As Wisconsin heads into another governor’s race, we can expect that faculty tenure will once again be dragged into the political arena. It’s an easy target—often caricatured as a cushy system that protects “lazy professors” with lifetime job security. That talking point gets applause, but it gets the issue completely wrong.

            Tenure isn’t about protecting people who don’t work hard.  It’s about protecting the integrity of research itself.

What Tenure Actually Does

            True, research is produced by people, and so protecting research means protecting the people who conduct it. That’s the heart of tenure. But here’s the part that rarely enters the public conversation: academic disciplines are global communities. A physicist or economist or Shakespeare scholar isn’t judged primarily by colleagues on their own campus. Their work is evaluated by experts around the world.  Hiring, promotion, and salary decisions depend heavily on outside reviewers—people who aren’t part of the university, the state, or   political system. That global peer‑review process is what guides quality and credibility.

            University administrators—department chairs, provosts, chancellors, system presidents, and boards of regents—play important roles, but they are not the ones who determine whether a piece of research is groundbreaking or trivial. They can’t. No single campus contains the expertise to evaluate every field.  Weakening tenure would shift that authority away from worldwide experts and toward politicians, political appointees, and administrators. That’s a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of people who are not equipped to judge scholarly work.

Academic Freedom Strengthens Research Quality

            Academic freedom is another concept that gets tossed around without much understanding. It means the freedom to choose research topics, decide how much time to devote to them, and—especially in the STEM fields —determine how to pursue and fund that work. Without academic freedom, research becomes vulnerable to political pressure. The topics that would survive would be the ones politicians approve of, not the ones that advance knowledge within a discipline.

Teaching and Research Strengthen Each Other

            Critics often claim that research distracts from teaching.   The opposite is often true. The best teachers are frequently active researchers. Their enthusiasm for and knowledge of their subject spills into the classroom. Students feel that energy.  Moreover, working with research professors creates hands‑on learning opportunities; undergraduate and graduate students work as research assistants, gaining experience that greatly enhances what they get from classes and textbooks.

What’s at Stake for Wisconsin

            Some candidates have proposed eliminating or significantly weakening tenure. If that happens, the UW System—already strained by years of tight budgets—will struggle even more to hire and retain top faculty. Talented scholars have options, and they will choose institutions where their work is protected and valued.

            And here’s the irony: if tenure supposedly encourages laziness, how has Wisconsin produced not one but two top‑tier research universities as classified by the Carnegie Foundation?

• UW–Madison ranks among the top five universities in the nation for federally funded research.
• UW–Milwaukee, though much smaller, is recognized by the Carnegie Foundation as an R1 research university—a distinction reserved for institutions with the highest quality research activity.

These achievements don’t come from a system that rewards complacency. They come from a system that protects rigorous, world‑class research.

            In the upcoming gubernatorial race, voters should recognize that tenure is a safeguard—one that keeps research independent, protects academic freedom, and helps Wisconsin compete for the most productive faculty.   Weakening it would not make our universities stronger or more accountable. It would make them less competitive, less innovative, and less capable of serving the state.

When Rep. Tom Tiffany reminisced in the Milwaukee Journal (Nov 17, 2025)  about his days studying economics at UW–River Falls, he worried that today’s economics departments no longer teach much about free markets. He can rest easy. The competitive market model remains the backbone of every introductory economics course in the country—from UW campuses to community colleges to the Ivy League.

            Pick up any standard textbook and you’ll find the same core ideas Tiffany encountered in 1980: supply and demand, market equilibrium, price signals, and the efficiency of competitive markets. Milton Friedman, whose work Tiffany credits with “opening his eyes,” is certainly regarded as one of the top economist of the modern era -- especially in the area of monetary policy, free trade, low tariffs and immigration -- and his views are part of a broad and rich discussion of economics.   Most importantly, he was a strong advocate of using scientific method in the theoretical and empirical facets of economics. And, frankly, he would be appalled by current economic policy.

            But here’s the part of economics that often gets lost in political rhetoric: the free‑market model is a benchmark, not a blanket prescription. Economists teach students the conditions under which markets work well—and the equally important conditions under which they don’t. For markets to achieve textbook efficiency, we need enforceable property rights, good information, many buyers and sellers, low transaction costs, and the absence of externalities, among other prerequisites.

