Featured Article
The Wall Street Journal
opens with an editorial today, Texas
v. Ohio,
comparing Lone Star prosperity with Buckeye decline: “Texas
has been
prospering while Ohio lags, and the reasons are instructive about what
works and what doesn’t in economic
policy.”
According to the WSJ,
“Let’s start with the fact that Texas’s
growth puts the lie to the myth that free trade costs American
jobs.” In his piece, Ohio and
NAFTA,
Buckeye Institute Scholar Dr. Joseph Zoric points out that
“As the
international economy expands and world markets become more important,
Ohio should be in a strategic position to remain competitive. This
means that the legislature needs to focus on making Ohio a more
business friendly state by formulating a tax and regulation system that
attracts rather than discourages business investment both domestically
and from abroad.”
The WSJ
notes that “…Texas is a right to work state and has
been adding jobs by
the tens of thousands.” Going all the way back to
1998 the Buckeye
Institute has tracked the costs of compulsory unionization for Ohio
jobs. In
Manufacturing jobs increase in right-to-work states, shrink in Ohio,
the author points out that “jobs increased by 493,300 from
1982 to 1998
in right-to- work states, while declining 1,063,200 in states
with
compulsory union laws. Ohio, which does not have a right-to-work law,
lost 66,900 manufacturing jobs over the same
period.”
“Ohio
Governor Ted Strickland,” the Journal writes,
“a Democrat who supports Mrs. Clinton, blames his
state’s problems on President Bush.” The Buckeye Blog
carried a posting last year Euphemism
of the Day and Other Unemployment Woes showing in
graphic form how Ohio has lagged the national economy since 2000 at the
least.
Its
author asks, “As the chart from Ohio's budget office shows,
there's
been no long and deep national recession, just the phenomenon of job
creation in Ohio coming to a complete halt. Could national policies be
so insidious to Ohio while so advantageous for the rest of the country
as to make our unemployment fund a victim of outside forces? This
hardly seems likely.”
The WSJ
also puts blame for our state’s condition on Ohio’s
tax structure:
“Ohio politicians deplore plant closings even as they impose
the third
highest corporate income tax in the country (10.5%) and the sixth
highest personal income tax (8.87%).” In
Grinding to a Halt: Ohio’s Tax Policy and its Impact on
Economic Growth,
Buckeye Institute scholar Dr. Richard Vedder opens his major study of
the costs of
Ohio’s tax burden with this assessment: “Ohio has
rapidly
increased its tax burden in the last generation, while its economic
performance has been among the poorest of the American states. These
two phenomena are closely related.”
The Journal
sums up it editorial with “The challenge for our national
economy in a
world of competition is to become more like Texas and less like
Ohio.”
Buckeye Institute President David Hansen takes a look at the challenges
Ohio creates for itself in Thoughts
on Ohio’s Climb up the Tax Burden Ladder and
finds that our state’s dwindling economic freedom translates
into
“…less ‘economic activity’
[which] is a sanitized way of saying our
climb up the tax burden ladder has meant fewer jobs, less wages for
those lucky enough to have jobs, and less opportunity for our
states’
citizens to realize the prosperity their talent and effort could afford
them elsewhere.”
Empowering
Families
By
Ken Blackwell
Across
the country, governors are rushing to pour more and more tax dollars
into state-run preschool programs. Today, all but ten states offer some
sort of taxpayer-funded preschool for some three and four year olds
-- primarily based on need.
According to the National Institute for Early Education Research, more
than $3.3 billion is spent on the nearly 950,000 children who used
these programs each year. And last year, 28 states increased government
funding by a combined 13 percent.
Reaching our youngest and most vulnerable children early with the
basics of a good education is a good idea. The problem is many states
are locking these students into dysfunctional and underperforming
public education systems just a few years early.
Buckeye Voices
Sam Staley, director of urban and land use policy for the Reason Foundation, thinks Gov. Ted Strickland's proposed $1.7 billion debt issuance is a bad economic deal for Ohioans. He explains his concerns to Buckeye Institute President David Hansen on Buckeye Voices.
Buckeye Institute in the News
In his weekly New York Sun column, Ken Blackwell discusses school choice.
Buckeye Institute President David Hansen appeared on Ohio Public TV's program State of Ohio to discuss the Governor's economic plan.
The
Buckeye Institute was mentioned in a Chicago
Tribune story on economic issues in the Ohio primary. That
story was also published in a variety of other newspapers, such as the Modesto
Bee, the Miami
Herald, the Fort
Worth Star Telegram, and the Kansas
City Star.
