US life expectancy went down again in 2021 after falling in 2020. According to preliminary data from the CDC, life expectancy was down to 7.61 —the lowest it has been…
Public-sector unions fought for — and won — the right to represent all employees within their bargaining unit, regardless of union membership status. Because government unions have exclusive representation rights as a…
Minnesota has made great strides in smoking reduction, especially among youth. Between 2000 and 2020, for example, cigarette use declined by 90.1 percent among high school students and 78.0 percent…
A lot has been made of the recent drop in public-school enrollments. Get ready for the demographic cliff. Enrollment in Minnesota public schools dropped each of the past two years,…
As the debate over gun control rages on, @CrimeWatchMpls has chronicled 27 local examples of failure to enforce the controls already in place. Each example illustrates the failures of our…
American Experiment’s wind energy billboards were prominently featured in a recent CNN story about the growing local opposition to wind turbine projects in rural Minnesota. I was pleasantly surprised by…
Getting licensed is expensive and time-consuming. To be a licensed cosmetologist in Minnesota, for example, one must undertake 1,550 hours of training, write three exams, and pay nearly $300 in…
The Minnesota Senate passed a huge tax cut bill today, lowering the bottom income tax rate from 5.35% to 2.8%. Slashing the bottom rate nearly in half benefits all income…
Demography is destiny. In the past year, the population of the entire United States grew by only 393,000, at the slowest rate ever recorded. But the growth (and shrinkage) was…
To effectively address public health concerns related to smoking, state, and local lawmakers should promote access to safer tobacco alternatives. Lawmakers ought to: Tax e-cigarettes more favorably compared to traditional…
In 1999, 23 percent of adults in Minnesota reported smoking a cigarette. By 2018, that number was down to just 14 percent. Similarly, in 2000, 32 percent of Minnesota high…
In other news, a journal has retracted a study that claimed that vaping kills as many as 650,000 people a year. While minor, this presents a victory against the rising…
Smoking rates have gone down precipitously since the introduction of e-cigarettes and vaping products. It is true, smoking rates were going down even before e-cigarettes. However, a lot of evidence…
In 2018, households in the lowest income decile paid an effective rate of 2.77% on tobacco taxes compared to the 0.05% paid by those in the top income decile.
On April 15, the Minnesota Department of Health released data suggesting that alcohol-related deaths rose in 2020. Generally, fully alcohol-attributed deaths, defined as “deaths that would not have happened if…
The United States contains some of the largest untapped reserves of essential metals in the world, but we aren’t producing them domestically. The video below from Kite and Key Media…
Despite the evidence showing how disastrous raising the minimum wage is, a bill proposed in the Minnesota senate seeks to drastically raise Minnesota's minimum wage effective August 2021.
Good News/Bad News in Budget Forecast The state released the February budget forecast Friday, setting the stage for negotiations on the next two-year budget. The good news? The forecast predicts…
A new bill introduced in the Minnesota Senate will allow a physician not licensed in Minnesota to provide telehealth services in Minnesota.
Data from the grid operator's website shows wind accounted for just 3.26 percent of energy demand at the time of this writing. Coal accounted for 55 percent, natural gas 24.6…
Raising the minimum wage is generally bad public policy, but current events make the 2021 minimum wage hike an especially bigger burden on Minnesota's small businesses.
These two factors, among others, should push Minnesota legislators to enact occupational licensing reform in the next legislative session: (1) the fact that Minnesota has consistently ranked among least free…
It should be common sense by now that restricting businesses and keeping healthy people locked down is not the best way to mitigate risk from the coronavirus. Yet so many…
Wind and solar special interest groups often claim that these sources of energy are an economic engine for the United States. However, as my colleague Martha has written, these sectors…