What you want from Wisconsin in 2025
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What will it take to make Wisconsin among the best places in America to live, work and do business? The Badger Institute has pulled together some of the best minds in the state and the country to offer answers. The Mandate for Madison is a book full of ideas and solutions about public policy centered on how to improve Wisconsin, offering research and recommendations from a remarkable set of scholars who bring extraordinary insight into Wisconsin’s situation. These options offer a fast start to correct the problems holding back our state.
Badger Institute’s latest:

Referendums on development could kill state’s growth
Subjecting big development proposals to popular vote risks killing statewide economic growth, observers say in the wake of a successful effort by Port Washington data center opponents to give citizens the ability to nix the future use of a key financing tool.

Measure what matters: family structure and its impact on learning
In 1969, nearly nine out of 10 American children lived in households with two married parents. By 2023, that figure had fallen to roughly six in 10.

Wisconsin’s southern border shows what freedom brings
From 2011 to 2024, Wisconsin counties beat their Illinois counterparts 103 percent to 68 percent in private-sector economic output.

