Suburban conventional wisdom about Memphis is that it is full of poor people, but the times, they are a-changin’. It’s the suburbs’ poverty rates that produce headlines like, “Memphis #1 in poverty.” Actually, Memphis isn’t...
Read MoreWe can only hope that members of the Memphis Police union are more accurate on the shooting range than they are in their lobbying. Once again this year, the union is passing out pamphlets criticizing the City of Memphis budget...
Read MoreMost cities have routes through them that allow drivers to convince themselves that all is well. In post-Katrina New Orleans, driving St. Charles Avenue or Magazine Street to the French Quarter, it was possible to imagine that...
Read MoreWho knew that when we wrote this posts in May 10, 2010, that we’d be looking back today to that time as the good old days? The Tennessee Legislature, now recognized widely as the worst state legislature in the nation,...
Read MoreWe’ve written often about the dangers of Memphis blindly pursuing cheapness as our chief competitive strategy for the future. We’ve seen it play out in our economic development behavior for two decades as we watched cities boom...
Read MoreIt has been just over six years ago that former Shelby County Commissioner John Willingham laid out a plan for a payroll privilege tax that would eliminate the 2.25% local option sales tax, eliminate the wheel tax, slice the...
Read MoreAll cities are working hard to answer challenges that face them, but the trick is to make sure the right questions are asked in the first place. Last month, People First, the human capital development campaign of the Memphis...
Read MoreAlthough it’s not the most politically palatable talking point for elected officials, it is nevertheless inarguable that there is a point at which budget cuts and tax reductions become enemies of the government’s mission itself:...
Read MoreSo why do multi-national corporations taking in tens of billions of dollars a year in revenues demand incentives that shift their tax burdens over to homeowners? Because they can. That’s being proven out yet again as...
Read MoreMemphis is struggling, our challenges are daunting, and maybe, just maybe, we should acknowledge those facts in making a pitch for the 25-34 year-old college-educated talent that we need to compete in today’s economy. It’s a...
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by Bill Day. Memphian Bill Day is two-time winner of the RFK Journalism Award in Cartooning. His cartoons are syndicated internationally by Cagle Cartoons. Cartoons Archive →