Once again it looks like another year will go by without an increase in the state tobacco tax. This year it is quite surprising though as West Virginia is facing a severe budget crisis and raising tobacco taxes would essentially fix it all in one fell swoop. Nevertheless, our legislators seem intent on using our…
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With just over a month left in the open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act, the share of West Virginians without health insurance has already dropped significantly. As of this week, nearly 100,000 West Virginians have enrolled in health coverage through the ACA. The overwhelming majority of these sign-ups have come through Medicaid expansion,…
An article in Sunday's in Wheeling's Intelligencer/News Register highlighted the growing cost of the state's business property tax incentives. The Marcellus Gas and Manufacturing Development Act of 2011 created a special tax preference for manufacturing facilities involved with natural gas liquids products (the famous "cracker bill" was an expansion of this legislation). The tax incentive gives a…
Surprise! West Virginia has a budget problem -- about a $200 million problem, in fact (you can read all about it here, here, and here!). Oddly enough, Medicaid, which for years has taken the brunt of the blame for anything budget related, has hardly been mentioned in the fervor. This is especially odd because the…
Today's Charleston Daily Mail includes an editorial in response to the EARN report on income inequality and our recommendation to raise the minimum wage as a tool to combat inequality. The Daily Mail contends that raising the minimum wage is a bad idea for two reasons: one, income inequality isn't all that bad because rich…
A new report from the Economic Analysis and Research Network takes a deep look at income inequality, by focusing on how the top 1 percent in each state have fared over 1917–2011. The report finds that not only is income inequality on the rise nationally, but each of the 50 states has experienced growing income inequality…
The Obamacare scapegoat strikes again! It seems that some businesses have found it useful to blame the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, to make unpopular announcements. Unfortunately, the most recent attempt to deflect the blame using Obamacare hits my family directly as our daughter's daycare, the West Virginia Public Employees' Daycare, announced yesterday it would…
The West Virginia House of Delegates passed legislation that would increase the state's minimum hourly wage from $7.25 to $8.75 by 2016. We've already looked at the demographics of who would be affected by the increase, now we'll look at how much it would cost. Using the same method as when we looked the cost of…
As noted yesterday by the Daily Mail and Gazette, the House of Delegates overwhelming passed a bill (HB 4283) to increase the state's minimum hourly wage from $7.25 to $8.75 by 2016. As Dave Boucher carefully notes, the bill also increases the minimum wage for tipped workers from $2.13 to $2.63 by 2016. As I…
Bills introduced in both the Senate and the House this session propose to raise the tobacco tax in West Virginia by $1 per pack of cigarettes. While it is a big increase from the 55 cents per pack today, it would actually only catch West Virginia up to the national average ($1.53 per pack) while…