Browsing: Work

It’s common to describe capitalism as “dog-eat-dog,” but entrepreneurs win by being more appealing to others, serving them better. That surely is something we all can celebrate, especially during the ramen-for-dinner pre-profit stage, when entrepreneurs could use some encouragement.

The percentage of Wisconsin workers who are employed in the manufacturing and retail sectors has been on a steady decline over the past two decades.

Volunteers are the backbone of emergency response in Wisconsin and many communities have struggled for years to find enough of them.

A wedding barn is nothing like a tavern — especially in ways that matter for liquor laws. The Badger Institute is happy to join an effort to fill in Wisconsin lawmakers on why.

Among the bills Republicans are considering in the Legislature is one eliminating the last remnants of Wisconsin’s personal property tax. The bill, AB2, sponsored by Rep. Dan Knodl (R-Germantown), would end property taxes on everything but real estate.The move is one the Badger Institute long has advocated.

Thousands of Wisconsin renters caught a break when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention imposed a moratorium on evictions in September 2020, ostensibly to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. But Wisconsin landlords like Mike Cerns had already paid the price. Cerns estimates he lost between $60,000 and $80,000 in unpaid rental income and the cost of repairing property damage from bad tenants he could not evict. “The federal government essentially stole my property during the eviction moratorium and the courts were an accessory to the theft,” he says.

Burdensome licensing requirements hurt Wisconsin workers and make the state a less attractive place to live.  Overly onerous licensure regulation does little to promote health or safety and instead costs Wisconsinites jobs, income and the ability to care for their families. While just a start, we believe AB 203, 204 and 205 will begin to help address some of these issues.

Amid a sustained outcry from frustrated occupational license seekers and a statewide worker shortage, Wisconsin lawmakers are advancing a universal recognition licensure bill and nearly a dozen more narrowly targeted reforms that would finally help remedy longtime bureaucratic dysfunction and over-regulation.

Wisconsin’s top marginal income tax rate—the rate that matters most to the state’s economic competitiveness—remains among the highest in the country. Moving to a flat tax would substantially improve Wisconsin’s tax competitiveness. Separately, repealing the personal property tax would reduce compliance burdens for taxpayers and administrative burdens for the state. As policymakers work on the next biennial budget, each of these policy changes deserves thoughtful consideration.

Wisconsin can — and we think has to — do a lot more to compete with our neighbors. That’s where competition has to take place and with much of the rest of America. Or, watch our children and our neighbors move to states with more jobs and better wages, more opportunity and more prosperity. And those who are left behind at all levels are going to have fewer jobs, less opportunity, and more of the tax burden. People who are left behind are going to bear more of the tax burden. So, to us, the choice would seem clear.

The Badger Institute published new research by a nationally noted economist finding that a single-rate reform of Wisconsin’s individual income tax would yield substantial benefits to everyone in the state by spurring faster economic growth, more job options and more investment.

Estimates show moving to a flat individual income tax in Wisconsin could generate nearly $7.2 billion in additional GDP, $614 million in new investment, and nearly 24,000 additional jobs over the next five years.

Unions — and the progressives looking to make them again mandatory in Wisconsin — don’t get markets. They don’t get that in a market, a seller and a buyer or an employer and an employee must both benefit or no future deals happen. Instead, the game is zero sum, a fight for morsels, and only the bigger fist wins.

Dogged by a huge backlog for occupational licenses and complaints by applicants and lawmakers, Wisconsin’s Department of Safety and Professional Services must submit to an audit of its operations.

An all-Republican majority of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted Tuesday to direct the Legislative Audit Bureau to examine an agency that fields between 5,000 and 10,000 calls every week. The LAB website projects the expected release of the audit in fall 2023. 

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.

The Wisconsin Assembly on Thursday voted to ask voters in this spring’s elections whether able-bodied childless adults should have to seek work in order to go on receiving taxpayer-funded benefits, an idea the Badger Institute long has championed.

The Badger Institute’s visiting fellow, Eloise Anderson, explains why men who have been left behind are vital to a new civil society.

What’s the big deal that Scott Walker didn’t campaign on curbing union power?

Of the convicted criminals Wisconsin imprisons, most will serve a sentence and be released. Then what?

Eight states, including neighboring Minnesota and Michigan, have authorized dental therapist programs statewide. Dental therapists are mid-level providers who perform preventive, restorative and intermediate restorative procedures.