Joseph Coletti

Retiree health benefits today represent a $31 billion unfunded liability for state government on top of the $10 billion unfunded liability for state employee pensions. Daniel DiSalvo of the Manhattan Institute writes in a paper released today that North Carolina could offer a model for other states…

A recent essay provided as examples of reclaiming civil society: “an independent voter organizing project…[that] ultimately elected a progressive woman as a county commissioner in a conservative rural county.” So much for civil society as neighbors helping neighbors and the lesson of the Good Samaritan who used his own money…

Mecklenburg voters soundly rejected a proposed quarter-cent sales tax hike in November. The $50 million tax hike to bail out the Arts & Science Council would have delivered $22.5 million per year to the Arts and Science Council, $17 million to parks and greenways; $8 million to education; and $2.5…

Has government policy, in promoting home ownership, actually made it more difficult to own a home? It’s almost a ridiculous question: who ever heard of a government policy having unintended effects that are opposite of intended outcome? It’s like suggesting that there was gambling at Rick’s Cafe.

David French, who joined Jonah Goldberg and Steve Hayes to create the recently launched Dispatch is ” convinced that the more we politicize the crisis [in community] rather than personalize it and spiritualize it, the more we’ll miss the mark.” “A functioning community doesn’t just provide love and resources,” French…

Governments like to use clawbacks, in which they provide a benefit but demand it back if some objective is not reached. North Carolina uses clawbacks for some tax incentives, but could not recover millions of dollars that had been paid to Dell Technologies when that company closed a plant…

Another new paper finds that colleges are increasingly the wrong way to go for good jobs, producing debt-ridden graduates who are “overeducated and underskilled.” Instead of college, Veronique de Rugy and Jack Salmon of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, suggested apprenticeships and on-the-job training will become the…

Here’s some good advice on homebuying you may not have considered: If you’re looking to buy a house, chances are you’ve spent countless hours examining listings. Fabulous. Now, just make sure you spend a little time ensuring that house you want isn’t within the borders of a city that…