There is little debate that America’s infrastructure plays a critical role in the economy. Roads, bridges, shipping facilities, airports, the energy grid, and other vital industrial elements all play a crucial part in the ability of the nation to produce and deliver goods and services in the most efficient way possible.
Despite this importance, some in Washington have asserted that Americans must also pay for unrelated energy policy proposals if they want better infrastructure.
Amid negotiations for a massive infrastructure improvement package, political leadership on the Left has insisted that the infrastructure bill include provisions to implement President Biden’s energy policy agenda. One such proposal in this agenda is a call to expand federal energy regulations through the reduction of carbon-based fuels.
A key stated goal is to reduce carbon and other greenhouse emissions to approximately half by 2030. An additional proposed mandate is that the nation’s electrical grid completely transitions away from carbon-based fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil by 2035. In light of the high cost of transitioning from carbon fuels, such federal mandates would be detrimental to the state of Mississippi. The state’s economy and citizens are highly dependent on affordable energy.
From the economic angle, it is important to note that Mississippi has the 2nd highest level of energy expenditures per dollar of GDP. This means that Mississippi’s economy needs more energy than most other states to produce its economic outputs. Mississippi also has the 8th highest amount of carbon output per dollar of GDP. This carbon output makes sense. Many of Mississippi’s top industries, such as agriculture and manufacturing, have very high energy consumption and utilize affordable carbon fuels such as natural gas and coal.
These economic factors would cause Mississippi’s economy to be disproportionally affected if the federal government mandates a reduction in the use of carbon-based energy fuels. Meanwhile, other states with less energy-intensive sectors (such as finance and administration) would be less affected. Thus, Mississippi would be in a competitively disadvantaged position at the hands of a federal carbon-reduction policy.
On top of the macroeconomic effects of more expensive energy, raising the cost of energy by requiring more costly fuels with a lower carbon output could be devasting for some Mississippians on an individual level. According to the Energy Information Administration, the state of Mississippi ranks among the highest in the nation for its consumption of energy per person.
As a predominately rural state with many in poverty, Mississippi’s energy consumption per person is an important factor to note. A study found that the rural poor spend a high percentage of their income on heating and cooling their homes since many rural homes are not as well-insulated as their suburban and urban counterparts. An additional study found that when energy costs go up, many of the poor reduce their heating and cooling to save money, with resulting health issues and the accompanying medical expenses.
Mississippi and its citizens should be able to utilize the most affordable and efficient energy sources without the heavy hand of federal overreach. Instead of using infrastructure negotiations as an opportunity to impose unprecedented restrictions on carbon-sourced energy, leaders in Washington should focus on the nation's infrastructure needs.
America has faced plenty of external threats before. Each time the United States came through triumphant and stronger.
Today, however, we face a threat that is internal, rather than external; Critical Race Theory. We need to work out how to respond to it as a threat to the American way of life.
Critical Race Theory encourages Americans to lose faith in their own country. Instead of celebrating America’s Founding Ideals, Critical Race Theory teaches young Americans that their nation is founded on hate.
Far from marveling at how people from every country, culture, and creed want to come to the USA, Critical Race Theory insists instead that America is inherently racist.
We ought to applaud the progress that has been made towards achieving Martin Luther King’s vision of a country where people are defined by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Instead, Critical Race Theorists want to racialize everything.
Critical Race Theory is a form of race-based Marxism. Old school Marxists divided the world by class, capitalist oppressors Vs oppressed workers. Critical Race Theory’s new variant Marxism divides America into oppressor Vs oppressed base on skin color. Critical Race Theory specifically rejects the principle of equal protection under the law.
Nowhere is Critical Race Theory more dangerous and destructive than in our education system.
In California, public schools have accused white teachers of being colonizers on stolen Native American land and told them “you are racist” and “you are upholding racist ideas, structures, and policies.” North Carolina’s largest school district launched a campaign against “whiteness in educational spaces”—and encouraged teachers to subvert families and push the ideology of “antiracism” directly onto students without parental consent.
