As the tragedy of Flint reminded us all, up to date infrastructure is an essential ingredient to livable communities. Transportation, water, energy and digital communications systems need to be world class for Michigan communities to compete for talent. Our new…
Metro Minneapolis has built a diverse economy that is one of the wealthiest of any large metropolitan area in the country and has withstood deep national recessions. Median household income in the Twin Cities of $73,231 was the seventh highest…
Lets take a look at the details of California's economic resurgence since the election of Governor Jerry Brown and adoption of a significant tax increase. (Using data compiled by Don Grimes covering the period from June 2011 to June 2014.…
By and large our Minnesota policy case study has been well received. The facts are clear. It has the best economy of the Great Lakes states by far. And it also is the highest tax and spending state, with the…
Doug Drake has authored a must read report on the role lower taxes has played in shaping the Michigan economy over the last two decades. It's entitled: Michigan’s Tax Policies: Wrong Turns on the Path to Prosperity. You can download the…
We are working on our next report. A case study of Minnesota's economic growth policies. With an emphasis on tax and spending policy. These, of course, are the policy levers widely considered to influence state economic outcomes the most. In doing…
Interesting New York Times column on the recent economic fortunes of Minnesota and Wisconsin. And the correlation between that and the policies pursued by their Governors the past three years: Minnesota's progressive Mark Dayton and Wisconsin's conservative Scott Walker. The…
The Free Press published Sunday an op ed I wrote about the current Michigan economic recovery compared to that in the early Eighties. You can read it here. For those interested in more of the details that the op ed…
As we start the new year I thought it would be helpful to take a step back from the specifics I normally write about to delineate the themes that these posts are about. For the past several years––no matter who…
After the 2010 election I was asked by several publications to write about what I expected to happen to state economic policy. My basic answer was that Governor Snyder campaigned on creating Michigan 3.0 (more knowledge-based), but almost all the…