Ed in ‘08 came to St. Louis this week to promote education reform. Follow the link to watch KTVI interview Adam Thibault about the campaign’s goals.

I liked the mention of merit pay and rewarding teacher quality. But the next suggestion — that we create more positions for teachers like "mentors" and "leaders" — doesn’t seem like it could transform the profession as radically as Ed in ‘08 hopes. Some schools already have programs that allow teachers to mentor each other, which is nice but hardly innovative policy. This would be a good time to bring up charter schools, tuition tax credits, or another policy that would allow families to choose schools and allow schools to compete, but once again Ed in ‘08 lets the opportunity slip.

Ed in ‘08 in asking, "How do we improve American education?" and doing a good job of calling attention to this issue. Sadly, the conversation doesn’t go very far because the policy change it throws out for discussion are too cautious. If this were a multiple-choice test, I’d have to answer, "None of the above."

There are two editorials in today’s Wall Street Journal that discuss and highlight the proper solutions (read: abolish needless government regulations) to the worsening health care situation in the United States. Both editorials are spot-on in their assessments, and should be read by all those who are looking for a solution.

The first editorial focuses on the Florida legislature’s unanimous passage of a health care reform bill during this last session. The bill was aimed at kicking the government out of our health care decisions, rather than trying to further regulate and manipulate the free market. Gov. Charlie Crist signed the bill in an effort to combat the notion that health care coverage has to be an all-or-nothing decision. Before this bill was signed, health care coverage plans were littered with state mandates and regulations that often drove up the price of the plan beyond the reach of average individuals. As the author points out, these erstwhile mandates included such "necessary" procedures as the age-old practice of acupuncture, not to mention chiropractic visits (I searched a long time for a clip from the Simpsons episode where Homer sort of becomes a chiropractor, but had no luck). All kidding aside, this is quite an accomplishment for those free-market advocates who think the government would only worsen the problem (jeez, who could think something like that!).

The second editorial also focuses on a bill that is working its way through the legislature in New Jersey (yeah, I know, New Jersey is ahead of Missouri — uh oh) that will allow residents to cross states borders to buy an affordable health care policy. By opening out-of-state markets, it allows competition to flood the New Jersey market, which can only benefit that state’s consumers. Rather than being held hostage by existing health care companies in the state that are able to coordinate and charge higher premiums, consumers will be able to select from a number of approved health care providers (don’t even get me started on what approved means, but that is a topic for a different day) throughout the United States.

Because New Jersey’s average health care costs are almost double the national average, this bill should be welcomed with open arms. Nevertheless, opponents of the bill say policy buyers will only be able to get "bare bones" coverage. That is simply not true. Even if did happen to be true, it is not like policy holders would switch to a lesser plan than they originally had; this would simply allow those who had nothing before to have something.

Let’s all hope this bill succeeds, and Missouri legislators take notice.

Alright, that is all for now. I have to get home so I can make it home for the two-hour "Lost" finale.

A precocious high school student criticizes the accuracy of Missouri MAP test score results in today’s Springfield News-Leader, arguing that such scores are a biased metric of student performance. She explains that because MAP test scores are not perceived by students to have a direct impact on their future academic success (which seems to me to be pretty true), students have little incentive to prepare for it — in some cases, they actively strive to do poorly on purpose in order to reflect negatively on their teachers.

I have no doubt that this student is correct about MAP test student incentives. I remember my own experience with the Texas TAAS test, which I actively worked to either fail or skip and encouraged my peers to do so as well (oh, I was such a punk at age 14).

We can argue about whether standardized tests are an appropriate measure of student learning. Any performance metric will ultimately be biased, though, because learning can’t be summarized in a single number. And although I would disagree that incentives alone are responsible for low MAP test performance scores, I do wholeheartedly agree with the aforementioned student’s statement about the role of incentives in general:

At the root of this problem lies the real challenge for MAP test-takers: motivation. Students do not perform as well as they should on MAP tests because they simply do not care.

Students without incentives have little reason to care about academics in general, not just the MAP test. If a family is stuck in poverty, in a miserable school system, with little opportunity for upward mobility, then it is no surprise to find students there who find little reason to care about their academic performance.

This is one of the reasons to support school choice — to break the barrier of stagnation. If students don’t have an opportunity to learn, and are stuck in a system in which violence rather than learning is the primary concern, even the brightest and most motivated will fall behind. If offering families the opportunity to choose their school helps even one additional student break that cycle, school choice is a success. And think of the benefits to Missouri.

P.S.: By the way, according to our grade report, the author of the piece linked at the beginning of this entry goes to a school (Glendale High School) that is ranked among the top 25 percent of public schools in the state (and even higher among high schools alone).

The Post-Dispatch published a great article today about Confluence Academy. These successful charter schools have seen enrollment skyrocket, so that now nearly 2,300 children attend the three schools. You can see why the St. Louis Public Schools feel so threatened by charters. They’re getting really big:

Confluence is now larger than many public school districts — nearly the size of the Clayton and Affton districts.

The interesting thing about this situation is that nothing is preventing SLPS from running its own Confluence Academy. This is a good time to review Caroline Hoxby’s remarks about charter schools. She points out that charter schools are not doing anything that it’s illegal for public schools to do. Nobody ever said traditional public schools couldn’t imitate the best charters, or pioneer their own innovations. They just don’t do those things.

