This Post-Dispatch article about the H1N1 vaccine mentions that St. Louis city sent most of its vaccine supply to hospitals and pharmacies. Some doses have been distributed for free in schools and existing public clinics, but the city didn’t open any new free vaccine clinics like the ones in other cities.

It was a smart move on the city’s part. Offering free vaccines is a recipe for shortages. Charging for the cost of administering the vaccine — as pharmacies do — prevents demand from skyrocketing and depleting the vaccine supply. And allowing people to buy the vaccine at their local retail pharmacies is better than forcing everyone to come to a few central clinics. People are used to going to those retailers for prescriptions or other vaccines, so they don’t have to go out of their way to find a clinic they’ve never been to before.

And, while it’s true that taxpayers paid for the H1N1 vaccine, as the people quoted in the article stated, that doesn’t mean that they should all receive it for free. Administering the vaccine would require the city to hire nurses. Taxpayers shouldn’t be made to incur yet another flu-related expense, especially considering that new H1N1 cases have been declining for weeks.

The USDA, always eager to tell kids what they should eat, wants to spread its message through a more effective medium than “Know Your Farmer” trading cards. The department is soliciting feedback for a contest to reward creators of online games that teach kids about nutrition.The games must be based on USDA data.

MyPyramid Blast Off Game is the only game I’ve found on the MyPyramid.gov website. It’s cute and colorful, albeit inflexible. Players are supposed to select a day’s menu from a list of foods. The game doesn’t take into account differences in nutritional needs, so every player is scored as an average American. A kid who is lactose intolerant has to choose dairy servings anyway, and a kid with Celiac disease has to add whole grains to the rocket ship’s “diet.” Players see a message that their rocket ship didn’t complete its mission if they go over the recommended calorie limit, even if they go just a few calories past the target with an extra serving of vegetables.

The contest will probably inspire new games that improve on MyPyramid Blast Off. Developers could start from the same premise but add complexity, allowing nutritional targets to vary. There would be no need to solicit personal health information from kids — players could be asked the design menus for hypothetical people. Changing targets would also make the game more fun to play repeatedly. In the current game, once players create menus for themselves, there’s nothing more to do.

I’m less confident that an online game can change a generation’s eating habits. Is it worthwhile for the government to sponsor a nutrition contest that may not have a large effect on public health? As usual, the USDA has lofty aspirations, and I’m left wondering whether we’re all really better off because of its actions.

A video from the USDA shows the erection of hoop houses — also referred to less imaginatively as “high tunnels” — at the White House Garden. The USDA, through its “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” campaign, is launching a pilot study that will subsidize farmers’ hoop house purchases in the interest of increasing the availability of local produce. From the press release:

The 3-year, 38-state study will verify if high tunnels are effective in reducing pesticide use, keeping vital nutrients in the soil, extending the growing season, increasing yields, and providing other benefits to growers.

Missouri is among the states that will participate.

Farmers have sheltered plants in temporary greenhouse structures like these for decades. The practice wouldn’t have continued for so long if it weren’t advantageous, so I’m sure the study will find that hoop houses provide some benefits.

What is less certain is whether the USDA’s high expectations will be borne out. The press release states that the study will look into pushing back the end of the growing season. That seems like a reasonable — even cautious — goal, knowing that farmers already use hoop houses for that purpose. But, in the video, officials blithely assert that you can grow food year-round in a hoop house, in “pretty much any climate.”

Are hoop houses tools that can help some farmers grow crops a little longer? Or are they miracle implements that make plants grow anywhere, anytime? I suspect that if the latter were true, most farmers would buy hoop houses without the inducement of a subsidy. After all, hoop houses sell for anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars — not a big up-front expense. That would be a small price to pay for the ability to grow crops during several additional months of the year, no matter the weather.

Charles Murray can’t be pleased with the New York City Department of Education’s plan to spend a few hundred thousand dollars on online SAT prep for public school students. Murray doesn’t believe policy can cause a significant rise in test scores, so he must view this expenditure — or any other program with a similar goal — as a waste of resources.

While I’m generally more optimistic that scores can rise, in this case I agree that student achievement is unlikely to change. A test prep course could help if students are simply unfamiliar with the test, or if they just need a little extra practice with the kind of questions that appear on it. But if low scores reflect a deeper problem, as I suspect they do for many New York students, last-minute test prep won’t make a difference.

The best course of action would be to improve schooling for younger students, years before they take college admissions exams. Then, by the time they get to high school, they won’t struggle with the math and vocabulary found in the SAT.

New York shouldn’t give up on current high school students, but it needs to help them build a stronger foundation of knowledge than what they’ll get from a course on test-taking strategies. The department could stick with the online education model, and instead of explicitly offering free test prep, it could open English or math courses similar to the St. Louis Public Schools’ virtual school. Course materials needn’t teach to the test, although students whose skills improved would do better on test day as a consequence. To preserve the college admissions focus, the department could use a practice SAT to place students into different course levels.

