Fred Barnes: Three ‘Easy’ Steps to a Trump Re-election

Fred Barnes has written a smart, welcome piece in the Weekly Standard that gives President Trump an “easy” path to win re-election in 2020, if only he can do three things. President Trump is in deeper political trouble than he thinks. And I’m not talking about whatever special counsel Robert Mueller has up his sleeve. Trump has real-life re-election trouble. The midterm results were clear about this. Millions of voters whom Trump needs to win a second term in 2020 expressed their disdain for him in the only way they could—by voting against Republicans. Those GOP candidates were his surrogates,...

How big is government in your county?

New data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis breaks county GDP down into the share derived from Private goods-producing industries, Private services-providing industries, and Government and government enterprises. Which of Minnesota's counties lead and lag in these categories?

Tempering the Alarm About Sea Level Rise

This article was written by Judith Curry, a climate scientist who was formerly a Professor and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. New report on Sea Level Rise and Climate Change challenges the alarming predictions of 21st century sea level rise. “Antarctica meltdown could double sea level rise”. “The planet could become ungovernable”. Such headlines reflect the growing alarm over sea level rise. How worried should energy companies be about sea level rise? There are 287 energy facilities in the U.S. at coastal locations that are within 4 feet of typical high-tide level. More than half of...

AMERICAN EXPERIMENT BOOK SHELF

Millennial men lagging in workforce participation

In today’s low-unemployment environment, which demographic group is below all others in labor force participation? A recent article in Bloomberg reports the surprising answer: “Millennial males remain less likely to hold down a job than the generation before them, even as women their age work at higher rates.”

“Labor Day Project” Helps Employers Rethink Recruitment Efforts

Minnesota’s accelerating talent shortage has created a mismatch in our labor market. Employers are desperate for skilled workers but are struggling to find and retain talent. Why? Why are these well-paying, very-little-debt-incurring career paths going unfilled? Dave Zdon and Dan Nyberg decided to find out for themselves. After learning about the skilled labor shortage while creating LEAN Construction training, and discussing the shortage on Labor Day in 2017, the Labor Day Project was created.

New data shows which Minnesota counties saw economic growth…or not

Today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released its prototype estimated for Gross Domestic Product by County for the years 2012 to 2015. True, they are only prototypes and cover a limited and fairly historic set of years. But they represent the first attempt to quantify this economic variable - GDP - at the county level, which is important for state economic analysis. 

Resources Are Almost 5 Times as Abundant as They Were in 1980

The following article originally appeared in Reason. Humanity is enjoying a world of increasingly cheap and ever more abundant mineral, agricultural, forestry and energy resources reports a brilliant new study, the Simon Abundance Index. This analysis by Marian Tupy,* editor of Human Progress at the Cato Institute, and Professor Gale Pooley from Brigham Young University – Hawaii uses data on 50 different commodities to track their price trajectories over the past 37 years from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. They find in real price terms their basket of commodities decreased by an average of 36.3 percent between 1980 and 2017. That’s great,...