Browsing: Economic Development

If everything works out as under-promised, Microsoft will make the biggest single technology investment ever in the state of Wisconsin — a transformative infusion of billions of dollars to develop more than 1,500 acres in Racine County.

Wisconsin will need to build 200,000 housing units by 2030 to accommodate all the people who want to live and work here. Sheboygan County is a microcosm of the problem — but on the forefront of a possible solution.

Demand for legal cannabis products is elastic, so states must consider this fact when setting tax rates. If taxes are set too high, legalization will not deter users from exiting legacy illegal markets.

A small group of enthusiasts would like to put Milwaukee at the forefront of historical preservation of postmodern architecture. Or at least help a downtown developer get a tax break.

Data centers chug electricity like undergrads drink beer, and the advent of artificial intelligence — which uses, we’re told, about 10 times the electricity as conventional searches — makes power demand soar.

The population of Wisconsin has grown by 1.5 million since 1970, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, at an average growth rate of 0.5 percent per year. The county-level data tell a more nuanced story, however.

The Social Development Commission, Wisconsin’s largest anti-poverty social services agency, abruptly closed its doors in late April after the latest in a series of scandals stretching back over more than 30 years.

Free-market reforms are driving prosperity and fostering human flourishing in the Dairy State. This unmistakable trend is evident in state economic indicators from recent decades, a hopeful story that can instill pride in all Wisconsinites.

The population of Eau Claire County, now approximately 108,000, has grown almost 10% just since 2010. A little farther west, just across the St. Croix River from Minnesota, St. Croix County has grown 15%.

Wisconsin’s largest metropolis, Milwaukee, has been one of the nation’s largest urban areas for decades, but its comparative position has changed.

At the national level, recent studies show that small businesses are not contracting with the federal government as frequently as in the past. And those that do are becoming more concentrated in a handful of congressional districts around Washington, where rent seeking is the norm.

Lazy whiners not welcome. Latest entry in a series of profiles of persevering small towns in the Badger State —…

Wisconsin’s smallest incorporated village is on a hill, and in a valley, too.

When Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s business chamber, last month put out the results of its semiannual survey of CEOs’ sentiments, the outlook was grim: 22% rated the Wisconsin economy as “strong.” Only 10% said the same of the national economy, with 28% calling it “weak.” That’s a gloomier number than the WMC found in summer 2020, amid lockdowns.

Only a certain kind of person or family wants to be in Millville, Wisconsin. And no one grandfathered into residency is clamoring for some kind of economic revival.

In most of rural Wisconsin, population is flat or declining. The Badger Institute identified 116, or nearly 6%, of the state’s 1,939 municipal units that have lost more than 20% of their populations since 1990.

Since the end of World War II, the average number of milk cows living in Wisconsin each year has halved in size, yet the annual production of milk in the state has doubled.

After Gov. Tony Evers announced last week he was diverting $36.6 million in federal emergency pandemic funds for, among other things, a soccer stadium, a sports center and a railroad museum, state Sen. Duey Stroebel tweeted, “I struggle to see how any of these projects relate to pandemic relief.”

Legislative leaders say costly project not needed or wanted Wisconsin officials in the Evers administration, supported by politicians in many…

Congressman Bryan Steil is still waiting to hear back from U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg about his request to please make it clear Milwaukee does not have to run “The Hop” streetcar through a closed construction site on Sundays — and Sundays only — during the winter in order to meet the requirements of a federal grant.