Browsing: Economic Development

America is choosing sides and Wisconsin — given the lurch to the left along its borders — can greatly benefit.

Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan are all now among America’s 17 thoroughly blue states where Democrats control both chambers of the legislature as well as the governor’s mansion. We are just one of 11 states with divided government, according to Ballotpedia, and Iowa is one of 22 states that is totally red.

The Hop cost $15.03 per ride in operating expenses, never mind the cost of rails and wires — not a dime of it paid by passengers. It’s why the Legislature is doing Milwaukee a favor when it says, “enough.”

Many of the folks proudly wearing the cardinal and white are Wisconsin transplants who are now sunburnt Florida residents. They were lured south, many of them, for short stints by the sun and the surf, but stayed for the taxes — or, actually, the lack thereof.

Wisconsin’s economy shows some worrisome signs in top-line economic output and some positive trends, such as fairly large net migration from other Midwestern states, both in people and in income. And while the Badger State’s fiscal and regulatory policy mix is closer to the norm among states than it was even a decade ago, there is a clear need for additional reforms.

Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu has introduced a plan to transition over four years to a flat 3.25% individual income tax from the current four-bracket structure with a top rate of 7.65%.

He discussed the plan in this office in the Capitol Wednesday with Badger Institute President Mike Nichols in this week’s edition of the Institute’s Free Exchange podcast.

My hope for 2023 is that every legislator in Madison will talk to somebody in their district who lost their small business or their job, and ask why.

Shouldn’t be hard to find them.

Between March of 2020 and March of 2021 — the last period of time for which I could find data — 17,364 Wisconsin establishments opened and 13,698 closed, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. Almost all of those were small businesses.

Scholars like Morris Kleiner at the University of Minnesota have found that licensing creates barriers to entry into the field, especially for low-income aspirants; reduces employment and competition; inflates prices and the wages of licensed workers; stifles innovation; and limits mobility.

Wisconsin’s per capita GDP in comparison to other Midwest states is troubling. Even more troubling: we’re trending in the wrong direction. In 2011, Wisconsin was the 4th most productive of seven Midwestern states per capita. We’re now second from the bottom.

Why would a citizenry want its government to require, by law, higher prices? At anytime, it’s a good question but, as veteran journalist Ken Wysocky points out, at a time of raging inflation, it takes on a new urgency.

State and local governments in the United States have wide latitude in setting economic policy. In the first half of the 20th century, the progressives chose an economic model for Wisconsin that called for high levels of taxation and government expenditure coupled with extensive regulation of business and labor.

As we move through 2022, the national economy is in what might best be described as a strange state.

The Badger Institute today announced partnerships with several leading research organizations and subject matter experts who will contribute to its 2022 Mandate for Madison, a policy roadmap for the governor and Legislature beginning in 2023.

Pulling cops out of public schools was a crazy idea.

Watch a forward-looking update on the life changing work of the Badger Institute

Public-private hybrids underperform and are fraught with risk 

A menu of pro-growth tax reform options from the Tax Foundation and the Badger Institute.

Federal dollars drove personal, small bankruptcies down, but Chapter 11s were flat and could spike

Protecting the environment should be a goal for individuals of every political and economic stripe

1800s utopian commune called Ceresco was established — and collapsed — just blocks from where GOP was later founded

Economic impact varies widely across Wisconsin counties