America's Tech-West is booming --- New Mexico is not.
Governor Grisham is leading New Mexico down a different & separate path from our neighbors on the deserts and in the mountains...leaving us fragile, dependent, weak & poor.
Two contrasting ideologies seem to be at work: in New Mexico, we extract our natural resources and exploit our poor (mining, so to speak, for more government grants & bigger federal assistance); our neighbors though, they exploit the human talents of their residents (promoting their intelligence, their creativity, their hard work).
The West is now full of names like Samsung, TSMC, Bosh, Toyota, PSMC, Kia, Bayer, Softbank, Oracle, NVIDIA, Ford Motor, Microsoft, Meta (FB)...all incubators of prosperity...none of which exist here!!! In Future Cities, research by Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis (CBRE) on re-shoring and headquarter relocations, the number one reason corporate America moves & relocates: Business Climate.
So, generally speaking...what is New Mexico's business climate?
In one word: torridly bad!!! As appealing as our magnificent typography is to our Tourists & Visitors; but towards American business systems, New Mexico offers, not the light-handed 'laissez-faire' of our neighbors, but the heavy-handed & repugnant 'Afuera, Los Patrones y Capitalismo'. In their annual 'business climate index' CNBC ranks New Mexico one of the WORST states in the nation (43rd). Mountains of burdensome regulations, fines & penalties align up against The Jemez & Sangre de Cristos. Balloons over Bandelier welcomed; but shunned, dangerous & barricaded, Billion-Dollar investments by Masayoshi San.
New Mexico is Fly-Over Country.
Prosperity --- that is, People, Jobs, Investments --- fly West over New Mexico to Arizona; fly East over New Mexico to Texas; fly North over New Mexico to Colorado & Utah. Nobody stops, except for abortions in Las Cruces & THC in Espanola.
When transformative businesses bypass New Mexico, but do invest multiple millions to many billions into our neighboring states of Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, these corporate investors are in fact Dis-Investing in New Mexico. Thus, as times goes by, conditions here will only worsen!
I call it Dis-Investment or Divestiture --- David Mamet calls it Disenlightenment. Mamet, the poet-playwright-philosopher whose mammoth 'Glengarry Glen Ross' is enjoying a wonderful summer revival on Broadway with Bob Odenkirk, just released "The Disenlightenment: Politics, Horror and Entertainment". The Amazon review says: 'a compelling narrative on manipulation, power & the human condition..."Government" he writes, "like Circe, turns men into swine." Here in New Mexico, its not swine but javelina, as the Santa Fe Governor & her Administration scavenge the beltway for handouts and proudly promote The Land of Enchantment as the poorest state in the West, and thanks to this ideological leadership, New Mexico, like no other state in The West, has become dependent on federal hallucinogens...DC assistance. For instance, in Utah 4% of her people take 'Snap' benefits; in New Mexico, incredibly, 25%, says Source New Mexico. Medicaid users & benefits paid here outnumber all other state users, at a prodigiously devastating 33.5% participation rate, from The Association of Healthcare Journalists.
No matter how many subsidies to entertainment or salary boosts to state teachers or special legislation like 'FIT' programs for babies born on fentanyl, there is no path to growth & prosperity in the playbook of Marxists & Socialists. David Horowitz, founder of The Freedom Center and in his youth a big-time Communist organizer, once said there's not one paragraph, not even one sentence, in the entire lexicon of Marxist literature that examines & explains how to increase growth or prosperity, only on how to 'organize' and 'appropriate' (ooops, I mean share) the riches. Santa Fe reads from the wrong book, thinks from the wrong ideology.
Please forgive my dismal meanderings!!!
A Proposal For Our 249th Independence Day!!!
Let's re-fertilize, let's plant, let's grow a new sustainable crop: Capitalists. Let's invest into New Mexico's future from our rich endowment, and focus a wee bit less on present-day 'nanny-state' ideology: the temperature at which all work stops in New Mexico; the outrageously high medical liability maximums; the car I must drive by 2025.
Let us richly Endow, Imbue, Entrust our Future with our Children.
Therefore...@ birth, in the State of New Mexico, to each baby born of New Mexican Moms & Dads, the State Treasury shall invest --- endow, imbue, entrust --- a sum of $5,000, not to be distributed until that daughter or son reaches the age of maturity, or their eligibility to vote in NM elections. These Investments w/b sort of a twenty-year investment annuity, which, at the discretion of the holder, may be held up to their 65th year.
Will our next Santa Fe leadership team continue to promote poverty to extract DC largesse; or, be more aligned to our Tech-West neighbors, to promote the strength, the leadership, the 'animas' of New Mexicans, to extract incubation & investment??? Equipped with these $5,000 annuities, our future New Mexican leaders will then intuitively understand (a) the enormous & fulfilling power of insurance, (b) the sacred'ity of investments into the future, and (c) the amazing snowballing impact of interest rates. And maybe they will remember that these investments into them were built upon the faith & industry of our present-day New Mexicans, but also built upon our pioneers from 200-300-400 years ago, and upon our 1,000 & 2,000 year old settlers; and upon, from what we now know, our earliest settlers from, stunningly, 23,000 years ago.
A Toast To our 249!!!...To Our Past, Our Present & Our Future...
To The Power of Compounding Interest & To Our Future Capitalists...que Viva!!!
ps.2---I am not smart enuf to have conceived this proposal...it's from Ted Cruz (R, Tejas) & Linda Serrato (D, Santa Fe).
Pete Stubben, a former pit trader in the Wall Street commodity markets, founded a new Queens and Brooklyn Republican club — The Rockaway Republicans — during the Bush administration. The club aimed to bring balance to local politics and help elect Republicans to the New York City Council and the New York State Legislature. Stubben also wrote a monthly column for the local community newspaper, The Rockaway Wave.
Seven years ago, he relocated to the beautiful, scenic, and historic town of Silver City in Southwest New Mexico.
