Amazon recently announced the addition of 500 jobs at its Fulfillment (distribution) Center in Middletown, bringing the total of year round jobs at the site to 2,500. Is this commitment amazing?   On a macro level it is not. Over the past five years Amazon has been one of the fast growing companies in the world. Amazon currently has almost $90 billion in net sales from over 20 million products provided by 21,000 sellers. A stunning success.   Yet from a micro perspective, isn

The recovery from the 2008-2009 recession has been the longest and weakest since WWII. Typically an upswing in domestic real investment initiates a recovery. The two main components of real investment are residential housing and nonresidential (business) investment. The bursting of the housing bubble explains the extraordinarily slow recovery in housing construction but nonresidential investment has also been slow to recover.   Many economists blame the tidal wave of bailouts

The Delaware Economic and Financial Advisory Committee (DEFAC) met on September 19 th and the news isn’t encouraging.   Less than three months into the new fiscal year, the state is running an operating balance deficit of $355 million and an unencumbered cash balance of $32 million. In September of 2010 the state’s operating balance was a $47 million surplus and the unencumbered cash balance was $107 million.   Expected revenues for this fiscal year (FY 12) have been reduced

Delaware manufacturing was hit hard by the "Great Recession". Between 2007 and 2012 total manufacturing jobs dropped almost 25% and the number of manufacturing establishments in the state fell 15%. Manufacturings annual payroll in Delaware shrank by over $366 million, a drop of 21%. The total value of manufacturing shipments went down by 12%.   How did Delawares manufacturing firms cope with these seismic shifts? Some answers can be found by comparing 2007 and 2012 data on De

In his recent State of the State address the Governor asserted that the legislated expiration of both his earlier 17% increase in Delawares top personal income tax rate and the 34% increase in the average gross receipts tax rates were "unaffordable tax cuts today."   How has Delaware fared since Governor Markells first State of the State speech and proposed budget? Between January of 2009 and today Delaware has lost almost 7,000 jobs, the unemployment rate is unchanged at 6.9

As the failed gubernatorial recall in Wisconsin and other recent referendums evidence, citizens are waking up to the fact that politicians have made pension commitments for public employees that can’t be sustained. Delawareans should be equally concerned about the overuse of supplemental pay by the state. Supplemental pay consists of overtime, shift differential compensation, uniform allowances, and other such catch alls. In the private sector supplemental pay, excluding bonu

The retirement benefits of Delaware state and local government employees are at risk. The governments of both the state and New Castle County have been playing financial games with their employees pension funds, but the chickens are coming home to roost.   For more than two years groups like the Pew Center on the States and Millman have provided analysis about the serious underfunding of state and local government pension funds across the nation. This analysis has been mostly

This article was originally published Sunday, May 31 in the Delaware State News and on the website. After years of doing business as usual and putting tough spending cut decisions to the side, the General Assembly is now facing the harsh reality that yes, we do need to make spending cuts. The roughly $70 million gap in Gov. Jack A. Markell’s proposed budget versus tax revenue collection simply cannot be made up just by increasing taxes.   There is one area of the budget which

The Tax Foundation has recently released its 2015 State Business Tax Climate Index. As usual the "tax you until you leave" states of New Jersey, New York and California fall at the bottom of the rankings. Besides the "energy belt" states, it is no surprise that Florida, New Hampshire and Texas make it into the top ten best business tax climate states. Although surrounded by high tax states, Delaware ranks a competitive 14 th in business taxes. Why? As in past years, Delaware

What would you think of officials who spend tens of millions of your tax dollars every year and never check on whether citizens get what they pay for? That’s what’s happening with Delaware’s questionable program to buy jobs. The state regularly gives your tax dollars to companies that promise to create or maintain jobs here. The catch is that nobody ever checks on whether the companies keep the promises they made about jobs. A new study by the Pew Center on the States evaluat