Burdensome rules on government grants to a Detroit church divert resources from helping people to satisfying bureaucrats. Government should encourage more private giving, not try to replace it.
Michigan black inventor Elijah McCoy's 52 patents helped the trains run efficiently and on time. The market rewarded his brilliant ideas and helped him overcome racial discrimination.
The Salvation Army has been waging war on poverty since long before the government declared its own war on poverty thirty years ago. A new city of Detroit ordinance makes it more difficult for the Salvation Army to help hungry and homeless people at its twenty Detroit shelters.
Is the hiring of workers to replace striking employees a moral decision, a business concern, or both? A look at the inherent rights of workers and freedom of contract resolves the matter easily.
Some consider freedom of choice a serious threat to organized labor. Michigan law denies many workers the right to choose whether or not to support a labor union. The twenty-one states which guarantee this freedom to choose through right-to-work laws also enjoy greater economic growth, job creation, and real wages.
If welfare as a government entitlement ends, private institutions will play a larger role in helping needy people. Detroit's Capuchin Soup Kitchen is an excellent example of meeting needs through private, voluntary cooperation.
When a customer is sued by a former supplier because the customer found a better bargain with another company, whose side does the law tend to support? A Michigan firm finds itself in this situation.
If state employees are underpaid, it is not because they are paid less than private-sector workers. The documented wage and benefit gap between Michigan's private and public sector is significant and growing.
The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects our homes against unreasonable searches. A Kalamazoo city rental inspection ordinance runs afoul of this provision, and helps create an unusual alliance.
Some Michigan welfare recipients make the only logical economic choice when they stay on welfare rather than find work that pays even $9 per hour.
When firms compete, costs tend to go down and product quality tends to rise. When regulators enter the marketplace, operating under a different set of incentives, price and quality trends tend to work against the consumer.
American education is still burdened by the thing that caused the economies of Eastern Europe to disintegrate-central planning that all but obliterates individual initiative and accountability. Private-practice teaching is an innovation that gives teachers more freedom and incentive; provides administrators more flexibility and cost savings; and allows more choice and improved education to students.
A Michigan statute that protects lawyers from competition contributes to sky-high attorney fees that burden the average consumer and prevents many poor people from affording simple legal services.
An initiative to provide Michigan public school students and parents greater choice in school selection would benefit students and schools. Opponents of school choice defend the existing system and status quo, and find themselves opposing freedom instead of helping to make it work.
When government construction projects do not even accept bids from nonunion firms, the taxpayers pay more and nonunion workers are denied employment opportunities.
Most Medicare, Medicaid, and other health care reform plans seek to manipulate health care need. Another proposal, medical savings accounts, would encourage injury and illness prevention and would help save Americans $200 billion annually.
Michigan highway financing goes through "binge" and "bust" cycles that allow roads to deteriorate before new monies are raised. Modern technology may make possible a more equitable and cost-effective "pay-as-you-go" system.
Environmental problems exist, but some Michigan textbooks make exaggerated claims and teach children that the world is near destruction. Twisting facts is bad enough, but it may be worse to subject our children to unfounded fears and pressure to save the planet.
The laws uncovered by the Mackinac Center's Outrageous Law Competition will make you chuckle. Underlying them are two serious lessons which teach us about government's response to crises and the role of special interests.
About 20 percent of Michigan's goods and services are exported to Mexico. That country's recent currency crisis was met with a U.S.-backed bailout. The federal government could do Michigan a favor by getting its own house in order, and not throwing U.S. taxpayers' money at Mexico's failed policies
Farm subsidies drive up food prices for the poor and subsidize many millionaire farmers. The problem seems intractable today, but exactly 100 years ago a Michigan man mustered the integrity and courage to deal with this very issue.
Michigan is winning the battle to control its workers' compensation costs. It is time to celebrate that success, and take the next steps for improvement. Progress can still be made in getting the injured back to work and screening out dubious claims.
A $50 million unfunded EPA mandate requires that the Mackinac Bridge be repainted inside of a tent. This is a premier example of an unfunded mandate the governor should resist. This piece of research generated enormous statewide attention.
Michigan's roads are in poor shape and they need money for repairs. Unfortunately, hundreds of millions of Michigan road dollars are diverted to nonroad uses, and are even used to build roads in other states. Cost-saving measures are recommended, along with a call to give roads higher priority without a net tax increase on Michigan citizens. This contains the key points of the Center's comprehensive transportation study, Fixing the Roads.