So if SLPS really wanted to replicate Confluence Academy’s success, they could: teach Spanish to kindergartners; spend extra time on reading; offer more opportunities to study chess, poetry, and African step-dance; and teach a different character value each month. (At Confluence, this month’s value is compassion.) But SLPS isn’t looking for innovations like these, because in the past, its students have had no other school to choose. It didn’t need to attract students and show results.

Maybe SLPS will start trying new things as it faces more competition from charters. But even if it doesn’t, at least families will have options besides SLPS.

To piggyback on Patrick’s earlier post, I stumbled across this interesting chart from the Wall Street Journal last night.

We forget how low fuel taxes are in the United States (particularly in Missouri). The recent rise in energy prices have had a much smaller impact on European wallets, where taxes account for a much larger share of total fuel prices.

This only underscores the need for significant transportation reform as cars become more fuel-efficient and gas tax revenues level off. 

I spotted an interesting article today in the Post-Dispatch discussing frustrations that many parents are having with a school in Arnold, Mo. The article describes how several families had become disillusioned with a particular private school that they had chosen for their children, and how they were going about finding schools that would better meet their children’s needs.

The piece is a nice portrait of school choice in action, where parents recognize that their current school is failing their kids and take the initiative to find a better educational option. These are the choices that relatively affluent people have at their disposal, and it’s a significant part of the reason that children of wealthy families are far more likely than their financially-disadvantaged peers to attain educational success and economic prosperity.

Seeing the way that educational choice benefits these families, we, as a society, should be outraged that so many public school districts flatly refuse to offer even the smallest degree of choice to as many children as possible. Ideally, all families would be able to choose from among both public and private options, but even if private options were not included, shouldn’t students be able to attend any school within their district? After all, these families’ tax dollars are paying for the operation of all the schools in the district, so it’s only fair that they should have the chance to benefit from the best that the district has to offer. Yet even so modest a pro-student reform as this recently drew opposition from the Missouri
Council of School Administrators, the Missouri Council of Administrators of Special Education, the Missouri School Boards’ Association, the Cooperating School Districts of Greater Kansas City, the Missouri National Education Association, the Missouri State Teachers Association, the Kansas City Missouri School District, St. Louis Public Schools, and the Cooperating School Districts of Greater St. Louis.

Because those who have the financial means have
already left the public schools, the only ones left are those without
the the economic and political power to make an impression on the
legislature. And the concerted opposition of the aforementioned groups is what leaves the economically-disadvantaged (and predominantly minority) children of the state at the mercy of schools and districts that, to put it bluntly, aren’t interested in offering them the best opportunity to succeed if that opportunity would mean changing the educational status quo.

Yesterday afternoon, Sen. Kit Bond outlined his energy bill, which somehow faltered in the Senate. It seems that typical politicking got in the way of a bill that could have substantially lowered our rising gas prices. Shocking. I know. This bill would have helped combat the ridiculously high gas prices in several different ways. It called for environmentally friendly drilling in places such as Alaska and oil shale deposits in the Rocky Mountains, which would have relieved some of our dependence on foreign oil while increasing the supply. This spike in gas prices may be attributable partly to speculating, but mostly to simple economics. I don’t care how many econ courses I take, it all comes down to supply and demand. With the increase in world demand, something needs to be done to increase supply.

Sen. Bond also called for "Streamlining the oil refinery permitting process, without relaxing any requirements." Hooray! I am OK with taking baby steps to get the the free market, as long as we get there. The U.S. government has put up so many regulations, it has become nearly impossible to build refineries. Hopefully, this "streamlining" can lead to some deregulation, and we can see a substantial drop in gas prices. All in all, I think Sen. Bond summed it up best when criticizing a colleague who actually suggested the oil industry be nationalized (no joke, albeit that is funny):

"I can tell you, you don’t want the government running energy. The free
market may not be perfect, but it doesn’t screw things up like the
government does."

Oh, and of course we can talk about the taxation issue as well, but Justin has already covered that aspect.

In case you haven’t read it, I highly recommend David Boaz’s (of the Cato Institute) op-ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal about the hypocrisy of the current presidential nominees’ calls for Americans to "do something noble" like "public service":

The real issue is that Messrs. Obama and McCain are telling us Americans that our normal lives are not good enough, that pursuing our own happiness is "self-indulgence," that building a business is "chasing after our money culture," that working to provide a better life for our families is a "narrow concern."

They’re wrong. Every human life counts. Your life counts. You have a right to live it as you choose, to follow your bliss. You have a right to seek satisfaction in accomplishment. And if you chase after the almighty dollar, you just might find that you are led, as if by an invisible hand, to do things that improve the lives of others.

Who is John Galt?

Let me preface this post by saying that I appreciate the attention that Henry Waters, publisher of the Columbia Daily Tribune, pays to educational matters. He has written several columns in the past with which I wholeheartedly agree. But he missed the mark in a recent column advocating that public schools should be given responsibility for providing universal preschool.