How do we ensure these this divisive ideology is not being advanced in public schools here in Mississippi?
Critical Race Theory in the classroom opposes meritocracy, and has caused some school boards in parts of America to abandon standardized testing. It teaches young people that the government must actively discriminate against racial groups deemed privileged.
Most obnoxious of all, it advocates neo-segregation and turns schools into a race re-education program.
The Mississippi Center for Public Policy believes these neo-racist theories have no place in the classroom. What can we do about it?
Step one is to find out how prevalent this kind of ideology-based teaching actually is. Then we need action to ensure that public schools do not use public money to indoctrinate students about fringe racial theories that claim one race is superior to another, or that individuals should be treated differently on the basis of race. We are working on producing a draft bill that we believe will go some way to achieving this. Our think tank is leading the way on this.
But tackling Critical Race Theory cannot be done just by passing a law. Whether we like it or not, America is engaged in a battle for her future – and it is a struggle being waged for the hearts and minds of millions of young Americans.
Rather than simply forbid a divisive ideology being taught, we need to make a concerted effort to teach people why America is such an exceptional country.
Young people growing up today, like every generation before them, seek to make sense of the world around them. Why, some will ask, are some people more successful than others? How come some parts of America are prosperous yet others poor? What explains the fact that America is so rich relative to most other countries?
Critical Race Theory offers a superficial, if deeply flawed, explanation. We need to offer young people a better way of understanding the world. It is an absence of freedom and liberty that explains why some societies are less successful than others, not any fringe theory about ‘white fragility’.
As Mississippi’s free market think tank, we aim to educate tens of thousands of young Mississippians, through our online engagement, about liberty, limited government and the American Founding. We seek to show the rising generation that it is individual character, not any intersectional identity, that matters most.
If you would like to learn more about our work combating Critical Race Theory, please sign up for our updates at www.mspolicy.org.
This article was first published in the Northside Sun.
At the Mississippi Justice Institute, one of our foundational causes is litigating to free workers from excessive licensing laws that make it exceedingly difficult for ordinary people to use their talents and earn an honest living.
We’re focused on this issue because we believe that there is inherent dignity in work; that opportunity is vital to a vibrant society; and that pursuing one’s calling is at the very heart of the American Dream.
Occupational licenses were originally intended for professions in which a mistake could pose serious health and safety risks to the public, like EMTs or school bus drivers. But they have also crept into many professions that pose no risk to the public, like florists and interior decorators.
In the 1950s, only one out of twenty people required a government permission slip to do their job. Today, that number has skyrocketed to nearly one in three. And most of those licenses are for working class jobs.
What has led to this explosion in occupational licensing? Counterintuitively, practitioners of various occupations lobby the government to impose regulations on them. In exchange, they gain a sense of legitimacy, monopoly use of a title, and expensive and time-consuming barriers to entry into their professions which keep many would-be competitors at bay.
The posterchild for licensing creep is the beauty industry. Because of the need for sanitation in any profession which involves touching customers, and because the work sometimes entails the use of sharp implements, chemicals, or heated appliances, practitioners of the profession claim that their work is dangerous and needs to be licensed and regulated. But the potential dangers are often wildly exaggerated by industry insiders and used to justify licensing burdens that are vastly disproportionate to the actual risks involved.
The excessive and costly training that results from this scaremongering can make it virtually impossible for workers of modest means and young people to break into the beauty industry. A new report by the Institute for Justice shows that the average beauty school program costs $16,000 and takes about a year to complete.
Beauty school students borrow an average of $7,100 in federal student loans, which is $600 higher than the average student. After all of that, beauty school graduates can expect to earn just $26,000 a year on average, less than restaurant cooks, janitors or concierges – none of whom are required by law to attend costly schools before working.
This type of excessive licensing has implications far beyond the beauty industry. Recent research indicates that excessive licensing laws cost our country an estimated 2.85 million jobs per year and over $200 billion annually in increased consumer costs.
