Stanford Social Innovation Review

I can speak for Maine. Governor Baldacci put the Maine Arts Commission in charge of his "creative economy" initiative. An email from the Maine Arts Commission announced that "STIMULUS FUNDS ARE AVAILABLE" but the link states that they are "FOR NONPROFITS ONLY"

Then finally a rare business grant appears - but one has to pay a large registration fee for the” Juice conference” to compete in an oral competition. The promotion does not say what the semi finalists choices make perfectly clear- the grant is for “high growth” companies – doing “social good”, of course! The small scale modest growth businesses that were encouraged to participate and to pay the conference fee, never had a real chance.

The “creative economy “ movement – in Maine and many other states follows Ayn Rand-like guru Richard Florida. When I first learned of it, it struck me as a distribution of wealth scheme as opposed to a job-creation scheme. The idea is to use the arts to lure what is called “the creative class” to one’s state. One of the attributes of the creative class is that they have money. There is no direct focus on creating jobs for the voters who actually voted for governor Baldacci. So in Maine the “creative economy” movement is a love fest between non-profit organizations and high growth capitalism. Everyone else is an outsider to this intimate affair and can hope, at best, to benefit from the ever-popular “tickle down effect”... Read More

At the national level we have big government, big business, non-profit organization, and President Obama’s favored buddies, the Unions. Concentrated power and wealth and the rest of us get entitlement for the bare essentials of life, the taxes and of course the massive debt that we get to leave to our children. And while Obama overlooked job creation until last week, we have been encouraged for months, by an air-brushed angelic image of president Obama to “volunteer service”. Of course the private economy does not have the advantage of utilizing “volunteers” , when we are low on funds we just have to carry on understaffed.

Ironically, the company in my group that was selected over me is "solving the problem" of allegedly toxic athletic Tshirts by creating a a non toxic Tshirt. Ceramics has never been shown to be toxic so it is not possible for me to claim I am solving a similar problem. The high growth potential of this company is that it will ultimately seel its ... Read Moredesign to NiIKE- and we know how many Maine and/or American jobs NIKE creates. In fact some of the countries that NIKe is known to manufacyre it's product prodces a higher proir margin because of lax environmantal regulatins resulting in high levels of polution- A great place to manufacture a toxin free Tshirt.

Not sure if the click to read link is connecting to the article of this title. It leads to an article about Causes leaving My Space.

Thanks for catching that! It has been fixed. :)