Minnesota pays 30-40% more per ton for salt than NY or Ohio. Midwest governments should be using their buying power and ability to control political subdivisions to make these mergers less profitable. For commodities, this is an area where government procurement shines.
In the absence of sane Federal regulatory action, consolidation of suppliers is best addressed by consolidating demand. A state like Minnesota should be forcing cities/counties to use a single state contract and leverage that demand to pull salt in from Canada, Western NY, wherever. Then use multi-state alliances to drive more demand and concessions from suppliers.
The downside is that winner take all procurement will put incumbents out of business, but that will happen anyway.
>> winner take all procurement will put incumbents out of business
The worst part isn't that companies go out of business, they probably won't, but that after a few rounds of one big state contract only one company will have the capacity to even bid for the contact. That one big company will then subcontract lots of little local delivery contracts. The one big company will have then effectively replaced the government in that it will manage salt delivery across the state.
End of the day, the market is doing that anyway. Remember the private equity folks are buying up the means of production -- contracting out trucking or whatever is meaningless.
It's obviously building an old-school Trust, but under our current legal philosophy, as long the private equity / public companies slowly boil the frog and the commodity doesn't increase in price quickly, there will be no Federal regulatory action.
All of these things are re-treads of what happened between 1880-1920. The cost efficiencies driving profit are about using computer tech to reduce labor and other costs. In the old days, it was spinning machines powered by coal/gas/electricity displacing water or craft work. It's more profitable/lower risk to build a monopoly and slowly implement cost-cutting than to be forced to do so by a competitve marketplace.
That’s silly. A single buyer doesn’t have to buy the entire supply in one shot. They could easily say “We buy the cheapest marginal salt in any quantity until our total capacity is met. You must beat $CANADA_PRICE + $IMPORT_PRICE, as well as $NY_PRICE + $TRANSPORT_PRICE or we’ll have to buy from them instead”.
Minnesota state procurement is seriously broken with residents now paying the second highest taxes in the nation (after CA). The only question is whether this should be attributed to incompetence via political appointments or straight up graft.
Check out the MNLARS project, if you’re interested in another excellent example. Pay attention to the insane dollar amounts involved and feel free to make up your own mind if the people in charge of that project were really that dumb or if there is something more sinister going on.
Minnesotans don't have much time for political nonsense. Taxes in Minnesota are not an issue. We have had the highest voter participation percentage of any state for a long time.
This is a great state to live in that cares about its citizens, people with disabilities and children. We also have great schools but we do have a large achievement gap. Another thing that bothers me are some of the inequities across counties. We also have a lack of affordable housing like everyone else does.
Ah yes, the "Blue Ribbon Committee" organized by the same people who were responsible for managing the MNLARS project for the past decade. I'm glad there were able to put together this "independent" and completely bias-free review of this project so this can be put to bed.
Get real. I lived in MN most of my life and finally moved last year. I now reside in TX and keep much more of what I make. If you don't smell something fishy with this project and the way MN is managing tax revenue, they've got you fooled.
The politicians will hide behind very noble reasons to request more money from taxpayers. Perhaps there are some true believers, but they are only concerned with empire building, giving high-paying/do nothing jobs to cronies, and maximizing the amount of money flowing through their coffers.
People at all levels of government have few if any incentives to be results-oriented and efficient but are heavily incentivized to request more money, employees, etc. The unfortunate thing is that the people of MN have been easily manipulated via guilt, social justice, etc. into paying well more than their fair share. Maybe guilt is a cultural defect somewhat specific to MN, but it seems that the politicians have been quite good at exploiting it for gain.
> This is a great state to live in...
It _used_ to be a great state to live in. Below average wages, above average taxes. Keep buying into Minnesota exceptionalism and telling yourself that your quality of life is somehow better than other places in the US. It ain't.
> Get real. I lived in MN most of my life and finally moved last year. I now reside in TX and keep much more of what I make. If you don't smell something fishy with this project and the way MN is managing tax revenue, they've got you fooled.
Minnesota manages to keep the lights and heat on in the winter, how’s TX in that regard? You still pay taxes in Texas, just in different ways.
Road salt isn’t a complex delivery of services. It’s a pure commodity.
Large complex procurement fails or needs change orders frequently because they are large and complex. Buyers don’t understand what they want and sellers understand what they are told. More bidders often drive prices up.
Commodities are different. It’s driven by volume and competitive process. If 30 salt miners bid, you’re getting a good price. If 2 bid, your only path to better pricing is to go vertical to control demand. State governments are able to do that for this type of commodity. Supermarkets do the same thing with produce, although that was illegal until recently.
Making direct comparisons among state income taxes is facile without acknowledging the marginalized rates. Do California and Minnesota have high tax rates? Yes, but only for high income individuals. California's highest bracket doesn't kick in until you make over $1MM and Minnesota doesn't until you make over $275k. Iowa's top tax bracket begins at $75k as an example. Someone making $80k per year would pay higher income taxes in Iowa than in Minnesota or California yet strangely the internet isn't full of people ranting about the tax rates in Iowa. If you compare effective tax rates versus median income, California and Minnesota aren't even in the top 20 most expensive tax states.
It's hard to compare because it depends on you and policy.
Unless you have unusually high W-2 income, expensive or large property, etc most of the differences between states are pretty marginal when you net everything out.
Many of the "low tax" states have a catch, whether it be sales tax on food, school funding, high property taxes, local governance that encourages HOA, etc. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter too much. People complaining about taxes is background radiation.
People in Iowa complain about their tax rates. If you don't live in Iowa, you don't hear about it. Iowa's population is too small to make the news for the most part (except at caucus time, but state taxes are not an issue in the national elections).
I live in Iowa. I've literally heard more people here complain about "Liberal California" tax rates than Iowa tax rates. Generally people just have a poor understanding of how taxation actually works. Most Iowa residents probably have no idea that they pay a higher tax rate they they would in California.
Exactly. I live in New York, which is definatly a high tax state. 51% of income tax revenues come from people making >$700k, and much of that money is transferred to people making <$32k. With refundable credits for children and property taxes, those folks have a near-zero or negative income tax rate.
Most government bidding processes would be improved by simplifying them drastically. Eg highest bidder wins. Instead of the beauty contests with lots of different factors that need evaluation by politicians.
In the absence of sane Federal regulatory action, consolidation of suppliers is best addressed by consolidating demand. A state like Minnesota should be forcing cities/counties to use a single state contract and leverage that demand to pull salt in from Canada, Western NY, wherever. Then use multi-state alliances to drive more demand and concessions from suppliers.
The downside is that winner take all procurement will put incumbents out of business, but that will happen anyway.