Celebrating 35 years of advancing freedom in Wisconsin

Policy Brief: Forgiving School Loan Debt 

By Scott Niederjohn, Ph.D.

Student debt forgiveness schemes are both inefficient and unfair policies for helping low-income families. First, it is clear that any plan to eliminate student debt across the board would end up benefiting doctors, lawyers and many others who have or are likely to get high-earning jobs and won’t need help paying off their loans.  

Further, because the majority of student debt—both nationally and in Wisconsin—is held by those in the top 40% of the income distribution, such a plan would most benefit the wealthy, contributing further to income and wealth inequality. In addition, debt forgiveness would add to inflationary pressures, as the former debt holders have freed-up money to spend on other uses. 

Debt forgiveness amounts to spending $1 trillion from the federal Treasury exclusively on people who went to—and in most cases graduated from—college. This essentially punishes Americans who didn’t go to college and, because of that fact, are more likely to need government help. 

Continue reading the report

Viewpoint: Getting to the meat of ARPA spending

By Mark Lisheron 

Another day, another politicized repurposing of the monumental sums that were supposed to help us survive the COVID-19 pandemic. 

On Tuesday, the press office for Gov. Tony Evers announced that $10 million would be made available in grants to meat processors. The money would, of course, be coming from a billion-dollar American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) stash atop which the governor and the governor alone sits. But the words COVID and pandemic aren’t even in the press release. 

For nearly a year, with metronomic regularity, the multi-million-dollar directives have come, almost always with a disclaimer that this group or that industry was hit hard by the coronavirus. I think we can all agree that all of us were hard hit by COVID. 

Maybe because we’re more than two years out and it’s getting increasingly hard to spend money on an emergency when there no longer appears to be an emergency, that the Evers administration is asking ARPA funding to shoulder a heavier load. 

Read the entire Viewpoint.

Weekly Survey: Do you think forgiving student debt will help low-income families? 

Last Week's Results

Jay Nordlinger, senior editor of National Review and a fellow at the National Review Institute, joins the Badger Institute to keynote a June 15 luncheon in Madison.

A native Midwesterner, Nordlinger will share his thoughts on the issues of the day – from politics to policy, from foreign affairs to freedom – related to the current state and likely future of American journalism. Reserve your seat (audience Q&A will be encouraged!)

This event is co-sponsored by The Badger Institute and the National Review Institute.

Courts clogged

By JEREMIAH MOSTELLER | Spring 2022

There are as many as 20,000 more victims and defendants waiting for a resolution of their criminal cases in Wisconsin than there were before the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to recent data published by the Wisconsin Court System, it now takes more than eight months for the average felony case to be resolved. That is two months longer than it took to resolve similar cases in 2019 and more than three months longer than in 2010. Many misdemeanor and criminal traffic cases are taking longer to resolve than the average felony case did pre-pandemic.

Many county jails are still over capacity because of the number of people awaiting trial. Judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys have raised alarms that the backlog will affect the state’s justice system for years to come.

The pandemic prompted court systems in states across the country to nearly halt their legal proceedings. Many courts held remote hearings for the first time.

Read the full article.

The new capitalism

By REMSO MARTINEZ | Spring 2022

Jimmy Gullberg has 129,200 followers on the social media platform TikTok, many of whom look to him for entertaining advice about his job as a physician assistant in Milwaukee.

Despite his growing audience, Gullberg isn’t quitting his daytime job anytime soon. Nor does he have any intention of letting his TikTok “brand,” @pacollective, stagnate. Since May 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic in full swing, he’s begun producing 20 to 30 short videos a month using comedy to mentor students and illuminate the lives of healthcare workers.

These videos make money. How much, exactly, Gullberg won’t say. But he and other Wisconsin entrepreneurs are part of TikTok’s explosive international growth. In 2017, ByteDance Ltd., the Chinese-based owner of TikTok, generated $63 million in revenue. Last year, it was $4.6 billion, according to Business of Apps data.

Far surpassing Facebook, YouTube and other social media, TikTok’s short-form video platform (think of YouTube videos but much, much shorter) has attracted and encouraged a new, more direct kind of capitalism.

Read the full article.

Taking a Toll 

The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) issued its latest Apples to Apples report, an analysis of Wisconsin school performance. The report finds that Milwaukee’s choice and charter schools continue to perform better, on average, than traditional public schools in Milwaukee. But the pandemic has taken a toll as proficiency rates across all schools, statewide, have dropped below 40% for the first time.

What We're Reading

• The Atlantic: Kids Are Far, Far Behind in School 
• City Journal: Can We Avoid a Recession? 
• AEI: The Power of the Success Sequence 
• Claremont Review: The 1619 Lesson 

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