MORE ARTICLES
Outmigration and the Labor ForceApril 25, 2024 - 11:44 am
Study Finds Obstacles to Search for Opioid SubstituteApril 25, 2024 - 9:11 am
Annual Massachusetts Outmigration Hits 39,000, Up 1,100% Over The Last Decade: BU StudyApril 24, 2024 - 1:00 pm
Hoover at Stanford’s Stephen Kotkin on Stalin’s Tyranny, WWII, & the Cold WarApril 24, 2024 - 12:33 pm
Superior Court Judge Invalidates “Equity Theft” Law as UnconstitutionalApril 23, 2024 - 1:04 pm
Tax Man Confounded: Why High Rates Haven’t Yielded Higher RevenueApril 23, 2024 - 12:58 pm
Massachusetts’ Workforce Growing Older and More Diverse, Remains Highly EducatedApril 18, 2024 - 9:26 am
Johns Hopkins’ Ashley Berner on Educational Pluralism & DemocracyApril 17, 2024 - 2:53 pm
Why the secrecy? Pioneer Calls for Open Meetings Dealing with Steward’s Impact on Patient Care.April 16, 2024 - 1:59 pm
Industrial Policy Reimaged: Can Government Improve Free MarketsApril 16, 2024 - 12:34 pm
(Almost) Everything You Wanted to Know About the MBTA
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /by[WARNING: Hard-core transportation nerdiness ahead. Consider yourself warned.] As a user of the MBTA and a fan of transit (no, really), there’s no better place to learn about the minutiae of the system than the T’s Blue Book. It tells you everything (well, almost) you could want to know about the system. Within its pages, you find stuff like: • Most heavily used subway line? Red Line at 74.45m trips per year, which narrowly edges out the Green Line. And the Blue Line lags way behind at 17.88m trips per year. • Most popular station? Downtown Crossing, with 22,880 entries and transfers on a typical weekday. Least popular? Suffolk Downs, with only 794. • Who’s on the bus? The T […]
Tuesday Quick Hits
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /by– Holub out? I haven’t followed it closely but the Globe suggests that UMASS-Amherst Chancellor Holub is on his way out after just three years. One of the data points the article refers to is a survey of professors that shows dissatisfaction with the Chancellor. Its not entirely clear but the survey appears to be one of those on-line, opt-in surveys, not a scientific sampling. So that means approximately 100 (self-selected?) respondents (out of 1000+ faculty members) are responsible for the failing grade given to Holub. – Referee Needed. The Patrick Administration is claiming big $$$ savings from the opening of the automobile insurance market to competition. (A view I agree with and a stance for which the Governor does […]
The Soft Cost of Doing Business In Massachusetts?
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byIf you talk with business leaders, you hear stories about the hidden costs of doing business in Massachusetts – huge building projects idled by recalcitrant local building inspectors, regulators blithely ignoring legitimate concerns raised by companies, and a general lack of understanding of how businesses work. I’ve always wanted to quantify these ‘soft costs’ to see if they amounted to much, or were just so much complaining. As I compiled information for my last post on business rankings, one pattern in the data caught my eye. If you look at Massachusetts strictly by the taxation and business cost numbers, we come out in the mid-30s. This year, we were ranked 32nd for tax climate by the Tax Foundation and 39th […]
Your vote is sacred, unless we don’t like it
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, News /byThe vote of the people is sacred. Except when it’s not. And it obviously is not sacred in Nahant, where town officials are perpetuating a dangerous trend – if your vote doesn’t conform with the wishes of those in power, you have to vote again. On April 30, voters in the town election rejected a proposed $260,000 override for the local schools. So, earlier this week, after receiving a petition from 173 residents, the Board of Selectmen voted to hold a special election on June 25 to reconsider it. Such things don’t happen often, but they should never happen. The justifications for it are the same lame talking points always presented in such circumstances, the worst of which is the […]
We’re #5! No wait, we’re #43!
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byDuring last year’s gubernatorial campaign, CNBC ranked Massachusetts #5 as one of the best places to do business. The ranking (and some of the subindexes that weren’t quite so positive) got bandied around by the campaigns as evidence and counterevidence of the state of our business climate. (Even some of my fellow bloggers have referenced it.) If you look at the subindexes for that ranking, you can quickly figure out our strengths and weaknesses – on productivity/quality of life measures, we are very strong; and on business cost/tax policy issues, we are pretty weak. And that gets replicated in lots of similar surveys – depending on which measures are chosen, Massachusetts does very well or quite poorly. So what matters? […]