North Carolina’s heavy-fisted response to the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in a delayed economic recovery, reports from state and national economists show. Things won’t speed up for a while. The latest projections call for relatively high unemployment through next year. School closures and business restrictions led to an “unprecedented drop in economic activity,” says the...
With President Biden in the White House and Democrats in control of both houses of Congress, conservatives are bracing for a flurry of policy changes on issues they care about. Already, the Biden administration has unleashed nearly two dozen executive orders related to immigration, climate change, and gender identity. When Congress comes back into session,...
In a recent tweet, former President Barack Obama declared, “Eleven years ago today, near the bottom of the worst recession in generations, I signed the Recovery Act, paving the way for more than a decade of economic growth and job creation.” The tweet set off a debate among the cable news punditry class about which...
The call to impeach President Trump is verging on clamor among Democrats. Tom Steyer, a California billionaire, has one of the loudest voices. He takes this all personally. Steyer stars in ads for his “Need to Impeach” group calling the president a criminal. Characteristically, the president has tweeted his adversary is “wacky” and “unhinged.” The...
The Piedmont Triad Airport Authority certainly had good intentions when it voted to change the airport’s name late last year. It had some good reasons, as well. But it wasn’t such a good idea. The airport, which straddles the city limits of Greensboro and High Point, would now and forever more be called Central North...
Every few days, I see another story. They’re always the same. They start with some headline about how a company has chosen North Carolina over another state. Occasionally it’s another country. Sometimes it’s a city. They read like this: [Insert Company Name Here] chooses [North Carolina/City Name] over [other state/country] for latest expansion. It’s not just the headlines that are the same. The substance...
Here’s a new math fact for a new school year: The U.S. will launch the year at the back of the global classroom. Other countries have surged ahead, populating a global STEM pipeline that teems with talent. Yet despite hundreds of billions of dollars in annual education spending and years of top-down school reform, U.S....
Americans are upset. Some are just mildly unhappy, others seem miserable, many are plain mad. A NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll reports that more than half have believed the country is “on the wrong track” in every month since February 2005. A Pew survey reveals most of us have been “dissatisfied” with the way things are...
RALEIGH — The General Assembly’s top economist on Tuesday told legislative budget writers that the state had a “steady as we go” economy that is now faring better than most other states. “We now have reached a point where we are now surpassing the average growth of the nation as a whole,” said Barry Boardman...
Economic development is a game, and it’s played by its own special set of rules. At its core, it involves taking public money and spending it on private companies, which is also presented as a gain for the public as a whole. That’s especially true for stadiums and other facilities built for sports teams, where...
Becki Gray, John Locke Foundation vice president for outreach, discusses costs associated with renewable energy mandates. Gray offered these comments during an interview with Donna Martinez for Carolina Journal Radio (Program No. 663).