While there is some evidence (thanks to Janese Heavin for the links) suggesting that preschool might be useful in helping low-income and minority students keep pace with more well-to-do classmates, it would be a terrible idea to make preschool mandatory — especially if the task is given to public schools. The communities that would seem to benefit most from exposure to preschooling live predominantly in Missouri’s urban centers. It is no secret that the public schools in those areas are at the same time among the most expensive and the least effective in the state. So why would Mr. Waters ever want to give failing school districts such as Kansas City’s or St. Louis’ even more control over students’ lives?

While not perfect, a far better solution was proposed this past legislative session by state Senator Jeff Smith, whose bill would have granted scholarships for disadvantaged children in unaccredited or provisionally accredited school districts to attend preschool at licensed facilities, at least half of which would not be operated by public schools. Senator Smith’s bill did not go into detail about the degree of choice that parents would have under his program, but the idea has a lot of promise if it could be properly structured.

Detailed commentary will follow, but I wanted to get Mayor Funkhouser’s new regional Kansas City transit plan up on our blog. Here is the Kansas City Star’s story. Here is some typical boosterism. Here is some blunt critisicm. Here is the Show-Me Institute’s contribution to the discussion. I do like how the mayor’s plan includes some less expensive and efficient parts, like bus–rapid tranit, express buses, and even commuter rail, assuming there is enough demand for the commuter rail. But $600 million for 11 miles of light rail sounds low, considering it cost St. Louis that same amount to do just seven miles from 2004 to 2006 — although that included two miles with significant tunnelling. As I said, much more analysis of this to come.

Missourinet covers the continuing drama of the pre-need funeral scandals (seriously, what a bizarre thing for a scandal). It seems the summer will be spent in a series of investigative hearings designed to disentangle the issue:

The state has gotten an agreement with National Prearranged Services to suspend all sales of pre-need contracts in Missouri….and has gotten a consent order with the parent company, Lincoln Memorial Life, to stop manipulating the trust funds without telling those buying the plans.

For a quick refresher, prepaid funerals allow households to set aside money for funeral expenses with an insurance broker. Brokers are then legally required to set aside the money in a trust fund, but they maintain rights to 20 percent of the total amount, in the event of cancellation or other changes. Apparently, unscrupulous insurers haven’t been doing their duty and have skipped town with large sums of their clients’ funds. In April, Nick, our former-intern-turned-law-student, argued:

While we advocate free-market solutions here at the Show-Me Institute that shy away from extensive government interference, I don’t think anyone can reasonably claim that a market with a definite and defined end is truly free, and I hope stronger legislation can be put in place to protect consumers of these unique services.

First of all, better laws aren’t the problem. Enforcing the existing laws is the problem. Whenever a scandal erupts, the gut reaction is to legislate because at least it creates the pretense of doing “something.” But if insurers broke the existing laws, what makes anyone think that they won’t do the same thing with news laws? Not only will we face the same problem, but we’ll invite greater government intrusion into our lives.

Second of all, prepaid funerals are a colossally stupid idea. You could just set aside $1,000 in a savings account for 40 years and have more than enough to pay for a funeral. Plus, you’d have the freedom to do whatever you wanted with that money, without penalty, in the event that you decided not to use it for a funeral. Unless there’s some kind of great tax benefit or significant funeral discount for a prepaid plan, I see no reason not to use a savings account instead. Really, I think David said it best in one of his previous posts:

If agreements are not being honored, then the companies should be prosecuted. But that should not serve as a jumping-off point for more laws or more control. [...]

Just because something may be a bad deal [...] should not automatically be a reason for the government to jump in to protect us from ourselves. This is the type of reaction that leads to the ever-expanding role of government in our lives.

Indeed.

Check out this new website.  The Missouri Foundation for Health set it up to educate people about insurance coverage and collect ideas for policy solutions.

Giving people information about health care options is a great idea. And this website is easy to navigate, and has lots of information. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will be as effective as it should be because it’s more focused on insurance than on health care. The question we should be asking is: Can everyone pay for health care? (There are different ways to pay for care, like using a regular savings account, an HSA, catastrophic insurance coverage, traditional insurance, or some combination of the above.) Instead, this website asks, "Is everyone enrolled in a traditional insurance plan?" and then panics when the answer is no, without considering whether that kind of plan would be appropriate for everyone. Surely, we can all agree that a billionaire doesn’t need traditional insurance to cover routine check-ups, even though he or she might want long-term care insurance or a designated savings account.

This feedback form offers a humorous illustration of the website’s misplaced priorities. Along with basic information like your name, zip code, and email address, you’re supposed to check off whether you are "insured" or "uninsured." But without detailed information about someone’s financial and medical situation, a simple yes-or-no answer to to the "Are you insured?" question doesn’t mean very much.

Every Memorial Day that I can recall while I grew up in Portland, Ore., we went to visit my mom’s parents’ resting place. After moving away, first for college and later for work, I got out of the habit of visiting family members’ graves on Memorial Day. There just weren’t any within driving distance.

Now that I’m living in Missouri, it’s a little easier — my great-great-great-great grandpa is buried about an hour and a half northeast of Kansas City, lying at the bottom of an abandoned well with several other people after they were all murdered. Although I visited the site in March, and had considered going there again over the Memorial Day weekend, a nasty bug has laid me out for the past few days … and the rain would have been a dealbreaker anyway — my car didn’t handle so well on the muddy back roads last time.

