Robert Semple writes convincingly that gas prices are not set by Presidents, but are set in a global market, and that they are beyond the control of any one country. As Dean Baker pointed out last week, "Oil prices in the United States depend on the world market, not just supply and demand in the…
Blog
Today's news that Shell Oil Company has chosen a site in Pennsylvania as the location for their new cracker facility comes after months of competition between PA, WV, and OH over which state would land the cracker, with each state offering a variety of incentives. (A "cracker facility" converts ethane from natural gas liquids into more profitable chemicals…
Yesterday, our sister group in Kentucky - the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy - released a report advocating the creation of a coal severance tax trust fund. As readers know, this is something we've been pushing in West Virginia for over two years. So, it is great news to read that the idea is being…
Here's an article that appeared in the Gazette about the strain Medicaid is putting on the state's budget. Due to the loss of stimulus funds, the declining federal match rate (which is tied to rising income in the state), and rising health care costs, state officials are scrambling to find a way to keep Medicaid funded.…
In his Friday column, Paul Krugman points out that state expenditures for higher ed has fallen by 12 percent over the last five years after adjusting for inflation. Krugman highlights that one result of this disinvestment has been a 70 percent growth in inflation-adjusted tuition at public four-year colleges over the last decade. This got…
On the heels of their 2012 State Business Tax Climate Index is a new report from the Tax Foundation, called Location Matters: A Comparative Analysis of State Tax Costs on Business. What's the difference? While the State Business Tax Climate attempted to measure the "business friendliness" of each state's tax system, the Location Matters report attempts to measure…
Jeff Goodell has an insightful article talking about the "big fracking bubble." The article also profiles Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon. This is the money quote: At Chesapeake, McClendon operated more like a land speculator than an oilman. "Our approach is to go in early, quietly and big," says Henry Hood, who directs Chesapeake's land purchases. "We…
A new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) shows that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) or stimulus bill, has continued to boost the economy throughout 2011, and will continue to do so through 2012 and into 2013. According to the report, the stimulus increased employment in the 4th quarter of 2011 by between 400,000…
There has been a lot of noise lately in the policy community about a new report out of Oklahoma, recommending the elimination of the personal income tax. The report claims that the nine states with no personal income tax have performed better economically than the nine states with the highest personal income taxes. The Institute on Taxation…
Last month the Tax Foundation released the 2012 edition of their State Business Tax Climate Index, a measure of how business-friendly a state's tax system is. The overall index is comprised of 5 sub-indexes, measuring the "business-friendliness" of a state's corporate income, individual income, sales, property, and unemployment insurance taxes. This year, West Virginia ranked 23rd, with…