Today, the Show-Me Institute joined with organizations throughout the nation in celebrating the life and legacy of economist Milton Friedman.

Friedman was both a groundbreaking theoretical economist and a tireless advocate for freedom, and the world is a better place today than it would have been without his influence.

If you’d like to learn more about Milton Friedman, his rigorous scholarship, and his passion for liberty, a good place to start is his classic book Capitalism and Freedom. The Idea Channel is also streaming every episode of his excellent PBS series Free to Choose for free!

Read, watch, and learn.

Via Mr. Combest, the Kansas City Star reports that Jackson County, Missouri (that’s Kansas City and suburbs, for you St. Louisans who have never been west of Party Cove) will be laying off employees in order to balance its budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders deserves credit for making the tough decisions to cut employees, and by extension the size of county government, instead of trying to raise taxes. I don’t mean to treat lightly the situation for the county employees who are losing their jobs, but Mr. Sanders’ first responsibility is to the taxpayers, not the government workers. As someone who has himself been laid off from a government job, I feel comfortable saying that.

I have long admired the overall government setup in Jackson County, as compared to St. Louis County.  It has far fewer suburbs (I think it’s 18, as opposed to 91), which are much larger, on average, than in St. Louis. That leads to much less duplication of services. St. Louis County could learn from that.

Bill McClellan has been tremendous with his last two columns in the Post-Dispatch about the Missouri Supreme Court opening and the Missouri non-partisan court plan. Two months ago, I blogged some suggestions for improvements to the court plan, which I think (hope) are worth revisiting. I think the non-partisan court plan should be kept, but the most important change it needs is to make the governor’s selections coincide with the term of the governor, rather than the current six-year staggered term. As I wrote in May, the number of governor appointments should also be increased by one to equal the number of lawyers and judges on each commission. With those changes, I think problems with the current set-up could be well-addressed.

According to the Springfield News-Leader, officials are touting the economic benefits of September’s "Tour of Missouri" bicycle race:

Out of a budget of $2.8 million that includes participation by sponsors and host communities, it’s estimated state spending will come to $1 million for the race.

That money is tourism investment, and it’s unfair to claim it is being diverted from areas such as child health care, Bennett said.

I don’t doubt this race was planned with good intentions, but I don’t think the race-as-investment strategy has solid economic grounding. The race will undoubtedly bring money into Missouri, but the concentrated gains probably won’t be worth the diffuse cost to taxpayers.

Continue reading "A Bicycle Built for Tourism" »

An article in the Post-Dispatch describes the enthusiasm with which high school students across the country are responding to online summer school courses:

Students taking classes online can submit their assignments in e-mails, “talk” to teachers through instant messages, and interact with other students in online discussion groups.

Some students and parents say online classes make learning easier.

“These online classes have been a blessing,” said Carol Meerschaert, whose 16-year-old daughter, Claire, has an attention deficit disorder.

The Missouri Virtual Instruction Program will begin offering summer school courses in 2009, and it will charge tuition. It probably makes sense to charge tuition for high-demand subjects, but I don’t see the point of the rigid distinctions MoVIP is drawing between school-year and summer-school courses. One of the possible advantages of online education is that students can begin and finish coursework whenever they want, working at their own pace.

The Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas has released a new working paper that finds an increased availability of school choice in a given community results in parents who are better informed about their children’s schools and educations. It may seem like an obvious point, but in the social sciences, truth is often counterintuitive — so the more data and rigorous analysis that exists, the better.

From the abstract:

Theories of school choice suggest that parents need to and can make informed decisions that will tend to situate their students in appropriate schools. School choice, in a sense, brings elements of participatory democracy into the world of compulsory education, and thus brings the same potential benefits and problems that have long challenged democratic theorists. Increasing choices to parents may give them an incentive to raise their information levels about the schools their children attend. Akin to the information gathering of consumers in a marketplace, choice parents should have more reasons to gather more information about their schools than parents without options. Alternatively, a lack of any increase in information levels amongst school choosers would suggest that despite the increased incentives to gather information, having choices per se is not sufficient to overcome the costs of information gathering.

To test whether the availability of school choice increases parent information about schools, we analyze data from the second year experimental evaluation of the Washington Scholarship Fund, a privately-funded partial-tuition voucher program. We find that presenting parents with choices does lead to higher levels of accurate school-based information on measures of important school characteristics. Specifically, parents in the school choice treatment group provided responses that more closely matched the school-reported data about school size and class size than did parents of control group members.

And from the conclusion:

Since accurate information is important for consumers to make effective choices, these results are generally consistent with the claims made by school choice supporters that low-income inner-city parents can and will become informed educational consumers. That, alone, is a significant finding.

An article in today’s Columbia Missourian discusses Al Sharpton’s solution for reducing the gap between blacks and whites when it comes to health care services … universal health care:

Universal health care to me is the only way you are going to bridge the gap to guarantee all Americans health care, Sharpton said. The gap between black and white in health care in some areas is three-to-one in terms of services. The only way you are going to do that communally is with a universal health care plan that makes it all an even playing field. Unless that gap is closed, it will never be one truly American entity.

Health care in the African-American community is not as up to par as it is in the white community. But universal health care would bring everyone down to the same level. That won’t solve the problems in health care for anyone. As we have stated before at the Show-Me Institute, the U.S. health care system hasn’t been developed along free-market lines for decades.

