“[B]usiness is run for the benefit of its owners, its shareholders, its customers and its employees. It’s not run for the benefit of the country.”  That’s according to venture capitalist and Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Bill Frezza in an NPR interview on Tuesday. Read more

The damage caused by Tropical Storm Irene is clearly evident to anyone driving even a few miles in south-central Vermont. The damage from economic policies of the last 30 years has been harder to spot, but it’s becoming visible in statistics like those released on Thursday by the U.S. Read more

“(Governor) Shumlin says he plans to present a level-funded budget to the Legislature in January,” Bob Kinzel reported on Vermont Public Radio last week.

Level funding: The words suggest two things: no cuts, no increases.  For that reason, politicians love to use them. Read more

Despite the national publicity Vermont received when Gov. Peter Shumlin signed the new Green Mountain Care bill into law, there is still a lot to be done if universal health care is to become a reality here. Funding is one of the biggest unknowns, and that won’t start to take shape for another 18 months or so. Read more

It appears there will be two new studies of Vermont’s education funding system. The Legislature has commissioned one—and a California-based consultant recently won the contract. In addition, two communities in southern Vermont—Dover and Wilmington—have decided to pay for their own study of how their local economies might have been affected by Acts 60 and 68. Read more

One of the justifications for lowering taxes on the rich for the last 30 years has been that their increased wealth would trickle down to the rest of us. We needn’t complain that some are getting bigger slices of pie than others, we’ve been told, because the pie is getting bigger, and we’re all getting a little more. Read more

A new Medicaid study out last week is drawing lots of attention. The New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, and others are all writing about it. The authors say it is the first randomized study of its kind in 40 years, and it shows significant and positive benefits from providing public health care services for people who can’t afford them. Read more

Taxes pay for public education, health care, roads and bridges, communications systems, and other public structures that make it possible for individuals and businesses to thrive in our society.  Making these public investments boosts the economy both in the short term and down the road. Read more

That was the question posed by Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz, former chairman of Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers and winner of the Nobel prize in a recent interview on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Now that deficit reduction has been become the crisis du jour, most of the current reporting and discussion are focused on how much and how quickly to cut federal spending—few are questioning whether to cut.  Read more

The fiscal 2012 budget Gov. Peter Shumlin proposed in January made its way through the Legislature largely unscathed. The majority Democratic House and Senate increased the governor’s budget by just 0.1 percent—or $5.6 million on total spending of $4.8 billion.

That’s not surprising. Read more