Our Economic Forecast

Good news, chuqueños. The foreboding sense of doom you’ve been feeling for the past several years is not a brain tumor, or a premonition that your mother-in-law is moving in with you.

The dark cloud that’s following you is the presentiment that El Paso’s economic well-being is likely to take a slight hit in 2017, according to the wizards conjuring economic forecasts over there at the University of Texas at El Paso.

That’s without taking into consideration any effect the Trump presidency might have on the local economy in his efforts to make America great again.

The profs at UTEP won’t divulge the detailed forecasts for less than $10 (and none of you interested citizens have forked over a dime to help me help you), but they did give us a glimpse of the historic data-sets, and they’re not pretty.

For instance, for 2013, 2014, and 2015, El Paso recorded a net out-migration of 19,905 citizens. That was offset by a natural increase of 25,336, for a net gain of 4,431. The disconcerting part of that data is that of those 19,905 people who left, probably a lot of them paid property tax, whereas that 25,336 increase attributable to natural growth are still in diapers.

It’s too bad that this scientific data isn’t available to our brothers and sisters over there at City Hall. Properly informed, they could have made some wise decisions to help ameliorate our tax burden.

I mean, maybe. There’s a chance they could have done that.

5 comments

  1. You know damn well those idiots at City Hall (and, at CCC) have this information available. They just choose to ignore it in favor of continuing their business-as-usual-help-out-the-rich-at-the-expense- of-the-real-tax-payers policies.

  2. If you are between the ages of 18 and 35 and have the wherewithal and marketable skills your first stop is anywhere but El Paso. If you are 65yrs plus and were enchanted by this sleepy little West Texas jewel decades ago and planned to retire here you are pretty much porked.

  3. Maybe instead of donating the money for the datasets to you, we can send them to the dimwits on city council.

  4. elrichiboy, the truth is, is that l have NO idea who you are but because l have enjoyed your blog for at least the last few years, l’m glad that l just threw in a ten spot to “help the cause.” Thanks. My E.P. economic prediction for ’17 is that we will be pretty much the same as ’16. Trump mentioned (unfortunately) that he wants a bigger military which can only help Fort Bliss. l’m predicting that we won’t seriously get more of a tax/fee hit for all of the downtown economic “development” until after 2017.

    1. Thank you, Mr. Chihuahua. That ten dollars will probably go to diapers, either mine or the baby’s.

      To quote the advertising genius Bob Hoffman, “Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same.”

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