Minnesota is a successful high tax state
Minnesota is a high tax state. Has been for decades. Minnesota is the Great Lakes States best in economic well being and demographic outcomes. Has been for decades. Michigan is not a high tax state. Its taxes per capita far lower than Minnesota’s. Minnesota is far ahead of Michigan in all well being and demographic […]
Minnesota has not lost a congressional seat in six decades
For nearly two decades we have urged Michigan economic policy makers to use Minnesota as a model. Because Minnesota across the board has the Great Lakes best economic outcomes. From low unemployment to high labor force participation to better than the nation personal income and education attainment Minnesota is far ahead of Michigan. We also […]
The case for a 60 percent EITC
A year and half ago the Michigan Future Board proposed that the state expand its Earned Income Tax Credit tenfold. Going from a 6 percent match of the federal credit to 60 percent. This is at a time, when despite unprecedented federal funding and a multi billion dollar state budget surplus, expanding the EITC was […]
Higher education attainment means more work and higher wages
The Bureau of Labor Statistics each year publishes a chart that details the unemployment rate and median weekly earnings by education attainment for those 25 and older who work full time. The data for 2121 are below. Year after year the same story. (For instance this post on the 2013 data.) Each time new data […]
Now is the time to expand Michigan’s EITC
Now is the time to expand Michigan’s EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit). Michigan’s low-wage workers need help paying the bills now. Michigan employers having trouble finding enough workers to operate and expand their enterprises also need help now. Immediate expansion of the state’s EITC is the best way of accomplishing both. Expanding Michigan’s EITC from […]
Learning from Florida: 3rd grade reading mandates don’t work
This post reruns a 2017 post by our former colleague Pat Cooney entitled the Problem with 3rd grade reading mandates. In it Pat lays out the evidence that 3rd grade reading mandates don’t work and offers an alternative that does achieve the goal of all students gaining strong literacy skills and a love of reading, […]
Michigan needs a General Motors 2030 economic development strategy
In 1979 General Motors employed 468,000 American hourly workers. 76 percent of their U.S. workforce. In 2021 General Motors employed 45,000 American hourly workers. 46 percent of their U.S. workforce. Today 24,000 work at the General Motors Global Technical Center in Warren. Their average annual salary is $120,000. Around double what their highest paid hourly […]
Florida and Michigan academic test scores
For decades many business, political and media elites have told us that Florida is the model for improving student achievement. They constantly urge Michigan to replicate former Governor Jeb Bush’s 1999 A+ Plan. Today, once again, Florida is being trumpeted by many business, political and media elites for its policies of in-person schooling during the […]
Which state economy should Michigan want to be like?
In our last post we detailed that states with employment most concentrated in production––front-line factory––jobs are all structurally low-prosperity states, with per capita income substantially below the nation’s. Those states include Michigan and Tennessee, both with per capita income twelve percent below the nation’s Tennessee matters particularly because when it was chosen by Ford for […]
Factory jobs are not the path to Michigan prosperity
In 2004 Don Grimes and I wrote A New Path to Prosperity?. The report detailed that prosperous states were no longer manufacturing-based states, but were now those over concentrated in knowledge-based industries. In an accompanying Detroit News op ed, subtitled State should quit protecting factory employment and attract high-pay, high-education industries, we summarized our findings […]