I did, however, spend some time on Monday thinking about the value of civil society. Because we live in a country largely founded on principles of freedom, tolerance, and the rule of law, people with wildly different cultures, backgrounds, and belief systems can live comfortably together in the same communities. And although from time to time tragic incidents may occur — like the one that killed one of my progenitors, and drove several others out of Missouri — they are by far the exception rather than the rule. There are places in the world where this sort of organized persecution and violent purging happens all the time.

Ultimately, this is one of the most important historical innovations of the United States — despite our differences, for the most part we all manage to live and work together in peace.

This week, Gary Becker and Richard Posner discuss programs like the one in New York City that pay children to attend school and do well on exams. I’m surprised that this idea isn’t considered more seriously in St. Louis. After all, St. Louis suffers from some of the same problems as New York, such as a high drop-out rate and low test scores. And many economists support the effort. Becker is enthusiastic in his praise of the incentive programs:

I am confident that it will raise the performance of the students participating. The reason is simply that boys and girls as well as adults respond to incentives, as every parent realizes time after time.

Posner, on the other hand, is more cautious:

The largest indirect cost, I would guess, would consist in relaxed pressure to improve the public schools or to allow them to be bypassed by means of voucher systems. High rates of truancy may be due in significant part to low quality of schools. Paying children to attend school will reduce truancy rates some but without improving school quality, and perhaps without improving the education of the children receiving the payments.

Posner’s point makes sense because the evidence in favor of incentive programs comes from developing countries where children leave school to work and help support their families. They would like to be in school, but they can’t give up the income from their jobs. An incentive program allows them to earn money while attending school.

Before implementing incentive programs, we need to consider whether children are being pulled away or pushed out. If children are leaving to earn money, as is the case in some developing countries, paying them to stay might be appropriate. But if children are leaving because the schools are bad, an incentive program would just keep them in an unproductive environment.

My guess is that both of these factors are at play in St. Louis, at least in the older grades. There’s no reason we couldn’t try to address both. For example, a charter school with afternoon and evening classes would allow students to work during the mornings — like this school in Texas. Or students could combine high school classes with paid internships and apprenticeships. A combined choice/incentive program would keep students in school and improve the quality of their educational experience.

Devotees will remember my reservations about the passage of the property tax reform bill (which prevents backdoor tax increases through reassessment). Well it turns out that compliance with the new legislation is going to cost St. Louis County more than $700,000.

And it may not just cost the county government, but the state government as well. Eugene Leung, St. Louis County’s revenue director, argues that the property tax bill’s requirements amount to an unfunded mandate, in violation of the Missouri Constitution, and therefore the state may have to pony up the bill anyway.

So not only will the bill subsidize existing homeowners at the expense of new homeowners (as I’ve argued), but it also will require taxpayers across the state to pay for the bill’s compliance costs.

No, thanks.

Here’s a good way to make a positive out of a negative. The Missouri State Board of Education has decided to close down the Can! Academies of St. Louis, a charter school that began operations this year.

The Can! Academy never really succeeded. Beginning with 440 students (mostly former high school dropouts), it dropped to only 118 by the end of its first year of operation. Administrators decided that the school wasn’t meeting its performance obligations and the decision was made to suspend operations.

The positive, however, is that this is a perfect example of educational choice at work. If Can! were a traditional public school, it would continue to operate regardless of how bad things got. But that’s the beauty of choice. If a school doesn’t work, then it’s discontinued. Competition among schools helps to ensure that only schools that are actually succeeding continue to operate.

In other words, at least the Can! students aren’t forced to remain in a failing school.

Perhaps there is no finer crucible with which to test criticisms of the earnings tax than a general economic downturn. Nationwide, material costs and unease over the economy have slowed the construction industry. An article by the Post-Dispatch claims that St. Louis is no exception.

The same piece concedes that there is a lone exception, office construction in St. Louis County. Although there are certainly more variables behind a developer’s decision than just the earnings tax, examples like these demonstrate the practical insight behind academic musings. As commercial buildings continue to flee city limits despite their heightened desirability in somewhat uncertain times, lawmakers would be well-served to heed suggested solutions.

I would be remiss if I did not highly recommend this article from David Nicklaus with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Today’s post is simply planned as a collection of stories that you can make your own mind up about. Won’t that be fun! There is an investigation into milk price fixing centered on the Kansas City area and the headquarters of the Dairy Farmers of America. You can get the national angle here from the Washington Examiner and the local story here from the Platte County Landmark. Now, take these charges into consideration when reading Reason’s story about the recently passed horrible Farm Bill. As an Examiner editorial (that I can’t find to link to) asked recently, why is it a crime when private co-ops conspire to fix prices, but the federal government is allowed to do the exact same thing with impunity? Don’t get me wrong, price fixing should be investigated and prosecuted. However, the same government that is investigating this is also helping agricultural interests artificially raise prices through any number of means, from direct subsidies for ethanol to high tariffs for foreign sugar, to asking people nicely to eat more avocados.

Also, in the Platte County Landmark you can find an editorial stating that the price of gas is dictated by corporate manipulation moreso than supply and demand. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. But I guess this chart, which clearly shows the growth of demand of more than a million barrells a day each year for the past four years, has nothing to do with price increases. Nothing at all to do with it, so let’s all go to the water cooler and bash the oil companies.

