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…
As Rick Haglund chronicled for Crain's Detroit Business, since General Motors in 1992 chose Arlington Texas over Willow Run for a motor vehicle assembly plant, Michigan’s economic development priority has been to compete for auto assembly and auto parts plants.…
The 21st Century path to prosperity––to a broad middle class––is concentrating talent. Not factory jobs. Why? Because today's mass middle class are professionals and managers who work in offices, schools and hospitals. Not production workers who work in factories. You…
More than a decade ago we asked if the state's economic development strategy worked, what state would you want Michigan to look like? Our answer was Minnesota. At the time the most prosperous state in the Great Lakes. And cold…
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell made clear in recent Congressional testimony that a strong safety net is the not the cause of the decline in labor force participation. In a terrific article about Powell's testimony, the Washington Post writes: U.S.…
Last year we published our first-ever state policy recommendations. Our motivation for doing so is a sense of urgency that across the political spectrum we need a different set of policy options. Ideas not about how we can turn the clock…
For more than a decade we have argued that the strategy for producing better economic outcomes that Michigan has adopted is not smart. Basically lower taxes and smaller government as the recipe for economic growth. As lower taxes produced less…
Conventional wisdom is that people follow jobs. So the most effective talent attraction and retention strategy, once again according to conventional wisdom, is to create jobs. If conventional wisdom were right Michigan should have reversed the net outmigration of young…
In his last post about our State Policies Matters report, Rick Haglund wrote of the much more generous safety net Minnesota has compared to Michigan. I wrote on the topic in a post entitled "The safety net and employment". Both of…
In an editorial entitled Snyder must sell how a 2nd term would overcome shortcomings of his 1st, Stephen Henderson, Detroit Free Press Editorial Page Editor, wrote: "I think he’s (Governor Snyder) premature in taking victory laps, especially with the unemployment rate…