            These are demanding conditions. They rarely hold perfectly in the real world. That’s why so many policy debates revolve around cases where markets fail. Childcare has large social benefits that private markets underprovide. Carbon emissions impose costs on others that polluters have no incentive to consider. Health insurance markets break down when some of the people who need care most are priced out. In these situations, “let the market handle it” isn’t an economic argument—it’s a slogan that ignores the  principles of economics.

            The encouraging part of Tiffany’s comments is that they suggest economics might finally take a more prominent role in Wisconsin’s policy debates. Too often, issues with clear economic dimensions are decided without reference to the discipline that studies them.  

If you’ve felt frustrated hearing politicians celebrate falling inflation while your grocery bill still feels sky‑high, you’re not alone. The confusion comes from mixing up two related but different ideas: inflation and price levels.

Inflation measures how fast prices are rising. Price levels are the actual dollar amounts you pay at the store. When inflation slows, it means prices are rising more slowly than before. It does not mean they’re going back down. Once prices climb, they usually stay there.

Think of it like driving a car. Inflation is the speedometer — how fast you’re moving forward. Price levels are the odometer — how far you’ve already traveled. Slowing inflation is like easing off the gas pedal. You’re still moving forward, just not as fast. But the odometer doesn’t roll backward. Prices don’t magically return to 2019.

Could we force prices down? Technically yes, but only by throwing the economy into reverse — a deep recession. That would mean high unemployment, collapsing home values, and families postponing milestones like marriage, children, education, or medical care. Economists agree that’s not a road we want to take.

Instead, the smarter path is to raise wages and compensation so that purchasing power catches up. If paychecks grow steadily, families can afford today’s prices with the same ease they had before the pandemic. That’s why the Federal Reserve aims for about 2% inflation: a pace that reflects ongoing improvements in product quality and keeps the economy moving forward without overheating.

So when you hear “inflation is down,” remember: prices aren’t falling, they’re just climbing more slowly. The real solution is making sure incomes rise to meet them.

Ever since Zorhan Mamdani rode to victory as Mayor of New York City,  his theme of "Affordability" has become a political mantra. Every office seeker, pundit, and policy wonk now waves affordability as a banner headline. Yet beneath that banner lies a set of expensive necessities that define life in America—housing, healthcare, education, transportation, and childcare. Each of these items presents its own unique challenges, and each deserves to be examined individually as policy is developed. Childcare, in particular, stands out as both a pressing affordability issue and a textbook case of market failure.

            One attempt to justify taxpayer support for childcare is empathy: parents struggling to afford care deserve help. After all, it's hard  to raise children even when you have money! The empathy argument resonates in many circles.

            But another facet lies in assertions of individual responsibility.  Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin once made what is perhaps the clearest statement of this view: “I’ve never really felt it was society’s responsibility to take care of other people’s children.” His position reflects a traditional free-market belief that individual responsibility aligns with the public interest.   But   the free market model itself shows that the childcare market lacks the incentives and mechanisms required for efficiency. In other words, childcare is not just unaffordable for low-income families; the prerequisites for market efficiency are absent. 

The National Interest V. Parental Time and Money

            In rich nations and in poor the most valuable resources are its people and the talents and ambitions they possess. Much of this value depends upon early investment,  yet decisions about their care—how much money, time, and educational investment they receive—are made at the family level. Parents, often constrained by limited income, time, and access to credit, make choices under pressure. This creates a disconnect: from a national perspective, we want optimal investments in children, but the decisions are left to individuals who may lack the means to provide it.

            International comparisons highlight this gap. Sweden spends about $7,000 per child annually in public funds on childcare. France spends $6,000, Germany $5,500, Canada $4,000. The United States? Just $500.  

Parent/Career Life-Cycles

            Careers follow a logistic curve: early years are marked by exploration, job changes, and modest income. Over time, careers stabilize, advancement occurs, and incomes rise, typically peaking around age 50.  Consequently, at the start of their careers parents have energy but limited finances; childcare costs are high when incomes are lowest. Parents typically have children when they are young, precisely when they have the least financial liquidity. Their careers are just beginning, savings are minimal, and collateral such as home equity or business ownership has not yet been accumulated.

