Vermont Tiger

Deconstructing Revenues

by Art Woolf

The state of Vermont released its monthly revenue report for the fiscal year through March and the bottom line, according to Administration Secretary Jeb Spaulding, is that

“We are pleased that, after three consecutive below target months for the General Fund, March was a positive one.

Reading the detail tells us something about how Vermonters are doing, and they're doing pretty well, income-wise. Personal income tax collections for the year to date  are up 8.2% from a year ago, which means people's incomes are up about that much.   

And Vermonters are spending some of that income on stuff, or at least on stuff that we pay sales tax on (up 5.7%).   But it wasn't a good ski season, as spending on hotels and at restaurants was up a meager 2.8%.   Rather than buying food, it appears that Vermonters (and those tourists who did come)  spent their hard-earned money on alcohol at bars and taverns (spending up 9.2%).    And they must have walked to those bars instead of driving since gas tax revenues were down 2.4%.

 

No More Harps in Heaven

Earl Scruggs will soon have those angels picking the banjo. 

But even angels will not pick as sweet as he.

Cats vs Heels

The UVM men's basketball team won, decisively, last night, shutting down Lamar 71-59, and thereby playing themselves into the NCAA tournament.

So much for the good news.

On Friday, UVM will play North Carolina, a team which has been picked to win the whole thing by many bracket junkies, to include President Obama. That pick, however, was likely influenced by politics.  North Carolina is one of those "battleground states" (the language is already getting tedious, and the campaign hasn't even started yet) and also where the Democrats will be holding their national convention. President Obama needs to get right and stay right with North Carolina, where people care about basketball even to excess.

No way the President was picking Kentucky, the other pre-tournament favorite.  Red State, so nothing for him there. 

Nobody is picking UVM.  But the way things have been going, lately, for President Obama, who knows?  The price of gas goes up ... the Tarheels go down ...

Nah. Won't happen. But congratulations to the Catamounts on a good season and a fine finish.

 

Around the Web

by Art Woolf

My weekly look at interesting sites, economic and otherwise, on the web.

1.  Tim Harford is great fan of failure.  In large part it is what differentiates government activities from the private sector.  In the private sector, failure often occurs and is a key way market signals work.  In the government sector, failure is rarely recognized.  He has a nice three minute video with some nice quotes on failure and adaptability (his latest book is Adapt:  Why Success Always Starts With Faiilure). 

2.  CBS Sunday Morning had a nice four-minute piece on the Danby (Vermont) marble quarry, which has provided much of the marble for Washington DC government buildings.  The focus of the piece is on the marble used for headstones for the nation's veteran cemeteries. 

3.  Most of the policy focus today is on getting more high school graduates to go to college.  In the Chronicle of Higher Education economist Alex Tabarrok argues that too many high school graduates are going to college. 

FLOTUS on Vacation

Skiing in Aspen.  Probably couldn't find a time share at Killington.

Around the Web

by Art Woolf

My weekly look at interesting sites, economic and otherwise, on the web.

1. An animated video, from the US Department of Energy, showing the rapid evolution of oil and gas wells in the Baaken formation in North Dakota and Montana.  Be sure to click on the arrow and watch.  North Dakota, by the way, will be the second largest oil producer in the U.S. within a few months.  It produces more oil than Iraq or Venezuela and will soon produce more than Nigeria. 

2.  President Obama has declared war, sort of, on the escalating cost of higher education.   Marc Eisner, a political scientist at Wesleyan College, tries to explain one of the reasons tuitions are rising by comparing his college life in the 1970s at the University of Wisconsin, with college life today:

I never saw an advisor. The course catalog would be delivered in bulk to Memorial Union (and other locations) and the university assumed that their adult students could make their own decisions about courses, the coherence of their schedules, and the number of courses they wanted to take in any given semester (if it took you longer to graduate than the standard four years, it was your problem). The one year I lived in university housing (a cooperative), I slept in a bunk bed in a cement block room with one window.  The food was rather bland—lots of starch, little in the way of protein—and you had your choice of milk or water (things were a little better in the dorms, but not much). Since no one owned televisions, if you wanted to watch TV you went to a commons area or hit a bar. If you wanted to exercise, you went to a gym that was equipped with an assortment of old steel benches, iron weights, punching bags, and stationary bikes.

