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A look at the lousy situation Rhode Island is in, how we got here,
and how we might be able to get out.
Featuring
Budget Demystification!
Fiscal Derring-Do!
Economic Jiggery-Pokery!
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RIPR is a (paper) newsletter and a weekly column appearing in ten
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Available Back Issues:
- Aug 09 (38) - How your government's
economic policies have worked against you. What a fake nineteenth
century nun can teach us about the tea party protests.
- Jun 09 (37) - Statistics of
optimism, the real cost of your government. Judith Reilly on
renewable tax credits. Review of Akerlof and Shiller on behavioral
economics.
- Apr 09 (36) - Cap and trade, the
truth behind the card check controversy, review of Governor's tax
policy workgroup final report.
- Feb 09 (35) - The many varieties of
market failures, and what classic economics has to say about them,
review of Nixonland by Rick Perlstein.
- Dec 08 (34) - Can "Housing First"
end homelessness? The perils of TIF. Review of You Can't Be
President by John MacArthur.
- Oct 08 (33) - Wage stagnation,
financial innovation and deregulation: creating the financial
crisis, the political rhetoric of the Medicaid waiver.
- Jul 08 (32) - Where has the money
gone? Could suburban sprawl be part of our fiscal problem? Review
of Bad Money by Kevin Phillips, news trivia or trivial
news.
- Apr 08 (31) - Understanding
homelessness in RI, by Eric Hirsch, market segmentation and the
housing market, the economics of irrationality.
- Feb 08 (30) - IRS migration data,
and what it says about RI, a close look at "entitlements", historic
credit taxonomy, an investment banking sub-primer.
- Dec 07 (29) - A look at the state's
underinsured, economic geography with IRS data.
- Oct 07 (28) - Choosing the most
expensive ways to fight crime, bait and switch tax cuts, review
of Against Prediction, about the perils of using statistics
to fight crime.
- Aug 07 (27) - Sub-prime mortgages
fall heaviest on some neighborhoods, biotech patents in decline, no photo
IDs for voting, review of Al Gore's Against Reason
- Jun 07 (26) - Education
funding, budget secrecy, book review of Boomsday and the Social
Security Trustees' Report
- May 07 (25) - Municipal finance: could citizen
mobility cause high property taxes?
What some Depression-era economists had to say on investment, and why
it's relevant today, again.
- Mar 07 (24) - The state budget
disaster and how we got here. Structural deficit, health care,
borrowing, unfunded liabilities, the works.
- Jan 07 (23) - The impact of real
estate speculation on housing prices, reshaping the electoral college.
Book review of Blocking the Courthouse Door on tort "reform."
- Dec 06 (22) - State deficit: What's
so responsible about this? DOT bonding madness, Quonset, again,
Massachusetts budget comparison.
- Oct 06 (21) - Book review: Out of
Iraq by Geo. McGovern and William Polk, New rules about supervisors
undercut unions, New Hampshire comparisons, and November referenda guide.
- Aug 06 (20) - Measuring teacher
quality, anti-planning referenda and the conspiracy to promote them,
affordable housing in the suburbs, union elections v. card checks.
- Jun 06 (19) - Education report, Do
tax cut really shrink government?, Casinos and constitutions, State historic tax
credit: who uses it.
- May 06 (18) - Distribution
analysis of property taxes by town, critique of RIEDC statistics,
how to reform health care, and how not to.
- Mar 06 (17) - Critique of commonly
used statistics: RI/MA rich people disparity, median income, etc.
Our economic dependence on high health care spending. Review of
Crashing the Gate
- Feb 06 (16) - Unnecessary
accounting changes mean disaster ahead for state and towns, reforming
property tax assessment, random state budget notes.
- Jan 06 (15) - Educational equity,
estimating the amount of real estate speculation in Rhode Island,
interview with Thom Deller, Providence's chief planner.
- Nov 05 (14) - The distribution of
affordable houses and people who need them, a look at RI's affordable
housing laws.
- Sep 05 (13) - A solution to pension
strife, review of J.K. Galbraith biography and why we should care.
- Jul 05 (12) - Kelo v. New London:
Eminent Domain, and what's between the lines in New London.
