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42 search results for: "government plantation"

31

Drop in Manufacturing in RI Most Worrying Because of Government Solutions

Highlighting the change in the Providence area’s mix of employment, Ted Nesi reviews a study finding that the metro has seen the nation’s greatest drop in manufacturing jobs, as a percentage of all jobs, with jobs requiring a college degree increasing in the mix.

This is a percentage, not the absolute number of jobs, so all sorts of jobs could go up or down, but if they do so at different rates, the mix will change.  In that light, this metric could be indicative of Rhode Island’s government plantation approach.  As the economy shifts toward emphasis on government services, more of the available jobs require college degrees (not because, by the way, government-service jobs necessarily require degree-level skill sets, but because it suits politicians and labor unions to require degrees.)

Beyond such considerations, the response from the governor caught my eye:

In his paper, Whitaker notes concerns “that the growing industries do not provide enough work opportunities or middle-class incomes for people without college degrees.” That echoes frequent comments by Rhode Island leaders including Gov. Gina Raimondo who say the state needs to do more to encourage the creation of jobs for workers who don’t attend college.

She may have said such a thing somewhere, but the emphasis of her policies has been on “well-paying” jobs in trendy fields.  More importantly, her premise about government effort is wrong. State politicians and bureaucrats are not well positioned to create targeted jobs.  And even if they were, they haven’t the right.  When the government attempts to create specific jobs, it is either manipulating the public to match politicians’ preferences or replacing residents who don’t fit the plan with outsiders who do.  Note this:

A study earlier this year by Boston Fed economist Mary Burke reported manufacturing employment in Rhode Island plunged by 57% between 1990 and 2015, and found a growing number of the state’s skilled jobs requiring college degrees were going to out-of-state workers.

If the state government is to maintain democratic legitimacy, it has to represent the people who are here, not a marked-off place on the map or a collection of preferred industries.

32

Census Numbers and Replacement Rhode Islanders

New U.S. Census estimates of states’ populations are out, and Rhode Island just like last year, experienced a small increase in population.  And once again the details of the numbers give reason for concern.

For the second year in a row, total population increased by a smaller number.  That is, 2014’s increase was 1,447, 2015’s was 1,127, and 2016’s is 819.  The natural population increase resulting from having more births than deaths was the smallest since 2010.

Of more concern, though, is that more Rhode Islanders continue to leave for other states than to head in the other direction, but those departures are over-compensated with immigration from other countries.  This year, we lost 3,784 Rhode Islanders to other states but gained 4,203 from other countries.  (Illegal immigrants would be included in these numbers.)  According to the Census, Rhode Island lost 28,565 residents to other states but imported 25,406 residents from other countries.

RI-compofpopchange-2010-2016b

Putting aside the fact that people who arrived from other countries may have later left for other states, Rhode Island has, roughly speaking, swapped out 2.4% of its population for people from other countries.  One needn’t be xenophobic to worry that this trend might not be ideal.

As the Rhode Island Family Prosperity Index report suggests, the Ocean State’s policy decisions are pushing our neighbors to leave.  Meanwhile, the government plantation model of the state’s major industry (government) creates incentive for elected officials and bureaucrats to seek to import clients who’ll require their services (and provide them votes).

33

Family Prosperity: A Needed Change for Rhode Island

The RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity today issued the Ocean State’s iteration of the American Conservative Union’s Family Prosperity Index report, making Rhode Island the second state explored in detail.  An associated Web site for the state is also up now.

The index incorporates a broad variety of demographic and economic data to compare how well states are performing for the families who live within their borders, and not surprisingly, Rhode Island ranks an abysmal 48th.  From the report:

… the FPI research suggests that economic hardship can often lead to adverse personal or social consequences, and vice versa. The issue of drug abuse, which has long been a concern for families and for the business community in Rhode Island, provides a clear example of this linkage. As we will discuss later, Rhode Island ranks worst in the nation in terms of illicit drug use. To its credit, in 2016, Rhode Island took action to address this disturbing trend.

With the Ocean State ranking nationally in the bottom 10 on the FPI Economics index, as well as the entrepreneurship and unemployment sub-indexes, it isn’t a surprise that the associated personal fnancial distress has an impact on its residents’ personal behavior.

