Joseph Coletti

Pensions and health benefits for retired state employees are a significantly understated obligation for state governments, but until states actually budget money for those needs, Medicaid is the biggest threat to other state spending. The National Association of State Budget Officers reminds us of that with today’s release of the…

As I hinted this morning, a few of us at the John Locke Foundation and Carolina Journal did participatory research and journalism this afternoon. We intended to compare Impossible Whoppers and regular Whoppers from Burger King. Instead we learned that orders on Uber Eats are sometimes canceled without notice after…

A new report examines how easy it is to do business in cities around North America. The  start a business, register a property, get electricity, find and keep employees, pay taxes, and get through insolvency. Charlotte ranks sixth on the index, behind Oklahoma City, Arlington (VA), Sioux Falls,…

This blog, our research updates, and Carolina Journal’s Daily Journal columns all make clear that state policies are grounded in reality, including recent budgets. Yuval Levin of the American Enterprise Institute provides yet more evidence that Washington policies are orthogonal to reality, especially in finances.

John Cawley and David Frisvold have become the leading authorities on soda taxes. In their current working paper with David Jones, they compare results in Philadelphia, Oakland, San Francisco, and Seattle. Philadelphia’s tax “decreased purchases by 27.7 percent,” but the authors “do not find impacts of the taxes in the…

Eric Levitz at New York Magazine claims the American Dream is being killed. He blames three policy decisions by which “we let” wages fall, prices climb, and the social contract fail. My colleague Mike Schietzelt raised the primary objection when sharing the article with me, that Levitz defines…

California raised taxes on high-income earners in 2012. The higher taxes and a growing economy contributed to the Golden State government’s $21 billion surplus, but the tax windfall was 45% lower than it could have been because people moved and found other ways to reduce their tax bill.

Scott Sexton at the Winston-Salem Journal raises an important concern about county sales tax promises. Forsyth County commissioners say revenue from a proposed quarter-cent sales tax increase will go to teachers, but under a strange (and correctable) quirk in state law that pertains to such things, county officials can’t…