By Ben Forman

MassINC has argued that the benefits of economic development spending should be quantifiable in order to justify taxpayer investment. But we recognize that this is challenging work.

By Mary Beth Meehan

American cities don’t die; they change. Global forces push and pull – industries move and take their jobs with them, economies shift focus, wars around the globe drive people from their homes – and our hometowns struggle to keep their balance.

An interview with Mark Erlich, Executive Secretary-Treasurer, New England Council of Carpenters 

"To understand what’s ahead for the American worker, you have to look back on what’s been happening in this country for the last three decades. From my years in the labor movement and certainly in my lifetime, I’ve watched us become a different kind of society with a different set of values. Over the last 30 years, there has been an unprecedented growth in income inequality.  Eighty percent of Americans have seen their wages diminish or stagnate.  Now it takes two wage earners in a family to make the equivalent of what one used to earn. Not only is this alarming on its own but it represents a dramatic turn in a society that was on a trajectory to greater parity after World War II."