School aged children will be walking out of classrooms tomorrow morning all over Minnesota and the nation to “protest” in favor of new gun-control laws. My suggestion if your school…
If you tax something you get less of it. As it is for cigarettes, so it is for estates. Evidence suggests that Minnesota's estate tax incentivises people to leave the…
Minnesota has a long history of mining iron ore, which continues to this day. In fact, nearly 75 percent of the iron ore produced in the United States is mined…
Minnesota serves as a crucial link between the Pacific Northwest and Chicago; BNSF moves more than 140,000 carloads of Minnesota corn, wheat, soybeans and other agricultural products, as well as…
As Minnesota's population ages, immigrant workers could be one source of continued per capita growth. But that depends on a couple of things.
Last Thursday, the Senate’s E-12 Education Policy Committee held a hearing on proposed legislation that would require public schools to strive for academic balance when teaching controversial political subjects. I…
Metier is an experiential learning program that teaches students in grades 5 through 8 to build a life and career around “flow,” defined as the happiest state wherein you feel…
Minnesotans’ electric bills have soared in the last decade, due to aggressive renewable energy mandates forcing a massive build-out of wind generation capacity. Yet no one did a comprehensive analysis…
A round-up of the last week’s economic news stories in Minnesota
January's data saw the continuation of a trend. Minnesota's job growth is being driven by relatively low productivity jobs.
In forced-dues states like Minnesota, teachers and cops are forced to fund the political agenda of their union. So for example, in 2016, the teachers’ union and AFSCME (both AFL-CIO…
Yesterday, the Minnesota Senate’s E-12 Finance Committee held a three-hour hearing on proposed legislation to require academic balance in the public schools. The push for this legislation arises out of…
Today the Star Tribune reported that hundreds of students “walked out” of their schools to protest against guns and school shootings at the Capitol in St. Paul: The article itself…
Low pay is a symptom of low productivity. This is the real problem to solve if we want to raise wages.
Reasonable people can disagree about the wisdom of allowing public employees to legally strike, especially when union members are sitting on the school board. If strikes are illegal, as we…
Minimum wage advocates often argue that the money to cover these higher wages will just come out of the pockets of 'the rich'. The recent Citizens League report suggests that,…
Imposing tariffs to solve a trade deficit is a harmful non-solution to what is a non-problem in the first place.
The Teachers Retirement Association (TRA) told legislators last month that it wanted to drop its assumed rate of return from 8.5% to 7.5%. TRA is the last fund in the…
Hard to believe that’s it’s already been about a year since the Dakota Access Pipeline protests petered out next door in North Dakota. Instead of coddling activists who trashed the…
Hard-working public employees are forced to pay money to a government union as a pre-condition of employment. The decision to financially support a union is a decision that employees should…
Many Edina students, parents, teachers and staff have expressed their appreciation for our efforts to reform the politicized Edina school system. This email, from an Edina High School student, is…
When people talk about 'winners' and 'losers' in trade, they are usually wrong. To see why, think of baseball cards.
One line from the Legislative Auditor’s critical report tells you everything you need to know about the Minnesota Investment Fund (MIF), a taxpayer-funded program under the Minnesota Department of Employment…
The current issue of the New Labor Forum includes a long column by Max Fraser, a left-winger who writes for publications like the Nation and Dissent and, improbably, is associated…