Michigan's no fault auto insurance is among the most expensive in the country. Allegations of price gouging by insurance companies make headlines while a far more likely culprit is costly state mandates.
If you wanted something done in your community, would it ever occur to you to send a check to Washington, D.C., so the federal bureaucracy could take a cut before sending back the rest?
Government subsidies for a new Tiger Stadium amount to corporate welfare. Other big businesses have to raise their own private capital-why not baseball? This article makes the philosophical and economic case for private sports facilities.
Most Michigan counties are net losers in the grab for public arts dollars. The claim that government spending on art produces a special "multiplier" effect is spurious. The bottom line: Art is too important to be dependent on government.
A private nonprofit environmental group knows that the free market is the most effective tool for protecting the environment. This is a wonderful success story of voluntary cooperation instead of government coercion.
Ironically, taxpayers' cherished deductions and loopholes stand in the way of meaningful tax reform. There is a fairer system that would still provide adequate government revenue.
Two new laws take effect in April 1995 that will help Michigan's 1.7 million school children and their parents. Will schools take advantage of the newly created freedoms and opportunities?
The prison business is booming in Michigan-fifteen percent of the General Fund. Can taxpayers afford the bills that mount from business as usual? Michigan can save hundreds of millions of dollars by trying what other states are already doing.
Michigan's turbocharged economy is a result of courageous government streamlining and downsizing. If the federal government is serious about "reinventing," it should follow Michigan's blueprint.
In a stunning retreat from free-market principles, Governor Engler asks Michigan to join the bandwagon of states in which government picks the industrial winners and losers. The MEGA plan will not work, and may have unintended negative consequences.
New technology makes it possible to ticket speeders with cameras, radar, and computers-and no cops. Should it be allowed? There are many pros and cons.
Why do more Americans believe in UFOs than have faith in Social Security? Can the system be rescued? Other nations have saved their systems with free-market reforms.
When government forces others to do its bidding without providing the money to pay for it, it is called a mandate. Politicians and bureaucrats try to wriggle out of the responsibility with carefully crafted code phrases. This glossary of "governmentese" will entertain and enlighten.
Welfare programs are one of the most unpopular of government activities. Though Michigan has made progress over the past four years, the real challenge lies ahead: making assistance to the needy a private initiative instead of a government responsibility.
Proposed core curriculum from Lansing is more of the same fuzzy thinking that has produced declining achievement scores and increasing functional illiteracy in the schools.
Economic progress means enhancing opportunities, promoting capital formation, insisting on fairness in taxation, and keeping good people who create jobs here in Michigan. The onerous intangibles tax works against all these things and should be abolished.
Labor reform that brings Michigan law up-to-date is not something to be feared. Giving workers freedom of choice in union membership would be a plus for the Michigan economy.
What financially hobbles our schools is not a lack of money, but a lack of money management. Contracting with the private sector offers a promising solution.
A burgeoning national movement to assert state sovereignty promises to mushroom into a crisis for the federal government if it refuses to live within its constitutional boundaries. Unfunded mandates are at the core of the controversy surrounding interpretations of the 10th Amendment.
Public Act 362 of 1993 authorized charter schools and did not violate the Michigan Constitution. Charter schools are a creative way to make changes within public schools. However, luring private schools into the public domain with tax dollars is a danger.
Advance disposal fees are taxes imposed on containers at either the distributor or the retail level and are likely to add more burdens than they relieve. Managing the waste stream effectively requires a reliance upon markets, not new taxes that make little economic sense.
Our state constitution would be improved if it incorporated provisions to restrict the state's ability to dictate terms of private contracts, protect and enhance educational freedom, and limit regulatory "takings" of private property.
Though certain initiatives are needed to clarify the law and ensure enforcement, the 1978 Headlee Amendment to the Michigan Constitution has worked reasonably well in limiting the growth of government.
Michigan voters decide this year whether they want to call a convention for the purposes of revising the state's constitution. The dangers of a general rewrite of our state's basic governing document exceed any potential benefit.
A comparable worth scheme imposed on the economy would arbitrarily abolish the role of supply and demand in the labor market. Markets set wages better than any artificial, political contrivance could ever hope to.
What was conceived as a protection for women in Michigan country clubs has become another entry on a long list of meddlesome and ultimately counterproductive restrictions on personal freedom.
