MassINC is sponsoring a forum next Thursday that promises some spirited debate — and, no doubt, an audience with some passionate opinions. Will the fiscal crisis encourage the major political […]
Economics
Posted inEconomy, The Download
Arkansas cracks down on high interest “payday loans”
Via Governing.com, the attorney general of Arkansas is ordering the shutdown of 156 "payday lending outlets" that make personal loans, with extremely high interest rates, against a borrower’s future paychecks. […]
Posted inEconomy, The Download
New Mexico: Land of Enchantment for businesswomen?
March is Women’s History Month, and the Census Bureau is marking the occasion by bundling data on gender differences in education, job earnings, voting participation and the like. One report […]
Posted inEconomy, The Download
Stupid spending: Everybody does it?
Elizabeth Kolbert writes in The New Yorker about all the ways we don’t behave as rational consumers. According to "behavioral economists" (as opposed to the old-fashioned economists who believe that […]
Posted inEconomy, The Download
Baby boomers may be knocking off too early
USA Today’s Sandra Block writes that Baby Boomers may be making a big mistake by retiring at 62, the first year they’re eligible for Social Security benefits:…millions of the oldest […]
Posted inEconomy, The Download
How easy is it to move on up?
The Pew Charitable Trusts just released a top-to-bottom study on income inequality, titled Getting Ahead or Losing Ground: Economic Mobility in America. (Read the press release here or a PDF […]
Posted inEconomy, The Download
Nickle and diming your way to the top
While we’re on the subject of economic mobility, author Adam Shepard has written kind of a rebuttal to one of the most popular works on how hard it is to […]
Posted inEconomy, The Download
Massachusetts leads the way in financial services and septic tanks
The US Census Bureau has posted a handy chart showing industries in which Massachusetts leads the nation in terms of sales per capita. (Oh, yes, there are similar charts for […]
Posted inEconomy, The Download
If not for Michigan…
Massachusetts would be dead last in job creation from 2001 to 2006. In fact, the Bay State is still 100,000 jobs short of its 2001 level, which was the peak […]
Posted inEconomy, The Download
History of the Wal-Mart Empire
I offer no opinion on the merits of shopping at Wal-Mart, but I feel compelled to point out this cool video from the Wall Street Journal. "The Diffusion of Wal-Mart" […]
