Gary Wolfram

This report analyzes the role small-dollar credit as payday loans and other short-term loans in providing Americans with needed financial services. It argues that these loans meet a legitimate demand for cash liquidity for millions of Americans, especially those with poor credit and those who are essentially shutout of the conventional banking system. Despite this, small-dollar, short-term loans are regularly criticized for being "predatory" and harmful. The report argues, however, that from the perspective of the consumers of these loans, these products meet an important need and limiting their availability through regulation would harm millions of Americans, especially low-income households.

The socialist principles of the Communist Manifesto of 1848 have delivered oppression, poverty, and misery wherever they have been implemented. Yet remarkably, many of them endure in contemporary political discourse ... Gary Wolfram refutes these principles with a clear exposition of the capitalist system--the only economic system compatible with both social justice and individual liberty. - Page 4 of cover

Michigan auto insurance premiums are among the highest in the nation. The American Association of Retired Persons, in a recent survey, found that Michigan's premiums were the second highest in the nation, behind only Louisiana. This, combined with a statutory requirement to purchase insurance, has led to legislative attempts to keep premiums down. Unfortunately, state lawmakers have pursued an approach that includes price controls, regulation of how premiums may be set, and requirements for insurance companies to provide specific types of coverage. As the famous Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises pointed out decades ago, this kind of government intervention, while well-intended, leads to unintended consequences that then lead to further government interventions, further unintended consequences, in a lengthy cycle with results that no legislator would have expected at the beginning.

"The Retrenchment of the State Employee Workforce in Michigan," a paper by Charles Ballard and Nicole Funari, is basically a summary of a lengthier report by the Michigan House Fiscal Agency.1 As such, it provides some useful information. However, the conclusions drawn by the authors and attributed to the paper in the media are not substantiated by the data presented, and the use of the data is in some cases misleading.