Posts by mark price

Morning Must Reads: Prediction: State Budget Cuts = Rising Property Taxes = Property Taxes Revolts

A toxic cocktail of state budget choices by the Corbett administration — which include holding in reserve more than half a billion in unexpected tax revenue, corporate tax cuts and a needlessly delayed and ultimately inadequate drilling fee — have slowed job growth and driven up property taxes. It is too early to know whether layoffs in 2012 will match the thousands experienced in 2011, but the news continues to trickle in that school districts are looking to raise property taxes and cut more staff in the year ahead.   

Morning Must Reads: Got Gas?, Foreclosures Up, and Layoffs in the Business of News

In petrochemical news this morning, Royal Dutch Shell choose Monaca Pennsylvania for a new cracker plant, there is still no buyer for Sunoco's Philadelphia and Marcus Hook refineries, and more from Paul Krugman on the job hype surrounding natural resource booms.

Morning Must Reads: Gas Booms in North Dakota and Pennsylvania and Art Is Good

Posted by Mark Price on March 15, 2012 7:49 am
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Responding to the bizarre claims that if everybody moved to North Dakota we wouldn't have high unemployment, Paul Krugman on Wednesday compared North Dakota's energy boom to Pennsylvania's.

Morning Must Reads: Predicting School Districts In Distress, Privatization and Hello Düsseldorf!

The Harrisburg Patriot-News reports this morning on a new study that predicts fiscal distress in Pennsylvania school districts thanks to state budget cuts.

Morning Must Reads: Business Subsidies 101: Take The Money and Run

Posted by Mark Price on March 9, 2012 9:58 am
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The Allentown Morning Call reports that a plant operated by International Battery in the Lehigh Valley has closed its doors. The facility opened in 2008 with $4 million in incentives from the commonwealth. 

Morning Must Reads: The Governor's Math Requires Fewer Math Teachers

PA Job Growth Slowed in 2011Pennsylvania’s 2011-12 General Fund budget made deep cuts to education and health care while leaving unspent $620 million from a revenue surplus last year and other unused funds.

We have estimated the failure to spend that revenue will by itself translate into the loss of 17,714 jobs (including private jobs lost due to the ripple effects of public job cuts) over the course of the 2011-12 fiscal year.

Morning Must Reads: Water Privatization in Harrisburg and a Taxpayer Financed Hotel in Pittsburgh?

The Harrisburg Patriot News reports this morning that there are several firms interested in buying Harrisburg's water and sewer system.

Morning Must Reads: Tough Times Discounted Salmon Versus High Anxiety

Bruce Bartlett this morning discusses the tendency for very high-income households to get press when they have fallen on hard times. 

Morning Must Reads: Government Spending, Top Incomes and adultBasic

Paul Krugman this morning caps off a series of blog posts over the last week with a column comparing government spending in the recovery following the deep 1981 recession and government spending in the recovery following the 2007 recession. The bottom line: the employment situation now would have been much better if the federal government had done more to provide aid to state and local governments.

Morning Must Reads: The Inequality Governor Strikes Again

One of the factors driving the increase in inequality prior to 2000 was the growing gap between the wages of colleges graduates and everyone else.

Therefore, a straightforward policy to limit the rise in inequality would open the door to college attendance for the children of low-income adults. However, as the figure to the right illustrates, gifted but low-income children are much less likely to complete college compared to similarly gifted but high-income children. In fact, these gifted, low-income children are as likely to complete college as the least academically gifted, high-income children.