Michigan’s government gives special favors to many private companies. Lawmakers believe they can improve the state economy through selective grants, tax abatements and other bits of favoritism. They can’t. But one program stands out as being clearly set up to fail: the state’s site preparation program.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News October 1, 2024.
Family budgets are stressed by inflation, high interest rates and price increases for food, gas, housing and transportation. Which is perhaps why 14 states cut income taxes in 2024. This is not only happening in Republican-controlled states. In Connecticut, where Democrats control the state House, Senate and governor’s office, policymakers cut income tax rates. Colorado, also controlled by Democrats, reduced income taxes, property taxes and the sales tax. The state's governor, Jared Polis, even called for lower taxes in his 2024 state of the state address.
To try and protect the public, states establish licensing laws that require individuals to get certain degrees, perform a set number of training hours, pass tests and pay fees to administer the licensing regime. But there’s a trade-off. Those requirements create burdens that limit the number of people working in the licensed field.
By Molly Macek
Michigan’s students performed worse on recent state tests than they did before the pandemic, and chronic absenteeism continues to impede student achievement. The state needs novel approaches that break free from the status quo.
More than 60% of third graders lack proficiency in reading, according to the 2024 Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress. Reading proficiency rates for third and fourth graders were lower than they were for these same grades in 2023. And all grades performed worse on the state reading and math tests than they did just before the pandemic.
When we consider individuals capable of transforming political landscapes, we often think of elected officials. On the Overton Window podcast, John Tillman, CEO of the American Culture Project (ACP), emphasizes that real policy change begins with everyday American citizens.
Only two states and the District of Columbia require a license to work as an interior designer. Michigan lawmakers are trying to bring the state into that group.
House Bill 5960, sponsored by Rep. Carol Glanville, D-Walker, would require individuals helping design the layout, fixtures and furnishings of a house, school or commercial building (with exceptions) to go through an accredited interior design program, pass a test and regularly complete 12 hours of continuing education.
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is pleased to announce the addition of eight new members to its Board of Scholars. This group is made up of 53 college professors, business leaders and other experts who support and contribute to the Center’s mission. They help us improve the quality of life in Michigan with high-quality, public policy research that promotes the benefits of free markets, limited government and the rule of law.
The union representing tech employees at The New York Times is threatening to strike, just as the paper enters crunch time for coverage of the 2024 elections.
The “protracted contract negotiations” with the Times Tech Guild, a branch of 600 unionized workers at the paper, concern several financial and other contract provisions, according to Semafor. “[T]he Guild proposed a ban on scented products in break rooms, unlimited break time, and accommodations for pet bereavement, as well as mandatory trigger warnings in company meetings discussing events in the news.”
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News September 24, 2024.
A Galesburg mother says bills pending in the Michigan Legislature would hurt her family and her disabled son. Senate Bills 790 and 791 would unionize people who provide in-home care to elderly or disabled adults. The bills would enable a union to skim some of the public aid designed to support caregivers and convert it to union dues, despite the lack of benefits unionization would provide.
By Craig Orji
Rumors of even the faintest trace of radiation can spark a panic in the modern world. We assume that any exposure to any type of radioactivity, no matter how small, poses a serious cancer risk.
Our leaders encourage us in this phobia by relying on the Linear No-Threshold model—the scientific framework regulators use to dictate radiation safety standards. Although fears are understandable, especially when promoted by authoritative bodies, the warnings often exaggerate the real risks. Unnecessary alarm about radiation stands in the way of new development of CO2-free nuclear energy generation. We must confront this problem if we are serious about reducing carbon emissions.
“Personally, nuclear power makes me a bit nervous,” Ken Sasaki, a construction ministry official in Japan, told the Los Angeles Times at the height of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe. “But as a nation, I still think we need it.”
Sasaki’s patriotic instinct turned out to have a longer half-life than his personal misgivings. Although the Fukushima plant was hit by a tsunami and underwent partial meltdowns, the emergency caused no cases of radiation sickness, let alone deaths.
Few ideas are more widely derided among economists than rent control. Government caps on rents or rent increases sound appealing. Who doesn’t love lower apartment prices? But the real-world results are that government-imposed limits mean lower rent for a few, higher housing costs for everyone else, and the creation of slums.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News September 17, 2024.
