FROM Scott Thistle’s recent article, Maine’s lack of population growth source of economic concern: State lawmakers heard again Monday that Maine’s dwindling and aging population will continue to be one of the biggest factors in the state’s long-struggling economy. . . . But the state’s economy is still largely hinged on its ability to grow […]
THE Congressional Budget Office recently published a report, The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2011, which examines incomes and taxes across income brackets from 1979 – 2011. In short, the report found that higher earners experienced greater income gains, and government transfers and taxes helped reduce inequality. As the report notes, market income* has grown considerably for […]
BROOKINGS recently published a report on the nature of goods trade in the U.S. Some of the key findings of that report: The country’s 100 largest metropolitan areas drive national goods trade, with more than 80 percent of all goods either starting or ending in these areas. In total, $16.2 trillion in domestic and international goods […]
THE Forbes annual Best States for Doing Business Index for 2014 is out, and once again, the political spin doctors are hard at work. I am not going to beat around the bush. I’m not saying ignore it. Read it . . . but don’t put a lot of stock into it. The problem with […]
THE skills gap has become rather pervasive in policy discourse both here in Maine and in the U.S. Despite wage and other data suggesting there isn’t a broad labor/skills shortage, policymakers at the state and federal levels insist that there is, and that this shortage is what is constraining economic and job growth. As a […]
ACCORDING to a recent piece in Reuters, all of the concerns about student loan debt, under-employment of college grads, and the like are overblown. The arguments underlying this proclamation are that the majority of the debt is falling on higher earners, and wages for the educated masses are rising relative to the uneducated masses. From […]
It is no generally conceded that the current economic environment is qualitatively different from that which prevailed little more than a decade ago. That is, we are in the midst of a “new economy” . . . . . . Clearly Maine has a significant challenge in amassing the highly skilled human resources that are […]
FROM a London School of Economics and Political Science paper by Soledad Artiz Prillaman and Kenneth J Meier (my emphasis): Studying the 50 U.S. states over the past four decades, we find that tax incentives to businesses prove unhelpful in stimulating economic growth and may even be harmful to state economies. Over the past 30 […]
AS noted here previously, there is no evidence of a skills gap in Maine. Wages are not accelerating in STEM fields, Maine’s workforce is more educated now than it is has ever been. A new report from the Boston Fed comports with the wage and labor market indicators that demand for labor in Maine is low.* The report […]
FROM a piece in the in the BDN regarding the minimum wage debate: Democratic candidates for Maine governor and the U.S. Senate joined former Ohio governor and U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland and Portland Mayor Michael Brennan on Tuesday to call for an increase in the minimum wage, expansion of health care benefits and other steps […]
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