States and Federal Aid

The graph below is from taxfoundation.org and shows the degree to which states rely on Federal aid.  The post says:

Mississippi, for instance, relied on federal assistance for 42.9 percent of its revenue in FY 2013, the largest share in the country. Also on the high end are Louisiana (41.9 percent), Tennessee (39.5 percent), South Dakota (39.0 percent), and Missouri (38.2 percent). States with heavy reliance on federal grants-in-aid tend to have a combination of modest tax collections (reducing the denominator) and sizable low income populations (correlating with greater per capita reliance on Medicaid, housing assistance, and other low income and poverty relief programming, and with a greater share of federal education support).

Maybe a New Year will bring a new result

I suppose it is too much to expect that in an election year (why would it be different??) some sanity would come back to fiscal policy.  That is, with all the GOP candidates promising to cut taxes, .... and continue to ignore the issues like infrastructure, there probably isn't much chance of a change.  The graph below ought to cause at least a reconsideration.  The graph is "Net Government Investment as a percentage of Net Domestic Product (annual data), 1959-2014" and is from moneyandbanking.com.  One can hope.  The authors say:

Switzerland is an amazing place, not least the skiing, the chocolate, and the punctual trains. The latter is part of the country’s exquisitely maintained infrastructure: there are no potholes, and no deferred maintenance of train tracks, tunnels, airports, or public buildings. Few countries go so far, but many can take a lesson: it pays to maintain infrastructure at least so that it doesn’t fail.

Data on Millennials and economic progress

From Zillow we have the following data:

"Some people are born lucky, lucky enough to have parents able to help finance their higher education. And some people are doubly lucky, lucky enough to have parents able to help finance both their higher education and a down payment to buy a home."  That's the way Zillow puts it.  Economists have known this for a long time, but the rest of us have to learn it.  I still encounter the myth of the "self-made person" on a daily basis.

US Homicide Rates

From Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight:

Deadliest jobs (from the BLS)

CEO Pay

The latest data on CEO Pay (from the Economic Policy Institute):

The continued rise of adjuncts in higher education

The following is from the Wall Street Journal (see here)