Late in the day but never last in your heart, it's time for the latest from the research front on issues from parole to China trade.
- Eye on Katrina, Three Years Later. As of this month, the city of New Orleans has recovered 73 percent of its pre-Katrina households and an astonishing 90 percent of its sales tax revenues, according to the Brooking Institute's Third Annual New Orleans Index. The greater region now houses 87 percent of its pre-storm population and has recovered 86 percent of its jobs and 76 percent of its public and private school students. - RS
- Impacts of Parole. In 2006, there were some 800,000 people on parole from prison. A new report by the Urban Institute investigates the effects of parole on former prisoners and offers some interesting findings. Combining national stats with the testimonies of 740 male parolees, the report shows that though parole can lead to increased employment and less substance abuse, it has almost no effect on re-arrest rates. - AR
- Drink it, don't drive with it. An American Enterprise Institute report on ethanol enumerates the negative impacts a transition to biofuels would have, both environmentally and geopolitically. It argues that a large-scale shift from gasoline-fueled vehicles to ones run by corn ethanol would damage the ozone layer, decrease air and water quality, create water scarcity issues, take up an unreasonably large fraction of America's farmland, and not make a dent in greenhouse gas emissions. Put simply, an ethanol economy would not increase American energy independence in any meaningful way. - DM
- The costs of trade. The Economic Policy Institute has some disturbing numbers on domestic unemployment thanks to trade with China: Between 2001 and 2007, 2.3 million jobs were lost due to trade, with each worker losing $8,146 per year on average. Now, as China moves away from low-tech products like shoes, clothing, and simple electronic devices to more complicated ones like computers and cars, the affects of trade are being felt up the educational ladder. Of the 2.3 million jobs lost, 31 percent displaced workers had a college degree or better, while about 30 percent had only a high school degree . - DS
--TAP Staff
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