Economy
Did you happen to see this profile of the $250,000 family, in the Washington Post, no less? Just how flush is a family of four with a $250,000 income? … The bottom line: Living in high-tax areas on either coast can leave our $250,000-a-year-family with little margin. Even with an additional $3,000 in investment income,…
Last month, Marc noted that the Providence Journal editors’ article pointing out that some relatively conservative states lead the nation in per-capita stimulus funding conveniently sliced the data. As Marc showed, the top 10 states by dollar amount were not all that surprising. As he also showed, funding per square mile shifted the list to…
Megan McArdle makes some interesting points about China’s potential for economic growth that may quickly find it more susceptible to competition: The endless acquisition of US currency is unsustainable. The sterilization transactions required to keep their foreign exchange operations from turning into inflation have left the banking system positively gorged with low-interest government bonds; and…
An article about Massachusetts’ race for a wind energy boom conveys the folly of Rhode Island’s own quest: Massachusetts could soon be home to the nation’s first offshore wind farm — and state officials are hoping to use the Cape Wind project to help fuel a small but burgeoning local wind-power energy boom. There are…
Although typically a fan of liberal policies and government-driven solutions Bob Kerr has decided that he doesn’t like the outcome of car taxes on old vehicles: “It’s obvious that small towns need to raise money,” [David Shepherd] says. Still, he finds the tax bill he received in September a mysterious piece of work. It seems…
Sunday’s PolitiFact correctly rates as “true” RI Democrat Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s statement that “the law… permits companies that close down American factories… to take a tax deduction for the costs associated with moving the jobs to China or India or wherever.” But in its headline, in its presentation, and in an expanded quotation from Whitehouse,…
Accurately or not, windsurfing — an activity that I tried during summer camp once, some twenty years ago, on a windless lake — comes to mind as a metaphor when trust is needed. Sometimes, you just have to lean back and trust that the wind is there to hold you up and move you forward.…
A blurb in a recent edition of National Review’s The Week offers a necessary reminder of an issue that shouldn’t slip out of public view: Having seized for itself, with the help of the courts, the authority to regulate greenhouse gases without the consent of Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency under Obama has aggressively proceeded…
An excellent article about government economic policy and our current crisis by Reuven Brenner and David Goldman (initially published in First Things) is well worth reading in its entirety. The essay’s underlying conclusion is that the focus on this or that manipulation of the economy as an explanation for our current predicament effectively misses the…
Being unemployed for long periods is a terrible experience for those who lack the resources to survive an extended financial drain. Especially when a family is on the line, the hopelessness and fear of joblessness is one of modern life’s greatest anxieties. Still, at a certain point, unemployment benefits begin to become a weapon of…