Springfield Takes Its Time Hiring a City Manager
Springfield is undergoing a lengthy process to hire its new city manager. There is nothing wrong with that. This is...
What to Make of Big Tech’s Pivot to Nuclear
The American nuclear industry is making headlines seemingly every week, with developments in construction, innovation, legislation, and regulation. Recently, there...
Centene Says the Quiet Part Out Loud
There are numerous flaws in the ongoing subsidy-driven economic development strategy employed in Missouri. In this post, I want to...
So Meta: New KC Data Center Heavy on Tax Incentives, Light on Jobs
Three years ago, I wrote in The Federalist about Amazon’s decision not to establish a New York City headquarters in...
There Oughta Be A Law: If Walmart is Essential, Small Retailers Are Too
As the coronavirus pandemic accelerated this spring, governments across the country clamped down dramatically on businesses and associations of all...
Hoping for the Best with the Internet Sales Tax
Last year Show-Me Institute writers discussed the possibility of Missouri imposing a new tax for online purchases, but there was...
USDA Moves to Kansas City, Gets Incentives
Alex Muresianu of Reason wrote recently about the USDA moving 550 positions from the Washington, D.C. area to the Kansas...
New York Shouldn’t Have Offered Amazon $3 Billion. No One Should Have.
This week Amazon announced that it was scrapping its plan to establish a “second headquarters” in New York. The company’s...
Missouri’s Biggest Cities Spend $100 Million Annually Just to Give Away Money!
An excellent story in the St. Louis Business Journal points out that according to a recent study by the Milken...
2018: A Bad Year for Government-failure Deniers
Are you a government-failure denier – someone who believes that the government that governs best is one that overflows with...
Millennials Are Buying in the Suburbs
Kansas City has been on a spending spree to try to attract millennials downtown, having been caught up in the...
2018: A Bad Year for Government-failure Deniers
Are you a government-failure denier – someone who believes that the government that governs best is one that overflows with...
Kansas City’s Christmas Tree
If you’ve lived in Kansas City for a while, you’ve heard all about building new things. We’ve built a new...
How Not to Study Economic Development Incentives
Economic development incentives are all the rage. And they aren’t all multi-billion-dollar packages to attract a new Amazon headquarters. Many...
You Gotta Spend Money to… Spend Money?
We’ve all heard the phrase, “you have to spend money to make money.” Thanks to some reporting by Brian Robbins...
Chesterfield Should Protect Taxpayers in Mall’s Redevelopment
In the age of Amazon, only fools, tricksters, or geniuses invest in malls. To which group the new owner of...
Wisconsin’s Foxconn Deal is Bad Public Policy
President Trump is heralding the news that a Taiwanese high-tech manufacturer is building a factory in Wisconsin. For him, it...
Kansas City Dodged the #HQ2 Bullet
Richard Florida is an urban studies theorist who promoted the idea that the creative class would drive urban renewal and...
The Financial State of Missouri Cities
It won’t be a surprise to readers of this blog that Kansas City and St. Louis are in bad financial...
Release the Amazon Bids!
Amazon has released a list of their top 20 contenders for their new headquarters. Neither Kansas City nor Saint Louis...
