Justin Katz
An unanticipated (unprecedented) leap in employment just prior to this year’s presidential election brought the Current Population Survey (CPS) data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) an unusually high degree of technical scrutiny. As I’ve been noting, the seasonally adjusted and unadjusted results have been a bit peculiar. With data from December now available,…
Feeling hopeful, RI?; “top priority” is shown, not stated; RI gets fatherless children first; surviving sans regulation; surviving sans net income; and surviving sans a documented framework for working together. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
It took me a couple of read-throughs to put my finger on the eery blank space in Mike Stanton’s group interview with Rhode Island’s three most powerful politicians: House Speaker Gordon Fox, Governor Lincoln Chafee, and Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed. Although only the two legislators are officially Democrats — Fox from Providence and Paiva…
As it happens, somebody forwarded to me the following Wall Street Journal political diary entry by Allysia Finley on the same day that the Providence Journal’s Philip Marcello reported that the Republicans in the Rhode Island House are considering championing the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity’s proposal to eliminate the state’s sales tax. Continue…
After two months of unexpectedly strong employment growth, Rhode Island’s surge abated. Unemployment held at 10.4%, leaving the state at second worst in the nation, with Nevada rapidly making up the distance, and the number 3 California finally slipping below 10%. According to survey data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the pace…
This week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is an apt one for thinking on a grand scale — of the where-we’ve-been-and-where-we-must-go variety. Essays in that vein fill the tabs on my open browser window, and as is often the case, most of them come from the center-right’s great aggregator and one-line editorialist Glenn Reynolds.…
Since the U.S. Census department released its latest state-by-state population estimates, it has been widely reported that Rhode Island was one of only two states to lose population from 2011 to 2012. The other was Vermont. However, as with the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity’s findings in September, looking more deeply reveals that the…
The word “entrepreneur” has been thrown around Rhode Island a lot in recent months and years. To most people, one suspects, concepts like economic development, entrepreneurialism, knowledge economy, twenty-first century workforce, and skills gap blur into a mosaic of sounds-good promises. The idea is that “they” (the folks in positions to modify public policy) are…
Government’s corrupt pension handling; the discount rate scam; fighting off the zoning inspector; government peeking doesn’t count as privacy invasion. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
Single-family home sales in Rhode Island continued to edge toward equilibrium, in November, meaning that the number of sales increased at an accelerated rate, while the inventory of houses on the market continued to go down. The median sales price continued to go down, too, but its rate of decrease remained steady. Continue reading on…
