Restoring economic viability to Massachusetts

By Richard A. Baker

But we do not have to accept this fate. There is hope. And that hope is found through a change in direction.

The first question that needs an honest answer is why anyone would hire a worker from Massachusetts rather than a worker from the Far East. What qualities do we have in the global economy? What is our unique value proposition that we have to offer the international community?

As a Congressman, these are the hard questions that Rich Baker will ask to determine what we add to the world economy, and to determine what we can do to preserve and enhance the advantages we have.

Are Massachusetts workers cheaper than workers in places like China or India? Absolutely not. A company can hire six workers for the wages on one person in Massachusetts.

Do we want to lower our wages to compete on price? I don't think so, because workers could not afford the housing and heating costs in the Northeast on significantly lower wages.

Do we work harder than our foreign counterparts? Yes, but not the six times harder that we need to work to reach parity with our Far East competitors. The value equation is still against us, and with most Americans working close to 2000 hours a year, we don't have time or energy to significantly increase our work.

But can we work smarter? Now we are starting to get somewhere. Massachusetts is the home to MIT, Harvard, and many other universities and colleges. Some of the top researchers and scientists call this are their home. Many students graduate in Massachusetts and stay here to work. The state has a huge knowledge base and is the home to many key labs and top inventors.

To maintain our value, to increase the opportunities in Massachusetts, we need to find policies that will preserve our knowledge of the area, to preserve our competitive advantage.

In the Middle Ages, craftsmen formed guilds and kept the methodology of their trade a secret. This allowed them to maintain their competitive advantage, and to keep good wages.

Today, these same trade secrets are kept by companies through the patent and trade secret laws.

In order for Massachusetts to maintain it unique value proposition, we need strong patent and trade secret laws to protect our inventions, our ideas, from being copied. With a computer and the Internet, ideas can be copied in a matter of minutes to the far corners of the world, to places where manufacturing is cheap, where copying can be done for a fraction of the cost in Massachusetts. I have seen projects cost corporations millions of dollars in research and development to produce, employing many local engineers at good salaries, be copied by competitors for a fraction of the development costs. The competition enters a market without risk for a fraction of the cost, and the original company looses out. After two or three similar incidents, the company will just stop investing in the research, because it is not cost effective. And the jobs disappear.

We need strong patent laws in the United States to protect our ideas, to protect our inventors, to protect our jobs, from infringers. For the past several years, many in Congress have been working hard to water down our patent laws, trying to make it easier for copiers to steal ideas. As an Intellectual Property Executive, I know the impact of these changes on the Massachusetts economy, and I will fight efforts to weaken our protection in the global economy.

We need a Congressman that understands finance, understands business, and understands economics, someone who will defend the economy of the 6th Massachusetts Congressional District. We need someone who knows how to create jobs so that the district can grow, so that its citizens can find jobs closer to home, so that the quality of life can be improved for all of the workers in Essex and Middlesex Counties.

Rich Baker has been working for years in local corporations. He has experience in working for international and multinational corporations, and understands how they operate. Rich Baker has spent years negotiating with corporations, both large and small, and knows how to convince them of the advantages of locating in the District.

The economic leadership of the Massachusetts 6th Congressional District has been missing for the past 12 years. It is time for a change.

And the opportunity to change is coming next November. A chance to cast your vote to change Congress. A vote for Richard Baker is that vote for change.