With all the discussion surrounding migration these last many months I thought it time to revisit the issue with a specific look at North Dakota. There are many ways to evaluate this issue and I will not go through them all here in one post. These are things that need to be evaluated independently. The issue in this post is the thought that North Dakota has a problem attracting in people. As this first map reveals, that is not really the case.
I caught numerous headlines last week about the President unhappy with the Fed raising rates (here is one from CNN). I am not going to get into whether the President can or cannot criticize the Fed, and I am actually not going to get into whether he should. The question we need to ask is whether or not he is correct about economic policy.
The way my travels fell meant I got back to back posts for sales tax because of the release schedule. So the question is: what have we learned? Well if somebody can explain to me the way the city is breaking out the report and why that makes sense, I would appreciate it.
Continue reading Another tax story, July 2018 Grand Forks Sales Tax
The big month is finally here! We now have a month with sales tax numbers reflecting the increased sales tax rate for the Grand Forks. We are all so happy that we could… Alright, enough of that. The results are somewhat to be expected. From the May 2018 total June was down over $200,000. Costs go up with the sales tax increase and people and businesses adjust if they are able. The more problematic part really is that June 2018 is down almost 1% fro June 2017, more than $120,000. These are not outcomes we particularly like even though they are somewhat predictable.
Travel the last few weeks left me with little time for blogging unfortunately. I presented a paper at the Western Economic Association meetings in Vancouver and then there was some travel in the Midwest. I’ll rant about erratic internet connectivity in Canada later. I’ll be blogging tomorrow about the Midwest Big Data Hub Meetings at the UND campus held today and tomorrow, including my presentation so stay tuned.