The U.S. economy needs the dynamism that renting enables as much as--if not more than--it needs the stability that ownership engenders.

Illinois is one of five states in which government liabilities outweigh assets. It is in the worst shape among states, according to a new report.

Gallup polling finds confidence in our public schools at its lowest point since Gallup starting surveying Americans about the schools in 1973. What's truly shocking is to see how funding for schools and hiring have increased robustly over that time that confidence in the schools was sinking.

Which countries naturalize the most immigrants?

Years of research tell us that low income students are prevented from attending college because they lack the skills necessary to do college-level work, not because they cannot afford it. High achieving poor students attend college at about the same rate as high achieving wealthy students, and low achieving poor students attend college at about the same rate as low achieving wealthy students.  The real differences... More

How the bursting of the housing bubble, excessive employee compensation and a bad bond offering sunk one California city.

A tsunami of tax hikes is set to hit the American people in 2013 if Congress fails to act. Here are some snapshots of how Taxmageddon affects districts around the country.

A recent, well-publicized study of U.S. household finances was described in a typical headline as “Wealth Fell 38.8% in 2007-2010.” This was “driven most strongly by a broad collapse in house prices,” as the Fed observed. But is that true? It would be true if the “wealth” in 2007 were real.

Americans' confidence in public schools is down five percentage points from last year, with 29% expressing "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in them. That establishes a new low in public school confidence from the 33% measured in Gallup's 2007 and 2008 Confidence in Institutions polls. The high was 58% the first time Gallup included public schools, in 1973.

Oklahoma leads the pack with a 74% increase in state government spending over ten years; Alaska, whose state government only grew 17% faster than its population, is at the bottom.

Pensionable ages have failed to keep pace with longevity. This comes at an increasing cost to the state. The OECD expects governments' expenditure on pensions to rise from 8.4% to 11.4% of GDP between 2010 and 2050

Most Major U.S. Daily Newspapers Could Be Dead Within Five Years.

A new study concludes that government employee pension funds have used an increasingly risky investment strategy that is not only dicier than that used by private pension funds, but also riskier than the investment approaches of public pension funds in other countries.

A policy of uncompetitive marginal rates will always lead to a weakened business community, which will in turn lead to widespread job and productivity losses.

In the typical city, town, or school district compensation costs generally range from 70 to 80 percent of the budget. Those compensation costs have soared over the years as politicians made overgenerous promises to local government workers.These concessions haven't merely resulted in big deficits; they have pushed many localities to the edge of fiscal ruin.

Unemployment rates have been consistently and substantially lower in the public sector than in the private sector. The recession and its aftermath are no exception.

Unconventional gas activity is having a dramatic impact on employment and economic growth across the U.S. lower 48 states, in terms of jobs and its contribution to gross state product.

The Estonian government reduced its spending by 11.5% in 2010, which put the nation much closer to being on a fiscally sound footing as the nation's downward economic trajectory began to reverse.With the nation's economy now recovering, both the government's spending and tax collections have been rising. Meanwhile, the Estonian economy grew by an astounding 17.3%.

Overcoming resistance from government unions to pension reform is only half the battle. Legislators in many states have crafted benefits that are as good, and in two-thirds of states actually better, than those enjoyed by workers, and that's another reason legislatures have been slow to enact meaningful reform while unfunded liabilities keep rising.

How prices and wages at McDonalds' restaurants around the world allow an economist to measure productivity in different countries.

Even with record-level income, revenues and farm land values, U.S. farmers also "harvested" more than $21 billion in subsidies last year from the pockets of U.S. taxpayers.

The  chart from Action Economics shows three different measures of compensation: average hourly earnings, the employment cost index for wages and salaries, and hourly compensation. They are all either moribund or falling.

President Obama’s economic policy can be criticized on many fronts but insufficient government spending is not one of them. The most straightforward way to assess the burden of government is by comparing total government outlays to gross domestic product (GDP). By this standard, the federal government is currently larger than at any point in post-War history.

In a further sign of a the sluggishness of the economic rebound, gross domestic product slowed in the states, according to a new report.

An alternative approach to measuring national well-being.

College-educated workers have fared relatively well during and after the Great Recession.

What we need to do is put the federal budget on a glide path to sustainability over the next four years.That includes  reforming the tax system by eliminating tax expenditures and lowering marginal rates, fixing an unreasonably expensive medical establishment, and finding a way to keep the economy going in the short run while we make needed long-run structural changes. Running downhill toward a cliff is not a promising way... More

Does the size of a country's national debt with respect to the size of its economy affect its economic growth prospects?

Canadian construction employment is surging to a record amid public works projects, energy investment and homebuilding, even as U.S. building jobs fall to the least in more than 65 years.