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RIPR is a (paper) newsletter that looks at local, state and federal policy issues that affect life here in the Ocean State. Each issue focuses on particular policy areas of interest. Future issues will examine controversial aspects of environmental policy, health care, state tax reform, and education spending. The intention is to look at action rather than talk. RIPR also issues a weekly column about public policy, carried by ten of Rhode Island's finer newspapers. See here for an archive of recent columns. If you'd like to help, please contribute an item, suggest an issue topic, or buy a subscription. If you can, buy two or three (subscribe here). Search this siteAvailable Back Issues:
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Links:Links pageRSSRIPR is primarily a print publication (yikes! how 20th century!), and the work it represents is supported by its subscribers. Feel free to use this link to an RSS feed for the blog, but the real meat is in the newsletter, so come back and subscribe when you have a chance. Responsibility: Tom Sgouros
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Fri, 31 Mar 2006
- How do we cut health spending when our economy depends on it? by Greg Gerritt
- What does it really mean that Massachusetts has more rich people than RI does?
- Why might the median wage in Rhode Island mean something different than the median wage in Massachusetts or Connecticut?
- Are poor people flooding into Rhode Island to take advantage of our welfare laws?
- Review of Crashing the Gate by Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga.
Didn't you mean to subscribe a while ago? No time like the present.
09:30 - 31 Mar 2006 [/y6/ma] link
Thu, 23 Mar 2006
How's it really going after 15 years of experience with vouchers that allow parents to opt out of the public school system? There was a column about this by John Tierney of the New York Times last week, praising the successes of choice in that city. But last year the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel published a seven-part series on the subject. You may be interested to hear what it had to say.
Many thanks to the Daily Howler.
12:56 - 23 Mar 2006 [/y6/ma] link
Tue, 21 Mar 2006
When, you might ask, did foreign ownership of domestic companies become equated with international tariffs? "Protectionism" used to refer only to the second. But now defenders of the Dubai port deal and many other inequities of the current world economy want it to refer to the first as well. See here.
20:56 - 21 Mar 2006 [/y6/ma] link
Wed, 15 Mar 2006
Bird flu is now found in Europe, after having spread from SE Asia. Quick, what migratory birds winter in Asia and summer in France?
Answer: probably none, which is why the bird flu is probably caused and spread by industrial farming practice rather than wild birds and backyard flocks. See here for a report from GRAIN an advocacy group that supports sustainable agriculture, among other things.
11:56 - 15 Mar 2006 [/y6/ma] link
Mon, 06 Mar 2006
Are we driving rich people away?
Much is made lately of a statistic that says that 1.86% of Rhode Islanders report more than $200,000 in adjusted gross income to the IRS, while in Massachusetts the comparable figure is 3.06%. The implication is that short-sighted tax policy is driving rich people from our arms to tax havens like Massachusetts. (These are numbers for the 2004 tax year.)
This could be the truth. On the other hand, it seems that the comparable numbers for 2001 are 1.67% and 3.18%. In other words, we have more rich people now than we did in 2001, and Massachusetts has fewer. So tell me again how we're driving them away?
To be quite honest about it, the comparable numbers from 1997 are 1.24% and 2.09%. So the rise is almost exactly comparable in both states. Which is to say that there's no evidence that we're attracting rich people, but there's little evidence that we're driving them away, either.
The whole thing is predicated on the idea that more rich people means more prosperity for all of us. This is just another version of the trickle-down story that Ronald Reagan's allies sold to a gullible public in the 1980's. On what evidence do people believe this to be true? There is little enough that one unavoidably suspects this is a species of religious belief.
There is counter-evidence, though. The article just below points to data that show that rich people have been inimical to the interests of their employees over the past 30 years. That's data, not religion.
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