Category: Poverty & income gap
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Digging Deeper on the Link Between Spending and Educational Achievement
A few days ago I posted data showing that K-12 spending in Virginia was 10.2% lower in 2014 than it was in 2008, yet National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores for Virginia students had climbed over the same period. Given the evidence that Virginia schools showed they could do more with less, I asked,…
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How Land Use Regulation Aggravates Income Inequality
The thesis advanced by economists Daniel Shoag and Peter Ganong in their paper, “Why Has Personal Income Convergence in the U.S. Declined,” is not new. Market-oriented urbanists have made the same connections for years: that land use restrictions drive up the cost of housing, and that high housing costs aggravate income inequality by throttling the flow…
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A Crimped View of Poverty
by James A. Bacon Life is hard on poor people, the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy tells us in a new special report, “The High Cost of Being Poor in Virginia.” While the number of poor Virginians declined to 11.2% in 2015, considerably below the national average, poor people still get a raw deal. They pay…
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Lottery Winnings and College Attendance
by James A. Bacon My mother was acquainted some forty years ago with a woman who lived on welfare and then won a life-changing amount of money in the lottery. As the story has been passed down to me, the woman used the money enjoy the high life, buying expensive clothes and expensive liquor, giving…
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Fighting Joe Takes on Jefferson Davis
by James A. Bacon As long as Joe Morrissey is in the public eye, politics in Richmond will never be dull. Yesterday, with his young wife at his side, Morrissey stood in front of the Jefferson Davis statue on Monument Ave. and declared that it was time to remove the sculpture. “The Jefferson Davis statue is…
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Rethinking the Relationship between the Courts and the Poor
by James A. Bacon A new law passed by the General Assembly this year waived the interest on court fines and penalties accrued by prison inmates. To get an idea of what that could mean to a felon re-entering society, consider the example of a man identified by the first name of Lacy. Of the $7,740 he…
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Cranky Not Optimistic about Woodville Elementary’s “Reconstitution”
Woodville Elementary School in Richmond is by some measures the poorest-performing school district in the school system. To be sure, the school has one of the highest percentage of economically disadvantaged students, but even then, it’s still the worst, as can be seen in the chart above. Performance that bad can’t be blamed on just the students’ socioeconomic…
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Can America Import Scandinavian-Style Socialism?
by James A. Bacon In the never-ending debate that rages in the comments section of Bacon’s Rebellion, defenders of an extensive welfare state often refer to the success of the Nordic countries — Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway — as proof that the United States “blue state” governance model can succeed. The Nordics combine high state…
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The Tricky Issue of Bad Debt and For-Profit Colleges
by James A. Bacon State higher education officials are scrambling to deal with the fallout if a federal agency votes to terminate the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS), an accrediting agency for for-profit colleges. ACICS-accredited institutions, which include Stratford University and the Bon Secours and Sentara nursing schools, among others, enroll 9,000 students in…
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Virginia Welfare Trends
I came across some interesting data on the Virginia Department of Social Services website showing the number of Virginians receiving social welfare benefits. I offer the data without commentary. — JAB
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Make It Easier for Physicians to Donate Medical Care
August “Augie” Wallmeyer, a long-time lobbyist and member of Virginia’s political class, decided in his semi-retirement years to tour the state, with special attention to rural regions that are largely unknown to those who dwell in Virginia major metropolitan areas. In compiling material for his soon-to-be-published book, “The Extremes of Virginia,” he says, he’d “met…
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Highlighting the Higher Ed Dropout Factories
by James A. Bacon The affordability crisis for American four-year colleges and universities is in part a problem of high tuition and fees, but it’s also a problem of low graduation rates, contends a new study by Third Way, a centrist think tank. “A typical four-year public college graduates only 48.3% of first-time, full-time students…
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The Cooter Controversy as Window into the New Class/Culture War
by James A. Bacon Ben Jones, the former actor and Georgia congressman, has built a small retail empire around the character Cooter he played in the “Dukes of Hazzard” television series. In addition to his Cooter’s store in Rappahannock County, Va., he has opened stores in Nashville and Gatlinburg, Tenn. But Jones has to contend with a…
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A Free Market Alternative to Payday Lenders
by James A. Bacon Most everyone recognizes that payday lenders create a poverty trap for poor and working class Virginians. While the lenders do provide a valuable service by extending short-term loans for emergency situations, the annualized interest rates are extremely high, and borrowers often find themselves rolling over their loans from month to month…
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Virginia Court Fines in 2015: $429 Million
by James A. Bacon The Legal Aid Justice Center contends that Virginia courts are perpetuating a cycle of poverty by fining people, charging them court costs, and suspending their driver’s licenses. When people lose their licenses, they find it harder to get to work. Many lose their jobs, making it impossible to pay the fines.…