Browsing: Work

Amid a sustained outcry from frustrated occupational license seekers and a statewide worker shortage, Wisconsin lawmakers are advancing a universal recognition licensure bill and nearly a dozen more narrowly targeted reforms that would finally help remedy longtime bureaucratic dysfunction and over-regulation.

Wisconsin’s top marginal income tax rate—the rate that matters most to the state’s economic competitiveness—remains among the highest in the country. Moving to a flat tax would substantially improve Wisconsin’s tax competitiveness. Separately, repealing the personal property tax would reduce compliance burdens for taxpayers and administrative burdens for the state. As policymakers work on the next biennial budget, each of these policy changes deserves thoughtful consideration.

Wisconsin can — and we think has to — do a lot more to compete with our neighbors. That’s where competition has to take place and with much of the rest of America. Or, watch our children and our neighbors move to states with more jobs and better wages, more opportunity and more prosperity. And those who are left behind at all levels are going to have fewer jobs, less opportunity, and more of the tax burden. People who are left behind are going to bear more of the tax burden. So, to us, the choice would seem clear.

The Badger Institute published new research by a nationally noted economist finding that a single-rate reform of Wisconsin’s individual income tax would yield substantial benefits to everyone in the state by spurring faster economic growth, more job options and more investment.

Estimates show moving to a flat individual income tax in Wisconsin could generate nearly $7.2 billion in additional GDP, $614 million in new investment, and nearly 24,000 additional jobs over the next five years.

Unions — and the progressives looking to make them again mandatory in Wisconsin — don’t get markets. They don’t get that in a market, a seller and a buyer or an employer and an employee must both benefit or no future deals happen. Instead, the game is zero sum, a fight for morsels, and only the bigger fist wins.

Dogged by a huge backlog for occupational licenses and complaints by applicants and lawmakers, Wisconsin’s Department of Safety and Professional Services must submit to an audit of its operations.

An all-Republican majority of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted Tuesday to direct the Legislative Audit Bureau to examine an agency that fields between 5,000 and 10,000 calls every week. The LAB website projects the expected release of the audit in fall 2023. 

Many of the folks proudly wearing the cardinal and white are Wisconsin transplants who are now sunburnt Florida residents. They were lured south, many of them, for short stints by the sun and the surf, but stayed for the taxes — or, actually, the lack thereof.

The Wisconsin Assembly on Thursday voted to ask voters in this spring’s elections whether able-bodied childless adults should have to seek work in order to go on receiving taxpayer-funded benefits, an idea the Badger Institute long has championed.

The Badger Institute’s visiting fellow, Eloise Anderson, explains why men who have been left behind are vital to a new civil society.

What’s the big deal that Scott Walker didn’t campaign on curbing union power?

Of the convicted criminals Wisconsin imprisons, most will serve a sentence and be released. Then what?

Eight states, including neighboring Minnesota and Michigan, have authorized dental therapist programs statewide. Dental therapists are mid-level providers who perform preventive, restorative and intermediate restorative procedures.

Some people earn a lot of money. Some earn a little.

Recent and rigorous academic evaluations suggest that such policies aren’t effective at increasing employment among the formerly incarcerated.
August 11, 2022

Survey solicits opinions on health care, crime, occupational licensing, and other issues.

As the COVID-19 pandemic struck the  United States in 2020, Congress began shotgunning money out over the country in unprecedented ways.

Reforms would expand oversight of federal funds, school and health care options, increase workforce participation.

Michael Jahr joined a panel of experts to discuss how expanding the dental therapy profession in Wisconsin would bridge the access gap for many individuals through use of free market principles.

The following is testimony submitted by Badger Institute Visiting Fellow Angela Rachidi in favor of AB 935 – FoodShare work and FoodShare employment and training requirements and drug testing.