Government Growth in Context

Shocking claims of growth in government abound. However, viewed in context of the economic, demographic, and societal changes that have occurred over the last fifty years, the growth in government is far less astounding than the sound-bite statistics indicate. For...

Conservative Spending Claims Don’t Add Up

A recent chart from the Republican Party of Minnesota, reproduced below, purports to show that Minnesota’s general fund budget is growing about 12 percent faster than the state’s economy and about 25 percent faster than the rate of inflation from 2012 to 2017. The...

Minnesota Outperforms Regional Migration, Population Trends

A new report from the conservative Tax Foundation and the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce—Minnesota Illustrated—generally paints a gloomy picture of Minnesota. The previous article in this series showed that this portrayal was inappropriately bleak in several regards,...