Life Works Here

Time to hang out the Vacancy sign

Peggy Noonan’s column this past weekend in The Wall Street Journal is titled: “The Old New York Won’t Come Back.”

The gist of the column, or one of the gists, is that the pandemic has proven to employees and employers that many folks don’t have to come to the office every day to work.

The economy is still humming in New York City, but whole floors of office buildings are empty.

The same weekend, Andrew Moreau of this newspaper had his own story about remote workers. And what an amazing story it is.

Professionals — thousands of them — have applied to move to Northwest Arkansas, lured here by a cash incentive offered by the Northwest Arkansas Council. Instead of offering these professionals a job to relocate here, these workers come with their own jobs.

Those who are approved for Life Works Here get $10,000 to move to the Natural State. Of the 26,000 people who’ve applied, 25 “candidates” have been selected.

From Andrew Moreau’s article: “The initiative is not an effort to fill jobs. Rather, the goal is to attract highly accomplished professionals with a specialty in STEAM areas — science, technology, engineering, the arts and math.”

People in all 50 states and 115 countries have expressed interest.

And to nobody’s surprise, it turns out The Walton Family Foundation is bankrolling the effort.

“As these individuals discover all we have to offer here in Arkansas,” says Mike Preston, state Commerce secretary, “I am confident that they will invest their talents into our communities, shaping culture and creating economic advancement through the region and the state for years to come.”

Let’s hope. Let’s also hope more lawmakers catch onto the idea that incentives work.

And that, ahem, perhaps lowering or eliminating income taxes for a period of years for those who move to Arkansas would also be a big incentive, and maybe even make national headlines.

But we’ll not discourage a great idea simply because it’s not our idea. And this new Life Works Here program could be big for Arkansas.

There will be those who will bemoan that New York City won’t be the same because of the pandemic. But there are many ZIP codes that will benefit from those fleeing the Big Apple, San Francisco, Houston, Miami, etc.

And, with the help of the Walton family (again), Arkansas stands to take advantage.

Now, about that moratorium on income taxes for five years . . . .