What Did You Expect?
Despite the claims to the contrary, parts of Colorado continue to implode economically.

Progressives (and, the RINOs) in Colorado all but ensured that many people can no longer afford to start a family (or to keep their family comfortable), as it is way down the list of the Best & Worst States to Raise a Family.
While ranking 18th overall, unsurprisingly, it ranks 40th in Health & Safety and 36th in Education & Child Care. Furthermore, if one looks at Massachusetts (ranked 1st):
“Massachusetts is the best state to raise a family, in large part because it provides a good blend of economic opportunities and safe conditions for children. The Bay State has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country and lots of job opportunities relative to the labor force, which ensures that parents will be able to provide for their children. It’s not the cheapest state, as housing and childcare costs are relatively high compared to most of the nation, but residents make up for this with fairly high incomes.”
And Minnesotta (ranked 3rd):
“Minnesota is the third-best state to raise a family, at least if you’re not averse to its harsh winters. Minnesota is a great place to find a job to support your family, as it has one of the highest median family incomes after adjusting for the cost of living and one of the lowest unemployment rates. In addition to good pay and job stability, residents also receive reliable long-term benefits, as Minnesota ranks at the top for employer-based retirement plan access and participation.”
Even looking at other states in the top 10, the theme is common, “the housing is expensive, BUT, the people living there have much better economic opportunities, being able to secure better pay relative to the cost of housing and, in turn, being ale to pay for the housing, regardless of it being expensive.”
In the meantime, Colorado’s common clay of the new West has spent close to a decade destroying the economic potential of the state. They finally succeeded - “Colorado's economic growth fell from 5th in the nation to 41st, according to new report.” It is as if only focusing on building “luxury apartments” and metro-district infested suburbs is not the way to create a vibrant, multi-faceted state economy. Colorado now has an imbalance of well-paying jobs vs. some of the most expensive housing in the country. A single person in Colorado needs an income of $106,579 and a family with two children, an income of $272,314, just to ‘live comfortably’ in Denver.
The common clay of the new West has decided that we need gobs of boxes ensuring profit for the corporate entities, under the guise of “if we build more housing, there will be more jobs”. What jobs? While adding thousands of Metro-District-fee-paying and rental units, Lakewood, one of the largest cities in Colorado, has lost jobs.
The common clay in the Jefferson County, Colorado, not only rolled over for the developers, but all but ensured that large swaths of the county are now setup for an economic failure (and a potential wildfire disaster).
When I was a director on the Board of one of the water and sanitation districts in Jefferson County, after inquiring about the insufficient water pressure in some of the fire hydrants in parts of the District, I got the good-ole-don't-worry-about-it. With some follow-up claims of how “pumps would keep pumping if needed” or something to that effect. One now wonders if such assurances were made to the residents of Pacific Palisades?
In the meantime, Jefferson County’s common clay of the new West ensured that thousands more houses have been built on the other side of the hill from the said district, in a high fire risk area, with “interesting” wind patterns and with questionable water availability. Nor did they seem to study the findings of the report on the Marshall fire, with one of the findings being that the structures were placed too close to each other. Who wants to place bets on who and what will be blamed if another calamity takes place?
To add ever more icing on that shit-cake, Colorado's common clay of the new West (namely, representatives from Lakewood and Morrison) also turned what should have been a job-generating development with public transit options, in to a sea of houses. Even the developer-provided study showed what a shit deal it was for the county.
Instead of wisely allocating water to the purposes of driving economic development, the common clay handed over the precious drops that remain to the big business interests to bolster their profits, while the rest of us get told to conserve.
Not to be outdone by Morrison in the “we have no clue what economic development means” department, Lakewood's common clay of the West has been working overtime to ensure that one of the largest cities in Colorado is set up for an economic implosion. The signs are all over the place:

