How a garbage-strewn rail yard in downtown Los Angeles portends doom for America. A dysfunctional Union Pacific rail yard filled with discarded packages and abandoned cargo epitomizes the nation’s current…
In November, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a request for comment to gather input on whether the state of Georgia’s waiver from certain requirements of the…
Minnesota’s rate returns to pre-pandemic level, but lags neighboring states. In data released for November, Nebraska again recorded the nation’s lowest unemployment rate since record-keeping began in 1976, at 1.8…
In data released for October, Nebraska records the nation’s lowest unemployment rate, at 1.9 percent. Last week, unemployment figures also were released for the state of Minnesota, showing an unemployment…
In praise of ‘Clean Slate’ laws In our 2019 report ‘Minnesota’s Workforce to 2050,’ I suggested that a “Clean Slate” law, such as those enacted in Pennsylvania and Utah, might…
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…
As parents and school leadership butt heads over school mask mandates, “some physicians and scientists have recently claimed that the best evidence shows that masks are not an effective measure…
Homeschool enrollment increased nationwide last fall as families pursued alternative learning environments to their neighborhood public school. (In Minnesota, homeschool enrollment increased by over 10,000 students compared to fall 2019,…
I was very pleased to see that my recent Star Tribune op-ed — Minnesota, we have a problem — generated not one but two day’s worth of replies. Sadly, many…
Minnesota is struggling to create new businesses. In 2019, the state ranked 49th among the 50 states and D.C. for its rate of entrepreneurship per capita. And in the last…
A new report by Goldman Sachs makes a bold claim: copper is the new oil. If this is true, it means Minnesota, which has some of the largest undeveloped copper…
In December, then president-elect Joe Biden pledged to reopen a “majority” of schools by the end of his first 100 days as president. This then shifted to a majority of…
Since 2019, 10 states have enacted major occupational licensing reforms enabling more freedom in their economies. This a good sign that states are recognizing the harmful effects that occupational licensing…
Following in the footsteps of Arizona, Missouri has become the latest state to enact a bill universally recognizing out of state licenses for professions and allowing people with criminal records…
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem stands for a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."
Compared to states that instated a shutdown, states that stayed open did not have worse health outcomes from COVID-19. In fact, most of them were among the top states with…
Unemployment is reaching high levels and states are facing an unprecedented rise in unemployment benefit claims, which will take a toll on unemployment insurance trust funds. But prepared is our…
There is no link between high tax burdens and a state being a nicer place to live or having a better education system.
The same arcane, rent seeking laws which have hindered Minnesota's craft brewers are also holding back its distilleries. It is time for them to go.
In Minnesota, groceries are fully exempt from the state’s sales tax base, but candy is treated differently than groceries and is therefore not included in the exemption.
It’s MEA week in Minnesota, the annual fall ritual in which schools statewide cancel two classroom days in deference to the annual meeting of the most powerful public employee union…
A new report finds that wind developers rely heavily on traveling workers, often from other states, and solar developers also often use out-of-state workers for construction.
The National Education Association's PAC held a contest to design a campaign 2020 poster, and union members interested in a copy of the winning poster could get one if they…
The comeback of the gray wolf in Minnesota and the rest of its range in the lower 48 states should be one of the Endangered Species Act’s greatest success stories.…