- Jun 05 (11) - Teacher salaries,
Veterinarian salaries and the
minimum wage. Book review: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
- Apr 05 (10) - Choosing a crisis: Tax fairness and school
funding, suggestions for reform. Book review: business location and
tax incentives.
- Feb 05 (9) - State and teacher
pension costs kept artificially high. Miscellaneous tax suggestions for balancing the state budget.
- Dec 04 (8) - Welfare applications and the iconography of welfare
department logos. The reality of the Social Security trust fund.
- Oct 04 (7) - RIPTA and DOT, who's really in crisis?
- Aug 04 (6) - MTBE and well pollution, Mathematical problems with property taxes
- May 04 (5) - A look at food-safety issues: mad cows, genetic engineering, disappearing farmland.
- Mar 04 (4) - FY05 RI State Budget Critique.
- Feb 04 (3) - A close look at the Blue Cross of RI annual statement.
- Oct 03 (2) - Taxing matters, a historical overview of tax burdens in Rhode Island
- Oct 03 Appendix - Methodology notes and sources for October issue
- Apr 03 (1) - FY04 RI State Budget critique
Issues are issued in paper. They are archived irregularly here.
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About
The Rhode Island Policy Reporter is an independent news source that
specializes in the technical issues of public policy that matter so
much to all our lives, but that also tend not to be reported very
well or even at all. The publication is owned and operated by Tom
Sgouros, who has written all the text you'll find on this site,
except for the articles with actual bylines.
Responsibility:
 Tom Sgouros
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Thu, 29 Mar 2007
Voter Fraud?
There are regular calls for laws to require using IDs at the polls,
and these calls often meet with surprisingly little resistance from
people who should know better. The controversy over the firing of
several US Attorneys for (supposedly) not investigating voter fraud
energetically enough has brought the issue into some focus.
An
editorial
in the Washington Post has some things to say on the subject, mostly
that credible allegations of real voter fraud are a sort of Republican
Will o' the Wisp, talked about but never seen, and the cause of
enacting real legal obstacles to people who have every right to vote.
21:25 - 29 Mar 2007 [/y7/ma]
Sat, 10 Mar 2007
New Issue Out
All about the budget follies of 2007:
- The structural deficit: Why it's sixteen times worse than in 2003.
(When Governor Carcieri took office.)
- Lottery projections are pretty revealing. (Revealing of mistruths
and self-deception, that is.)
- Re-amortizing the pension unfunded liabilities. (How to save $33
million with the stroke of a pen.)
- The last fiscal crisis, and how we got out of that. (Hint: It
wasn't only by slashing spending.)
- How many income tax cuts have there been in the past decade?
(Hmmm. Could that be related to the deficit?)
Isn't it time to subscribe?
16:13 - 10 Mar 2007 [/y7/ma]
Wed, 07 Mar 2007
More fun with statistics
The state budget continues to phase out the income tax on the very
rich, by offering them a flat tax alternative. This year, the maximum
tax rate on the wealthiest of the wealthy is scheduled to decline to
7.5%, and Senate Finance estimates are that this will cost us $14.4
million.
Here's the table of estimates:
| Year | Rate | Cost (millions) |
| FY07 | 8.0 | $7.2 |
| FY08 | 7.5 | $14.4 |
| FY09 | 7.0 | $24.5 |
| FY10 | 6.5 | $37.3 |
| FY11 | 6.0 | $53.5 |
| FY12 | 5.5 | $73.1 |
The difficulty is that these estimates were prepared by examination of
2005 tax data, and have not been projected forward. We'll collect
more income tax revenue this year than in 2005, by about 12%, so these
numbers are low.
So here's the same table corrected to be expressed as a proportion of
the taxes collected:
| Year | Rate | Cost (percent) |
| FY07 | 8.0 | .7% |
| FY08 | 7.5 | 1.5% |
| FY09 | 7.0 | 2.50% |
| FY10 | 6.5 | 3.8% |
| FY11 | 6.0 | 5.5% |
| FY12 | 5.5 | 7.5% |
1.5% of FY08 projected income tax revenue is about $16.5 million, and
7.5% of the FY12 revenue is about $102 million. The real numbers will
probably be even higher, because incomes at the top level are growing
faster than incomes down here.
15:15 - 07 Mar 2007 [/y7/ma]
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