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Albuquerque, NM - The good news this week is that New Mexico has improved its economic ranking, but the bad news is that this could be as good as it gets. The annual "State of Working New Mexico" report from New Mexico Voices for Children finds that personal income grew in the state over the last five years, bringing its national ranking up from 47th to 43rd. However, New Mexico Voices for Children research director Gerry Bradley says, income now seems to have reached a peak, and that's especially bad news for New Mexicans who didn't see much benefit from the recent growth.
"Things didn't improve that much as far as inequality of poverty or wages during the good years. Now we're very concerned that the economy is slowing almost to a halt in 2008."
Bradley says some recent policies will help counter the effects of the slowing economy, such as the increasing minimum wage and the state working families tax credit. However, New Mexico's poverty rate still remains higher than the national average, and New Mexicans receive less support per capita from assistance systems like Medicare, Social Security and food stamps.
Bradley says keeping the state economy on the road to improvement can be done with investments in early childhood education, health care and adult education.
"When there's prosperity it has to be shared, and now that we have a slowdown, we need to have good public policy to counteract its negative effects."
The report is available at nmvoices.org.
2 Tell us what you think:
Alas, when he was working for the State, our friend Gerry B was one of the economists who could say no wrong about Intel at the time of its big expansion in 1993-94. I wonder what he thinks now. Perhaps if they had not given away the damned kitchen sink to that company there might have been some tax revenues for early childhood education, health care and adult education.
For more info, check out SWOP's Intel Inside New Mexico: A Case Study of Environmental and Economic Injustice. Still on point 15 years later.
He's seen the light...
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