Bacon Bits: Boomtowns, Amazon, and Rent-a-Tribe

Pockets of prosperity. America’s big metropolitan regions may be sucking up most of the growth and prosperity of the current business cycle, but they’re not sucking up all of it. In crunching data measuring economic prosperity, population growth and rising incomes, GOBankingRates found numerous “cities” (not metros) that qualify as “boomtowns.” One region stood out as especially vigorous: the South. And Virginia nabbed two spots in the top 10, reports CNBC.

Charlottesville ranked 6th among cities in the South with 2012 -to-2017 income growth of 17.9%, population growth of 11.9%, and GDP growth of 22.4%.

Richmond ranked 9th in the South with income growth of 15% over the same period, population growth of 7.6%, and GDP growth of 22.4%.

Can Amazon avoid a housing crunch? Amazon officials have told the Washington Post that the company will learn from its experience in Seattle how to avoid creating a housing crunch when its HQ2 expansion brings 25,000 jobs to a Washington region that already has full employment and high housing prices. Amazon contributed $80 million to public and private efforts to support affordable housing and prevent homelessness in Seattle, said Jay Carney, a senior vice president. But he added that it is primarily the government’s responsibility to ensure an adequate supply of affordable housing.

In Seattle, Amazon’s explosive employment growth caught everyone by surprise, said Carney. In Virginia, the company knows what to expect, so “we can plan in a way we couldn’t in the past.” But Carney provided no specific policy ideas for keeping housing affordable.

A meme in the making: “Rent-a-Tribe.” Federal prosecutors are charging an Internet lender operating as an enterprise of the Lac View Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians of defrauding Virginians in a predatory lending scheme. In a legal brief, several state Attorney General offices, including Virginia’s Mark Herring commented upon the “rent-a-tribe” scheme: “Enforcing consumer protection laws has only become more difficult with the advent of tribal payday lending schemes, in which non-tribal lenders affiliate with Indian tribes to attempt to benefit from their tribal immunity.” A spokesman for the tribe told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that “rent-a-tribe” insinuation was “an offensive slur.”