Normally I simply roll my eyes at the content-free screeds that come out of the Ethan Allen Institute, but this piece by Rob Roper is ever so slightly more interesting to pick apart.
I think everyone agrees on the importance of small business in VT**, but instead of the anecdotes presented, I'd like to see him do the research so he can show statistics on whether small businesses are going under at a higher rate than usual because of Shumlincare.
** After all, offering IBM $4.5M to stay is a bit...
(Disclaimer: I say this as an individual, and not as an employee of IBM SWG BA)
Roper also makes hay with the CNBC report... unfortunately, while they furnish a qualitative explanation of their methodology, they don't provide the points given in each area to each state, just the rankings in each area, so essentially they've given no justification for the individual rankings in each area, so there's no way to debate the merits of the rankings. More disturbingly, while they state that "Education and business go hand in hand," and that they " rate states based on the education level of their workforce", their actual rankings of states by workforce and education appear to be opposites. It looks like the education ranking is, indeed, a measure of the education of the workforce, while the workforce rankings are heavily weighted on the availability of cheap labor (i.e., places with high unemployment and weak unions).
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