Current state Sen. Omar Fateh (DFL-Minneapolis) appears to have won the Democratic-party endorsement for Mayor of Minneapolis last night at the city’s party convention for 2025. I say “appears” because…
Digging for the roots of the rich/poor divide. In October 2024, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel…
The ideological divide between the two main parties in the state legislature is increasingly stark. This means that we actually see some rather profound debates up at the state capitol…
DFL legislators are taking on corporate landlords in a bill moving through the legislature. HF 685, and its Senate companion SF 365, were introduced last year but went nowhere. The…
Why well-intentioned government policies to help the poor often fail.
The Irish government knew that one way to get people to consume fewer plastic bags was to tax them.
Licensing boards limit competition.
With bars and restaurants linked to fewer than 2% of Covid-19 cases diagnosed since June 10th, it is not altogether surprising that a good number of Minnesotans have looked at…
Gov. Walz made himself look foolish a while back when he claimed he could control the weather. But controlling people is little easier.
Joe Exotic might be eccentric, to put it mildly, but the private ownership of animals is an important tool in species conservation and activists like Carole Baskin are wrong to…
Bernie Sanders complains about Jeff Bezos getting rich while his campaign was buying $233,000 of stuff in nine months from Amazon.
Beneath the surface Minnesota's economy shows inherent weakness.
Almost all government regulations are sold as being in the public interest. Very few of them actually are. Always ask yourself, 'cui buono?'
The Washington Post reported on Monday (June 17) that Michigan Sen. Gary Peters was gearing up to propose (in the newspaper’s words) “the creation of a new federal agency to…
Have the bosses of Target, Wal Mart, and now Amazon, have all suddenly been struck with a bout of generosity? Or that they are reacting as you would expect when…
Labor Day is celebrated by not laboring. And it is because of the vast increases in productivity in the last 250 years that we are able to do so. So…
Sen. Warren's "Accountable Capitalism Act" fundamentally misunderstands business and the free market system. That is why it is such a rotten bit of legislation. Let us hope it doesn't make…
President Trump describes his trade policies as "America First." But he could just as well say "Buy Local." After all, in terms of the economic logic, his trade war is…
Trade is one of the oldest topics in economics. It is also one of the oldest sources of economic dispute. Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776 largely to…
Recently, I had the pleasure of addressing a meeting in Mankato hosted by the Heritage Foundation on the subject of trade and its role in Minnesota's economy. I argued that,…
Imposing tariffs to solve a trade deficit is a harmful non-solution to what is a non-problem in the first place.
You may have heard recently about the federal jobs guarantee. This policy proposes guaranteeing a job to anyone who wants one, at $15 an hour plus benefits, by the simple expedient…
Rising wages are a good thing when, like Target's, they come from market forces and the competition between firms for labor.
The private sector can play a big part in alleviating the suffering of Hurricane Harvey's victims. It shouldn't be stopped from doing so by armchair moralists