The Cefa Brief

ComentáriosConstataçõesPerspectivasExplicativos

Arquivo

Correspondem a esses filtros: 8 textos

Textos

  • ComentárioIndustrial Policy

    A state incentive buys a location decision, not national capacity

    Plant construction spending rose from an annual rate of 75 billion dollars in 2020 to 244 billion in 2024; manufacturing output ended 2025 4.3 index points above 2020, and employment three hundred thousand below its 2023 peak. Plant takes years to run, so those readings are not yet a verdict.

  • ComentárioIndustrial Policy

    A facility count is not a pollution count

    Our environment dataset holds one number per state, the count of facilities reporting to the EPA Toxics Release Inventory. It is a measure of industrial density, the file says so plainly, and I am not going to chart it.

  • ComentárioWorkforce & Skills

    Jobs are counted where they are done, not where workers live

    In July 2026 the District of Columbia held 179.7 jobs for every 100 people in its own labour force, and Maryland held 87.9. The two numbers are measuring different things, and state rankings that put them side by side quietly mislead.

  • ComentárioRegional Development

    Four states now fund themselves on a price they do not set

    Severance is 47.2 percent of North Dakota's state tax collections and 43.9 percent of Alaska's. That is not a revenue line. It is a position in a commodity, held by a government that has to write a budget every year.

  • ComentárioRegional Development

    A house price index is not a house price

    Maine's house price index stands at 1044.11 and California's at 974.97. Each state's index is anchored at 100 in the first quarter of 1980, which means the ranking measures appreciation since then and says nothing at all about what a house costs.

  • ComentárioRural Economies

    Rural broadband went wrong at handover, not at appropriation, and the agency that signed the award should carry the account

    The money bought construction, and construction is not a connection: a rural household needs a line that works, at a price it will pay, kept working after the crews have gone. No series in this brief measures a broadband award, so the case rests on mechanism and on what the wage and price data show about the interval between the money and the work.

  • ComentárioInfrastructure

    Three flat years of housing starts is a result, not a pause

    Starts have run at 1.42, 1.37 and 1.36 million units since 2023, below where the window opened in 2020. The dollars going into construction rose through the same period, and the dollars are what gets quoted.

  • ComentárioRegional Development

    Six states raise no income tax and no two replace it the same way

    Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming levy no individual income tax. The FY2025 collections file shows what each one leans on instead, and the answer is narrower and less uniform than the shorthand suggests.