Perhaps that is why reforming occupational licensing laws has become one of the few remaining bipartisan issues. In 2015, the Obama administration issued a report encouraging states to roll back unnecessary occupational licenses. In late 2020, former President Trump followed suit, issuing an executive order that similarly encouraged states to enact licensing reforms and outlined several principles for reform. And on July 9, 2021, President Biden joined the club, issuing a new executive order encouraging the Federal Trade Commission to ban unnecessary licensing restrictions.
When President Obama, President Trump, and President Biden all agree that licensing creep is strangling the American Dream, it’s a pretty safe bet that they’re right. Mississippi is making progress in this area, but we need to continue working to eliminate anticompetitive licensing laws and let Mississippians shape their own destinies.
Debates about environmental stewardship and conservation have been a key fixture of public debate for decades.
With calls to preserve the natural environment, many have advocated for the expansion of government-owned property as the primary way to protect the environment and increase its quality. However, it is worth considering potential conservation alternatives that do not require putting more property in the hands of the state.
The traditional approach for many conservation initiatives has been for the government to purchase property from the private sector and then allocate that land for conservation purposes. This approach has been reasonably effective in many cases. However, it is important to consider the strong potential for conservation on privately held lands.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, approximately 93 percent of Mississippi land is under private jurisdiction. This places Mississippi among the highest in the country for the amount of land that is privately managed. As a state with so many natural resources and natural beauty, the opportunities for conservation and stewardship abound.
With so many private landowners, there is considerable potential behind the concept of incentivizing private land conservation using the state funds that are already allocated for conservation anyway. Such a model not only respects private property, but it also gives money back to taxpayers by supporting conservation efforts on their privately held lands.
There are several opportunities for the state to spend its appropriated conservation funds as effectively as possible. Mississippi could see the realization of private land conservation efforts in different contexts. Drawing largely from the state’s primary land uses found in cropland and forestry, there are a plethora of ways that private landowners can utilize their property in Mississippi for conservation efforts.
In agriculture, the opportunity for farmers to utilize specific sectors of their property for conservation carries enormous potential. For instance, while a lowland sector of a farm could be risky for crops due to flooding concerns, such land could carry great potential for waterfowl conservation.
With the allocation of the state’s conservation funds, farmers could establish a waterfowl habitat. The same goes for good cropland as well. In the advent of new technologies, it has even become possible for farmers to determine which sectors of their cropland have the greatest potential for conservation.
In forestry, conservation efforts on private land have obvious potential to create habitats for wildlife within timberland. In Mississippi, 77 percent of all timberland is privately owned, equating to approximately 15.1 million acres.
Given that many timberlands cover vast areas and are ecosystems in their own right, policies that directed conservation funds to these private lands would greatly expand the potential for conservation funds to be used as effectively as possible.
Mississippi is a beautiful state, and its natural beauty should be preserved for future generations. By allocating conservation funds to private landowners, the state could continue to protect Mississippi’s natural habitats. Ninety-three percent of Mississippi’s land is in the hands of private citizens. The state should ensure that the funds it appropriates for conservation can be directed back to taxpayers’ property worth conserving and not just government property.
As the nation gradually exits COVID and heads back into regular operations, the climate is ripe with opportunity to consider questions regarding the merits of regulatory freedom. Throughout the country, states have taken different stances on how to best approach the pandemic.
Some, such as New York and California, instituted a strong lockdown policy that vastly expanded government control over social and economic activities, while others, such as Florida and South Dakota, took a more hands-off approach, ensuring that the principle of individual autonomy drove good social and economic policy. These differing approaches offer a unique opportunity to evaluate whether the government is necessary to solve all of society's problems. History, free-market principles, and experience would certainly say that it is not.