Justin’s excellent post earlier today touching on the distortionary effects of the earnings tax was particularly timely. Also today, The Pitch published a piece that mentions our 2007 study about this very issue, "How to Replace the Earnings Tax in Kansas City," written by University of Missouri–Columbia economics professor Joseph Haslag (also now serving as the Show-Me Institute’s executive vice president). Haslag wrote a companion piece that makes the same case for the other side of the state, "How to Replace the Earnings Tax in Saint Louis."

The Pitch’s piece isn’t uniformly great; for instance, the author, David Martin, mentions at one point that despite some misgivings, "relics such as the old Greyhound station make me thankful that the TIF Commission and other inscrutable quasi-government agencies have the power of eminent domain." But Martin picks up on something that many other people omit when they discuss eliminating the earnings tax — the Show-Me Institute’s suggestion that lost earnings tax revenues could be replaced with a much less distortionary land tax:

[T]he Show-Me Institute released a study on January 25, 2007, urging Kansas City to phase out the 1 percent tax on income and put in its place a tax on land. The author, Joseph Haslag, an economics professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, calls the land tax a "slam dunk" in terms of promoting growth. [...]

The beauty of the land tax is that it essentially makes available to everyone the tax abatements that big-shot developers are always getting at City Hall. It would also save the city from having to go to court to pry valuable real estate from the bony fingers of people like Barber. When the land tax works as intended, speculators are forced to develop their holdings or sell them to somebody who will.

This is indeed one of the advantages of levying taxes on land value. Owners of land would have more of an incentive to either use their land in productive ways, so that they can recoup the value of the taxes the must pay, or avoid paying the tax at all by selling the land to somebody else who believes they can use it profitably. Although Henry George is most famous for promoting this idea, one of the earliest free-market economists, Adam Smith, also observed the value of a land tax as an alternative to other potential forms of taxation.

Of course, a more optimal outcome would be for government officials simply to find ways to cut unnecessary programs and spend much less of the taxpayers’ money. But nobody’s holding their breath for that to happen.

It’s certainly a rarity that market-regulating legislation uniformly helps economic growth. New standards facing Missouri scrap metal trading, however, have the rare distinction of being sensible. Although the law imposes new responsibilities on metal buyers, the parameters of the regulation are reasonable and definite. Only an unfamiliar seller with $50 or more in scrap is subjected to documentation requests. The law’s rigidly defined limits and minimal allowance for subjectivity are praiseworthy.

Aside from being horrendously wasteful, metal theft can affect businesses and homeowners of almost every variety. This new measure may seem especially appropriate to the construction industry, which, in addition to suffering the rising costs of metal, is especially vulnerable to materials theft.

Hopefully, the felony penalty attached to stealing certain metals and the fines associated with buying them will deter dangerous and costly criminal activity. If not, at least police will have a new tool for tracking perpetrators. After all, everyone gets along better when traffic lights don’t go missing.

There are all kinds of fun number-crunching stories to talk about today. But I’ll concentrate on just one.

Chicago currently has the dubious honor of having the highest consumer gasoline prices in the country. In large part, this is because of its very high gas taxes. People are up in arms. In fact, the local CBS-affiliate of “Chicagoland” reports today that long lines await Indiana suburban commuters hoping to fill up before the Illinois border. One commuter summarizes the current tax incentive best:

"It was $4.20 [in Illinois]. I can come over here and get it for $3.93," said Tikvah Wadley, one of the many fleeing Illinois taxes.

What does this tell us? It tells us that economic incentives matter, particularly when they are distortionary taxes. When consumers feel the effects of high taxes, they vote with their feet and flee to lower tax areas (in this case, choosing to fill up their gas tanks on the Indiana side of the Chicago metropolitan area).

But how does this relate to Missouri? Well, we have our own equally pernicious tax in the Kansas City and St. Louis metropolitan areas. The earnings tax is a 1 percent income tax on gross earnings levied on those who live and/or work in Missouri’s two largest cities. But if you happen to live and work in the metro areas outside of the city limits, you don’t have to pay it. We’ve written about this topic extensively.

If Chicago’s high gas taxes are having an impact on consumer behavior in Illinois, then imagine what the earnings tax might be doing to consumer behavior in Missouri Think of it this way: Combined federal and state gasoline taxes are 57.9 cents per gallon in Illinois (compared to 36 cents in Missouri). Chicago levies an additional 12.75 cents per gallon on top of that, for a whopping total of 70.7 cents per gallon. Indiana’s gas tax is 50.1 cents per gallon.

Ok, so here’s where the numbers get fun (and exciting!). Say that you live in Chicago and decide you’re fed up with high gas taxes, and want to fill up your car in Indiana instead. If you drive 12,000 miles per year and get about 25 miles per gallon on average (which seems reasonable), then you’d pay only $240.48 in gas taxes in Indiana this year instead of $338.88 in Chicago, for a total annual savings of $98.40. This $100 savings has been enough to promote long gas lines and impact Illinois gas stations. Apparently small incentives matter. I mean, think how hard it is to drive out of your way just to save a few cents.

OK, back to Missouri. Imagine you’re working in Clayton but that you live in St. Louis. If you make $35,000 year (the current per-capita Missouri household income), then you can save an extra $350 per year just by living a couple of blocks down the road. This is 3.5 times more in tax savings than the Chicago drivers are saving by filling up in Indiana! Wouldn’t you think this might be having an effect on urban growth?

