The current economic crisis had plenty of airtime in recent news cycles, but a shockingly small portion has been substantive. Measures of our economic voodoo god—consumer spending—have been abysmal, and companies with direct consumer interaction are visibly suffering. The supply-side economists in the media extrapolate this onto the population itself. Our new Federal Administration, contrary to the language of the election, seems to constitute the same kind of supply-side thinking that has dominated the past 30 years of public life. Here in Minnesota, we are faced with an enormous state budget deficit and plagued by job losses from prominent companies such as Target and Best Buy. If the unemployment rate today had escaped the last 80 years of academic gerrymandering, the unemployment rate would stand at 17.5 percent by some estimates. Things are bad, and people are unclear, at this point, what progress will look like. Thus, public discourse on the economy tends to fall in the range of “is the economy good yet?” to illogical predictive discourse using the Great Depression as an exclusive model. 

It seems that we’re looking in the wrong places for answers. The stated mission of the Obama Administration, according to Nancy Pelosi, is, “Science, science, science, and science.” If it isn’t clear to anyone that the new leadership wishes to harness science as a national panacea, this would be a bittersweet turn of events after eight years of obstructionist decay and under-funding. Science bloggers and academics breathed sighs of relief when Obama’s relevant appointments hailed from academia and not from the president’s personal corral of acquaintances and drinking buddies. Our new Energy Department Chief, for example, is Nobel Prize-winning physicist and prominent alternative energy advocate Dr. Steven Chu, who formerly headed the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory conducting research in this field. Obama’s other appointments have shown no less panache, and each deserves a spotlight in his or her own right. However, the musings of science policy seem almost alien when so many state governments are running out of money for projects as basic as food stamps, and Minnesotans may be forgiven for turning a deaf ear to the grandiose science proclamations of our incoming government. What can they do for us, after all?

Cue Alliant Techsystems. This Eden Prairie-based company is an oddity in Minnesota’s high-tech industry and serves as an indicator for industries that otherwise barely touch our state. The company spun off from Honeywell almost 20 years ago and employs over 17,000 people in 21 states. The company’s Web site boasts that it is the premier manufacturer of rocket engines worldwide and rattles off a fairly diverse product line with Defense, Consumer, and Aerospace applications. Every time you see an Air Force, NASA, or private rocket take flight, it’s likely that Alliant has taken part in the supply chain. Unlike regional mega-employers Target and Best Buy, it is not dependent on cascading consumer spending, and unlike United Health Group and Medtronic, it does not exist as a function of popular health care access. Any stimulus from our federal government is almost sure to manifest with Alliant before nearly anyone else in our market. In a time when the newly unemployed line up around the block for free breakfasts at Denny’s restaurants, and “bring a basket – pick your own” farm co-op events draw 40,000 people, it’s almost insulting to think that the federal government would spend taxpayer money on anything as superfluous as aerospace, right? Even if your only exposure to historical economic hardship is the 1930s, it becomes very clear that federal spending on such extraneous industry can yield technological windfalls in the future.

Alliant Techsystems, unlike other local employers who have been hemorrhaging jobs, has cut a comparatively small portion of its workforce – downsizing from 1050 to 900 workers at its Anoka ammunition plant. This plant, unlike other manufacturing operations nationwide, added hundreds of positions in recent years and may only be back to mid-2000s’ levels of employment. A cursory glance at Alliant’s operations suggest that its sustainability is primarily driven by federal spending – which is often allocated against the grain of what is profitable in the short run. It seems fairly obvious that industry moves in the shadow of government incentives, and, although Alliant and other tech firms have been reaping the benefits of the military spending boom, it will be one of the first to receive contracts under new science initiatives. In a Machiavellian way, the state should embrace a doorway into this seemingly recession-proof chimera of military and consumer applications and look to Alliant as an indicator of things to come. Recent years have shown that defense spending is the one thing that maintains or increases its budget at all costs in spite of widespread deficit spending. Alliant is a good local indicator because of the diverse product line it offers up for government contracts. President Obama has bandied about the idea of a more extensive, renewed mission for NASA and America’s stumbling space industry. Alliant would stand to benefit from this and virtually every other heavy engineering enterprise. Its performance should be monitored, as a successful industry anchor could create and attract new enterprises.

On the other side of the coin is academia, which will be flush with new scientific research grant money. Current iterations of the rapidly-evolving bill peg $2.5 billion dollars for peer-reviewed research, $250 million for unspecified “climate research missions,” and a number of provisions that are decidedly more tangential to the advancement of sustainable infrastructure. By all measures, Minnesota has taken impressive steps thus far in creating a basis for the “green collar” jobs that dominated part of the electoral cycle. Our university represents a great boon to our state economically. Many of the stimulus bill’s items that are not explicitly classified as “science” may ultimately benefit the larger cause of sustainability. The University of Minnesota is one of the largest landholders in the state, and there will be new research grants that must be spent within three months. A whole series of new projects may soon be underway that will solidify Minnesota’s environmental and scientific standing. Any new graduates who are discouraged about job prospects on the outside may find refuge with the University’s commitment to the new legislation. Specific appropriations themselves are too tenuous to discuss with any great accuracy, but the federal government seems intent on being a benefactor for institutions such as the U.