The economics of housing affordability The big buzzword in politics right now is “affordability.” Things aren’t affordable, the argument goes, or are becoming less so, and voters will reward the…
Chronic absenteeism (when a student is absent for 10 percent or more of the school year) has reached crisis levels, leading experts to scramble for explanations. Nationally, chronic absenteeism grew…
With the new and growing electricity demand that artificial intelligence (AI) is putting on the grid, it seems like the smart money is on nuclear to power AI. Nuclear power…
Allowing people to buy health insurance across state lines has been a key policy in Republican health reform proposals over the past 20 years. The policy goal has always been…
Fourteen states have committed to cutting their chronic absenteeism rates in half in five years, accepting the challenge to do so from a group of education advocates. Attendance Works, EdTrust,…
The phrases “cooking the books” and “Madoff miracle” appear in a New York Post headline from last month (August 10) on the state Teachers Retirement Association (TRA) pension fund. The…
It’s a sadly ironic cycle when tried and true crime suppression efforts are implemented with success only to be ignored, or worse yet rejected over time, leading to the next…
An analysis of school district data reveals the dramatic rise in homeschooling prompted by COVID-19 and school closure decisions “has largely sustained itself through the 2022-23 academic year, defying predictions…
Between 2021 and 2022, Ten states enacted individual income tax rate reductions. Six states enacted corporate income tax rate reductions. Oklahoma became the first state to make permanent the full expensing of…
Six blue-state Governors on the East Coast want you to pay for their offshore wind turbines. On September 13, 2023, Governors from Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and…
Questioning the inclusion of ideological agendas in K-12 education is not opposition to fact-based history, as teachers’ unions and activists claim. In fact, making such a claim is a distraction…
The controversial Hennepin County Attorney is much in the news. Just three months into her first term as the county’s prosecutor, Moriarty has been removed from a high-profile murder case…
A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) shows Mississippi beats Minnesota on post-COVID test score recovery. This adds to a trend of the Magnolia state…
Teachers’ unions and other school choice opponents use every excuse they can to limit empowering families with greater education choice, including that such programs don’t benefit rural areas because options…
They say “demography is destiny.” For Minnesota’s sake, let’s hope not. A headline about public education caught my eye the other day. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that: Minneapolis Public…
Minnesotans googling break-up advice peaks from October 16-23, according to a study of Google trends data from Oct. 24, 2021- Oct. 23, 2022 by HerNorm.com. The relationship website analyzed search…
Last week the White House released separate facts sheets for each state to highlight how the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will lower health care costs and improve health coverage in…
It’s probably a miracle the ban on Congressional earmarks ushered in by the GOP in 2011 lasted as long as it did. From the looks of it, members of Congress…
Minnesota students in school districts that switched to distance learning over the course of the 2020-21 school year had greater declines in math compared to their peers in school districts…
Although the USDA’s Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) is having its difficulties in Minnesota, the rest of the country is seeking more nonprofits to tap a higher federal reimbursement rate…
The article below was written by Francis Menton at the Manhattan Contrarian: As noted in my post this past Sunday, no amount of fake happy talk in the so-called “Glasgow…
Research shows that people leave and avoid high tax states. As we explain in our new report, ‘Taxes and Migration Minnesotans on the Move to Lower Tax States,’ looking at…
Minnesota’s high tax burden is the top reason more people leave the state each year than choose to move here. It’s a costly problem.
The September jobs report was disappointing. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the nation only added 194,000 jobs. Not only that but the Labor force participation rate has…