Category: News

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By Anthony Michael, Project Manager   The United States government is on pace to enter uncharted territory with its spending. This comes after lawmakers agreed on a bipartisan spending bill that will cost $320 billion over the next decade plus an additional $98 billion in interest payments for this new debt. Tack on the $1.5…

Tim Shea Special Contributor At first glance, the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ Q4 2017 GDP projections are a bit underwhelming. Sure, +2.6 percent growth is respectable, especially when compared to the +2.2 percent average of the post-Recession era. Stacked up against the +3.1 and +3.2 percent of Q2 and Q3 respectively, though? It’s a shot…

Nicholas Samuel Director of Research Collecting information about your community is a key component to local economic development. Through business retention and expansion programs, many organizations already have a good set of data which can both help you better understand your local economy and the impact of the work you do. These are great pieces…

By Tim Shea Special Contributor Taking the stage for his first (official) State of the Union address, President Trump resumed his attack on one of the most pilloried segments of American commerce: Big Pharma. The comments were certainly a crowd pleaser, and had enough bite to at least temporarily rattle drug stocks. But is change…

By Anthony Michael, Project Manager The deadline to find a path towards citizenship for the 689,800 recipients of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program is quickly approaching – March 5th. In his State of the Union, President Trump will likely call on lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to find a…

Tim Shea Special Contributor   “Life, uh…finds a way.” Those words, immortalized by Jeff Goldblum in the 1995 cinematic masterpiece Jurassic Park, were originally intended as foreshadowing for the film’s plot. But there’s a much deeper truth to them than a mere prediction of out-of-control dinosaurs. Indeed, the recent proposals of five left-leaning states clearly…

William Mellor Vice President Just as everyone was talking about Amazon’s not-so-short shortlist, Apple entered the conversation and announced 20,000 jobs and $350 billion in contributions to the American economy over the next five years. Pretty impressive, but what do we know about Apple’s “contribution” of $350 billion? The answer is, disappointingly, not much. Let’s…

Tim Shea Special Contributor Ringing in the New Year with what might be the antithesis of true ‘roll-back’ fashion, the Walmart corporation announced last week that it would be raising it’s minimum wage for U.S. employees to $11 per hour. The pay hike comes on top of one-time bonuses ranging anywhere from $200 to $1,000…

Tim Shea Special Contributor   Ahhh, 2018. We made it. And while the future promised by Rollerball hasn’t quite come about (much to our chagrin), it seems doubtful that the coming year will be a boring one. This is especially true for the economy. So, to start the year off right, we’ll be taking a…