The way to truly raise health care standards across the board is to open the market to everyone — not just a few HMOs, and especially not with the government maintaining centralized control of health care decisions. Pamela Hardin, first vice president of the Columbia branch of the NAACP, makes a great point that’s applicable not only to African-Americans, but to everyone:

It is the responsibility of citizens to educate themselves on health care programs.

Maurice earlier referenced the Joplin Globe’s editorial on toll roads in Missouri. I wish to add my thoughts. The Globe writes:

Missourians have eschewed toll roads for much the same reason. They don’t relish paying again at a toll gate for something for which their gasoline taxes have already paid.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! The Globe could not be more wrong. It is illegal to put tolls on roads that were built with gas tax dollars. Any new transportation plan for Missouri, which I hope includes tolls, would only be able to put those tolls on new highways, or new lanes added to existing highways. You can not just take I-70 and turn it into a toll road after it was built with gas taxes. Tolled interstate highways in other states, such as Oklahoma, were either built as toll roads, or turnpikes, before the interstate highway system was created, or were built afterward using toll financing instead of gas taxes. I just wanted to make that clear for everyone. 

Following on the heels of Barack Obama’s declaration earlier this month that he would support some form of merit pay for teachers in public schools, Michael Bloomberg has voiced his support as well:

Supporters, like Bloomberg, say bonuses for teachers who improve student achievement would reward effective work and attract strong people to the job. But some opponents, including many teachers unions, worry about the idea of gauging teachers based on a narrow factor like standardized tests.

U.S. teachers are typically paid on a system that rewards seniority, with an average starting salary of around $31,000.

Bloomberg said some critics believe that offering financial incentives to teachers somehow diminishes their altruistic motives — an idea he denounced as "ridiculous."

"We should be offering teachers and principals incentives not only to take the toughest assignments, and to fill special needs, but also to get the best possible results from their students," he said.

Support by politicians like Obama and Bloomberg helps demonstrate that using market mechanisms to improve public schools isn’t a party- or ideology-based issue. People simply want the schools to work, so their kids can learn. Ignoring market-based solutions is a recipe for continued failure.

In an editorial published late last night, the Joplin Globe argues against instituting tolls on Missouri highways. The piece points out that Missouri voters have rejected toll roads twice in the past, and that residents in adjacent Oklahoma have been soured on toll roads:

Oklahoma is a big turnpike state. A few years ago,
56 percent of Oklahomans responding to a statewide survey said they
would happily do away with tolls, and more than half were willing to
use state-lottery revenues for that purpose. Of course, state lottery
money wound up being earmarked for public and higher education. But the
fact is that Oklahomans were tired of forever being required to plop
down $3.50 to drive from Tulsa to Joplin or Tulsa to Oklahoma City.

The editorial suggests that Missouri could raise funds for transportation infrastructure instead by increasing the motor fuel tax for a period of time, or increasing vehicle and license fees.

Now, I understand that people may not like the idea of paying $2 or $3 every time they travel up and down I-70 or I-44. For example, I go to school in Illinois, and every time I drive to Chicago I’m annoyed by the tolls on I-88 as much as the next driver. But the money collected helps improve highways, and does it at the expense of the people and businesses that use those roads the most. Raising motor fuel taxes or increasing license fees would affect motorists who don’t use the highway at all — a far less justifiable fundraising base.

Also, I like the idea of having a guy like Little John collecting tolls on I-70.

An article in today’s St. Joesph News-Press reports that Kansans are upset about Missouri eliminating a tax deduction that non-residents received in the past:

A highly publicized Social Security tax cut for Missourians that Gov. Matt Blunt recently signed into law also nixed a real-estate tax deduction for non-residents — essentially increasing Missouri taxes for people who work here but live out of state.

Because of this, Kansas lawmakers might launch a counterattack by passing a law that would restrict Kansas non-residents from the same benefit. Yet, all of this hullabaloo really results in not much of a tax increase at all for the average Kansans who works in Missouri:

[T]he more than 1,400 neighboring Kansas residents who commute to Buchanan County may pay more taxes to the state of Missouri next year, but they should break even after paying their Kansas taxes, explained Gerald Williams, a certified public accountant with Sumner, Carter, Hardy, Rich and Co. in St. Joseph.

Mr. Williams on Tuesday provided to the News-Press calculations from multiple mock filing scenarios for Kansas he figured under the new law.

"In most instances, it makes no difference," he said. "You may pay more to Missouri and less to Kansas, but when you add them together, it’s the same amount, out of pocket."

Kansas has a higher tax rate, but also provides a credit to Kansans for income taxes they pay out of state, which offsets the higher taxes in Missouri, he explained.

Kansas residents who don’t itemize their deductions will see no difference, while other filers can expect little or no change. In rare instances, he found filers could pay between $40 to $50 more than in prior years.

So Kansans will not really be affected by the ending of these tax breaks. The Kansas politicians who are making this an issue sound like the residents of Shelbyville, getting upset at Springfield for getting the upper hand, preventing them from having the lemon tree they desire.

In today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch, an article discusses the re-introduction of emissions tests at private repair shops starting Sept. 4. Nearly 600 auto shops are already signed up to be allowed to perform the tests. The goal is to make the process easier for motorists:

For the past seven years, most Missouri motorists have had to make two
stops to have their biennial safety and emissions tests. That will
change on Sept. 4, when Missouri shifts the emissions tests from a
dozen contractor-run test centers back to private repair shops.

Combining the two tests at a single place is a great idea. It offers motorists time-saving convenience by reducing the number of required stops, and helps eliminate the infamously long wait times at emissions test centers. Now I wish I had waited to buy my car in September, so I could have taken advantage of this.