'Shoes' Slow Arizona's Progress, Report Says

Five Shoes Waiting to Drop on Arizona's Future, a 50-page report released by the Morrison Institute of Public Policy, details five key trends that could harm the state's future if they are not well managed.

The "shoes waiting to drop," according to the report, are trends already at work in Arizona that are altering the state's social and economic make-up. The report says that Morrison Institute researchers believe it behooves Arizona to recognize the trends and respond to them as it plots a course in a time of transition.

The trends are encompassed by the following:

• a talent shakeup that hinders Arizona's ability to attract and retain highly skilled workers;
• a Latino education dilemma that finds many Arizona Hispanics in need of better educational opportunities to keep moving forward;
• a fuzzy economic identity that interferes with the state's economic development agenda;
• a lost stewardship that leaves Arizona without leaders in challenging times; and
• a revenue sieve that finds Arizona's tax system old, leaky, unbalanced, and inconsistent with where the next wave of economic growth will occur.

Five Shoes Waiting to Drop on Arizona's Future is the fourth Arizona Policy Choices (APC) report, Morrison Institute's annual publication that focuses on public policy issues facing the state of Arizona. Morrison Institute is a part of the School of Public Affairs (College of Public Programs) at Arizona State University. The report is available at: http://www.asu.edu/copp/morrison/APC01New.pdf