An introductory report is obviously just a starting point, and the initiative’s data for the whole country is online already in interactive format.  We’ve already been making use of it, in this space, noting for example evidence that Rhode Island’s economic and civic reality is actually spurring two conflicting reactions among its people: one to retrench toward healthy behavior and one to compensate for difficulties with unhealthy behavior.  Unfortunately, our elected officials seem more inclined to implement policies that favor the unhealthy behavior and impede the healthy (arguably to fertilize the government plantation).

To help make the case that Rhode Island needs a new direction, the Rhode Island site is encouraging Rhode Islanders to tell their own stories, whether negative or positive, and is hosting a leadership forum in cooperation with the Hassenfeld Institute for Public Leadership at Bryant University on January 17 (RSVP at the link).

35

Using Smartphones to Access Public Welfare Benefits

Yes, it’s arguably unfair to react to the phrase I’ve italicized in the following quotation from a recent article by Christine Dunn in the Providence Journal without the context of a longer, more subtle conversation, but it did jump out at me:

More than 13,000 people applied for housing vouchers in less than a week in November, when Rhode Island Housing and the Providence Housing Authority jointly opened their waiting lists, the Rhode Island Housing Board of Commissioners was told Thursday morning.

The online application process was a success, and most people were able to apply on their mobile telephones.

It’s a truism of the welfare state that, no matter what the government is technically subsidizing, taxpayers are actually subsidizing the least-necessary goods and services the recipient purchases.

Of course, used properly, smartphones and the related data plans can be valuable tools helping people to advance in their lives.  Absent some structural incentive, though — or even just a little bit of stigma to being on the public dole — the public must wonder whether we’re subsidizing technology mainly for entertainment and so that beneficiaries can better access more public benefits.

Treating welfare recipients as consumers of packages of public products leads to the government plantation.

36

Public-Options-Only School Choice Relies on Irrational Prejudice

Notice anything about the recent op-ed from RI Education Commissioner Ken Wagner?

Some claim that charters take money that is owed to district schools. In my view, the money is not “owed” to district schools or any other education provider. Local, state and national taxpayers raised this money for a specific purpose: to educate the youth of a community. We have an obligation to ensure the money serves the children rather than simply maintains the current system.

This is the core of the argument that I’ve been proffering for total school choice.  Public dollars aren’t collected and expended for the maintenance of a government-branded school system, but for the cause of educating the public.  Whatever structure or method will accomplish that goal most effectively and economically is the proper one.

Indeed, just about every argument in Wagner’s essay would apply to education savings accounts (ESAs), vouchers, or any other school choice vehicle and could be added to the Bright Today list of myths.

It is only through the devotion of insiders to the status quo and their control of public information that this point remains sufficiently obscure that Wagner doesn’t feel he has to address it.  The people are starting to figure it out, though, and it is yet another area in which those of us who really wish to move Rhode Island forward for the benefit of its people need only guide their natural conclusions.

Consider Dan McGowan’s WPRI article on public testimony regarding the Achievement First charter school expansion proposal before the state Council on Elementary and Secondary Education.  The article is 17 paragraphs long.  Here’s the 13th:

But the majority of individuals who testified about Achievement First Tuesday encouraged the council to back the expansion.

That is, after 12 paragraphs — three-quarters of the article — conveying the points of view of insiders, who are in the minority, McGowan finally gets to what should arguably have been the headline of the article: that people want school choice.  When all is said, the only argument to prevent the people from using public funds for their preferred public policy is maintenance of the government plantation.

37

Choosing Workers and Independence in Rhode Island

Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity CEO Mike Stenhouse often refers to the value of “a paycheck, not a welfare check.”  Rich Lowry suggests President-elect Donald Trump is on the same page:

Trump hammered away at the true bottom line of the economy for most people. Mike Konczal, a fellow with the liberal Roosevelt Institute, went back and listened to Trump stump speeches after the election to better understand how the mogul pulled off his upset. Konczal notes that Trump “never mentions poverty. And while he talks a lot about reducing taxes, he never talks about increasing transfers, redistribution, or access to core goods. He talks about wages, full stop.”

And that’s the key to Trump’s economics. If you squint just right, you can see a strategy. It is to increase growth through traditional Republican means (i.e., tax reform and deregulation) at the same time, he aims to directly create a tighter labor market through soaking up labor via an infrastructure program and reducing foreign competition by discouraging outsourcing and squeezing immigration.