Let’s take it a step further. The marginal income tax rate in Missouri is 5.91 percent. In Illinois, it’s only 3 percent. Do you think that might have an impact, also? Perhaps we can provide a pretty good answer to the question David Nicklaus poses in today’s Post-Dispatch as to why the St. Louis-area lost 5,000 jobs over the past year. Maybe taxes matter.

Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t throw in a plug for our new Missouri tax estimator, too. See how outraged you can get. Or read here about how small tax payments can affect your lifetime wealth.

OK, now that I have your attention with that eye-popping (yet accurate) title, let’s discuss the issue reasonably. The Kansas City Council decided not to put a tax increase for the city’s museum on the August ballot. The Star has the story. The Council was considering an expansion of the number of beneficiaries of the tax so that it would include other civic entities, and that is why the tax was going to increase from 2 cents to 10 per $100 assessed valuation, blah, blah, blah. Supporters of the tax would probably label it as an "8-cent tax increase" as opposed to "400 percent," but both are accurate.

I don’t think this is a bad idea. The zoo-museum-garden tax works well in Saint Louis city and county, and I feel it should be expanded to other neighboring counties, whose residents now get to go to the zoo for free on my tax dollar. A similar taxing district might work well for Kansas City, provided that the entities funded by the tax dollars were required to then keep their fees low — or, in some cases, zero — so that people didn’t get hit both ways. I also think the tax should be levied on more than just residents of the city of Kansas City. Spread the tax wide, keep it very low, use it for a defined purpose, and let the voters have the ultimate say. That is the basis of good special tax district policy, in my opinion.

As David Stokes and I have previously discussed, I do, of course, agree that legislation should be the result of public debate and that legislators should have very clear ideas of what, precisely, for which they are voting. I would be thrilled if the legislature would discipline itself to avoid the silly game-playing that has taken the place of high-minded political debate. So our thoughts are perfectly in accord on that point.

This being the case, I believe our disagreement rests squarely on certain conflicting notions of the proper scope of political power and the value of individual liberty.

It seems to me that the gist of David’s recent post was that the "liberty" the Founders spoke of and wrote into the Constitution is not especially broad in scope. In his formulation, constitutional protections of "liberty" should be sufficient to require that property owners cannot be denied the opportunity to make simple modifications to their properties, like fencing or (presumably)
"reasonable" additions to a house, and the Constitution would prevent governments from curtailing one’s eccentric tastes in decoration. But if a citizen wants to use their property in a way that could arguably impose a
significant inconvenience on their neighbors, whether by increasing traffic,
noise, or offensive smells, Stokes’ argument suggests that part of the population would be entitled to utilize the power of government to forbid
the undesired use. In other words, "liberty," in its constitutional sense, is not really infringed when the government applies force against some of its citizens in order to protect other citizens from inconvenience or annoyance. Another way of stating this proposition is that some liberties don’t really merit protection and, therefore, exist solely at the tolerance of the majority. Even more succinctly, one person’s freedoms end where they create a critical mass of irritation among their neighbors.

While I am open to hearing a principled argument that would establish where the constitutional line of demarcation should be drawn on the spectrum of irritation between "Ugh, my neighbor’s yard is loaded with plastic pink flamingos" and "Whooo-eeee, my neighbor’s hog farm sure do kick up a stink," I do think that it would be difficult to make. If one concedes that some level of irritation (short of empirically demonstrable harm) is sufficient to justify legislative restriction of liberty, then the only question left is who gets to decide where the line will be drawn. As David pointed out, that will usually be the majority, and the majority can — and will — re-draw that line as it suits their interests, regardless of the cost to the liberty of those not in the mainstream.

I know Mr. Stokes too well to simply lump him in with the petty tyrants for whom I have such great distaste, but the position he took in his post does put him in some unsavory company. Those with conventional, mainstream sensibilities have always loved the idea that they might somehow force those around them to conform to their standards — all-too-frequently by drawing the aforementioned line of demarcation in a fashion very restrictive of liberty. This crew does not always utilize the power of government — after all, there are plenty of neighborhood associations working to police homeowners’ aesthetic standards — but zoning laws have long since become the favorite tool to dictate how citizens may be allowed to use what belongs to them. This is mostly because (as Mr. Stokes implied) the desired results are both easier to achieve and more certain when obtained by persuading local politicians to pass restrictive laws, rather than seeking remedy in the courts.

Those who pursue governmentally-enforced restrictions on property rights always argue (as, indeed, they must) that "[t]he fundamental rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
do not and ha[ve] never entailed the idea that anyone can form their own
city, state, or country if they don’t like the democratic decisions of
the majority of Americans." Mr. Stokes added, "I believe we actually fought a war about this issue." These are statements that deserve a thorough response.

Stokes is right insofar as we did fight a war about whether people have an inherent right to reject a government that denies their freedoms — it was called the American Revolution. When Jefferson wrote about the unalienable rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," he stated that "whenever any Form of Government becomes  destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it" (emphasis added). The Revolution was fought to secure our natural right to liberty, not so that the tyranny of the British Monarchy could be replaced by a tyranny of elected representatives.

