Ever since the "Great Recession" started, my State of Oregon has been two full percentage points behind the national unemployment statistics, which are probably pencil-whipped, add at least 5 percentage points to all such stats you see. Oregonians are in that hole for a variety of reasons, high taxes are probably the one thing keeping most business depressed, but excessive State regulation stacked onto excessive National regulation probably has something to do with it also.
Oregon sucks for business, unless, of course, you are a Hollywood liberal who wants to make a film here, and then the State bends over backward, putting State employees to work in your producer's office to "smooth the way" (BTW, those folks all work for the Governor directly). "Green" also gets huge tax breaks, but if you just want to set up a stamping mill to stamp out a particular piece for say, the auto industry, fuggeddabboudditt.
All of this gives bad impressions to all those Daddy Warbucks types out there, and, like it or not, they have the moolah to actually put business in this state.
What to do.
Well, if you are a liberal like the Governor, you sign up for a class to help you understand the poor business climate.
You go to Portland State U, my alma mater, and there you will find the "Institute for Sustainable Solutions". No, I'm not kidding, they actually TEACH that crap. When I matriculated in 1966, PSU gave a good basic education, more night than day classes to students, many of them Veterans, who wanted to get ahead in life. There were few of these "puff" classes, and certainly no entire Institutes devoted to teaching this sort of puffery. But I digress....
At that prestigious (in Portland, anyway) Institute, they are wondering if those somber measurements of GDP (Gross Domestic Product, the total worth of all good and services sold/consumed in the US) is actually the best way to measure the value of an economy.
Dollars are SOOOOOOO old-fashioned as a measurement, so Twentieth Century, says the Institute.
Let's measure FEEEEEELINGS instead, says the Institute. So, the Institute proposes measuring the GPI ("Genuine Progress Indicator") instead. What is a GPI composed of? 26 things, according to the fishwrap's article on same, but let's examine the name for now.
"Genuine". The word is supposed to mean truthful, real, authentic. What about this measurement gives itself the right to be "genuine"? The article doesn't say. One surmises that they just needed a "G" word to put in front of "Progress" to hide it's association with all things lefty.
"Progress" This one's easy-peasy. PROGRESSive. Get it?
So we have the "Real because we say so, list of progressive things we think indicates satisfaction with life". Yeah, that's a mouthful, but that's what the Institute is trying to cram down our throats as being just as important a measurement as the basic, definable, dollars and cents of the GDP. This GPI is your basic moving target, people. Since there are REAL bean-counters out there who CAN and DO point out when the Feddle Gummint messes with the GDP stats, there is a source of counter-point if those stats get pencil-whipped. This new Indicator has twenty-six indices of what? It comes up with what? The "World Happiness Report" (issued by the Earth Institute, no less). Who gives a flying fark? The followers of Mother Gaia and the cult of Holy Sustainability are those who give a fark. Not we filk who work for a living, or are living off the fruits of working for a living for 46 years like your blogger.
Scary, isn't it?
This is why we fail. This is a "Genuine" guarantee of failure. This is nothing but a way for the Left to claim we all smell like roses when we just stepped into a bucket of crap.
There is truly no hope. There is especially no hope when the Guv'ner sits in this class, lapping up this poison like a kitten lapping up warm milk.