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Like many Coloradans, I find the current growth trend rather mystifying, especially in the miserable month of April, and the experts aren't much help.
They say the factors behind the current boom are likely to continue, but I remember a report issued about 20 years ago by the Club of Rome -- a gathering of experts who examined resource consumption and production before issuing a prediction.
The industrial world, they said, was running short on raw materials -- fossil fuels, metallic ores, grain and the like. The world in general could look forward to wrenching shortages and high prices.
But in Colorado, underlain as it is with metal veins, coal and oil of the liquid and shale varieties, along with productive farmland, we could anticipate a boom.
Exxon was investing billions to refine oil shale on the Western Slope. Salida was flanked by two major uranium developments from Fortune 500 companies. Climax Molybdenum, then hiring 100 people a week, was planning a big new mine near Crested Butte.
Colorado might get strip-mined, but we'd all get rich in the process. Or somebody would, anyway -- note that the Guggenheim foundations manage to erect world-class art museums in Spain and Germany, with money that originated from Leadville, a Super Fund site where the school roofs leak.
None of those grand plans of 1980 came to fruition. Improved technology meant reduced consumption of energy and raw materials. Expanding trade meant access to raw materials from other countries with cheaper production costs. Nuclear power became politically impossible.
And so Colorado, which was supposed to boom in the 80s, saw its population drop during the decade. The forecasters were dead wrong.
That's nothing new, of course. Thomas C. Shotwell, a
prominent Wall Street guru of 1929, issued this prediction
at the start of that year: The market is following
natural laws of economics and there is no reason why both
prosperity and the market should not continue for years at
this high level or even higher.
That sounds remarkably similar to the stuff we hear today from Shotwell's successors as the Dow-Jones average soars to stratospheric levels.
As best as I can gather, Colorado's current growth is fueled by in-migration -- people and companies move here, bringing money with them, producing prosperity if you've got something to sell them.
So, what brings them to bustling Colorado rather than struggling states like Wyoming or North Dakota?
The Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry, which is essentially a statewide chamber of commerce, conducted a poll a few months ago, and learned that the most important reasons for businesses to locate here are quality of life and quality of workforce.
Next on the list were the state tax structure, surface transportation system, and K-12 education.
If these are indeed the reasons, then the bubble could burst any day now.
The quality of life in Colorado certainly has some connection to Denver's cultural centers, libraries, brewpubs and major-league sports. But you can find those things in Cleveland.
What's distinctive about Colorado is recreation on
public lands, administered by federal agencies whose
budgets keep getting cut, which inspires them to look at
public-private ventures
that mean development of
once-serene areas. Throw in user fees, increased
regulations and reduced maintenance, and this does not
represent an improved quality of life.
The quality of workforce
results from smart
people from elsewhere attracted to the Colorado quality
of life
-- if that diminishes, then so does the
economic growth.
As for the other growth factors, our state's property tax structure, with the Gallagher Amendment, is brutal to small enterprises in areas with little commercial development.
Our surface-transportation system is one of the state's major problems, according to the governor -- the same governor who enthusiastically agreed to the abandonment of a quarter of the state's main-line railroad mileage and who opposes efforts to keep those tracks in service.
And Colorado ranks 29th of the 50 states in its spending on K-12 education. While there's no direct relationship between money and results in education, this does indicate that it is not a priority in Colorado.
So if the CACI poll is correct, then the rosy economic forecasts for Colorado are wrong, and in a few years, we might look upon abandoned trophy homes the same way we regard crumbling dry-farmer homesteads on the prairie, erected during the wheat boom of World War I -- tragic remnants of the dreams of people who believed the experts.
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