For example, Brad Polumbo of the Foundation for Economic Education asserts the data is overwhelmingly in favor of free states over those states that locked down completely. For one, studies by The Lancet in July of 2020 and the Frontiers for Health in November of 2020 demonstrated that the stringency of COVID regulations showed no correlation with the numbers of COVID deaths within those states that promoted lockdowns.
Instead, studies indicated that the stringency of COVID regulations led to great economic cost as businesses took significant financial hits. Social consequences have included an increase in suicides, domestic violence, and drug overdoses.
Meanwhile, when comparing lockdown states to those that took a more relaxed approach, the result is quite telling. In terms of unemployment, those states that have prioritized lockdowns have taken longer to return to normal than those that took a more relaxed position. On top of that, most states that took the hands-off approach are much better positioned with unemployment (about 3 percent) than those that took a strict lockdown approach.
On a practical level, the pandemic offered the opportunity to really put various philosophical and economic principles to the test. As the pandemic comes to a close, it is evident that mistakes were made. Not adhering to principles of economic and social freedom may have been one of those mistakes. When making this kind of evaluation, hindsight is, of course, always going to be 20/20. However, the data demonstrates that moving forward, the best policy is that which adheres to limited government and prioritizes individual autonomy.
The Covid experience has only further demonstrated that there is no reason, pandemic or otherwise, that justifies government shutting down people’s lives and taking away their freedoms. As Mississippi and the nation at large return back to normal, it is critical that the protection of individual freedom and establishment of limited government ought to be the priority.
We live in a day when the logistics supply chain touches almost every aspect of life. From raw materials such as lumber and steel to complex electronics, practically every element of the market is somehow related to the workings of the logistics supply chain.
There have been multiple recent events highlighting the critical significance of a supply chain that can scale and adjust quickly to new scenarios. In the international trade sector, the accidental blocking of the Suez Canal slowed world shipping and completely halted all traffic through a waterway that facilitates 12 percent of all world trade.
On the infrastructure level, devasting cyberattacks targeted critical supply chain infrastructures and led to unforeseen shortages of essential resources. From a productivity standpoint, the logistics sector has had to confront the challenges of the backlog that came from a global pandemic with its labor shortages, lockdowns, and unprecedented demands for certain products.
In the wake of such shortages, it is more important than ever that our supply chain is strengthened and made to work better and faster. For these reasons, it is critical to recognize the role technology contributes to our supply chain’s ability to scale quickly in the event of future challenges.
The technologies that carry promise for supply chain advancements are numerous. Although these technologies cover multiple sectors and accomplish numerous tasks, there is a combined effect that can reduce shortages, increase speed, and facilitate efficiency.
A key technology with the potential to expand supply chain efficiency is the further implementation of automated data analysis. Using a combination of sensors, automated reporting, and location tracking, logistics companies have the ability to capture data trends and increase efficiency.
Furthermore, artificial intelligence (AI) development has created a new frontier as companies can now utilize data through AI. Using AI, logistics companies can predict patterns and respond to supply chain variables as quickly as possible. AI does not just increase efficiency for large logistics companies. AI also opens up new doors for smaller logistics companies that may not have the expertise and workforce for large-scale data analysis.
Building on the power of data collection and analysis, there has also been an uptick in warehouse technologies that use data-driven decision-making to sort inventory, standardize inventory management, and ultimately send off orders for shipping. These technologies also increase the level of production, decrease the incidents of injury, lower labor costs, and improve product traceability.
All of these technologies have a real significance as America continues to face challenges to the supply chain. As many in the nation come to grips with just how far-reaching the inefficiencies in our system are, the solutions that emerging technologies bring to the table are practical tools that could help to meet new challenges.
The free market developed the technologies to push the supply chain into the future, and the free market has the tools to make the supply chain more efficient. Instead of expanding government control of the supply chain and putting more regulations on transportation and logistics, government leaders should pursue policies that will encourage technology innovation and support the free market. As a result, our supply chain just might emerge better than ever before -and even more ready to meet the challenges of tomorrow.
