Economy

A communist monument

Proposals for new college taxes prove institutions should be wary of left-wing alliances.

By Justin Katz | April 13, 2022 |

Legislation from socialist state Representative David Morales should be a warning to institutions (whether non-profit organizations or for-profit businesses) about furthering the power of progressives: Industry leaders and university officials in Rhode Island were outraged after a bipartisan slate of lawmakers recently introduced a bill that would allow host cities to impose taxes on endowments…

Plastic shopping bags

Do you get the sense our legislators have completely disconnected from reality?

By Justin Katz | April 8, 2022 |

Somehow, I’d hoped that a silver lining of the pandemic would be a little more wariness among lawmakers about tripping over unforeseen circumstances.  But we’re back to normal, now, in ways good and bad, so the state Senate has returned to the pressing business of forbidding Rhode Island stores from offering customers the option of plastic…

A Providence neighborhood at night

Realization of the progressive dream of banning single-family zoning would be devastating.

By Justin Katz | March 24, 2022 |

More frequently than I liked, during my years reading the thousands of bills submitted in the Rhode Island General Assembly each year, I’d come across one that made me wonder how anybody could submit such a thing.  Legislators couldn’t truly be representative of their constituents if they were expected to be the uber academics we…

Burning $100 bills

U.S. Policy Could Burn the Dollar

By John Loughlin | March 22, 2022 |

Financial expert Dennis Miller outlines the effects of the United States’s reckless undermining of the dollar as the global reserve currency for John Loughlin.

A butterfly in hands

We have a real opportunity to flip the script for younger generations.

By Justin Katz | March 18, 2022 |

Whether in a fictional battle of good and evil or real-life politics, when the dark side is ascendant, we have an unfortunate tendency to ascribe to it a competence it does not have.  Sure, a cabal of elite globalists may scheme on behalf of a Great Reset, but… they’re nuts.  In the long run, their…

Store signage

Why does Brianna Henries want to make life worse for working Rhode Islanders?

By Justin Katz | March 14, 2022 |

I’ve been trying to figure out which is the case:  Either politicians have developed such thorough contempt for the people that they assume we’re complete fools whom they can deceive with impunity or we’re allowing people to gain public office whom a healthy civilization would have kept well away from the controls. The problem goes…

Great Depression bread line

Today’s wasn’t a very good employment report for RI.

By Justin Katz | March 11, 2022 |

Almost since I began keeping an eye on it, the unemployment rate has primarily been a means of disguising the underlying weakness of RI’s economy.  With the latest iteration, the AP writer seems to accentuate the positive, but you don’t have to dig far to see the negative — as far, say, as the state…

A model house and key

Statistics come up short for charges of racism in housing.

By Justin Katz | March 11, 2022 |

A lack of housing is a problem, and racism is simply wrong, so we have powerful emotional incentive to join the two matters into the story we tell about our society.  In a more-specific way, advocates and researchers have even more-powerful economic incentive to do so.  In that space, as with “equity audits” in schools,…

A water drop and ripples

Paying your debts is social justice.

By Justin Katz | March 8, 2022 |

Maybe I’m just entering that late-middle-age phase, but it seems to me that younger adults — or all of us, with reference to times that were before our time — too infrequently understand the experience of the past.  Consider this find from Tim Worstall for Accuracy in Media: A new piece from Teen Vogue says that…

A man fuels his car

Don’t let them spin away the pain they’re infliction on Americans.

By Justin Katz | March 8, 2022 |

Gas prices have hit record highs in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, according to AAA.  We’ve achieved and exceeded the pain some of us remember all too well from the Obama years: In one week, Rhode Island gas prices rose 58 cents and Massachusetts saw a growth of 54 cents. AAA Northeast says Rhode Island’s average…