Wealth creation a good thing
I was in a meeting with a great Valley company last week discussing its mission and strategy for the future. This is a firm that has had wonderful success in its efforts to bring new technologies and fresh ideas to Northeast Ohio. When discussing its mission statement, it was interesting to note that the members of this conversation originally thought to include “wealth creation” as one of its goals, but one member thought that term has a negative connotation in the Valley. He was right — in some circles “wealth creation” still conjures up the notion of a few elites controlling the lives of many.
If the Mahoning Valley is to continue its transition to a modern, robust, and diversified economy, it’s time to embrace the modern definition of wealth creation as a mantra for all citizens of this area.
Social contract
We know about the social contract that existed in the Valley for the first 80 years of the last century. Men went to work in the steel mills, employers provided for them enough to earn a living, allowing the wife the option to stay at home to raise the kids, and park some money into a good pension and retirement. Thinking about my father, effectively an immigrant from Czechoslovakia, Youngstown Sheet & Tube even helped him get his GED. That social contract was befitting its era. That social contract helped to educate the kids of the Valley with college degrees, so mine and my friends’ fingernails weren’t permanently black underneath from the grease of eight hours of hard, gritty labor everyday.
That contract broke in the worst of ways, and left an unprepared region spinning in a vicious spiral of economic hunger. “Wealth creation” was a synonym for greed, and politicians of the past used it as a flash point to keep people voting against the future, and for the status quo. I believe this submarining of the idea that an individual can have the ability to amass its own wealth contributed to the corruption of the Valley — if you want to have some cash in your pocket, best to do it under the table where nobody can see it. The negative aura surrounding wealth creation also acted like a travel agent — booking one way tickets out of the Valley for the people who wanted to have a say into their own destiny.
Thankfully, that time is over. People are now looking at ways to return to the Valley, because they want to marry the economic advantages of Youngstown and Warren to the compassion and moral values of its citizens. As a result, we are beginning to see people placing their own capital on the line for a chance to grow their personal wealth, but also the personal wealth of their employees. These leaders now want to hire employees who are well educated, because they have seen that when you fill your firm with smart people, contributions to the efficiencies of that shop floor, of that sales office, of that R&D center lead to a stronger company, and ultimately a stronger Valley.
Job creation
There has been an abundance of smiles at the Regional Chamber of late, because the fruits of many years of labor on developing a game plan for cooperation among all stakeholders of the economy are beginning to pay off. In this “jobless recession,” how many parts of the U.S. can claim announced job creation to the scale that was seen in this region over the last month? And yet our work is nowhere near finished. When 2,000 people show up to apply for 120 positions at TMK IPSCO’s new facility in Brookfield, we know that the idea of attracting new business and expanding existing business must continue with urgency.
And the best way to have such future success is to continue to believe that we as a Valley control our own destiny. Times are tough, and will continue this way for months and months. But an unwavering belief that the ethical empowerment of the individual for the benefit of the community will get us ahead, and allow the Mahoning Valley to be a leader in the country for the first time in generations.
Eric Planey, a Valley native who has worked in banking in New York and Asia, is vice president for international business attraction for the Youngstown-Warren Regional Chamber.