This year marks the 5th anniversary of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a state-based constitutional litigation center and the legal arm of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. When we started MJI, we wanted to make Mississippi a better place and to defend the ideals that make our country, and our state, so unique.
MCPP had already been engaged in that effort for decades; advocating in the legislature, the executive branch, and the public square. But in order to truly defend the constitutional ideals of liberty and justice for all, we knew we also had to take our fight to the courts.
The Mississippi Justice Institute helps foster freedom and prosperity in Mississippi by standing up for ordinary Mississippians whose rights have been violated by the government. We defend the personal, economic, and religious liberty of Mississippians in court and ensure that all forms of government are limited to their essential responsibilities as provided by the Constitution.
The fight for liberty never ends, and no organization can see it fully achieved. But we have made important progress. So, in honor of MJI’s 5th anniversary, here are five reasons to celebrate!
1. MJI has stood up for the right of regular Mississippians to earn an honest living in occupations as varied as eyebrow threaders, eyelash artists, weight-loss coaches, food truck operators, taxicab drivers, home health agencies, and telemedicine providers.
2. MJI has defended the right to free speech, whether for pro-life counselors to have compassionate conversations with women seeking abortions or for companies to be able to truthfully label their products.
3. MJI has won cases protecting Mississippians’ personal rights to worship and to bear arms. A Mississippi city tried to stop churches from having drive-in church services during the pandemic. After we filed suit, the city officials decided to allow the services after all. Another city banned the open carry of firearms. We filed suit, the city dropped the ban, and a federal court issued an order preventing the city from ever restricting the right to openly carry firearms again.
4. MJI has defended Mississippians’ ability to choose to send their children to charter schools. When the Southern Poverty Law Center challenged Mississippi’s charter school funding law, MJI intervened to represent parents of charter school students, and the courts upheld the funding for charter schools.
5. MJI has protected Mississippians’ property rights by leading the charge to eliminate administrative forfeiture, which allowed the government to take and keep private property without requiring involvement by the judiciary, and we forced the government to return over $100,000 worth of improperly forfeited property.
It’s no easy task to take on the government in court and win. But despite those challenges, MJI has been successful in winning over 90 percent of its cases either in court or through legislative reforms adopted in response to its lawsuits. And that’s what makes it all worthwhile – knowing that our clients can safely exercise their rights because we stood up for them when there was nowhere else to turn.
In its first five years, MJI has gained statewide and even national recognition for its work. In 2019, we received a national award for above-and-beyond service to the American conservative movement, and in 2020 we received an award for having one of the top 50 most influential leaders in the state.
We believe that Mississippians have never felt more confident that their constitutional rights will be protected and, if needed, zealously defended. With your help and support, we plan to continue fighting to make that true for many more years to come.
In the wake of Covid-19, the economy reeled from the devastating effects of lockdowns, logistical shortages, layoffs, and business closures. However, as the dust is starting to clear and the economy is getting stronger, it is important to consider how Mississippi can increase its recovery rate for jobs, employment, and economic growth.
Mississippi led the way as one of the first states to begin lifting the economic restrictions brought about by the pandemic. Mississippi was also one of the first states to proactively encourage people to get back to work by rejectingadditional federal unemployment benefits. Despite growth, Mississippi jobs are still recovering. State leaders should implement recovery-minded policies that support economic growth and help the state come back even stronger than before.
The policies that would give Mississippi an economic boost have numerous implications and reach across almost every sector in the state. Yet, these relatively unsophisticated policies could really lead to lasting growth for the state.
On the fundamental level, policymakers should take actions that will stop the state government from taking money right out of the citizens’ wallets through an income tax. The state income tax should be abolished. As so many rebuild what they lost during the economic devastation of Covid, Mississippians need every dollar they can get. While the federal government in Washington is printing more money and inflating the dollar to fund direct payments, state leaders in Mississippi have the opportunity to make a meaningful difference by just leaving Mississippian’s incomes alone.