It is vital to point out that a great many of the American colonies (Plymouth, Maryland, Rhode Island, etc.) and also several American states (Texas, West Virginia, Utah, among others) were founded precisely because a group of people was unwilling to live under the laws established by the majority to which they were formerly subject. The founding generation clearly would have approved of these acts, as it produced numerous works expressing concern that the people must be protected against what Alexis de Tocqueville called the "tyranny of the majority." James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution," thoroughly acknowledged this problem in Federalist 10, citing worries that "measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority." The American people demanded the creation of a Bill of Rights because they recognized the danger that even citizens of a democratic republic might one day produce laws that would violate individual freedoms, and they wisely intended to prevent future majorities from succeeding in that regard.

Even on a local level, the proper authority of government has not always been understood to allow majorities to dictate extensive limitations on liberty. Before the Missouri Supreme Court swayed from its original interpretation of the state Constitution, it did, in fact, hold that communities were and ought to be powerless to deny individuals the right to use their property as they saw fit, so long as the selected use did not threaten the health, safety, or welfare of the community. The court repeatedly stuck down local efforts to restrict citizens’ use of their property, arguing in State ex rel. Rosenblatt v. Sargent (1882) that a government that holds the property of its citizens subject to the unlimited control of "even the most democratic depository of power" would still be a despotism. That meant that cities were not permitted to limit the height, location, or use of buildings on their property unless the government demonstrated a threat to the neighborhood’s health or safety that would otherwise result. Only when the government had made such a demonstration — and, importantly, this did not include hypothetical or merely potential threats — would the courts permit cities to restrict their citizens’ liberties and property rights.

The final point I’ll make here has to do with David’s concern that applying the Constitution properly would require some to "go up against [some powerful business'] law firm to try to get some money from them." I’ll admit that it is terribly frustrating for people to have to go to litigation to seek redress of harms that they have suffered, but do we really want to sacrifice individual liberty for the sake of convenience? The American founders certainly didn’t think so, and neither did the Missouri Supreme Court until the late 1920s. Our legal system, while definitely imperfect, is a far better surety for freedom and justice than the capricious whims of those eager to force their neighbors to conform to their own ideas of what is proper and acceptable.

The Columbia Daily Tribune published an editorial today about cyber bullying. There are lots of questions, but not a lot of answers:

Whom can we blame for implications of the new cyber world? The technology? The senders of messages? The recipients of messages? Clearly, most control rests with recipients. Their most effective weapon is the "off" button, but who are we as the rest of society to tell anyone he or she must use it?

Over at the Technology Liberation Front, Adam Thierer suggests that a state-mandated media literacy curriculum is the best solution. He writes:

For the most part, media literacy is not routinely integrated into the curricula at elementary school, secondary school, high school, or college. This situation must be reversed. Luckily, my home state of Virginia is helping to pave the way.

And a comment to his post even recommends including "information literacy" on state assessment exams.

I’m more inclined to side with the Tribune than with Thierer. First of all, my experience is that kids start using computers in the very early grades, and courses on word processing and online research are plentiful. If anything, schools go overboard with lessons on how to use the Internet or how to send email — skills most kids already have or could figure out in a minute.

Second, even if I’m wrong about that and kids are missing out on instruction, state standards and tests aren’t going to help. We already have state standards and MAP exams for subjects like reading and math, and they haven’t spread traditional text-based literacy. I doubt media literacy will fare better.

And finally, I don’t see any indication that media literacy would have prevented Megan Meier’s tragic death. It wouldn’t have improved Megan’s emotional health or made her less vulnerable to rejection. Unfortunately, the state can’t mandate resiliency the way it can require schools to teach computer skills or safety tips.

The Show-Me Institute has released our contribution to the ongoing debate about the "Missouri Plan" and judicial selection in Missouri. The study is called, "Is the ‘Missouri Plan’ Good For Missouri? The Economics Of Judicial Selection." Its authors, Prof. Joshua Hall and Prof. Russell Sobel, are terrific economists who measured how the various methods of judicial selection used in all 50 states rate when considered with the Institute for Legal Reform’s annual state rankings.

In short, it finds that Missouri’s current method of selecting Supreme Court justices (and appellate judges, and some lower court judges) is the most favorable system for the state’s economic growth, as measured by the ILR rankings. (To be clear, it’s actually tied with the closely related system of gubernatorial appointment from nominating commission with legislative approval; Missouri does not have this last part.)

Now, how does this fit into the ongoing debate about reforming our system? It is very important to note that this study looks at the big picture, not the small parts. It places the 50 states into seven different categories based on their methods of judicial selection. However, the authors readily admit that there are minor differences between individual processes within each of those seven methods. The study concludes that the Missouri Plan is good for our state and for economic growth. It does not say that minor improvements or changes to the Plan are automatically bad things, although it does warn against going too far with minor changes. To that end, I think the study fits well with the Missouri Plan op-ed I wrote last year. (I should probably rephrase this, as the small op-ed fits with the major study — not the other way around.)

Nevertheless, I think this study provides an excellent framework for looking at this issue, and clearly warns against making significant changes to our plan. However, defenders of the current system (of which I am one) would be incorrect if they were to suggest that the study defends the current system exactly as it is.

