As state policymakers pivot toward fall economic planning, they must confront a sober reality about our competitiveness. The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce’s 2026 Business Benchmarks report revealed that our state has fallen behind on crucial growth metrics since 2019. Minnesota currently ranks 38th in GDP per capita growth and a dismal 46th in real median household income growth, while a separate national index places our overall economic outlook at 39th. Regulated free markets are the best economic engine to solve this.
The proper role of government is to make investments the private sector will not make while refereeing for free and fair competition. Producers then compete in the market for consumer dollars, which pushes down prices, drives innovation, and delivers better quality.
Economist Joseph Schumpeter called this “creative destruction:” shellac records gave way to vinyl, then CDs, then digital downloads, and then streaming, each stage driven by competitors trying to out-innovate one another for your business.
Take out your phone. It’s a supercomputer marvel. Government funding built the foundations of the early internet; free-market competition scaled those foundations into the device in your pocket and search engines that organize the world’s information in seconds.
Publicly funded research often lays the groundwork — university agricultural extensions, federal technology research — but it’s free-market competition that harnesses those raw tools into the best consumer choices.
When economic anxieties rise, public debates tend to veer toward ideological extremes — but neither extreme is the answer.
A recent Cato Institute/YouGov survey revealed that 34% of Americans under the age of 30 hold a favorable view of communism. That figure doesn’t reflect a desire for historical atrocities; it reflects real, modern frustrations. While I honor those working toward a more equitable society, communism is not the solution.
Under communism, the government owns the means of production and citizens have no rights; in exchange for the state’s promise of care, citizens owe absolute obedience, enforced by police-state tactics. Under Soviet rule, Eastern Europe was enslaved, the Berlin Wall trapped citizens, and millions were sent to Gulags for forced labor. Citizens waited in bread lines, wore bland state-issued clothes, and watched censored media. The people tore down communist leader statues.
In China, communist economic policies starved over 40 million people during Mao’s Great Leap Forward. To survive, China shifted to state capitalism — a flawed system with heavy interference, yet far superior to pure communism. Today, over 1 billion Chinese own a smartphone or mobile device, and China has stock markets. But Beijing abandoned only communist economic policies, not communist political ones. Citizens live in an authoritarian one-party state where advanced facial recognition tracks everyone — a real-world totalitarian nightmare.
Our Declaration of Independence — our nation’s mission statement — states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all (people) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among (people), deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This anchors our society in human rights and establishes that government exists to preserve them.
In his first inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson urged Americans to “unite in common efforts for the common good,” reminding us that the majority’s will must prevail while protecting equal rights for the minority too.
Communism offers neither democracy nor minority rights we hold dear.
Regulated free markets also generate the wealth and tax revenue needed to fund public investments — and that’s the real debate: what investments should we be making? If government wants to invest in a bridge, private companies bid for the business, forcing innovation to deliver projects faster, cheaper, and better for taxpayers. Competition is the best solution.
For those of us here in Minnesota working for a fairer society, communism is not the answer.
Remember that the best social program is a good job. The most powerful weapon against poverty is an employable skill — whether as an RN, electrician, medical lab tech, IT analyst, HVAC technician, or commercial driver.
We absolutely need a safety net. The real debate is not over the destruction of the market or the destruction of government, but which investments we should be making together, which referee rules could be improved, and then letting people be free.
Free to compete.
Free to choose.
Todd Carlsen writes about social and historical issues of interest to the community. He is a resident of Eden Prairie.