...In short, the college experience today is far different than in was a generation ago. Whether it is a net improvement depends on your perspective, I suppose (I am skeptical, and tend to embrace the more Spartan days of the past when students were treated like adults instead of infantilized and resources were lavished on the library instead of the co-curriculum).

There is a lot of truth to that.

3. Allen Sanderson, an economist at the University of Chicago, gives his thoughts on how numbers can be used to manipulate conclusions.  Examples:

Tax & Frisk Bowl

... Can the Giants front-four get to Brady and—as the fastidious football locution puts it—'disrupt his timing?'  That is to say...pound him into wet, pink pulp.

Can't seem to help myself.  I not only keep watching (and making losing bets) but I keep writing about it, too.

here, a few years ago, and now here:

Enjoy the game.

gn

Friday Night Smites

Howard Dean: still partisan after all these years

by David Cornwall

"I don’t mean to sound partisan, but....."

But in the end, it was too enticing to resist for Howard Dean, a former governor of Vermont, a former presidential aspirant in 2004 and a former Democratic Party chairman.

Dean stopped by the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester last Friday night, to help spread the word about a new book, Do the Impossible, on his 2004 Presidential campaign.  The book was written by Kate O’Connor, one of his key staffers from that effort, and published by the bookstore’s own Shire Press. The tale is a day-to-day recounting of what went on both behind-the-scenes and elsewhere on the campaign trail nearly eight years ago.

The last impression many folks have of Mr. Dean was of him screaming semi-hysterically into a microphone after the Iowa caucuses that year. The "Dean scream" became some kind of iconic moment, although, in fairness, it was a case of the media ripping things a little out of context (shocking, if true). As Mr. Dean himself explained it Friday night, he was trying to make himself heard in a large and noisy room, and all the cameras caught was that seemingly bizarre gesticulating. No big deal. No one thought anything about it at the time, until the cable news guys started showing that video clip over and over.

Whatever.

Four Wheel Frost

Those who watched the NFL Playoffs last weekend – Vermonters, especially – were probably a little taken aback to see Robert Frost pitching Jeep Wranglers.  Well, poetry is a tough racket and you need something on the side to pay the bills.

Gregg Easterbrook's Tuesday Morning Quarterback is essential reading for serious NFL fans and always contains some gem that goes beyond the sidelines.  Easterbrook is an extremely versatile writer.

The Jeep ad inspired him to verse, capturing Frost's rhythms but changing the words a bit to make them more appropriate the subject matter.

These woods are lovely, dark and deep
And quoting a public-domain poem is cheap.
But I have promises to keep.
After all, I signed a contract with Jeep.

 

 

Around the web

by Art Woolf

My  weekly look at interesting sites, economic and otherwise, on the web.

1.  The wealth gap, Congressional verion, via the Washington Post. 

When Myers entered Congress, in 1975, it wasn’t nearly so unusual for a person with few assets besides a home to win and serve in Congress. Though lawmakers on Capitol Hill have long been more prosperous than other Americans, others of that time included a barber, a pipe fitter and a house painter. A handful had even organized into what was called the “Blue Collar Caucus.”

But the financial gap between Americans and their representatives in Congress has widened considerably since then, according to an analysis of financial disclosures by The Washington Post.

Between 1984 and 2009, the median net worth of a member of the House more than doubled, according to the analysis of financial disclosures, from $280,000 to $725,000 in inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars, excluding home ­equity.

2.  New Year's around the world.   Nice photos from The Atlantic.  I think my favorite is the last one, but there's no way I would have paid for a seat on the plane.