On the issue of economic inequality, Americans are of two minds. On the one hand, we value opportunity over security, balancing a meager safety net (compared with other developed countries) with the promise of upward mobility for those with ability, gumption, and tolerance for hard work. The idea of opportunity itself suggests variability of outcomes, […]
Economy
Posted inEconomy, Politics
The state budget should focus on outcomes not allocations
Since 2001, Gov. Mitt Romney and the Legislature have cut spending by almost $3 billion. While also raising taxes and fees, the state has reduced Medicaid services, eliminated health insurance for some of the poor, decimated public health programs such as the anti-smoking campaign and drug prevention, virtually eliminated funding for outpatient mental health care […]
Posted inEconomy
Downtown Bostons Greenway is still up in the air
INTRO TEXT By the time this article appears, an agreement may finally be in place about how to govern and maintain the 27 acres of downtown land now opening up in Boston as the steel cloud of the Central Artery disappears. Then again, maybe not. The complicated mix of public and private parties that for […]
Posted inEconomy
Cape Cod’s tourism industry shudders at a cap on worker visas
INTRO TEXT Every summer, Chuck Rigg, owner of The Commons, in Provincetown, counts on an influx of Jamaican workers to staff the 19th-century hotel and bistro he operates with partner Carl Draper. But a surprise decision by the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services to limit the number of foreign workers admitted to the US […]
Posted inEconomy
Blue collar blues
Economist Paul Harrington has lots of data about manufacturing employment in Massachusetts, and all of it is ugly. In 1984, about 670,000 people were employed in making things, or about one in every four non-agricultural workers; just a decade later, manufacturing was down to 447,000 employees, or about 16 percent of the state’s private sector […]
Posted inEconomy
Robert Greenstein and the Center on Budget get hawkish on the federal deficit
Earlier this year, when President Bush proposed his budget for fiscal 2005, it surprised no one that the administration’s spending plan was denounced by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank traditionally concerned with the effects of federal spending –and especially the lack thereof–on the poor. More of a surprise was […]
Posted inEconomy, Health Care, Opinion, Politics
Rising medical costs could upend state government
Read responses to this article When we speak of balance in government, the typical reference is either to the intricate separation of powers inherent in our constitutional democracy, or to the fiscal requirement of a balanced budget. Questions of balance, then, are usually left to the political scientist or fiscal officer, and are of secondary […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Tim Cahill targets pols pensions
INTRO TEXT Nobody likes getting fired. Well, almost nobody. For long-time state workers, getting the heave-ho or having their position eliminated can be a pension bonanza under a controversial provision of the state retirement laws. Nearly two years ago, CommonWealth reported that the granting of so-called Section 10 “termination pensions” appears to be rife with […]
Posted inEconomy, Health Care
Economist David Cutler says increased life expectancy comes at a price and we havent figured out how many more years we want to pay for
Harvard economist David M. Cutler’s new book, his first, has a catchy, if somewhat threatening, title: Your Money or Your Life. The subtitle promises “strong medicine for America’s health care system,” and the book delivers on that promise in a number of ways. But the real dose of castor oil Cutler dispenses is for the […]
Posted inEconomy
The state considers carrots for smart growth
With Massachusetts home prices continuing to soar, the housing crisis has begun to sound like the old Mark Twain saw about the weather: Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything. ALISON WILLIAMS Smart-growth housing in Manchester-by-the Sea. Hoping to match deeds to words, the Romney administration and an independent task force of housing, business, […]