Ramstad: Here’s why Minnesota is in a precarious state

I’ve said it since this column started in 2023: Minnesota’s population is growing so slowly, we’ll have a hard time maintaining the prosperity we’ve been used to for decades.

Earlier this month, former Minneapolis TV journalist Rick Kupchella amplified that idea in a widely discussed hourlong documentary called “A Precarious State.”

As a piece of journalism, it connected developments that are typically presented as discrete from each other. However, “A Precarious State” is more properly evaluated as a political statement for the moment it is in and the people behind it.

Kupchella, a former anchor at KARE 11 and founder of the Bring Me the News website, now strides the line between journalism and advocacy as the owner of a public affairs consulting and production firm.

Funded by business interests, the production appeared in content and timing designed to influence next month’s elections, particularly for the city councils in Minneapolis and St. Paul that are stacked with people who stand against business and growth.

Aired on five TV stations around the state on Oct. 2, Kupchella’s documentary has subsequently gone viral in business and right-leaning circles. The documentary’s YouTube version has received more than 300,000 views and an online discussion drew hundreds of questions. He told me he’s got a handful of shorter, follow-up videos planned in coming weeks.

The documentary focused heavily on crime in Minneapolis. As a first step to solving the state’s economic challenge it prescribed the restoration of the Minneapolis Police Department, gutted by criticism and resignations after the police slaying of George Floyd five years ago.

The takeaway seemed to be: If we solve crime, we solve Minneapolis’ (and the state’s) growth woes.

“It’s been a critical point all along for me,” Kupchella told me. “We talked about education, we talked crime, we talked about economic pain and demographic realities. ... You stop and say, if the orientation is ‘how do we right the ship,’ then whatever else is true, the first thing you must stabilize is the sense of safety and security.”

I agree that personal safety and low crime are baseline conditions for any community to attract people and to prosper. MPD is understaffed. It has made important changes, but the department has a long road to get back to the number of officers its leaders say it needs.

Kupchella’s documentary doesn’t go into the department’s own role in harming its reputation and relations with the public. Even if it had, the point remains that the city endured a rise in crime in 2020 and 2021. That wave has ebbed, data shows, but it will take time to change impressions about the city’s safety.

That’s more than I’ve ever written about crime in this column. Here’s why:

The city and the state would still have growth challenges had the Floyd murder, subsequent riots and resulting contretemps about the direction of MPD not happened.

The root cause of the population growth slowdown, and its slowing effect on economic growth, is that growing affluence led people to marry less and have fewer children.

It’s paradoxical in a way. But many other countries, from South Korea to Greece to Brazil, for the same reasons are seeing slow growth or outright decline in population. Demographers project world population will peak later this century.

In the U.S., there are racial overtones to the phenomenon because affluence has long been concentrated among white Americans. The white population peaked about 15 years ago in Minnesota and several other states, including some in the South.

Minnesota’s particular challenge is that it had a relatively higher portion of white people to start. Minnesotans of color and new immigrants have had to offset the white population decline. They’ve done it, but not by much, and the state’s overall population growth has trailed the nation’s for more than 20 years.

Those are a lot of cards stacked against Minnesota, indeed the entire Midwest.

Maintaining economic growth in the face of slow population growth is a huge challenge. As my colleague Aaron Brown has written, it has been front and center in rural Minnesota for decades.

There’s opportunity in that challenge, too. If Minnesotans can find a way to stay rich as population growth slows or declines, people will come from around the world to find out how we did it.

Excellent policing and safety in Minneapolis are a start, not an end.

The city and all of Minnesota must maintain affordability, clean air and water, and opportunities for personal and professional growth.