At the request of third graders from an elite Newport private school, lawmakers in Rhode Island this year declared the American burying beetle to be the official state insect. The designation is appropriate not only because the Ocean State is one of the few that still can claim the bugs as residents, but also because the species feeds on and breeds in carrion — i.e., “the decaying flesh of dead animals.”

If Rhode Island legislators are looking for ideas for next year, the Ouroboros should be a candidate for the official state economic symbol. Historically, the mythical snake eating its own tail has been emblematic of renewal and self-creation, but Rhode Islanders may finally answer its greatest mystery: What happens when the snake finishes?

Rhode Island’s strategy of subsidizing every step in the economic chain has a similar circular feel.

Continue reading on Watchdog.org and then… return for this bonus ending, only on the Ocean State Current:

Despite a one-month increase of 1,100 jobs in “education and health services,” the total number of jobs located in Rhode Island decreased by 300, in June, after a longer-term trend of slowed growth, and the latest economic development controversy is the shift of a local star start-up company, Teespring, to Kentucky, after that state provided $2.5 million in tax incentives while Rhode Island officials had no interactions with its executives.

Bugs that require carrion to survive must live in a world of living animals.  Somebody has to pay for expanded government programs that provide services to beneficiaries of other government programs.  Otherwise, the economy will ultimately become a central-planning head with nothing left to eat.