...so where's the sugar for schools? Feeling rich, fellow South Dakotans? New data on regional price parities from the Bureau of Economic Analysis says you should. The May 2011 report says that, from 2005 to 2009, stuff cost less in…
Posts tagged as “economy”
With summer vacation purportedly upon us, I note with heightened interest this CNN article about America's disinclination to take a break. According to "No-Vacation Nation" by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, we are the only advanced nation not…
Rep. Kristi Noem, Senator John Thune, and other Republicans argue that we aren't producing enough oil. They say boosting our oil stocks requires continuing handouts to oil corporations and erasing environmental safeguards. But we already have more oil than we…
Energy investment is a matter of cost-benefit analysis. On two major tar sands oil projects, TransCanada's Keystone pipeline system and Hyperion's proposed Union County refinery, we are told that the environmental harm is justified by the benefits of making more…
Monday's post on personal income growth got me looking at patterns of commuter inflow and outflow in South Dakota. Commuter inflow is the income folks from, say, Lake County, bring home from their jobs in Minnehaha. Commuter outflow is the…
Reaganomics makes me sick. But wait, it's not just me; it's the whole society. According to an argument highlighted by Yankton reporter Nathan Johnson, the rise of neoliberal economics—you know, the "material values and individualism" preached by the Church of…
The Bureau of Economic Analysis has released data on personal income growth in 2009. Nationally, after growth of 4.0% in 2008, personal income shrank 1.7% in 2009. Big counties—those with more than a quarter-million people—seemed to take the recession hardest:…
March brought little change in local unemployment numbers. According to the latest figures from the South Dakota Department of Labor, Lake County added 35 jobs in March, but also saw 40 more people jump into the labor pool. That brought…