Saturday, June 16, 2018

Lex Anteinternet: Issues In the Wyoming Election. A Series. Issue No. 1 (d). The Economy again. . . Tourism. The fragile leg of the stool

Wyoming Gubernatorial candidate sitting on camp stool washing her feet of the tourism industry. . . okay, that's actually a cap chair.  The stool must already be broken.

Recently, in being asked about economic matters by the Casper Star Tribune, Harriet Hageman, in noting that there was a television advertisement boosting Wyoming tourism running in the background, made a dismissive comment to the effect of why couldn't Wyoming do something like that for coal.*

Wyoming state tourism advertisment.  Note what is not in this poster. . . nothing associated with the extractive industries.

Nothing could better demonstrate the fragile nature of this sector of Wyoming's economy.

Tourism is, in  my view, a byproduct of the agricultural sector of Wyoming's economy.  The large open spaces that agriculture preserves are also the preserves of wildlife and wild lands. By the same token, those industries which provide the bulk of income to Wyomingites and the state itself make use of those lands, but at their root, they are in some deep fundamental ways counter forces to tourism.  The balance between it all is preserved by the Federal Government and its multiple use policy on the Federal domain.  Candidates like  Hageman would bring in policies, if left unrestrained, that would tip that balance one way, and that balance is very easy to disrupt.  Indeed, if the really right wing politicians in the state had their way they'd flat out destroy much of the character of the state and this would put a dent in this section of the economy that made it look like it was hit by a truck.

Put another way, a lot of people come into the state to look at wildlife, to hunt, fish, ski, camp and hike.  

Nobody visits the state to see coal mines in Campbell County or drilling rigs in Converse County.

This puts this sector of Wyoming's economy uniquely on the outs with the remainder of it. And frankly a lot of Wyomingites are pretty ambivalent about tourism.  Indeed, if people are directly involved in it, a lot of Wyomingites hold a somewhat hostile view toward it in a way.  We'd rather not run into tourist crowding any spot we might wish to visit, and if we regard visiting fishermen and hunters as tourists, which we do, we're often not rather have them here at all.  Still we're aware that they contribute to the economy in a significant way.

We're not really inclined to do anything to help it, however.

And on top of that, we oddly miss opportunities to lightly tax it and help offset the loss of coal money.  Lodging taxes come up for vote in various Wyoming counties, and then lose.  It's odd, as we don't pay lodging taxes in our own counties as we don't stay in hotels there as a rule.  Likewise, the added $.01 tax is paid in large measure by visitors, and a lot of us oppose it as well (although we do pay it.)

And yet nobody is going to really speak about this sector of the economy in the election.  Nobody.

Tourism is a sector of the economy that depends, really, on the agriculture sector being successful as it preserves the basic nature of the state, and its silently in opposition to the extractive industries which contribute a massive amount of cash to the state's coffers but which almost anyone from anywhere else doesn't regard as visually pleasing.

Indeed, there are quite a few views held by Wyomingites that actually irritate visitors, and we don't care.  If you subscribe to the Tribune you'll often see letters to the editor which will state something like "I see where your legislature is consider. . . . . if this passes I shall never bring my family from Big Blight, New Jersey to visit your state".  Yeah. Well stay home.

But it is a huge factor of the economy.

And we know that big events can bring in big money to municipalities, if managed right.  The 2017 eclipse in Wyoming was proof of that, bringing in huge crowds.


Tourism, it might be noted, suffers in a weird way from being totally divorced from the economics that influence other sectors of Wyoming's economy.  Indeed, the economics of tourism is in some ways directly counter to the economics of other sectors of our economy.  Tourism does best if travel costs are low, and that means low gas costs.  Low gas costs mean low petroleum prices.  And if the cost of living is high, to include the cost of food at the table, tourism suffers.  Tourism does best when costs are low. As Wyoming's other commodities do better if their products are high, that creates an odd tension, although in fairness agriculture does better if petroleum is low as well.  Not that this creates an open sense of hostility, but you will occasionally hear grumbling about it.

All that would argue that the state does best with a balanced economy.

Should tourism and its role in the economy be an issue in the election?  Well, it won't be.

But we probably ought to remember that it is an important part of our economy.  While we're busy talking about other economic sectors, we shouldn't forget this one.  It's easy to disrup

*I suppose I know what she meant, that being why didn't Wyoming have an active program marketing coal, but the suggestion is extremely naive.  If that were done, it would in fact provoke a counter reaction by environmentalist which would be much more sympathetic to most people in the United States.  If anything, a "use coal" campaign by Wyoming would accelerate the decline of coal, not boost its fortunes.  At any rate, this is one of a series of statements by Hageman which would suggest her view of the Wyoming economy is basically fixed at about the 1940 level.

No comments: