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Hope you had a good weekend, because it sure is a gloomy Monday: rainy skies, talk of a double-dip recession, and now a dubious accolade for our intractable state budget. According to the number crunchers at the Daily Beast, Rhode Island is the state with the highest debt to GDP ratio in all the country.
The state spends more than it produces by a hefty 21.54 percent. And although our actual debt - estimated at just over $10 billion for 2010 - is piddling compared to second runner up Massachusetts, which owes $79 billion, we're spending it faster than we can make it almost 1 percent faster than our neighbors. That's because, with a gross domestic product in 2009 of only $46.5 billion, we just don't produce enough to sustain our government spending.
There's a lot of pain for New England in the list, with Connecticut coming fourth, Vermont sixth and New Hampshire seventh. Maine's in there too, at no. 11, although with a debt to GDP rate of 10.77 percent, they have a similarly sized economy but are about half as spendthrift as we.
The piece - cheerfully titled "The Most Screwed States" - details some of the cuts being made around the country to reduce deficits: libraries, health programs, higher ed, aid for at-risk children. It's hard to know how cuts could be more depressingly short-sighted.
So who's faring best? Tennessee, with a debt ratio of 1.95 percent. On the chopping board there is a fish hatchery. Imagine a world in which Rhode Island had only to trim pork-barrel spending to balance its books? And then of course there's Alaska, which may rank third with a ratio of 18.5 percent, but is avoiding social welfare cuts by relying on its oil riches. Maybe even Levi Johnston can make a go of balancing municipal books there. (A friend lives in Wasilla, and no, the Palins are not locally popular. At all. But we should have their problems.)