It is no secret that Michigan Democrats, having gained a policymaking trifecta in the 2022 elections, were intent on repaying favors to organized labor.
Elected officials said as much. Speaking at a Michigan Education Association conference in February 2023, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer noted the union’s influence early in her political career. “Twenty-some years ago when I first ran for the state House, the first organized labor endorsement that I got was from the MEA,” the governor said. “And I’ll never forget that.”
By Jason Hayes
If Michigan legislators pass Senate Bill 275, the bill’s new “low carbon fuel standard” will increase costs for drivers by $350 per person annually. Our new report, Low Carbon, High Costs: How a Clean Fuel Standard Would Increase Gas Prices and Living Costs in Michigan, shows how the standard will impact the statewide economy, provide almost no environmental benefit, and enrich rent-seeking businesses rather than helping the people of Michigan.
American government is at its best when lawmakers debate policies to benefit the public. Elected officials, though they have different views and ideas, can come together to put the general interests of the public first and foremost. The government exists for the people and to serve the people, all 336 million of them.
When I was 25 years old, I was married with a newborn and a total annual household income of less than $35,000 (or $48,000 in 2024). But my wife and I managed to pay monthly college loans, cover our expenses, tithe and save and invest more than 25% of our money. And in the years since, we’ve never spent even half our income on essential living expenses (housing, food, transportation, technology, etc.).
On the Overton Window podcast, Angela Erickson, vice president of research at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and former senior research director at Pacific Legal Foundation, talks about the critical role of project management in the legislative fight against home equity theft. This issue affects homeowners across the United States, with devastating consequences for those who fall behind on their property taxes. Erickson gained a thorough understanding of the problem while leading a successful fight against home equity theft at Pacific Legal Foundation.
In 2012, Michigan citizens were getting set to vote on a constitutional amendment that would have enshrined the forced unionization of home caregivers into the state constitution. This ballot proposal was bankrolled by SEIU Healthcare Michigan, which had been skimming $6 million per year from caregivers and was set to do so again.
The country has fully recovered the jobs it lost during the pandemic and has been steadily growing in recent months. Michigan, meanwhile, is still falling behind.
Michigan’s added 39,000 jobs since February 2020, a 0.9% gain. That’s well below the 4.2% national average. Michigan is ranked 40th in job growth. Jobs in Idaho, the fastest growing state by this measure, are up by 12.9%.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News September 10, 2024.
The movie “Reagan” contains a scene from Ronald Reagan’s boyhood. He's seen running from three other boys, into his yard and up on the front porch where his mother meets him. The three bullies fall back, lurking down by the street.
Michigan lawmakers appear likely to pass legislation that would worsen shortages and hamper emergency response. House Bills 5895, 5896, and 5897, introduced in July by Reps. Laurie Pohutsky, D-Livonia, and Jason Hoskins, D-Southfield, accompany similar Senate legislation that aims to prevent businesses from “excessively” raising prices on essential products such as energy, lodging, or food and drinks during emergencies.
You might see trouble when you look at power outages, declining birth rates and exorbitant grocery prices. Intellectuals and environmentalists, however, see something so wonderful that they had to create a word for it: Degrowth.
In the 2014 book Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era, a collection of European thinkers presented an ideological movement that aimed to overturn the “growth paradigm” and usher in “an economy of common feast for all sober individuals.” The movement relies heavily on arcane and fustian terminology such as “dépense,” “nowtopian,” “dematerialization,” “economic disobedience,” “post-normal science,” and the use of “imaginary” as a noun, while “degrowth” itself comes from the French coinage “décroissance.”
There is no such thing as price gouging. During crises, we see price signals that help allocate scarce resources to those who need them most.
But some Michigan lawmakers are proposing new laws to prevent "price gouging" during emergencies, an approach that misinterprets how markets work. Suppressing these signals, as the proposed laws intend, will result in shortages and ultimately harm consumers.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News September 4, 2024.
Sixty percent of Michigan’s third-graders just failed the state’s reading test. Last week the state Department of Education released the results of the Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress (M-STEP). The results showed that only 39.6% of third-graders were rated proficient or above in the English Language Arts portion — a 10-year low. What’s more shocking is the collective shrug from political leaders and school officials.