And we all know how shocking that is. But, in this case, I actually think they’re right that a well-intentioned bill to prevent teacher abuse would have had some pretty unfortunate consequences. The Springfield News-Leader provides some background.

It’s hard to believe. You’d think that a bill making it easier for school districts to remove teachers found guilty of sexual misconduct would get the fast track to approval (and pass unanimously). Yet SB 1212, which for better or worse did just that, eventually stalled in the Senate and was never voted on.

In my opinion, there were two problems with the bill. First of all, it would have removed any discretion on the merit of an accusation from individual school districts (as was the previous standard) and have immediately made any accusation a state matter. And, second of all, any allegation (whether valid or not) would remain on a teacher’s record for five years and could potentially be used in employment decisions (districts are granted full immunity on hiring decisions based on such allegations). Accusers are also immune from any civil or criminal liability.

Ok, so here’s the problem I see. A vindictive student alleges sexual misconduct in response to a bad grade. The matter, regardless of how baseless the accusation may be, is immediately brought to state authorities and a report of the incident is placed in a closed file that can only be viewed by future employers if the accused teacher signs a waiver. But this isn’t much of a choice, in that a refusal to sign the waiver would appear as a tacit admission of guilt. Meanwhile, the student accuser is immune from any sort of retaliation. That’s a problem.

I have to agree with the teachers unions that the bill would not have done enough to protect innocent teachers. I think this is a perfect example of a really well-intentioned bill that would have probably been an overreaction and ultimately a mistake.

Besides, it’s not like this guy is a teacher, so we’re probably pretty safe.

The City of Festus has decided to sell the only airport in Jefferson County. The Suburban Journals story serves as a terrific entryway for me to recommend several studies by the Reason Foundation about privatized airports. There is absolutely no reason why governments alone should manage and operate airports.

I should be clear that this particular airport is not being sold specifically so a private company can operate it as a for-profit business. That could happen, but they also might sell it to neighboring companies who would stop using the land for an airport entirely. I certainly hope the private operators who buy it will keep it in use as an airport, but that is my heart talking. My head says Festus should do whatever is best for the citizens of Festus, which is exactly what they are doing. Anyway, airport privatization is an interesting issue, and one that the city of St. Louis might have to consider for Lambert in the long run as a potential move.

A disjointed editorial about MOHELA, Missouri’s pseudo-public student loan lender, appears in the Lake Sun Leader today. The author argues that somehow the lending agency is responsible for declining student performance in the University of Missouri system.

I have no love for MOHELA or the lavish payments I provide them from month to month. But I will never understand this notion that a college education should be free. It’s one thing to argue that MOHELA mismanages assets (there is a lot of evidence to suggest this is true), but another thing to argue that the lending agency does not provide affordable financing options to students with essentially no credit history (for example, MOHELA’s current rate of 3.80 percent on Stafford Loans is a full two percentage points lower than the prevailing 30-year mortgage rate for a $100,000 mortgage in Saint Louis). Perhaps part of the reason why MOHELA remains on the verge of insolvency is the public insistence on cheap debt for too long. (I love the anecdotal accounts of students using student loan money to buy cars and pay down credit card debt … apparently, though, that’s not why such funds are drying up).

But I wholeheartedly agree with the author that educational performance in the state is declining.

I am going to defer to his boss on the question posed in the title of Dave’s post on the Village Law, and just succinctly get to the heart of the issue. Liberty is not the issue in the village law. Dave is correct to point out that politics was one of the major reasons for objections to the law, and I hope he would agree with me that policy should not be created in the manner used for the village law. Major changes should be debated and voted on in the open, not attached at the last minute in a manner that means nobody will see. (Which could lead me to a rant about why the legislature does not allow computers that would display automatic black-lined changes for amendments on everyone’s desk in the capitol, but I shall save that for another time.) So, yes, the process was flawed and changes to Missouri’s incorporation procedures should have been reconsidered the proper way before the legislature this year, where they would not have come close to passing — hence, repealing it was the right thing to do.

The above applies even if the Village Law was a good law, and even more so considering it was a terrible law. The idea that a nuisance lawsuit is a reasonable way to for a neighbor of Mr. Plasters in the Ozarks to defend against a new casino (believed to be the ultimate goal) is not realistic. So, after a casino is built right next to you, you should go to small claims court and try to have it torn down? Or go up against the casino’s law firm to try to get some money from them? There is an enormous difference between the pettiness of a planning process that prevents one from having a strangely colored house or a front yard fence and a process that prevents a hog factory or a casino from locating wherever someone wants.

As for the person in Franklin County who wants to develop his property into 102 homes, Franklin County has legitimate concerns about that proposed development. Somebody has to build the roads, sewers, telephone wires, electricity, etc., to serve the new homes. Many of those new services would be paid for by other taxpayers, and even the ones that aren’t will certainly go through others’ properties. For things of this nature, it is not a violation of your natural rights to have to go through a process established by the people of the county in a democratic fashion.

The fundamental rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness do not and has never entailed the idea that anyone can form their own city, state, or country if they don’t like the democratic decisions of the majority of Americans. I believe we actually fought a war about this issue. There are many ways to fight for your desire to do what you want with your property other than forming your own political entity. And if sometimes you don’t get it to do what you want … hey, life isn’t always fair.