Michigan’s job growth has been weak during the Whitmer administration. Employment is up by 41,255 people, a 0.9% increase. That’s the 13th-worst among the states. The national average is 4.4%.
With 4.7 million people employed in the state, a 41,255-person increase over six years is not much. The state offered the automakers and battery manufacturers companies $1.45 billion in taxpayer money to projects that pledged to create 14,800 jobs. That sounds like subsidies should be able to make a dent in Michigan’s trends.
In just the past few months, multiple stories have emerged of local government restrictions holding residents back in Bay City, Michigan. As reported by Bay City Times:
Rigid parking requirements
Local business owner Lyndsay Edmonds faced months of delays trying to open a small bed and breakfast. She had to get approval from three different city departments (planning, zoning and historical commission) in order to seek multiple variances. Why? Because of the city’s rigid parking requirements. Bay City has parking minimums she can’t comply with. The city thinks it knows better than businesses and entrepreneurs about how many parking spots their own establishment needs.
Traverse City Light & Power’s troubled internet service provider business continues to be a source of financial distress for the city. At a recent meeting, the Traverse City City Commission approved a plan to let TCL&P borrow money from city-controlled funds intended for other purposes to help the city-owned utility finish building its internet network.
Michigan lawmakers don’t have to agree on much each year, other than how to spend all the money that the state collects from its taxes. Partisans needed to compromise with each other to do this, since Republicans hold a majority in the House and there is a Democratic governor with a Democratic majority Senate. Both sides were going to have to give up something and get something in order to pass a budget. What they came up with has a number of positive features.
Why is it so much more expensive to build things than it used to be? Dollars get you less than they used to, but inflation doesn’t fully explain why building the Mackinac Bridge cost about $1 billion dollars in today’s money, while the I-75 modernization project is already above $1.4 billion. Or why the Golden Gate Bridge cost $35 million ($800 million today) in 1933, while the safety net alone installed under the bridge in 2017 cost $224 million.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News October 21, 2025.
Give Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the Legislature a quiet round of applause for completing the state budget earlier this month. The Legislature is split — Republicans control the House and Democrats have the Senate — so agreeing on how to spend $81 billion took negotiation and tradeoffs. But passing a budget is a minimum expectation for lawmakers.
Michigan lawmakers have introduced one of the most ambitious occupational-licensing reform packages in the country — more than 50 bills that would repeal unnecessary licenses, simplify education mandates and make it easier for skilled people to work in our state. The changes in House Bills 4879 through 4934 would make it possible for the state to protect the public without blocking opportunity.
Can libertarian ideas break through in an era dominated by fear-based politics and bipartisan protectionism?
Brian Doherty, senior editor of Reason Magazine and author of books including “Radicals for Capitalism” and “This Is Burning Man,” joins The Overton Window Podcast to discuss one of the movement's central challenges: shifting the Overton Window toward liberty in a political landscape increasingly hostile to free-market principles. Doherty’s latest book, “Dirty Pictures,” traces major post-1960s shifts in the business and aesthetics of comic books through the history of underground comix artists.
Michigan relies on tourism. Tourism is an important part of the economy for much of the state, and it’s helping many municipalities adapt to new economic conditions and thrive. Having a robust tourism sector requires having places for people to stay — hotels, bed and breakfasts, cottages, cabins and homes.
Policy can be powerful, and in states, governors get the biggest say in policy. Michigan performed below the national average during Jennifer Granholm’s term and above average during Rick Snyder’s term. It has fallen below average during Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s term.
The Michigan House is considering heavy-handed bills that would impose burdensome requirements on artificial intelligence systems and likely drive AI development out of the state. Several other states are pursuing better approaches, dubbed “Right to Compute” laws. These states are not taking the punitive and one-sided approach Michigan is considering. They instead seek a more balanced one that promotes innovation and puts up guardrails against the most likely dangers of AI development.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News October 15, 2025.
Millions of people took to the streets on June 14 for No Kings Day, protesting President Donald Trump. The movement is preparing No Kings Day 2.0 for this weekend, including a rally in Detroit, to highlight what they call Trump’s “authoritarian excesses.” But the protesters may be overlooking a concrete, effective solution.
I’ve never thought much of the joke that Halloween is a socialist’s favorite holiday because it encourages kids to go door-to-door asking for free handouts.
I have fond memories of going door-to-door dressed as a soldier or ghoul, collecting loot in my pillowcase and filling my belly with sugar. That love carried through into my young adult life, when I’d purchase bags of Halloween-themed candy and turn my yard into a cemetery using whatever decorations I had on hand, dressing up as a Knight Templar or as Snake Plissken. Now, as a parent, I get to look forward to taking my kids trick-or-treating.
By Molly Macek
The state of Michigan spends more taxpayer dollars to feed students in wealthy districts than in poor ones. With Michigan near the bottom in national reading scores, these funds would be better spent on helping kids read than subsidizing lunches for families who can afford their own.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News October 8, 2025.
A wide range of people have needed to talk about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. In the month following his death, I’ve had conversations with business owners, college students, lawmakers, a priest, a barber and a family member who has no interest in politics.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News October 1, 2025.
A sad reality in American culture right now is that we’re uncomfortable with disagreement. We encounter a differing opinion, and our instincts are to avoid, dismiss or demonize the other person.
Michigan Public Radio Correspondent Rick Pluta asks an important question about a possible interstate compact to eliminate corporate welfare, “Why would other states buy into that?”
Lawmakers look at business subsidies as ways to attract factories, offices and jobs to their state. If they are correct about that. then dropping their programs would cost them something valuable. They wouldn’t be able to announce that they had attracted the next big thing to their state if they stopped offering deals to select companies.
With the new budget, Michigan will spend more money on roads than ever before, when adjusted for inflation. The $5.4 billion the state is spending on roads from its own funds — not including federal transfers or the small amounts of local and private money — is 15% more than the previous peak in 2019.
Businessman and former Michigan gubernatorial candidate Kevin Rinke joined The Overton Window Podcast to share how a lifetime of political skepticism eventually led him to public service — and why Michigan’s literacy crisis now commands his full attention.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News September 23, 2025.
Two hundred people gathered in Washington, D.C., last Thursday to honor Edwin J. Feulner. You may not know Feulner’s name, but you likely have heard of the institution he co-founded and built: The Heritage Foundation.
In Michigan, you can be a community librarian with a general equivalency diploma (in a small town), a bachelor’s degree (for mid-sized municipalities) or a master’s degree (in larger cities). But to be a school librarian, you need a bachelor’s degree, a teaching certificate and a master’s degree.
Activists are collecting signatures for a proposal, possibly for a November 2026 vote, that would amend the state constitution to add a new rate in the state income tax. This would give Michigan the seventh-highest rate in the country; fourth-highest if you include Detroit’s city income tax.
Michigan’s slow slog toward being able to spend $1.5 billion share of federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funds may finally be getting somewhere. After years of delays, and our warning in March of this year that the plan Michigan submitted was likely to be rejected by the National Telecommunications and Infrastructure Administration, Michigan has finally submitted a new plan that appears likely to be approved.
Detroit has the most extensive and comprehensive zoning ordinance in the state of Michigan. The zoning law has evolved over time, mostly by getting more restrictive: Much of the current housing in the city would likely be illegal to build under zoning rules that have been put in place over the past few decades.
Invest in MI Kids is a ballot proposal to change the state constitution by increasing taxes on higher earners and sending the money to public schools. Doing so would make it easier for politicians to raise taxes in the future — not only on “the rich” but on everyone else.
