Economy
You don’t have to be an old hand at data analysis to see what’s going on in this chart of Americans holding multiple jobs, from the St. Louis Federal Reserve: From 1994 through 2020, the number oscillated around approximately 250,000 to 300,000. Now we’re rapidly approaching 500,000. One conclusion about which I’d speculate, given…
Don’t let things like this slip under your awareness or your commentary, because plenty of Rhode Islanders have no experience or intellectual foundation to question the reporting: The R.I. Department of Health on Thursday ordered the owner of Roger Williams Medical Center and Our Lady of Fatima Hospital to take immediate steps to stabilize their…
Really, can’t we do better? Why do we put up with this? The answer to my questions may be that the people who won’t put up with it leave and take their income with them. Then the state redoubles to draw in people who’ll need government services, because that’s what their incentives are.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports (Page 11) that as of the fourth quarter of 2022, Rhode Island has fifty dealerships that sell new cars. Note that this figure does not include dealerships selling new trucks, new buses, new motor homes, new motorcycles, et etera. Governor Dan McKee’s proposed 2024 budget, Page 158 of…
John DePetro and Justin Katz review many ways RI politicians are childish and misleading.
Rhode Island investment expert Michael Riley tweeted a chart recently that rewards closer analysis: Notice a common theme dividing everything above and below “food and beverage”? Actually, everything from “housing” up is heavily subsidized, in one way or another, by government, while everything below is not. Basic economics should lead us to expect that subsidizing…
Rhode Island Current, a newcomer to the Ocean State’s media landscape, recently published an article by Nancy Lavin asking the perennial question, “What’s with RI jobs data?” Over the decades of my interest in the topic, this ambiguity has been a running theme. The state has no (and cannot have any) economic confidence. We’re like…
For all the talk about equity and living wages in the Ocean State, we hear surprisingly little about the lack of opportunity and earnings growth for working people. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial understandably focuses on larger states, but Rhode Island makes an appearance, nonetheless: Earnings nationwide rose 5.4% on average between the first…
Homelessness may be the most striking issue on the table in the degree to which proposed solutions conspicuously ignore causes. The attitude of the advocates and journalists seems to be that homelessness falls like an original cause on a metro area and can only be addressed through direct government reduction. That’s a careless approach; an…
John DePetro and Justin Katz discuss evidence of unions’ tightening grip on Rhode Island and other political topics.