They are also about to sneak in an ordinance further codifying Metro District abuse. The common clay of Lakewood keeps saying that "they need to pass something." Well, that "something" could have been a simple "there shall be no Metro Districts allowed in Lakewood, due to the history of Metro District abuse of the residents in any number of Colorado municipalities." But, the common clay of the new West in Colorado is more interested in ensuring developer profits, rather than sensible, sustainable and economic potential generating development practices.
The “leaders” of Lakewood (and the greater Denver Metro) have also been enabling more rental abuse as well. White House Report has recently claimed that “Denver renters paid $136 more per month to landlords who used rent-setting algorithms.” Well… If the common clay of the new West did not enable the building of “luxury apartments”, maybe, just maybe, it would be a touch harder for such abuse to take place? This is the version of "affordability" Colorado progressives have been pushing in JeffCo (and, to be fair, in most of Colorado). Curiously, the Justice Department and CO AG are only coming after the commercial entities who, allegedly, colluded on the rents, but, somehow have not asked who was it that enabled the building of the corporate-owned monstrosities and allowed for the, alleged, rent-fixing at the state and municipal level.
Not content with enabling Metro District abuse and enabling corporate rent fixing, the “leaders” in Lakewood have also been channeling taxpayer payer to anything, but economic development. And the results are in – Lakewood has not only lost jobs, but continues to fail to attract any sort of meaningful well-paying job opportunities, while communities such as Golden, Centennial, Boulder and others are continuing to thrive.
Maybe, just maybe, even though some areas of Colorado are still booming economically, so much damage has been done in other areas (such as the Jefferson County’s failings above), that it is now starting to have a statewide impact?
Maybe. Maybe not. We are not the economists over here – just some locals who have been watching with dismay our tax dollars being spent on anything, but actual economic development (or public transit, or bike paths, or parks, or playgrounds, or schools, or…). While the local “leaders” bend over backwards to pass policy after policy to enrich corporate interests, while telling us how “anti-development” we are. Just for fun, have a look at Lakewood’s (or Denver’s, or Aurora’s) budgets. Chuck full of nuggets they are. And not the shiny kind.
The common clay of the new West in Colorado has also been yapping about how everyone should go full electric. Knowing that Lakewood has one of the least reliable electrical grids in the Denver Metro area. Maybe we should put an SMR in the backyard of each of the progressive leaders who want the rest of us to sit without electricity for days the next time there is an outage? Also, maybe the thought leaders of Colorado would like to shell out the tens of thousands of dollars per household need to do full-electric conversion? Oh right, that’s not their problem - it’s yours.
On a recent trip to Seattle, it became apparent that the lack of vision and economic development is a Colorado-specific problem (or, even specific areas of Colorado problem). While Seattle has some of the common-clay-of-the-new-West-created issues not unlike those in Denver, engineering and building prowess (well, and culture and arts, and an actual tech industry) is not one of those problems. They have been, successfully, accomplishing the same types of building and engineering by which the author was impressed after visiting some places abroad.

Take a stretch of highway and push it underground to revitalize a whole sea-front area – yes. Build a world-class museum in a modern development – yes. Build an extension to an-already-world-class aquarium and beautify the area around the new extension to make it highly desirable to visit – yes. Seattle could give Finland and Germany a run for the money.
It’s just that quite a few of the Colorado “leaders” have no vision or even a frame of mind to accomplish such feats. It comes with that “clay of the new West” mentality. They confuse a podunk stretch of buildings along Colfax with an art district, or a fugly box with architecture, or a few lines of shrubs with a park. Or a dysfunctional train line or two with public transit. Or channeling economic development funds to anything but actual economic development, economic development. Narrow frame of mind breeds a narrow set of outcomes. No vision, no worldly point of view.
And now, there is more than a real possibility that in light of the recent political happenings nationwide, the federal government may start looking at shutting down the Federal Center or cutting back on the staff at that facility drastically. Hey - I am just a guy who likes to ask “what if?” And since Lakewood’s clay of the new West had gone out of their way to ensure that there is no vibrant, multi-discipline localized economy, who is to say what new failures might be just around the corner in one of the largest cities in Colorado?
As it turns out, maybe it was plain stupid to build a train network (well, more of an excuse for a “network”) that does not serve the needs of most people, most of the time (while spending billions to do it). Or that in the decades of unbridled growth, no meaningful transportation solution has been built to ferry the hoards of “outdoor enthusiasts” to the mountains. Or that it was an economic suicide for one of the largest cities in the state to abdicate any sort of meaningful economic development. Or that having a second world rate infrastructure will eventually bite the state in the ass. Or that selling schools (which taxpayers shelled out millions of dollars for), instead of turning them in to something of actual benefit to the community is extremely shortsighted and sends another message of just how little the common clay of the new West cares about the constituents… No wonder Colorado is rapidly dropping has dropped so rapidly in its rate of economic growth.
Happy New Year!