            In theory, they could bridge that time/income gap by borrowing against future earnings to pay for childcare; in practice credit markets refuse to lend to them because they lack assets to pledge as loan collateral. Sometimes extended families can offer to bridge that time gap.   Grandparents or older relatives with savings can help younger parents. But this solution is uneven and unreliable. Disproportionately, poor children, regardless of talent, are left behind if society fails to invest. That wasted potential represents a loss not only to the child but to the nation.  Senator Johnson’s statement, while consistent with free-market faith, illustrates precisely why the market fails: it assumes individual responsibility can solve a problem that requires collective investment.

Return on Childcare Investment

            The benefits of early childhood investment are not speculative; they are measurable. Nobel Prize–winning economist James Heckman has spent decades studying early childhood development. His research demonstrates that investing in young children—especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds—yields annual returns of up to 13 percent. That figure exceeds the average return on the S&P 500. These returns are derived from better educational outcomes, improved health, higher lifetime earnings, and reduced crime. In short, childcare investment strengthens families and the economy simultaneously.    The market left to the incentives facing individual responsible parents would fail to fund one of the highest-return investments available.   

              The affordability debate  gains clarity when viewed through economics: subsidizing childcare is not just an empathetic gesture to help struggling families; it is augments the market with public funding to gain a large national return on  investment.  

             In a recent interview conducted by FOX anchor Laura Ingraham, President Donald Trump defended the H-1B visa program, which allows U.S. companies to hire foreign workers in specialized fields such as technology and engineering. The program was designed to address gaps in the domestic labor market by permitting firms to bring in talent for up to three years when equivalent skills are not available among U.S. citizens. When Ingraham suggested that such talent might exist within the American workforce, Trump dismissed the idea, arguing that the U.S. simply does not produce enough qualified candidates.

            That comment sparked backlash within the MAGA movement, exposing a tension between Trump’s populist base and his pro-business instincts. Many supporters felt betrayed by his endorsement of a program often criticized for displacing American workers and depressing wages.     Meanwhile, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has announced legislation to eliminate the H-1B program altogether.

            Trump’s defense of H-1B visas, however, points to a deeper issue: America’s chronic underperformance in STEM education. If the U.S. truly wants to reduce reliance on imported talent, it must begin by cultivating its own.

            The challenge is compounded by a severe teacher shortage, especially in math and science. Schools across the country struggle to hire qualified educators, particularly in rural and low-income districts. Even when teachers are available, they face large class sizes, administrative burdens, and limited resources. This creates a vicious cycle: students receive inadequate instruction, fall behind, and lose interest in STEM. As fewer students pursue these fields, the pool of future educators and professionals is further limited.

            This problem has persisted for decades. What is new is the potential of artificial intelligence to break the cycle. One of the most prominent innovators in this space is Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy. His nonprofit platform has long provided free, high-quality instructional videos in subjects ranging from arithmetic to differential equations. More recently, Khan has advanced this mission with Khanmigo, an AI-powered tutor and teaching assistant designed to personalize learning for every student.

            Khanmigo functions as a real-time learning companion. For students, it offers interactive tutoring that emphasizes critical thinking and problem-solving, guiding  learners through complex math problems, assisting with computing tasks, and providing  feedback on writing assignments. For teachers, Khanmigo helps with lesson planning, grading, and mentoring, easing the burdens that often drive educators out of the profession.

            Perhaps Khanmigo’s most promising feature is its ability to replicate the benefits of one-on-one tutoring at scale. Until now, individualized tutoring was prohibitively expensive and logistically impossible for most schools. AI changes that;   every student can have a personal tutor that adapts to their pace, learning style, and needs. This is especially valuable in math, where gaps in understanding compound over time. A student who struggles with fractions in fifth grade may find algebra incomprehensible in eighth. AI can identify these gaps early and provide targeted support, preventing long-term academic failure.

            In classrooms where teachers are stretched thin, AI can take on routine tasks such as grading quizzes or generating lesson plans, freeing educators to focus on mentoring and motivating students. The goal is not to automate education but to enhance it—making teachers more effective and students more engaged.

            Ultimately, math must be treated as a language. Mastery comes through practice, and fluency permits exploration of  STEM fields; giving them a try without a language barrier.  With AI tools like Khanmigo, students can discover whether they enjoy these fields, develop their abilities, and whether to pursue them as college majors and careers. Without that language, they remain outsiders in a world increasingly defined by science and technology.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Economics was a thunderous affirmation of a truth economists have long known: knowledge creation is the lifeblood of economic growth. The laureates — Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt — were honored for showing how innovation, driven by public and private investment in research, fuels prosperity. Their work is not just theoretical. It’s a roadmap for how nations thrive.

