Economic Growth
BPF consistently aims at encouraging Mississippi's State Government to perform their vital, core responsibilities. BPF is focused on ways to ensure the state government provides these responsibilities in an effective and cost efficient manner in our cities, where new economic ideas are born.
Featured Work
What Happens When Experts Are Wrong?
Bigger Pie Forum Projects
Mississippi River Flooding
Consumer Advocate
PODCAST: 2000 Residents, One Street, and a Chance to Save Jackson
Downtown Jackson is at a tipping point. Liz Brister, head of Downtown Jackson Partners, and her husband Bill—a retired finance professor—sit down with Wyatt Emmerich to talk population decline, property redevelopment, safety perceptions, and why one vibrant street could change everything.
AI – The Next Big Thing for the Big Machine!
Hold my ampere and read this! The next three years are going to be electrifying! Why? Turn on the financial news today and all you hear is AI (artificial intelligence) this and AI that. AI must be the next BIG THING! Some think it will be the BIGGEST THING ever. It’s the elephant in the room that nobody can stop talking about. Watt could go wrong?
BPF Book Review: ‘The Illusion of Innovation’ by Elliot Parker
Innovation and innovators are critical to a dynamic and resilient economy. They are the methods, madness and masterminds behind Joseph Schumpeter’s famous descriptive, ‘creative destruction’. So, author Elliot Parker’s new book, ‘Illusion of Innovation’ should be taken as a serious warning to economists, investors and politicians about the prospects for America’s prosperity in the years ahead. The book serves as a critical and important assessment of the state of innovation in America today.
Mini Mills, DeepSeek, and Amazon’s Data Centers
In 1969, Nucor opened its first mini steel mill in Darlington, SC. Its small electric furnaces produced steel from scrap cheaper and faster than the big integrated mills’ blast furnaces could from iron ore. Nucor disrupted the steel industry. Today, it’s the largest and most diversified steel company in North America, with a $45 billion market cap. Mini mills now account for 70% of all steel produced in the U.S. Former industry giant U.S. Steel has only two integrated mills left, a market cap of $8 billion, and is seeking to be acquired. Sic transit gloria.
BPF Book Review of “The Coming Wave” by Mustafa Suleman
So where can one turn to better understand AI and how it might reorder America’s economy? A useful primer that makes the bull case for AI and provides good historical context is The Coming Wave – Technology, Power and the 21st Century’s Greatest Dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman with Michael Bhaskar. The book’s lead author, Mustafa Suleyman certainly has the creds to opine on this cutting-edge area of software, chips and algorithms.
Under the Bus
You might think the Governor and the Legislature threw Entergy Mississippi’s 461,000 customers under the bus as a sacrifice to the Economic Development Gods when they exempted the Amazon project from PSC oversight.