Ohio combats brain drain with dog parks and bike lanes
In a little less than a month, approximately 7500 Buckeyes will walk the aisle and graduate from the Ohio State University.
How many will choose to stay in Columbus, let alone the state of Ohio?
That vexing question was the focus of Milwaukee-based Next Generation Consulting, a firm hired by the city to evaluate the city's ability to retain young professionals.
After a year's worth of research - and $125,000 in consulting fees - the group provided their Attract and Retain Talent presentation to the city last month.
First among their ground-breaking findings: overhaul Columbus public transport. Their interviews with our best and brightest brought forth ideas to create better bus service and bicycle lanes through downtown.
Other suggestions included bringing more shops into prior failed government subsidized urban initiatives such as the downtown City Center mall.
Next Generation's earth-shattering recommendations also included the need to create affordable urban housing and build downtown communities.
And, yet, not one word was said about encouraging economic activity by reducing the disincentives for growth. Not one word about creating tax-friendly environments for accelerating new business development.
If the power to tax involves the power to destroy, Ohio has steadily crept up the ranks of states destroying their local economies.
On the heels of tax filing season, the public policy group Buckeye Institute recently compared Ohio's tax burden as a percent of income with the rest of the nation.
Ohio had leapfrogged past forty-one other states - from 47th in 1970 - to have the 5th highest tax burden in the country this year.
According to David Hansen of the Buckeye Institute, "No other state in the nation has increased its relative tax burden as greatly over the past thirty-five years."
No society has taxed itself into economic prosperity. By its very nature, innovation entails risk. By lower taxes, Ohio decreases the disincentives for innovators to continue taking these risks.
Next Generation Consulting has taken their dog and pony show on preventing brain drain across various Midwestern cities. With the steady loss of manufacturing jobs, Rustbelt cities facing the increasing loss of young people and their economic dollars have been more than willing to seek their professional help. Last month the US Census Bureau released the fifty fastest growing metropolitan areas in the nation this decade. Only one was located entirely in the Midwest - Sioux Falls, SD.
The rest is
here. 
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Topic: Ohio combats brain drain with bike paths
