On February 16, Rep. Hal Colston, (D-Winooski) gave the daily devotional on the virtual floor of the Vermont House. Afterward, Rep. Scott Beck (R-St. Johnsbury) took the unusual action of requesting that it be put in the House journal. The devotional is a diatribe of all things Colston considers racist.

Bernie Sanders has made it this year’s great cause to increase the federal minimum wage to $15. But regulatory law expert Mario Loyola writes that “Americans don’t fully understand … the many ways it hurts the very people it’s supposed to help. As the National Bureau of Economic Research concludes  “The data show that increasing the minimum wage results in a significant net increase in unemployment. The increase is particularly pronounced among young adults — and most pronounced of all among low-skilled workers.

Five years ago I wrote a column explaining the Flint Michigan lead-polluted city drinking water disaster. At the root of it was a government project to build a new water supply system from Lake Michigan, sold as a jobs creation program for the distressed industrial city.

President Biden did a pretty good job on his inaugural address.  His theme was unity, and his speechwriters decorated it with lots of good words like hope, truth, honor, respect, tolerance, goodness, faith, and of course democracy. He also listed half a dozen of the great causes he intends to address, which left me a bit apprehensive.

The Public Assets Institute (PAI) recently released a report, “The State of Working Vermont 2020.” It provides a good overall picture of the economic stagnation Vermont has experienced over the past several decades.

For 40 years, Vermont created an average of 4,700 new jobs a year. The best year, 1978, saw an increase of more than 12,000 new jobs. But after the turn of the century, job growth flattened. Vermont employers averaged fewer than 1,000 new jobs a year between 2000 and 2019. The high point was 2012, when 3,800 jobs were added.

After the Detroit riots following the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, an umbrella organization of racial justice groups called Will Breathe Detroit sued the city last August, arguing that its police officers repeatedly responded to protesters with violence.

2020 was an unprecedented year. From Covid-19 outbreaks, to entire swaths of the economy shut down, to peaceful/violent protests, we saw a little bit of everything. And while their may seem to be more bad news than good this year, the tail end of 2020 has brought hope with a Covid-19 vaccine. As we yearn to turn the calendar to January, it may help us to reflect on the most meaningful cultural and political events of 2020, to make us wiser for the future decisions we will make in 2021. 

Here are the top 10 posts of 2020 from the EAI Blog. We look forward to connecting with you on the Blog in 2021!

The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan offered an important thought in a column last week. She wrote about some research finding “unexpected gifts of the pandemic..."

I was saddened to learn this month of the death of one of my favorite economists, Dr.  Walter Williams of George Mason University.

Does Facebook treat content from some groups unfairly? It depends on how you define “unfair.” If you mean, “making a rigid effort to constrict any non-politically correct news,” that I would say no.