Yesterday, Mark Muchow, the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Revenue, presented at November Legislative Interims on the future of state severance taxes. In his presentation (Severance Tax Trends -November 26, 2012), he found that severance taxes are going to decline and stagnant over the next few years because the boom in shale natural gas…
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As part of the "fiscal cliff" and "grand bargain" deficit negotiations, some CEOs, politicians, and pundits are saying that raising the retirement age of Social Security should be on the deficit chopping block despite the fact that it does not contribute to the federal budget deficit. Raising the retirement age is usually premised on the…
We often hear that one of the state's biggest economic problems is a skills mismatch. More specifically, we are told that manufacturing firms in the state cannot find enough qualified workers and that this is holding up our state's economic recovery. The problem with this argument, as we've pointed out before, is that it is…
In this month's edition of Jobs Count, I looked at the Congressional Budget Office's report on the employment and GDP effects of the fiscal cliff. The CBO report spells out how many jobs lost and how much GDP would be reduced for each deficit reducing policy that is a part of the fiscal cliff. Overall,…
Last week, the Pew Center on the States released a report that looks at the impact of the "fiscal cliff" on state tax revenues and spending programs. The report also includes a nice fact sheet on the impact to West Virginia. On the revenue side, West Virginia, like several other states, is linked to the…
On Friday, we co-released a report with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute on the rise of income inequality in West Virginia. Most striking in the report was the average drop in incomes among the bottom 20 percent of West Virginia households since the late 1970s. While the wealthiest…
The independent think tank Headwaters Economics has released a report on the best fiscal practices for states and local governments with oil and natural gas extraction. The report states, "Drilling for oil and natural gas is a high-impact economic activity that presents opportunities and challenges for state and local governments seeking to reconcile the benefits of job and…
West Virginia is nearly a month away from reductions in childcare assistance eligibility requirements that will ipact over 800 parents and 1,400 children. Families that make between 150-185 percent of the Federal Poverty Level will be dropped from the program on January 1, 2013. The changes in eligibility could not only force parents to quite their…
With the election over and the "fiscal cliff" drawing near, the nation's attention has once again turned to the federal government's budget deficit and the problems we face addressing it. Most agree that some combination of spending cuts and tax increases will be necessary in order to put the federal budget on a sustainable path,…
As readers may know, we've talked a lot recently about the future of coal in West Virginia. Specifically, we've aimed at taking a data-driven and evidence-based approach to the issue instead of one focused primarily on unsubstantiated political posturing. The issue is just too important not to be taken seriously. Now, with the election over, …