Growing Albuquerque’s and New Mexico’s Middle Class

We all know that the major employers in this city are the military base with its national lab and the local colleges. If anything happened to those two industries we would see a major economic down turn here in the city. This is why our U.S. Senators have had to fight hard to keep the base and the lab.

Last evening at the Democratic Party of Bernalillo County meeting new state senator Tim Keller was asked how do we grow the middle class and diversify our employment picture to protect against a local economic down turn. State Senator Keller is excited with the prospect of working with local colleges and universities to encourage start up businesses that would build the middle class and provide for good paying jobs here in the city. He is very willing to encourage small business development. He pointed out that our city could be the next Silicon Valley if we were willing to put the effort forward to encourage small businesses. This is something that could be done on a statewide base to encourage our economic security.

In order for there to be new development in this area the state would need to work had with local colleges and universities to encourage small business development. We would need to increase teacher and instructional staff paid to encourage bright people to say in the state. Some tax relief for small business start ups would have to be given. Capital for small businesses would be a must because of the difficulty of starting a small business. We would need to encourage the people at the labs to work with small businesses around the city to help develop new technology. Green technology could be improved and developed with the help of lab workers.

New Mexican have seen what can happen over the last few weeks when the economy is based on a few large companies and not diversified over a number of industries. A large number of individuals are looking to our state government to continue the work started by our Governor Bill Richardson to protect New Mexico for any ill consequences of having all our eggs in one very large military basket.