I frequently begin these daily rants by promising to “connect the dots.” That’s because Americans have a distressing tendency to argue policy in silos–ignoring the fact that the effects of policy A will often have a significant effect on policies B, C and D.
A friend recently sent me a column by Michael Hicks that connected our state’s disastrous education policies with our efforts at economic development. Hicks is a conservative and an economist, and his observations are based on data, not ideology. As he reports, Indiana’s economy is not keeping up with national trends. (Evidently, keeping taxes too low to provide the infrastructure necessary to an attractive quality of life isn’t the most intelligent approach. But then, that’s my snarky take.)
First, the data.
The Indiana Economic Development Corporation turns 20 years old in early 2025. In 2005, Indiana had 104,854 businesses, 2.96 million jobs and 6.28 million people.
In the most recent year for all these data, 2021, Indiana had 99,280 businesses, 3.23 million jobs and 6.81 million residents.
If the state had grown at the same pace as the rest of the nation, we would have 110,305 businesses, 3.23 million jobs and 7.05 million people. That leaves Indiana with a two-decade growth shortfall of more than 11,000 businesses, 151,000 jobs and 240,000 people.
Hicks says the reality is even worse than these numbers suggest.
Since its formation in 2005, Hoosier factory employment has declined by almost 55,000 jobs, or 10%. Indeed, since Indiana’s LEAP district was announced, the state has shed a further 14,000 factory jobs, while the nation as a whole added 166,000 manufacturing positions.
Over the past two decades, average real wages for manufacturing workers in Indiana dropped by a stunning 14.4%. Nationwide, they rose by just under 1%.
This performance–as Hicks acknowledges– is “policy failure in its purest, most unadulterated form.” But as he also acknowledges, the failures aren’t attributable to poor performance by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, which he says is one of the better such concerns. The problem is that the IEDC represents a “state with increasingly poor economic fundamentals”.
Hicks predicts a future performance that is even worse, thanks to Indiana’s war on education. There is, to begin with, 15 years of funding cuts to state universities–funding cuts that have left us with 10 years of declining attendance and graduation. Our legislature’s failure to reverse that decline places us behind Mississippi, of all places, where one-third more high school graduates attempt college each year than here in Indiana.
The lack of action on college completion removes from our economic development organizations the single most important aspect of a region’s future economic performance — educated young people.
To illustrate this disaster, we can look to the recent past. Since 1980, 72% of population growth, and almost all job growth, went to the 15% of U.S. counties with the highest educational attainment. There are only six of those in Indiana — four in the Indianapolis suburbs and the host counties of Purdue and Indiana University.
Over the same four decades, the least well-educated half of Indiana counties lost 13,764 people. This will inevitably worsen in the decades to come. Education is now more, rather than less, important to economic growth and prosperity.
Indiana’s education failures aren’t limited to higher education. There’s a reason fewer of our high school graduates to to college.
Indiana spends less per student on K-12 education than we did in 2010. One result is the average college graduate working in one of Indiana’s public schools is paid less than they were in 2004. On top of that, Indiana’s proposed high school curriculum will make it among the weakest in the nation…Either Indiana gets a lot more kids to finish college each year, or it gets used to slow growth, declining relative incomes, fewer businesses, wage declines and economic stagnation.
If Indiana’s goal is to be worse than Mississippi, then we’re doing great. Not only are we spending less on education at all levels, we are siphoning off what we do spend on educational vouchers that have done nothing to improve educational outcomes, but have deprived the public school system of critically-needed resources in order to support religious schools and enrich upper-middle-class families.
Early voting in Indiana begins on October 8th. By November 5th, Hoosiers will have made a choice between Jennifer McCormick, a gubernatorial candidate who understands the importance of education to economic development and overall quality of life, and Mike Braun, a candidate who wants to destroy public education by using our tax dollars to fund a “universal voucher” program.
McCormick has consistently done her homework. Braun clearly has not.
We will either elect someone who can begin to reverse Indiana’s steady decline, or we can continue to vie with Mississippi for the title of America’s most failed state.
An old business adage was “You have to spend money to make money”. Democrats understand that (the Biden administration has spent money to good effect growing our economy) while republicans, the supposed “pro-business” party do not.
