California Style Industrial Policy

The L.A. Daily News reports:

Assembly line jobs helped turn the San Fernando Valley's sprawling farmland of the 1930s and '40s into a vibrant, middle-class community after World War II. Now there's a plan to make manufacturing jobs - which have declined sharply over the past three decades - a key part of the region's economic future.

Area business groups and cities are setting aside years of hand-wringing over job losses and cut-throat tactics to retain factories in their towns. Instead, they're banding together to attract high-paying assembly jobs.

Operating under a unified development plan, a recently formed coalition of nonprofit, academic and government groups will work to maintain the manufacturing and industrial base that fueled the Valley's growth for the last half century.

"We've always believed that we've got the beach, we've got the sun, jobs will just come," said Roberto Barragan, president of the Valley Economic Development Center. "That's great, but it's not going to get real jobs to come here."

His private, nonprofit group based in Van Nuys has partnered with the cities of Burbank, Lancaster, San Fernando and Santa Clarita and Los Angeles City Councilman Alex Padilla and College of the Canyons to try to create those elusive, high-wage blue-collar jobs. With a recently completed comprehensive economic development strategy, known as a CEDS, the entities plan to work together to attract federal grants to establish new, small manufacturers and help retain the remaining shops.

Industrial policy is a name for "rent-seeking".