Northeast Indiana economy faces dramatic change
by Mark Souder
November 3, 2009
This column was first published by the KPC Media Group in the News-Sun (Noble & LaGrange Counties), the Evening Star (DeKalb County), and the Herald-Republican (Steuben County).
Even if there was not a leftist government like we currently have in Washington, the economy in our area still would be facing dramatic changes.
The Democrats’ cap-and-trade bill will accelerate the decline of larger vehicle sales, and the parts for those vehicles that are produced in our area. This decline, however, was inevitable.
In my view, a big part of my job is to slow down the pace of the decline so baby boomers can retire without being cast into the streets. But, the generations that follow will face totally different challenges in agriculture, vehicles, engineering, and even providing services.
Lifelong learning will be essential. Those who don’t learn the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic will be on semi-permanent welfare.
The Obama administration, for all it has done wrong, has helped fund some energy projects that will at least keep our area in the game. I will write more on that in a future column.
But, if our region is to maintain our current standard of living, one of our biggest challenges will be to provide an adequate supply of engineers.
Most people think of ITT in Fort Wayne as the maker of SINGAARS radios and military electronics. But, the ITT Space Systems division in Fort Wayne, with nearly 520 of the best paying jobs in the region, does some of the most sophisticated engineering in the world.
The GOES satellites orbit at 40,000 miles up above us. They feed the information that goes into the regular weather reports we see. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) uses satellites designed in Fort Wayne as the backbone of their forecasting. The POES satellites orbit at a much lower level, over the polar region, and they capture even more views.
Last week, the NOAA Deputy Assistant Administrator for Satellite Systems visited ITT to discuss yet another possibility: satellites to monitor real climate change.
Simply put, the debate over carbon impact is based on few real facts and lots of opinion. If some variation of a carbon tax passes Congress, or the courts order a carbon tax (as they have said they will if Congress fails to act), then how will we track violators? Will our local industries have to make expensive changes, pay higher taxes and likely close, and meanwhile, all that is required from our foreign competition is self-reporting?
My point here is not just to highlight the convergence of federal policy and the amazing engineers in our region, but to also point out what we will need to do if we are to survive in the future. Most Hoosiers will work in service jobs — education, health care and retailing, for example — but the number and quality of those jobs will largely be dependent upon whether we can continue to be a world leader in manufacturing, agriculture and the new areas of energy products. To survive, our area will need to have even more ITT leadership centers on which we can anchor the rest of our jobs.
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