Economy
It’s not that often where I can find an article on CNN.com that has much relevance to Rhode Island, but this one caught my eye. It just shows what a little ingenuity and work can do when you actually have a thriving economy. Out in North Dakota where the unemployment rate currently sits at 3%…
The unemployment rate for Rhode Island fell by one tenth of a percent to 10.8%, but total employment dropped by 80 people. That’s not even a “mixed picture,” though. The only reason the unemployment rate moved in a seemingly positive direction is that 471 more Rhode Islanders just gave up looking for work. So if…
Via Ted Nesi comes a Bloomberg column by Josh Barro. It’s one of those commentaries in which it isn’t quite clear whether the author is offering pure political advice or expressing his opinion, so I’ll assume the latter. In that context, here are Barro’s thoughts on the balance of the economy and government: If you…
Earlier today, Glenn Reynolds linked to an American Enterprise Institute post by James Pethokoukis, drawing on charts from economist John Taylor showing that the United States economy hasn’t been returning toward where it would have been without the crash, and that this is unusual for prior downturns. The reasons, I think, can be inferred…
Hm. So what this says is we’d have been better off without the stimulus? Well, at least we’re in our 3rd “recovery summer“, ’cause one just wasn’t enough! ADDENDUM: Woops, almost forgot. It’s Bush’s fault.
The Stephen Hopkins Center for Civil Rights’ panel discussion on the event of Milton Friedman’s hundredth birthday offset “liberaltarian” Brown professor John Tomasi with June Speakman, a Roger Williams professor more inclined to agree with the prefix of the coinage. The panel would have benefited from the inclusion of an unabridged conservative who agreed with…
It’s intriguing to observe the telescoping nature of the “context” to which folks are referring when discussing President Obama’s infamous Friday the 13th Roanoake speech. The damning two sentences continue to be: If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The inferred meaning is that somebody else should…
630AM/99.7FM WPRO has posted my appearance on the Dan Yorke show, Tuesday, in two segments. The first is the initial half hour introducing the research from the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity and touching on some conclusions. For the second hour, Economic Development Corp. board member and VIBCO President Karl Wadensten joined us in…
In a strong indication that, among journalistic practitioners, the biased media narrative is more a matter of intellectual laziness than cultural duplicity, the latest canned story, by Los Angeles Times reporter Don Lee, is that workplace discrimination is landing men the great majority of “newly created” jobs: Since the recession ended in June 2009, men…
One hears anecdotes, from time to time, about young adults who simply do not understand the habits associated with holding a job. Punctuality, an understanding that sometimes tedious or undesirable activities are necessary, and an appreciation of the relationship between consumer and vendor are all examples. Giving young adults the opportunity to learn such principles…