99.2% of Rhode Islanders believe the state economy is hopeless

[opebo]

Many other states are completely deluded about American 'competitiveness' - but apparently not Rhode Island.  Practical people.  The American model of $10-15/hour labor costs simply can't work in the modern globalized world.

[opebo]

Many other states are completely deluded about American 'competitiveness' - but apparently not Rhode Island.  Practical people.  The American model of $10-15/hour labor costs simply can't work in the modern globalized world.

So your solution is to force everyone to be paid double that and simply sit back and sigh when half of them don't have jobs?

No, my solution would be to completely alter global capitalism - for example, no more products from China.

However, your solution - even lower wages than the above mentioned $10-15 - might work well for the ruling class.

[opebo]

So, is there any hope for RI and states like it?

How can things be turned around?

Has any state in a similar situation before managed to really turn things around?

Only if either all the low-wage slave countries were to blow each other up in a nuclear war, or said Rhode-Islandish states could adopt a $3/day wage scale.  Either way.

[opebo]

How about how to attract well-paying jobs?

As I said blow up all the cheap labor and jobs become automatically well paying.  Or maybe a plague - but how do you tailor it to only kill non-Rhode-Islanders?

[opebo]

Why do you act as though the only people in the world who have a right to earn a decent living are Americans with few marketable skills? Why don't the poor, toiling masses in China matter to you, and why do you refuse to acknowledge the tremendous improvements in living standards they've obtained over the past 20 years?

Because they're not in the same polity.  Why should people in one tribe care about the people in another?

[opebo]

Households in RI have an above average median income. Come down to rural Mississippi if you want to see hopeless.

And all along the way!