Tuesday, June 17, 2014
The Bluest State by Aaron M. Renn, City Journal Spring 2014
This is a long methodical article that links poor conditions to the governing policies of a certain party...
On the City-Journal.org website, Aaron M. Renn pens a major takedown of the policies ruining Rhode Island:
"'Rhode Island is in the midst of an especially grim economic meltdown,' a 2009 New York Times story began, 'and no one can pinpoint exactly why.' Five years later, the state continues to suffer from most of the same problems the Times story described: high unemployment, a crippling tax structure, dangerously underfunded state pension systems. But contrary to the Times’s claims, Rhode Island’s predicament is easy to explain. With no special economic advantages, the state has maintained an entitlement mentality inherited from an age of colonial and industrial grandeur. Rhode Island was once one of America’s most prosperous states, and its rate of higher-education attainment remains better than the national average. But the state’s key industries collapsed long ago, and its political leadership has refused to make adjustments to its high-cost, high-regulation governance system."