But while the global economic community celebrates this insight, the United States is actively dismantling the very machinery that makes it possible.

Project 2025: A Blueprint for Scientific Sabotage

Under the banner of Project 2025, the Trump administration is executing a sweeping plan to gut federal research budgets. Agencies like the NIH, NSF, and DOE — the backbone of American scientific leadership — are facing historic funding cuts. These aren’t trims. They’re amputations.

The consequences are immediate and brutal:

• Cancer research trials are being delayed or canceled.
• Alzheimer’s studies are losing funding midstream.
• Climate resilience programs — including satellite monitoring and extreme weather modeling — are being shelved.
• University labs are laying off staff and freezing graduate programs.

This isn’t belt-tightening. It’s ideological vandalism masquerading as fiscal responsibility.

Innovation Is a Public Good — And We’re Defunding It

For nearly a century, economists have understood that scientific research is a public good. It benefits everyone, but it won’t be produced in sufficient quantity without public support. That’s why the U.S. government has historically led the world in funding basic science — from the moon landing to the Human Genome Project.

But Project 2025 treats public goods as expendable. It redirects resources toward tax cuts for the wealthy while hollowing out the institutions that generate long-term prosperity. It’s a short-term sugar rush that guarantees long-term stagnation.

The Economic Fallout: Slower Growth, Fewer Jobs, Lower Living Standards

The Nobel-winning economists have made it clear: cutting investment in knowledge creation slows economic growth. That means:

• Fewer high-paying jobs in biotech, AI, and clean energy.
• Lower productivity across industries.
• A declining standard of living for future generations.

  Countries that invest in research grow faster. Those that don’t fall behind.

The Evidence Is Stark — And It’s Visual

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has released a devastating graph showing the scale of these cuts. It’s not just numbers. It’s a portrait of national decline. Every line trending downward represents a missed cure, a delayed breakthrough, a shuttered lab.

           In the ongoing battles over federal funding, the term “clean continuing resolution” (CR) has become a rhetorical centerpiece. A continuing resolution is a temporary funding bill passed by Congress to avoid a government shutdown, or to end one, when full appropriations bills have not been enacted. A “clean” CR, in theory, maintains existing funding levels without introducing new policy changes.  

            On its surface, a clean CR suggests a neutral, straightforward measure to keep the government running—free of policy riders, ideological demands, or partisan brinkmanship. It simply keeps the government functioning for a set number of days, extending the budget that prevailed prior to the deadline of the previous budget, in the present case October 1.

            In the present shutdown, the term "Clean CR" gives Republicans like Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader John Thune  a ready-made talking point: if only the Democrats would accept the clean CR, the government could be opened immediately! They argue that Democrats are obstructing the government’s reopening by demanding unrelated concessions.  

            The “clean” CR is  procedurally tidy but politically loaded.   Democrats  argue that the CR is not truly “clean” if it fails to address two major concerns: the rollback of Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies and the practice of “rescission,” where the executive branch refuses to spend funds that Congress has appropriated.  

            First, Democrats seek the restoration of enhanced ACA subsidies that were expanded under President Biden. These subsidies made health insurance more affordable for millions of Americans, particularly low- and middle-income families. Without them, premiums rise, coverage declines, and the ACA’s promise of accessible healthcare is undermined. A clean CR that omits these subsidies  locks in a policy shift that Democrats view as harmful and regressive.

            Second, Democrats are alarmed by the Trump administration’s increasing use of rescission. This practice allows the executive branch to withhold spending on programs that Congress has explicitly funded.  The Constitution grants Congress the power of the purse, but Project 2025 envisions a presidency with sweeping control,  including the discretion to ignore or reinterpret congressional appropriations.

            From the Democratic perspective, accepting a clean CR without safeguards against rescission amounts to surrendering legislative authority. It would allow the executive to selectively implement laws, undermining the separation of powers and threatening democratic accountability;  the clean CR is not a neutral funding tool.  The clean CR is not just about keeping the government open. It is about what kind of government remains open.

