Chronic? Yes..sort of...

We were talking about this in the newsroom yesterday. It came up in our "A Year of Hard Choices" opening interview with economist Greg Gardner. He had said New York might lag behind the rest of the country in recovering from this economic crisis, so I asked about this chronic recession idea. Yes, sort of. Listen:


I also asked him if there were a model for job creation anywhere that could be plugged into the North Country. He had said no, begging my followup, "Do we just live with it?" Not exactly. Listen:


What about this idea of the "creative class?" Could putting economic development resources into quality of life improvements, instead of -- what, a new manufacturer? an ethanol plant? a super-conducting super-collider? -- change the flat-to-downward trend in the North Country?