We may know as early as today if Luke Air Force Base will be chosen as a training base for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The decision would give Luke further life once its primary tenant, the F-16 fighters, are phased out. Not surprisingly, the western suburbs of Phoenix are ambivalent, even if many support Luke publicly. Built up long after the base had been in operations, its residents are outraged at the jet noise. (Shoulda checked that out before you thought you were getting so much house for the money in that crapola lookalike subdivision). Encroaching sprawl, meanwhile, has had the base on a razor's edge of closing for years.
The group Luke Forward supports the base's continued existence. But Luke faces the mos powerful enemy: the Real Estate Industrial Complex. In other words, these economic elites — including, according to some sources, the Mormon Church, which owns land nearby — want the base to go away so they can continue building on the same sprawl model as the past 50 years. It's a big leap of faith: the old Growth Machine may not regain its health for years, if ever. But the Real Estate Industrial Complex is a simple-minded dinosaur. It feeds (builds tract houses, pockets quick profits). Its brain doesn't even realize its tail is on fire from economic, environmental and social tectonic shifts.
If Luke closes, to be replaced by more subdivisions and shopping strips, it will once again represent the colossal lack of imagination that keeps the Arizona economy backward (but highly profitable for the status quo).
Arizona has always been deeply dependent on federal spending, whatever its libertarian pretensions. It's a net "taker" state of tax dollars. One big part is the military, which not only pacified the state for settlement by the whites but then built numerous training bases there during World War II. Luke and Williams Air Force Base survived and continued their training missions, adding to a relatively diverse economy from the 1950s through the 1970s. Back then, Phoenix leaders had recruited some high-profile employers in aerospace and technology; it still had headquarters companies and was a major national agricultural exporter. Williams closed in 1993, and by that time the economy was on its way to its current extremely narrow form.
Unfortunately, the Phoenix of the 1950s and 1960s never saw the next leap possible with these military installations: the brainpower. For example, the Air Force's major technology and R&D bases went elsewhere, especially at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton. Imagine if Phoenix, aided by Air Force Reserve Maj. Gen. Barry Goldwater, could have gotten some of that action? It might have created the kind of talent magnet seen in Albuquerque, with Kirtland AFB and the Sandia National Laboratories. That opportunity was never seized, even after Williams was closed and Luke's future seemed endangered.
By the 1990s, the "conservative" congressional delegation wasn't going to help Arizona get federal installations, much less high-tech, braino ones. This goes along with the missed opportunity to steal federal offices and jobs from the huge concentrations in Denver and LA. Meanwhile, most of the legacy tech and aerospace companies went away and more weren't successfully seeded; the old McDonnell Douglas helicopter unit holds on at the edge of Mesa, now under Boeing ownership. Luke hung in there, doing a job suited to a base surrounded by cotton fields and desert, but still providing thousands of jobs and a touch of diversity to the economy. Yet the shadow government of the state lusts for the day when Luke closes. It can build more houses! Who cares if most of the jobs pay wages far below those in similar metros?
The amazing thing is the "stuckness" of Arizona. Look at South Carolina, a state even more intolerant, reactionary and regressive than Arizona — indeed, in many ways, it never rejoined the Union. Yet it just pulled off an economic-development coup by landing the second assembly line of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. It did so with lavish economic incentives, including $170 million for infrastructure. State leaders, including the disgraced Gov. Mark Sanford, aggressively courted Boeing and leveraged its dissatisfaction with the Seattle area. (Has Jan Brewer ever made a call to a major business lead?) It's the classic Southern strategy of going after big projects -- and North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama have been much more effective than South Carolina. And it couldn't have happened soon enough. With its old sectors of textiles and apparel decimated by China, South Carolina has the fifth highest unemployment in the nation.
Combined with other government policies, the strategy still leaves most residents of the state behind the national average in most measures of social and economic well-being. But thousands do benefit from these better-paying jobs. These states, unlike Arizona with the massive target of California next door, have capitalized on a corporate desire for cheaper land and wages. But their toolbox for economic development contains more than sunshine and golf. There has not been a long vendetta waged against their state commerce departments.
Arizona could do so much better. Arizona could be a world-beater. The lost opportunity with the meds-and-eds strategy is tragic. Phoenix, which already has more land than brains, could focus its development brains on quality infill for new generations that don't want to live miles from everything and be car-dependent — and start to protect itself against the consequences of climate change. But if they refuse to play in the real game, of populous metros building talent and competing worldwide, Arizona and Phoenix could at least do as well as South Carolina and Alabama.
But, no. Please, God, give me one more boom...
Land has long been the path to the quickest score in Arizona. Back in the 50s, land fraud was pandemic. Over the years, regulations tightened but the idea never went away: capitalism at its purest is flipping parcels. It's also capitalism at its most decadent, self-cannibalizing stage.
While it lip-syncs the free-market pieties of faux rugged individualists, it's really a parasite on the productive economy. But, as we've seen, that economy required such horrors as planning, public-private partnerships, congressional earmarks, and a business class in tune with reality. Long before Phoenix settled for its marginal status as a branch-office backwater, this business class guided the growth here. Then it dissipated. Some of it was consumed by bigger national entities. Some of it vanished into Scottsdale Airpark. The rest got religion, tithing its campaign contributions to the church of Ayn Rand.
We got lazy here because the growth required no investment. The people who mattered got rich and that was all that mattered. Now, it may be over although the truest of believers know otherwise. This is a state crashing on cheap crack and too inebriated to take its own inventory.
Arizona's New Man is someone like Jeff Flake. His career is based on a postmodern politics of ideological coolness. He's an entrepreneur of his own image. There's nothing really to do except sell his well-tended self. Likewise, Arizona sells itself. Who knows? Maybe there's a reality-TV show that will make us all rich.
Posted by: soleri | October 30, 2009 at 09:03 AM
Boeing does not own MD Helicopters anymore (and the MD is not an abbreviation for anything anymore). Boeing sucked it dry then sold to a Dutch company that couldn't turn it around, who then sold it to Patriarch Partners (Lynn Tilton). She hopes to re-invigorate US manufacturing and MD Helicopters Inc. is the jewel in her crown of 70+ companies. They clocked good sales last year but the downturn of course has put expansion on the backburner.
MDHI has a great product line, but still is recovering (customer support wise) from the Boeing years. At the end of this recession, it should pop out stronger. This is in stark contrast to Honeywell Aerospace which is shipping jobs and equipment to Mexico. The old AiResearch/Garrett will just be a memory soon.
Posted by: eclecticdog | October 30, 2009 at 11:33 AM
Support for Honeywell capital projects (including the location of U.S. defense department assets) is now conducted in
China.
Posted by: Joanna | October 30, 2009 at 01:32 PM
Use the Force, Luke.
(Sorry -- very lame, I know.)
Posted by: Emil Pulsifer | October 30, 2009 at 05:09 PM
Lame, but it made me smile Emil. Thank you.
Posted by: Joanna | October 30, 2009 at 08:54 PM