Economy
Free-market purists err in that they disregard (or, at least, discount) the importance of factors that both they and the market have a hard time factoring into their equations. Even relatively unadulterated free-marketers recognize the problem of externalities and the tragedy of the commons. We should arguably go a little farther than that and recognize…
Biden’s vaccine mandate seems strategically divisive to create two classes of people and businesses.
There are so many angles to debate with Joe Biden’s play to force every American company with 100 or more employees to mandate vaccines among its employees, but for the moment, think about how crazy it is economically. The United States is in the position of having more jobs than people are willing to fill,…
It’s very easy to demand that government “ban evictions” when, like the people Katie Mulvaney interviewed for the Providence Journal, you’re not the one trying to derive income from a rental property: “The governor and the General Assembly have the authority to protect the public’s health with a moratorium” as well as Congress, said Jennifer…
Mark Patinkin wrote an interesting profile article about Rhode Island restaurants that are struggling to find employees. Head chefs and owners are washing dishes and tending bars, which is only shocking to people who buy into the progressive/socialist narrative around employment. Leadership means being the one who takes ultimate responsibility for getting things done. Progressives…
Introducing discrimination into state contracting based on “equity” demands will create dreams deferred.
A recent staff article on the website of the American Institute for Economic Research captures a very dangerous marker of the society the United States elite have come to inhabit: Economist Judy Shelton has a crackerjack column in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal on the lack of intellectual and policy diversity at the Federal Reserve. She…
When Governor Dan McKee floated the idea of using “leftover federal stimulus funds” to hand out up to 100,000 gift cards to Rhode Islanders back in May, I made note to follow the story because I wasn’t sure whether it was a good idea or a meh idea. If this just-announced program is the same…
Liberty Rhode Island caught the RI House of Representatives bragging about softening its grip around the Ocean State’s economic neck. The example comes from the House’s Facebook page, which appears to be a partisan outlet to promote newspaper clippings that say nice things about House Democrats. The page quotes an article by Ryan Blessing in The…
Somehow or other, a tweet by RI League of Cities and Towns Policy Director Jordan Day found its way into my stream, yesterday, lamenting the cost of her student loans. Day appears to have graduated from Rhode Island College in 2013. She worked on Jorge Elorza’s campaign for mayor through all of 2014, which rolled…
There is a very strong case for diabetics to be vaccinated against COVID-19, as Dennis Thompson reports for HealthDay News: About 40% of deaths from COVID-19 in the United States were among diabetics, a “really quite sobering” statistic that should prompt people with the ailment to get vaccinated, said Dr. Robert Gabbay, chief scientific and medical…