MORE ARTICLES
FY2026 Consensus Revenue Hearing – Forecasting of Revenues is Tricky BusinessNovember 25, 2024 - 8:00 am
CUNY’s Carl Rollyson on William Faulkner & Southern LiteratureNovember 20, 2024 - 10:36 am
Pioneer Institute Study Finds Massachusetts Saw Four-Fold Loss of Income to Net OutmigrationNovember 19, 2024 - 11:25 am
Massachusetts Job Market Bears WatchingNovember 18, 2024 - 2:10 pm
NH Gov. Chris Sununu on School ChoiceNovember 13, 2024 - 2:02 pm
Five Reasons Why Project Labor Agreements Are Bad Public PolicyNovember 12, 2024 - 9:27 am
Statement of Pioneer Institute on MCAS Ballot Failure and State of Education in MassachusettsNovember 6, 2024 - 2:01 pm
Dr. Helen Baxendale on Great Hearts Classical Liberal Arts Charter SchoolsNovember 6, 2024 - 12:08 pm
Jeffrey Meyers on Edgar Allan Poe, Gothic Horror, & HalloweenOctober 30, 2024 - 11:44 am
Mountain State Modifications: Tiffany Uses ESA Flexibility to Pivot Quickly For Her Son’s EducationOctober 24, 2024 - 12:11 pm
Getting the Incentives Right
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byAt the end of the day, compensation systems are intended to attract a workforce appropriate to the task. So, the details in Monday’s Globe story on expanded State Police recruitment are alarming. The story leads with a push for greater diversity but quickly gets to the point: Thirty-nine percent of the department’s 2,429 officers are eligible to retire because they’ve been on the job for more than 20 years, and more than half of those already qualify for a full pension, according to State Police. “Over 500 troopers have maxed out their pension and could walk out the door any time,” said Colonel Mark Delaney. As our 2006 paper on state pensions points out, the Commonwealth builds all kinds of […]
Fed corporate tax killing state competitiveness
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Economic Opportunity, News /byOne could sum up a report from the Tax Foundation as saying the equivalent of – the French are eating our lunch. And you know that is not good. We, for many reasons, including avoidance of indigestion, should be eating theirs. The latest report from the Foundation shows that nearly half of U.S. states tax job providers at a higher rate than any other country in the developed world. Counting the federal rate alone, the U.S. has the world’s highest corporate tax rate, but including average sub-national rates (federal plus state in the U.S.), Japan edges out the U.S. for the highest-tax location. This study breaks the tax down by state, adding each state’s corporate tax rate to the federal […]
17-year old wisdom
/0 Comments/in Blog, Related Education Blogs /by Liam DayWe have an expression we use around the office: adult in the room, that person in any organization whose cooler head usually prevails when panic, or sometimes silliness, otherwise would. For example, the Patrick Administration didn’t have an adult in the room last January to say no to the Governor when he wanted a new Cadillac and damask drapes. That’s why Doug Rubin was brought in. Why the exposition of internal Pioneer lingo? Because of the report in today’s Globe on replacing the”underperforming” label for schools with a gentler euphemism. It seems the Massachusetts Board of Education has devoted parts of its last three meetings to debating nomenclature. Now, I’m not one to dismiss the significance of language, but this […]
Thanks TxDoT
/0 Comments/in Better Government, Blog, Blog: Better Government /byOur thanks to the kind folks at the Texas Department of Transportation who featured an excerpt of our research paper, Our Legacy of Neglect: The Longfellow Bridge and the Cost of Deferred Maintenance in the Winter edition of Horizon Magazine.
Counterintuitive Healthcare Cost Data
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, Economic Opportunity, Healthcare, News /byIt has been the conventional wisdom that small businesses are getting killed on healthcare costs and we’ve heard anecdotal evidence to support this when we’ve presented our research on the various costs associated with doing business in Massachusetts. But Charlie Baker at Harvard Pilgrim begs to differ, and he’s even got internal Harvard Pilgrim data to prove it. He notes: Small businesses, on average, had lower medical claims expenses per member than larger businesses, and lower health insurance premiums(!). In fact, much lower. On average, per member premiums for small businesses were 10 percent lower than the premiums paid by larger businesses, consistent with claims costs that were also about 10 percent lower. Why? Mr. Baker explains: I think it […]