Spot on editorial by the Providence Journal yesterday about last week’s bad jobs and employment report.

Two points in particular to highlight.

1.) Their call for broad-based improvement to the state’s business climate.

Beyond targeted incentives, Rhode Island needs a better tax and regulatory climate that encourages companies that are here to grow and others to come.

Thank you thank you thank you.

2. And this.

Perhaps what is most alarming about last week’s jobs report is that it’s never really felt as though Rhode Island was out of the woods.

Indeed, a well-founded feeling confirmed by the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity’s Jobs and Opportunity Index (JOI): our state has been stuck at forty eight since 2012. This is a situation that will only change when state officials take to heart the call by the ProJo and many others to take a much broader approach to economic development than the handing out of welfare to a very narrow list of corporate cronies and occasional, isolated tax reductions that lack credibility as they are unaccompanied by a reduction in overall spending.