Economy

WalletHub map of states' employment recovery

Rhode Island’s lag in employment recovery shows leaders have to stop crushing our economy.

By Justin Katz | May 25, 2021 |

With Rhode Island’s elected officials’ piling on the burden of mandatory increases in the cost of labor for the next few years just when Rhode Island businesses most need flexibility, we should pay careful attention to findings like Adam McCann’s on WalletHub.  McCann compared all states’ unemployment claim recovery and found Rhode Island to be second-worst…

Mark Zaccaria talks debt on Rhody Reporter

Could cryptocurrency start forcing government to pay its debts?

By Justin Katz | May 24, 2021 |

Mark Zaccaria explains, for Rhody Reporter, how the introduction of a viable alternative global currency to the U.S. dollar could force the United States government (and its dependent states, like Rhode Island) to finally start paying for programs… or reduce them.

A drowning person's hand

How are businesses supposed to adjust to 6-8% increased labor costs every year for four years?

By Justin Katz | May 14, 2021 |

That’s not a question addressed by anybody whom Edward Fitzpatrick quotes in his Boston Globe article on the march of a $15 minimum wage bill in the General Assembly.  Although, Working Families Party director Georgia Hollister Isman does say that “small businesses should feel good that people will have money in their pockets.” Here are the…

A printing machine

To defang fake news, promote economic freedom and free speech.

By Justin Katz | May 13, 2021 |

The common wisdom, of course, is that fake news is a byproduct of freedom, but it doesn’t work out that way, according to a Heritage study by Anthony Kim. Our findings reiterate the importance of economic freedom as the fundamental need for enhancing public trust. Pre-existing economic freedom perceptions are the building blocks for stability…

A gas shortage starts in South Carolina

The ’70s are coming! The ’70s are coming!

By Justin Katz | May 11, 2021 |

I’m just a hair too young to remember car lines for gasoline in the 1970s, but I do remember my parents explaining to me why cars’ gas fill lines had to be unlatched from inside the car.  (For younger folks:  because gas was so rare and important that people were siphoning it out of cars…

BLM protest on Federal Hill

Politics This Week with John DePetro: Not All Rhode Islanders Are Equal

By Justin Katz | May 10, 2021 |

The weekly conversation about politics between John DePetro and Justin Katz finds a common theme of some Rhode Islanders’ mattering more than others.

River and mill in Pawtucket, RI.

For a brief time Rhode Island had three seats in Congress.

By Justin Katz | May 6, 2021 |

That’s one of the telling details from a characteristically easy-to-read and historically informed essay by Steve Frias in the Cranston Herald.  In a nutshell, unionization and a refusal to adapt to a changing economy have been costing Rhode Island population, economic activity, and relevance for more than a half century: Unable to remake itself following this…

An aerial photograph of the U.S. at night.

High-speed internet is an asset Rhode Island should build on.

By Justin Katz | May 4, 2021 |

Obviously, those of us who choose to live in Rhode Island feel the state has a lot to recommend it, even as we’re perpetually frustrated by its flaws.  While making decisions for the future, we should build on our strengths.  Explicitly noting it as a reason to move to the state, TechRepublic’s N.F. Mendoza reports…

Aaron Regunberg tweet about free markets

The government is competing for workers, but paying them as service beneficiaries.

By Justin Katz | May 3, 2021 |

Leave it to Ivy League progressive Aaron Regunberg to stick with the far-left line no matter how clueless or heartless it might seem in the tweet shown as the featured image of this post: Just wild how the folks most invested in the Giant Spaghetti Monster idea of an all-knowing free market are complaining that…

Map of states gaining Congress seats

Increased population isn’t just the weather.

By Justin Katz | April 27, 2021 |

The other part of the pattern of domestic migration within the United States to which I alluded yesterday is shown in the featured image of this post, captured via Mary Chastain on Legal Insurrection. When debating the relevance of people voting with their feet and moving elsewhere, it is common for Rhode Island progressives and insiders…