banks, begin to reinvest in communities from which they extract profits. That will increase the number of job and housing opportunities and foster greater community stability.
MICHAEL B. TEITZ, Department of City and Regional Planning, UC Berkeley
Forget single answers. To build an economy takes foresight, clear thinking, long-term investment and hard work. California has limited policy choices. Short-term, we can facilitate housing-market recovery. Medium term, we should build infrastructure and education, and plan for military conversion. Long term, we need political consensus on economic goals and an agenda for development.
J.D. HOKOYAMA, President, executive director, Leadership Education for Asian Pacific
Reorder our priorities by converting the state’s high technology into applications that will help modernize our country’s infrastructure. Stop blaming others for problems that we have created.
JUSTIN OSTRO, General vice president, International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
Rebuild the state’s infrastructure using California companies, workers manufacturing products and services. With California’s educational, technological and aerospace talent, such transportation innovations as high-speed rail, electric vehicles and mass-transit systems can be developed.
HAROLD CHUANG, President, American International Bank
Too much attention is given to large corporations when small- and medium-size businesses make up the backbone of our economy and are the creators of most new jobs. Laid-off employees of large corporations, who constitute a highly educated and skilled work force, should be helped to start their own businesses. State and local governments should work closely with local trade associations to provide an economic environment conducive to small businesses.
WILLIAM C. W. MOW, Chairman, CEO of Bugle Boy Industries
It’s important to become more pro-business. This implies attacking unnecessary procedures and unnecessary regulations and shorten the permit cycles. Presently, California is not competitive, nor it is is conducive to business, thus not conducive to good employment.
JERRY L. JORDAN, Senior vice president and chief economist, First Interstate Bancorp
Resources should be shifted to heavy construction/infrastructure projects such as water, waste disposal and intracity transportation. In addition, we should privatize and develop more educational, health-care and correctional facilities.
SERGIO MUNOZ, Executive news director, KMEX, Channel 34
The proposed free-trade agreement with Mexico represents not only an opening for job creation but a window of opportunity to upgrade the skills of our labor force. From 1987 to 1990, the strong performance of the U.S. export sector increased trade with Mexico from $12.5 billion to $30 billion. This increase in exports meant the creation of 400,000 jobs in the United States. Mexican-Americans should become the natural link for business on both sides of the border, and Mexican-American managers and technicians ought to be the first choice for entrepreneurs in the two nations.
Our job now is to ensure that the trade pact is signed and, at the same time, to demand better schooling for our youngsters and retraining for our low-skill labor force.
MAUREEN O’CONNOR, Mayor of San Diego
Jump-start all public projects funded but not built. Bond existing cash to create new monies for more capital projects. Help businesses breathe by slowing tax collections or provide flexible payment schedules. Avoid lay-offs--use voluntary furloughs or early retirement. Avoid unnecessary budget increases by freezing government employees’ salaries. Avoid new taxes, fees, back-door rate hikes that evaporate discretionary disposable income. And pray that President Bush provides more direct aid to the cities.
TOM HAYDEN, Assemblyman (D-Santa Monica)
Those who promise jobs are usually, well, lying. With no policy of maximizing good long-term jobs, we blindly trust the very wealthy to invest in jobs rather than in antique art or corporate takeovers. So economic growth is disconnected with creating meaningful jobs for most Americans. There’s plenty of work to do on affordable housing, energy efficiency and environmental cleanup. If only the private sector or government cared to.
MIKE RILEY, President, Joint Council of Teamsters No. 42
Spend money rebuilding the state’s infrastructure--freeways, highways, sewers, bridges and streets. Eliminate unnecessary delays in permitting for major construction, thereby allowing work to be done now, not three years down the road. Seek more federal money to complete subway and other transit programs.
KEVIN STARR, Professor of urban and regional planning, USC
In the late 1940s, greater Los Angeles experienced an employment-related shock. The war was over. Where were the new jobs to come from? The rest, as they say, is history. A combination of the Cold War and a building boom unprecedented in history kept metropolitan Los Angeles busy at work for the next three decades.
Nick Patsaouras has already pointed the way to the future as far as the next generation of jobs in greater Los Angeles is concerned. Los Angeles County is committed to spending billions of dollars over the next decade on its Metro system. Patsaouras has suggested that, whether the contracts go to Boise or Tokyo, the construction and assembly be done here. Once in place, moreover--and that means by the end of the decade!--the Metro system will encourage some three to four decades of retro-fitting and reurbanization, as Los Angeles doubles back on its center and reurbanizes properties made valuable by the public transit system. The Cold War is over, but transportation has replaced defense; and connected to transportation is a construction boom that will see Los Angeles County well into the 21st Century.
