One estimate of the cost for bridging Knik Arm is $600 million. But such an immense amount of capital could fuel many other megaprojects. Has imagination finally failed Alaska, land of the Last Big Dream?
Here’s one better way to knead that dough.
Great civilizations once erected great libraries. While Alaska mayn’t qualify as a particularly fine civilization (or even an outlying shanty town on the fringe of an semi-nice burg) we now might have the chance to create what could be the greatest library of the Far North.
If we throw up such a thing, with the world’s knowledge housed, catalogued, filed, posted and stored for their use, they will come by the thousands. And they will stay to build houses, start businesses, raise children, seed ideas.
Think this is unlikely? Consider the somewhat controversial eddy in economics called new growth theory — which argues that increasing and shared knowledge is the real driver behind the modern economic engine.
The Council of Economic Advisers reported in 1995 that about 50 percent of American economic growth since World War II has been triggered by money spent on research and development.
In a 1998 statement about the future of the University of California system, UC president Richard C. Atkinson pointed out that the UC system costs California about $2 billion per year, yet brings in $11.5 billion to the state in the form of federal grants and corporate funding.
“For 50 years we have had a good understanding of the role of education as a driver of the economy, but it is only in the past 10 to 15 years that we have begun to fully understand the impact of research and development on economic growth,” Atkinson said.
“No state in the country illustrates the connection between knowledge and wealth more vividly than California. Almost all of the industries in which California leads the world — biotechnology, software and computers, telecommunications, multimedia, semiconductors, environmental technologies — were born of university-based research.”
Atkinson goes on:
Hewlett-Packard, one of the top ten exporter companies in the United States, estimates that over half of its revenue comes from products that were developed within the past two years. More and more of these products are emerging from work done at universities.
Ensuring strong economic growth has implications beyond simple dollars and cents. The state and the nation face tremendous problems — deteriorating inner cities, homelessness, degradation of the environment, the prospect of a huge number of baby-boomers retiring with a far smaller workforce to support them in their retirement.
How are we going to deal with these problems? There is only one way — we must have substantial economic growth. This requires investments in university-based research and a highly educated workforce. The link between California’s success and the success of its universities is clear and direct.
And so, where we are, another generation of Alaskans about to scatter hundreds of millions of dollars into the Knik tide, hoping that a bridge from downtown Anchorage to the Mat-Su barge landing will leverage development, jobs and prosperity.
Why not take the same money and create a Mondo Library of the Far North?
And we don’t stop with a library to house the data, store the tomes, digitalize the thoughts. We also create facilities for scientists. Study rooms for scholars. High speed computers for modelers. Laboratories for biotech.
Come to Anchorage, we will say, and you can finish your dissertation without hassle. You can find space for your experiments. Study rooms for your research. Wi-fi access to the world’s journals.
Plus there is fantastic scenery, great skiing (most winters) and decent coffee.