In a time when headlines are dominated by stories of expiring food assistance programs and shrinking health insurance subsidies, it's natural to look around for some good news. Fortunately, there's a bright spot worth celebrating—one that could reshape our energy future and help combat climate change: electricity generated using renewable energy is coming way down in price to where it is comparable to electricity generated by fossil fuels.

Thanks to data from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA, www.irena.org), we now have a clear picture of how dramatically the cost of clean energy has fallen. The key metric here is the Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE)—a way to compare different energy sources by calculating the average cost of producing electricity over the lifetime of a facility. This accounts for the large cost elements: upfront construction costs, ongoing fuel expenses, maintenance, and more.

Why does LCOE matter? Because different energy sources have very different cost profiles during the lifespan of the facilities that use those sources. For example:

• Nuclear and hydroelectric power require massive upfront investments but have low operating costs, and in the case of nuclear, huge cost at the end of life.
• Fossil fuel plants are cheaper to build but come with ongoing fuel costs—coal, oil, or gas.
• Renewables like solar and wind are increasingly affordable to install and have low operating cost.  

The numbers tell a compelling story by comparing inflation-adjusted costs in the year 2010 to costs in the year 2023:

• In 2010, solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity cost $0.46 per kilowatt-hour. In 2023, it’s down to just $0.04.
• Concentrated solar power (those large fields full of solar panels) dropped from $0.39 to $0.11.
• Offshore wind fell from $0.20 to $0.07.

By comparison, newly built fossil fuel plants cost between $0.08 and $0.18 per kilowatt-hour. That means many renewable technologies are now comparable in costs to technologies using fossil fuels, even without subsidies and without accounting for costs to the environment.

Lower costs make clean energy more accessible to communities, more attractive to investors, and more powerful as a tool against climate change. In other words, market incentives are beginning to work in favor of renewable energy.

SNAP is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,  the largest federal nutrition assistance program in the United States.  SNAP benefits are set to expire in November 2025 due to the ongoing government shutdown.  If this occurs food access will be greatly reduced for over 42 million Americans, a moral collapse.  

The expiration of SNAP benefits isn’t some unfortunate accident—it’s the predictable outcome of Project 2025, a political agenda that treats poverty as a personal failing and markets as the guide to personal responsibility.  Project 2025  is riddled with mistaken -- childish, really -- ideological devotion to “free markets,”  a conceptual framework that relies on idealized preconditions. It is a teaching tool in college and in advanced High school economics courses.   Economically ignorant self-labeled "conservatives" use it as a picture of reality rather than a deductive model inherited from the Scottish enlightenment and the writings of Adam Smith, refined over the intervening 250 years until now.   Such misuse creates little harm when what is it stake are commodities or luxury items. But when misapplied to the welfare of human beings it is a tragic desecration of the economics profession and a danger to millions of our fellow Americans.

Still, the federal USDA funds will run dry unless the shutdown ends soon.    25 states have already announced that without that federal money  they will cut off food aid.  This means that in those states families, children, seniors, and disabled individuals will be left to find alternatives at a time when charitable giving is already stretched to the breaking point, barely covering gaps in childcare, housing, and basic medical care.  

The authors and supporters of Project 2025 know this. The impending disaster is their warning shot, not just for food policy, but for every Federal government social support system.

The September Consumer Price Index announced the morning of October 24  shows inflation at 3%, prompting a 2.8% Social Security increase for 2026. Inflation remains above the Fed’s 2% target.   Closing that gap will remain tough.  On the somewhat brighter side,   3% is well below the post-COVID spikes during 2022 and 2023.

It’s crucial to clarify a common misconception: inflation is a measure of how fast prices are rising. It is a measure of changes in price level, not a measure of price levels.  Arithmetically, even if the economy achieves the FED's target inflation rate of 2%,  the price level will remain higher than before Covid. This will prove vexing for those who yearn for the lower prices of 2019. Such a reduction in prices would require a deep recession for a few years; the better solution would be to have Price inflation settle at the 2% target and wages rise to produce the purchasing power of 2019. A big part of our "affordability problem" is that we are for short of wages rising to that level. 

Consider a numerical example:  for example, if eggs cost $3 last year and $3.09 this year, that’s a 3% increase.   If egg-price inflation is zero next year, the price would remain at $3.09. 

Finally, thanks to the CPI’s role in indexing Social Security, retirees will see a modest bump in benefits to help offset the continued rise in "the cost of living."