FIND GREAT CONTENT
Search through articles, research, and policy papers. Search by keyword, tag, author, date range, and category.
This author has not written his bio yet.
But we are proud to say that Justin Katz contributed 5054 entries already.
When it comes to the average annual pension payment given to its retirees in the state Employees’ Retirement System (ERSRI), Cranston pays only a few percentage points more than the average for all cities and towns; its local fire and police retirement plans, however, are dramatically more generous.
While public assistance costs certainly bear watching, the larger reason for concern may not be that payments to individuals are growing and going to more people, or even that they’re covering more exigencies, but that the deepening involvement of government in private industry is making it more and more difficult to tell who is forcing whom to give what to whom else.
Ash Wednesday seems an appropriate day to consider ruminations on economic inequality, from James Nuechterlein’s “Public Square” column in last April’s First Things (subscription required): … the connection between inequality and hard times is so prevalent in folk wisdom that expressions of alarm over the nation’s distribution of income followed in the wake of the […]
NY Times writer Andrew Ross Sorkin believes the U.S.’s economic conundrum is competing with high-growth regions; Providence Journal columnist Edward Fitzpatrick doubts that new casinos will do the trick. Justin Katz considers the central problem to be a government seeking to shape the economy in ways that increase its own power and revenue.
Rhode Island’s overall score improved on Education Week’s annual report card and ranking report, while the national average remained exactly the same. But a look north to New Hampshire suggests that it will be some time before RI can show that its gains are more than just a consequence of the study’s methodology.
The contradiction of liberal populism and liberal technocracy resolves if one blends questions of power in with ideology. If our current state of coinciding prosperity and freedom is an accomplishment, then the objective of political action is to manage power so as not to undermine the achievement; if it is a discovery, implying an inability to undiscover it, then the objective becomes to marshal power for more expeditious achievement of progress.
On Tuesday, February 14, the department heads in Tiverton’s municipal government went before the Rhode Island State Labor Relations Board (RISLRB) as a step toward unionizing. No judgment has been announced, but the issue bears close watching. These are positions that elected officials and voters ought to have maximum flexibility to change.
Search through articles, research, and policy papers. Search by keyword, tag, author, date range, and category.
The Ocean State Current is an alternative, multi-media news source for Rhode Island and southern New England. Content is honest, opinion-journalism tailored for those who seek commonsense policy solutions. Please join our community by subscribing to our email list.