Minnesota’s economic news, w/e 3/27/20

A round-up of the last week’s economic news stories in Minnesota.

Questions for Authorities in Greater Minnesota Over Stay-at-Home Order

The clock on Governor Walz’s two-week stay-at-home order starts ticking at midnight tonight. But elected officials and law enforcement authorities in rural Minnesota say they’ve already been getting plenty of questions from citizens about how it will work. The issue dominated the latest virtual meeting of the Martin County Board of Commissioners covered by the Sentinel in Fairmont, including the issue of enforcement. “As far as the stay-at-home order from the governor, it’s a non-enforceable order, so if people go out to get groceries, pick up medications or go to the doctor, there’s nothing we can do with law enforcement...

Map: State education systems respond to coronavirus

Click on the map produced by Excel in Ed for state-by-state updates on actions education systems have taken in response to COVID-19. 

AMERICAN EXPERIMENT BOOK SHELF

Federal Coronavirus Spending Excludes Renewable Energy Subsidies, A Benefit to All Americans

Earlier this week, American Experiment wrote about how some Democratic members of the U.S. House and Senate had opposed the proposed pandemic relief spending bill because did not include more subsidies for the wind and solar industry, among other items on the liberal wish list that are totally irrelevant to the virus outbreak. Thankfully, attempts to insert these pork-barrel projects into the bill failed, which benefits all Americans by not providing even more incentives for unreliable, weather-dependent resources that increase the cost of providing electricity to everyone. It wasn’t due to lack of trying, though. According to an article in...

America needs masks, but federal regulations are getting in the way

In the case of N95 masks, regulations which are supposed to safeguard public health turn out to be obstacles in a public health crisis.  

Catholic schools work to overcome challenges from Coronavirus

We have been following and sharing updates on how the coronavirus has impacted public schools, but other educational institutions have been dealt a massive blow by COVID-19 as well.

Certificate of Need (CON) laws in Healthcare do not make sense

This is the logic behind CON laws: Hospitals incur fixed costs, and if they have too much capacity which they cannot fill they will charger higher costs for used beds in order to cover those high costs, therefore driving up costs. CON laws are there to prevent such rise in costs.Research has however shown however that CON laws do not lead to low costs. Findings show that controlling for other factors "CON laws seem to limit access to healthcare, fail to increase the quality of care, and contribute to higher costs."