Otterblog

Much of the mail (both snail and e) that we’ve received during the past week has been tied to our reporting on a recent study about the economic clout of Hispanics in North Carolina. It was put out by the Kenan Institute at the University of North Carolina. The report’s findings aren’t really surprising. They’re essentially two-fold, first that Hispanics are a huge and growing part of the economy, and second, that the cost to governments to provide services is tremendous and may by some estimates exceed the taxes that Hispanics pay to the state. Several readers have been concerned over that second point. They felt that we downplayed that information. I don’t think so. We gave it less attention, but that’s different from downplaying. You can do all sorts of comparisons with numbers, and I’m not sure we want to get into cost-benefit analyses with various ethnic groups. It’s a slippery slope.