South By North Strategies, Ltd.

Around The Dial – March 23

Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:

• Robert Reich tries to set straight the jobs debate.
• Jonathan Cohn checks in on health reform, one year later.
• The Washington Post reports on policies for boosting graduation rates.
• Heleen Mees notes the flaws of labor market deregulation.
• The Baseline Scenario notes the flaws of health care incentives.

The Road To Coverage

The Kaiser Family Foundation neatly diagrams how individuals will obtain health insurance coverage once the Affordable Care Act takes full effect.

No Time For TABOR

The N.C. Budget & Tax Center looks at how the adoption of a TABOR legislation that caps state spending growth to the sum of inflation and population growth would impact North Carolina.

The proposed TABOR legislation before the General Assembly would cap growth of state General Fund appropriations to population growth plus inflation. The TABOR formula fails to take into account that the costs of certain services, such as health care and education, grow faster than inflation. In addition, TABOR ignores demographic shifts, such as the increasing share of North Carolina’s population made up of elderly residents and college students. Therefore, the “population plus inflation” formula is not an appropriate way to measure the cost of providing basic government services and would ensure perpetually insufficient funding.
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Had North Carolina implemented TABOR in 1993, the TABOR formula would have reduced North Carolina’s cumulative investment in public structures by more than $35 billion between fiscal year 1993 and the current fiscal year. In fiscal year 2008, state policymakers would have had to cut state appropriations by 23 percent to meet the TABOR limit.

Around The Dial – March 22

Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:

• Ezra Klein looks at health reform, one year later.
• Robert Shiller goes bubble spotting.
• Felix Salmon mulls what to do about second liens.
• The News & Observer reports on passenger rail in North Carolina.
• Bob Herbert considers the problems of public education.

Back To The Budgetary Drawing Board

The N.C. Budget and Tax Center looks at the legislature’s proposed spending targets for Fiscal Year 2011-12 and is not impressed.

The legislature’s budget targets would drive state spending as a share of state personal income to its lowest level since at least 1972. An$18.3 billion budget would be an 8.4 percent reduction over the current year budget, making it the largest year‐over‐year percent reduction in total state spending in the last 30 years. The impact to state programs and services of such large budget cuts would be unprecedented in modern North Carolina history.