JOKI–It is in TWIN Falls and they got lots of breaks including urban renewal funds.

I think the biggest issue we have in Idaho and America is that our leaders and managers are selfish and often apparently stupid too. they have allowed too many riding in the wagon and not enough pulling it. It’s a good way to get votes in the short-term. The problem is easy to see when looking at the ever increasing percentage of budgets going to overhead.

As for Boise, the only reason we ever had big employers like Micron here is because it was where the original money people lived. The money people are now mostly dead and we are discovering that Idaho is not a good location for much other than call centers, military training, mining, and timber production — aka the same as it was in 1970.

I think if all the folk who moved here to build houses were to move away again we’d have a nice place to retire. Very low home prices/taxes and a lifetime supply of firewood from all the abandon homes.

However, if we make our airport bigger than LAX everything will be in the black again right?

Zippo- if you think mining, timber or nuclear energy is going to revive Idaho, you’re living in some by gone era. Personally, I appreciate Idaho’s legacy of wild and clean running rivers over super fund sites. by the way there are at least three active ones in Idaho right now. I appreciate the salmon and steelhead runs over barren hill sides and silt laden streams. Past timbeer pracrices sealed their own doom. Nuclear energy will never work in the US. It is too expensive and environementally sensitive, it is a viable energy source elsewhere, but will nnot in our future. Why risk it, cheap natural gas, wind and solar energy do work.

Idaho legisltaures are more interested in reelection than progress. For decades we have refused to invest in our infrastructre i.e. education and highways. We refuse to recognize that in order to grow and prosper requires, absolutely requires investment into our future. For some reason, we seem to be scared of what education and growth might bring.

Yes, we are growing, at least locally. Idaho is great place to retire and to tele commute from. However, our growth will be in the service industries and small business not technology or manufacturing.
That’s the way our elected officals want it and apparently most of our residents too.

That money wasn’t frittered, it was spent at a time when consumer spending had dropped so much that it threatened a vicious spiral of deflation which is worse than inflation. Just ask the Japanese about deflation.

Zippo, I’d agree that the government shouldn’t bailout banks but the 2008 TARP Act was without a shadow of a doubt absolutely necessary to prevent the collapse of the entire world’s financial system.

Like it or not, our world, all the conveniences of the modern world depend on Fractional Reserve Banking. It’s a glorified pyramid scheme and all pyramid schemes are doomed to collapse without very careful oversight and regulation.

Thomas makes a good point about feudalism in Idaho.