Michael Hicks sounds like the poor man’s Morton Marcus, who been pointing out the inverse effect of Indiana’s economic policies for so many years, I can’t imagine life before his reports.
I’m relatively sure that both Dr. Marcus and Michael Hicks are aware that, “The prophet is not without honor, save in his own home.”
The conditions are a perfect breeding ground for the production of MAGA Republicans!
Braun understands what he’s doing perfectly well. He just doesn’t care … like most right-wing ideologues. As said many times before, everything Republicans touch dies.
Indiana’s “government” is beholden to the Koch-funded ideology of eliminating government to the point where only the haves have it all. They, the Republicans, also know that “their” people will serve up their wives, mothers and sisters before voting for a Democrat. It’s a cult, plain and simple.
What isn’t mentioned here is the coincidental loss of vocational programs in schools too. Not everyone is college material; we used to accept that. Just using college-related data doesn’t fully show how badly the educational system is crumbling.
There are a few instances around the country where MAGA policies, designed to support rural cultures, are imposed on urban zones because of statewide MAGA influence. One effect they demonstrate is that they turn urban areas under them into rural economic zones—zones that need wealth from unimpeded urban zones to survive.
I was an Econ major undergrad and follow Hicks’ writings. He’s conservative in mind but speaks to the data and it’s very clear cut. One nitpick, I believe West Virginia, not Mississippi, is what future Indiana will be. West Virginia ranks last in the US college graduation rates.
In an information-based economy, we should be investing substantially more in education than we are.
Hicks used to dine with Art Laffer at secret meetings put on by the Indiana Policy Review and the infamous racist and Papa John’s former CEO, John Schnatter. Hicks wanted to keep a $3.5 million donation from Schnatter to Ball State and even made excuses for John until the video was released of him using the “N” word, clinching John’s demise.
Mike has been trying to distance himself from that past and has moved from Koch’s clutches (even though Koch is a major donor to the business department at Ball State). Their economics department trains future Koch suckers.
Braun takes orders from the same dark Koch network, so his two policy think tanks are shrouded in mystery. If Braun is elected, you can expect the IEDC and Chamber of Commerce to run our educational system. They are already changing it into a work training system for Indiana businesses. The Chamber is balking at the so-called paid high school apprenticeship system. I am sure they want unpaid apprenticeships or free labor.
Under Republican leadership, we are consistently a bottom-feeder in the country with West Virginia and Mississippi. As long as I’ve been an adult, the college-educated crowd departs after graduation for more progressive and warmer states with more opportunities.
I can remember meeting with our Mayor and Ball State faculty over a decade ago, and the faculty members said Colorado was stealing all our college graduates. CO had just legalized marijuana, was progressive, and had mountains with lots of amenities. Indiana has none of those things which means we have to be even more creative.
Instead of our “leaders” appeasing the rural backward voters, they need to make Indiana more progressive than our neighbors to keep future entrepreneurs in our state. McCormick is getting skewered for wanting to legalize medical marijuana – how embarrassing!
If it weren’t for the Biden/Harris Infrastructure Bill to stimulate the economy, Indiana’s roads and bridges would still be the worst in the nation. You can’t go anywhere today in Indiana without seeing orange cones. That progress is thanks to the Democratic Party.
I still have not heard from WFYI or Indiana Capital Chronicle journalists regarding Braun’s nonprofit “think tanks” underwriting his policies. You’d think before quoting them, you’d want an idea of who funds the organization. One of the orgs has just one employee who is doing all the “policy research.” I don’t buy that one bit!
Just as important as whom we elect as the next governor is our R state legislators that answer only to their dark money donors. I have lost hope for our state because rural voters maintain most of the electoral power and far too many of them are maga cult members. As a rural resident I am exposed to those cult members daily and it is getting worse.
IN’s R dominated legislature is giving low wage businesses and corporations exactly what they’ve demanded – less educated and unskilled laborers that will be forced to accept lower wages and fewer benefits for the jobs available. For those businesses and corporations that DO want skilled labor, they demanded that our taxes fund the education for the specific skills each of those businesses need and have been complaining that they can’t find workers with the specific skills their businesses need. Those businesses don’t want to have to invest their own money to train potential employees and they absolutely don’t want to have to pay a living wage for those skilled workers.
Sounds like “Good Red State Policy.” And not good for the red state.