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.”
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.
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%.
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.
People should notice that the candidates running to represent them are not promising to do much. More than in the past, this election doesn’t seem to be about policy. Yet candidates are taking tough stances. Interest groups have gotten candidates to state their views on the issues that interest groups care about. And voters will never be told how much their candidates have deferred their judgment to special interests.
Michigan’s long-delayed distribution of federal funds for promoting internet access is likely to be delayed again. Congress in its 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act economic stimulus legislation authorized more than $42 billion in federal funding for increasing internet access, of which $1.5 billion was allocated to Michigan. So far, not a single Michigan household or business has been connected to the internet as a result of the program.
Governments at the local, state and federal levels run a vast number of anti-poverty programs, but poverty rates remain high. The two political parties rarely consider solutions that do not involve spending more public money. Our leaders would be better off eliminating barriers to work rather than fussing over finances, according to Josh Bandoch, head of policy at the Illinois Policy Institute.
The European Union’s process-based regulations on genetically modified organisms might seem to stem from a reasonable concern for public safety. Special interests and regulators have pointed to the supposedly unnatural process of genetic modification since GMOs began to see widespread use in the early 1990s. They warn about the potential or unknown risks of genetically modified foods and claim these organisms damage the natural environment. Activists also predict economic harm as farms consolidate and small farmers get squeezed out.
There’s an adage that whatever you tax more, you get less of. Michigan is learning this lesson the hard way as strong income earners flee the state.
The financial information website SmartAsset last week published the results of its 2024 study, “Where High-Earning Households Are Moving.” Spoiler alert: they’re not moving to Michigan.
America’s adversarial political process is supposed to produce good results. The candidates offer different opinions, visions and proposals. The person with the most compelling ideas wins office and gets to enact his or her agenda.
Yet this is not how the political debate is working. Instead, candidates take advantage of a quirk in the adversarial process. Politicians don’t need to have the best ideas and most persuasive points. Candidates can also win if voters think it is unfathomable to vote for the person on the other side.
Workers deserve the right to choose who best represents them in the workplace. This Labor Day, public sector workers are on the verge of being able to make that choice for the first time in decades.
For years, unions have denied dissenting workers the right to completely dissociate from union representation. Workers who would prefer to have nothing to do with the union are still forced to accept the contract it negotiates with their employer. This problem results from a principle of labor law known as exclusive representation.
Academic economists have useful ideas about how to make the world better off. The papers they write are important but aren’t going to make the best seller list. Nor are they targeted at persuading enough people to generate the political popularity necessary for legislative change. This is where the economist Bryan Caplan steps in. His latest book, Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation, provides a more accessible take on the subject and puts it into a graphic novel. I discuss this work with him on the Overton Window podcast.
