FOR WELL OVER A DECADE now, squeezing growth out of the Massachusetts economy has felt a bit like getting that last ounce of toothpaste from the tube. Gov. Deval Patrick proposes to change this terribly frustrating challenge by calling for big new spending on education and infrastructure. To accelerate growth and expand opportunity, this investment […]
Demographics
Posted inPolitics, State House News Service, The Download
A poor showing
The Census Bureau has caught up with reality and the numbers are grim. After a half-century of accounting only for inflation when measuring the poverty line, the federal head counters have started to factor in costs such as housing and transportation as well as the impact of social safety net programs such as Social Security […]
Posted inEconomy
Half full or half empty?
from the sound bites blanketing the airwaves, it’s clear that politicians everywhere are concerned about the impact of the recession and slow recovery on the middle class. Elected leaders intuitively feel the public angst. But are things truly getting worse for middle-class families? Or are voters mostly reacting to the constant barrage of dispiriting media […]
Posted inArts and Culture, Economy
The great divide
Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960 – 2010By Charles MurrayNew York, Crown Forum, 407 pages Reviewed by Ralph Whitehead, Jr in the america of 1960, writes Charles Murray in Coming Apart, the lives of white people with a bachelor’s degree or better and the lives of white people with a high school diploma […]
Posted inPolitics
Campaign not much of a contest
two years ago, we had stories showing the Bay State was dead last in the country for the number of contested races for the Legislature, with less than 17 percent of the seats having a candidate from both major parties in the 2008 election. By comparison, every one of Minnesota’s 134 House seats gave voters […]
Posted inEconomy, Opinion
Study takes measure of Boston poverty
A study released last month by The Boston Foundation delivered grim news about the state of racial inequality in the Hub, depicting alarmingly high levels of poverty within black and Latino neighborhoods across the city. The report highlights the ever widening wealth gap between the rich and the poor, which has thousands of black and […]
Posted inEconomy, Education, Politics
A way out of gridlock
with unemployment too high, economic growth too low, and the gap between the rich and poor widening, the American Dream is hurting. Adding to the gloom is the polarization in Washington, where even a simple task like raising the country’s debt ceiling nearly led to economic cataclysm this summer. Yet the dream lives on for […]
Posted inEconomy, Education, Health Care
97.4
the bay state economy expanded by more than 10 percent last decade—8 percent growth on a per capita basis after accounting for inflation. It’s not the Massachusetts Miracle, but given that we were nearing the peak of the tech boom in 2000, and in 2010 we were barely emerging from an even bigger bust, these […]
Posted inEconomy, Opinion
The lost decade
the past decade in both the United States and Massachusetts has been referred to as a “Lost Decade” for the economy and especially its workers. Nationally, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita grew by only 7 percent, the only decade in the past 80 years, including the 1930s Depression decade, in which the nation […]
Posted inPolitics
Occupy attracts few people of color
Three things stood out during five days and nights of visits last week to occupy Boston in Dewey Square – how peaceful things are, how committed the occupiers are, and how lily-white the place is. An Occupy Boston protestor holds a sign Hardly any people of color were seen taking part as embedded, boots-on-the […]