In the complicated world of economic development, one of the biggest things St. Louis has going for it is the simple fact that living here is cheap. A new report out this morning illustrates just how cheap. The folks over at the Center for Regional Economic Competitiveness, an economic development thinktank in Virginia, crunched cost of living data for more than 300 metro areas around the U.S. What they found - surprise, surprise - is that Manhattan is the most expensive place to live in the U.S., with its basket of housing, energy, transportation, health care and other costs there coming out at more than two-and-one-fourths the national average. The cheapest? Harlingen, Texas, with Memphis taking second place. CREC kindly passed along their data, so ... Continue reading →
No matter how much oil the U.S. produces domestically, we'll still face huge swings in the price of gasoline. That's because there's a single, global price for oil. This chart from a new CBO report shows gas prices over time in Canada, Japan and the U.S. Canada produces all of its own oil; Japan imports all of its oil; and the U.S. produces some and imports some. Yet all three countries show the same wide swings in gas prices. (Absolute price differences are driven by different levels of taxes and fees in the different countries.) Of course, more U.S. drilling could increase the global supply of oil, lowering the global price a bit for everyone. But more likely, according to the report, is that other ... Continue reading →
Suzanne DeChillo/The New York TimesAuditors found that the government’s cost estimate for decommissioning the Indian Point 3 reactor, right, in Buchanan, N.Y., was just 57 percent of the owner’s projection.The government does a poor job of estimating what it will cost to tear down a nuclear reactor, Congressional auditors say, and it may not be overseeing plant owners well enough to assure that they set aside enough money to do the job.For a study it plans to issue on Monday, the Government Accountability Office scrutinized 12 of the nation’s 104 power reactors and found that for 5 of them, the decommissioning cost calculated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was 76 percent or less of what the reactor’s owner thought would be needed.The most striking example ... Continue reading →