Further, policymakers in Mississippi can help the citizens of the state by removing burdensome regulations on businesses. This can be done through widespread regulatory rollbacks, as well as through innovative programs like regulatory sandboxes. In 2020, Mississippi had the nation’s highest increase in new business applications as thousands of new entrepreneurs worked to support themselves and their families during Covid. By lowering excessive regulations and pursuing economic freedom, Mississippi will create an environment that helps these entrepreneurs stay in business for the long term as they navigate the challenges that face new businesses.
There is little debate that policies to expand economic growth are more important than ever in the wake of Covid. But Mississippi needs action to get this economic growth moving. By cutting back taxes, lowering regulations, and putting faith in the success of free-market principles, Mississippi just might have a chance to coming back from the pandemic stronger than ever before.
In recent years, the political and economic landscape in the United States has brought about a subtle but significant policy proposal. This proposal involves special jurisdictions in a quest to help struggling businesses that have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic or by poor economic infrastructure in their respective communities.
As part of President Trump’s economic plan, states throughout the United States (in addition to the federal level) have instituted a plan to give tax breaks to businesses to try to revitalize the economy. Mississippi is no exception as it has adopted various special economic zones with the express intent of prioritizing the investment and development of state infrastructure. In cities such as Vicksburg, this reform has reportedly saved jobs and helped stabilize the hurting economy.
These Opportunity Zones are designated to “encourage long-term investments in low-income and rural communities through Qualified Opportunity Funds.” Currently, there are about 100 Opportunity Zones in Mississippi. This will last as a program until 2027 per the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
They operate on the basis that investors can earn tax relief through investments designated by the Opportunity Zone. Such benefits increase as the time the investment is held increases. These zones have been placed in strategic areas throughout Mississippi and particularly target low-income and rural communities.
As a matter of policy, this appears to generally makes sense on paper. It goes without saying that to get more money into struggling areas, it is important to have opportunities for capital investment. This has been done in the past by incentivizing businesses with generous tax breaks rather than just having federal or state grants to keep those areas from downing. In doing so, the principle of choice by the consumer remains intact, by allowing the private sector to direct capital to where it is most needed.
In addition, such a policy has been propounded as a way to help fix economic decisions in the reality of business rather than the theory of bureaucracy. Opportunity zones can help promote economic growth in those hurting communities.
Tom Bell of the Foundation for Economic Education describes this principle perfectly and rightly suggests that, “it also bears noting that [these special jurisdictions] escape the charge that they can thrive only thanks to top-down subsidies. These days, special jurisdictions happen only if and when private investors fund them. That sort of objective oversight helps to ensure that special jurisdictions, far from floating on clouds of theory, have a solid grounding in the real world.”
In recognition of this fact that these geographic zones are entirely dependent on private investment, it is important that they do not offer only fiscal incentives. Otherwise, some have rightly pointed out that Opportunity Zones could potentially lead to crony capitalism. It is important that Opportunity Zones be coupled with tangible evaluations for success by local community members in order to avoid this.
As Lotta Moberg points out, the focus of the zones must encompass whole regions and offer not just tax breaks but thorough deregulation as well that will assist in directing those investments. This was done in Hong Kong, and it not only liberalized the economy, but incentivized state officials to provide further reform. Ultimately, it confirmed one of Friedman’s primary predictions: “Privately created and managed special jurisdictions tend to outperform public ones.”
As a general principle, the people of Mississippi and businesses ought to welcome the concept of free-market zones as opportunities to fix their own communities that are struggling economically. However, rather than simply placing a tax break incentive to fix the problem, the mindset behind Opportunity Zones needs to have a broader application as state governments seek direct investments from the private sector.
Ultimately, government incentives are not the answer to expanding investment. Rather than focus on specific regions, policies should lower taxes and regulation across the board. Free market investments that are not restrained by government action are much better solutions to building communities. Opportunity Zones may carry potential in some contexts, but ultimately it is broader freedoms for the free market that have the best chance at growing communities.