Related principles applied to Rhode Island would focus on workers both by decreasing the incentive for them to enter into dependency on government programs and by increasing the resources and liberty at their disposal to expand their work and, if they choose, build their own businesses (that is, reducing taxes and regulations).  Instead, the champions of the status quo in the Ocean State are striving to make more of us  dependent on government (through, e.g., UHIP and continually expanding social welfare programs), to attract people to the state who will require government assistance (for the government plantation), and to give government-selected businesses an edge against their local competition by taxing others more to tax the favored companies less.

This is unambiguously the choice Rhode Islanders face, and it has to be made again and again.  For example, infrastructure projects to “soak up labor” are sorely needed, both for jobs and for public safety, but the choice is whether to increase the tax/toll/debt burden or to redirect funds that currently foster dependency to help independent workers.

38

Monthly Tracking Will Be Welfare Boom

Pay attention to this tidbit from a Providence Journal article by Alisha Pina:

The majority, said Cindy Machado, chief human service policy and system specialist, were here because they want to know why their benefits were cut. Of the 97,000 receiving food assistance, 3,000 have been deemed ineligible or didn’t give the required paperwork in time to keep getting help.

Another 500 people on Thursday had their state health insurance cut for similar reasons. UHIP has a program that allows the state to check monthly if residents are still eligible for the insurance. Notices were sent to those in question, and time was given before benefits were ended. Officials had hoped that the program would save about $16 million this fiscal year, but delaying the launch by two months decreased the projected savings by $2.4 million.

Right now, it sounds like a money saver that 3,500 welfare beneficiaries were found to be ineligible, but we’re on an economic upswing, and all of the state’s welfare programs aren’t fully integrated, yet.  When the upswing stops and, more importantly, when all government programs are linked for this month-to-month assessment, UHIP will become a way to maximize payments, not minimize them.

Through a creepily invasive “program” that keeps a monthly profile of all Rhode Island residents — at least those below some income threshold that we might call the “dependence line” — the plan is for the government to actively sign up new “clients” as they become eligible, sucking a maximum number of people into the system.  Again, we’re all either potential produce or tax-money laborers for the government plantation.

42

The Story of Rhode Island in the Trump-Clinton Divide

The other day, the Providence Journal published an interesting map showing that, much like the country as a whole, Rhode Island’s presidential votes were split by region, with the coastal municipalities’ going to Hillary Clinton and the interior going to Donald Trump.  The image oversimplifies, of course; several cities and towns in the northeast of the state don’t touch the coast, and Charlestown and Tiverton went to Clinton without her winning even half of the vote.

Reporter Paul Edward Parker touch on some of the nuance in the numbers:

Four of the five communities with the highest median household incomes voted for Clinton, as did seven of the eight communities with the lowest incomes.

Essentially, Clinton drew her support from the wealthiest and poorest places, while Trump drew his from the middle.

Laying this out in more detail arguably tells the story of Rhode Island’s current condition in a single chart:

RImuni-clintonvotevsincome

In that red U, we see both the story of the “productive class” and the workings of the “company state.”

Refer back to this 2009 post on Anchor Rising, and you’ll see that the bottom of the U is almost exactly in line with the population that has been leaving Rhode Island throughout this millennium.  As those Rhode Islanders flee the state, those who remain are increasingly part of the “company state” or “government plantations” model, wherein highly paid service providers in and around government have incentive to increase the number of clients requiring subsidized services as a pretense for taking money away from those above the line for subsidies.

This model harms the economy and drives people away because it reduces the incentive and opportunity to work.  The “productive class” is characterized by the economic role of the people who tend to be within it.  It’s the broad class of people whose main function in the economy is to turn their effort and ingenuity into money that they can use to support and advance their families.

This trend is terrible for a state for a multitude of reasons, but two stand out as particularly profound and overarching.  The first is that the “productive class” is the group whose activities are the foundation of a thriving and advancing society.  They are the dynamism and hope for the future.

The second is that the erosion of this tier of the economy as a source of balance eliminates political competition. A loss of political competition will inevitably lead to a political monolith that is not only incapable of correcting itself, but also susceptible to simple, wasteful, and demoralizing corruption.

Those who sympathize with the high points of the U really need to reevaluate the long-term good of their policies.  The rest of us need to redouble our efforts to turn the tide.

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