New York shouldn’t limit its use of online education to preparing students for one test. We want students to be prepared for the next high school course they take, and for whatever courses they take beyond high school, too.

According to an article in The Springfield News-Leader, Webster County in Missouri is seeking designation as an Enhanced Enterprise Zone so that it can attract industry and create jobs. The article communicates that Webster County is economically depressed and that the EEZ designation will benefit the area with new businesses and jobs, but it divulges few details about how the program is constructed. The following are the few that it includes:

The discretionary program offers state tax credits, accompanied by local real property tax abatement, for businesses that meet criteria such as adding jobs. [...]

Ipock said state tax credits will only be allowed for qualified businesses and are geared toward industrial development.

Businesses that are ineligible to receive the tax credits include gambling establishments, adult businesses, retail trade, educational services, religious organizations, public administrators, food and drink establishments.

I disagree that the program’s benefits should be for “qualified” businesses. This is the same as the fundamental argument against targeted tax credits, like those to filmmakers. The government should not have the authority to pick and choose which businesses can operate in its borders. These programs create inequality because they force businesses that aren’t “qualified” to compete at a comparative disadvantage. This consequently encourages corruption, because it gives businesses an incentive to solicit the government for special treatment.

Instead, Webster County should focus on creating a favorable tax environment that would benefit all businesses equally, such as reducing commercial property tax surcharges and repealing mandates. If the city of Saint Louis were toying with such an idea, I would recommend that it repeal the earnings tax instead.

I also disagree that the focus of the program should be on job creation. Public works projects, such as Enhanced Enterprise Zones, encourage nonproductive work (e.g., “work for works’ sake”). I think that Milton and Rose Friedman would agree; in Free to Choose: A Personal Statement, they write:

If all we want are jobs, we can create any number—for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again or perform other useless tasks.

Furthermore, although the program may be successful at attracting the targeted industries, any activity that it generates will be discounted by the amount of the economic incentives that it takes to attract it. As Henry Hazlitt explains in Economics in One Lesson, spending in the private sector destroys jobs in the private sector. This is because public spending is financed by money that is taken from taxpayers, who can’t spend this money on products and services in the private sector that would generate productive economic activity.

When providing employment becomes the end, need becomes a subordinate consideration. “Projects” have to be invented. Instead of thinking only of where bridges must be built the government spenders begin to ask themselves where bridges can be built.

Today, the Suburban Journals reminds us that, earlier this month, the Missouri Housing Development Commission approved an initiative that will offer property tax relief to Missouri home buyers. From the article:

Under the new program, eligible Missouri families who enter into a contract to buy a new or existing Missouri home after Jan. 1 would have their property tax for the year paid, up to $1,250. In addition, to support the creation of “green jobs” in Missouri, families would be eligible for an additional $500 in tax relief if they buy an energy-efficient home or items to make the home more energy-efficient, such as Energy Star appliances.

Home ownership — just like any other investment — involves significant risks and costs. I’m worried that Missouri could help provoke another housing crisis by encouraging home ownership amongst those who wouldn’t otherwise select it.

In an op-ed in the Springfield News-Leader, to which David Stokes previously linked, Paul Hamby presents an alternative means than government subsidies to increasing home ownership:

If the goal is to get more Missourians into housing, there is a simple proven formula for that: Good paying jobs for Missourians. A business climate to create more jobs is where the governor should be focusing. That means less government regulation, fewer taxes on small businesses and families and fewer federal mandates. When government starts meddling, fairness goes out the window.

The FCC issues three classes of licenses to amateur radio operators. The Extra class — the third, and hardest class of license to earn — is a great example of a license with no public safety justification. It’s purely an exercise of government power.

Here’s how the Extra class works: If you pass a test on electronics and radio regulations that covers more advanced material than the test for the Technician and General classes, you get to communicate over portions of the radio spectrum that are off-limits to people who hold only Technician and General licenses. Nothing about those parts of the spectrum makes them need special regulation; they’ve simply been set aside as the province of elite radio amateurs.

Some amateur radio enthusiasts defend the system, saying that the Extra class encourages operators to gain expertise, and that everyone in society benefits from the resulting propagation of knowledge. This argument is similar to the rationale for the DARPA Network Challenge, which was supposed to contribute to our understanding of communications and problem-solving.

I don’t buy the argument in either case. When the government offers an incentive for learning, the people who already have the information or would have learned it anyway step up to claim the prize. This was clearly the result of the DARPA Network Challenge. The federal government offered a $40,000 prize to whoever could find 10 red balloons released around the country, and scholars at M.I.T. — who were already deeply interested in networks — organized a network, found the balloons, and won the contest. We spent $40,000 of taxpayer money (plus however much it cost to administer the contest) to discover that people at M.I.T. are smart.

So it is with the amateur radio licenses. The most motivated operators brush up on their trigonometry and take the test, while others settle for the General class and its fewer privileges. People who weren’t interested in electronics don’t suddenly become scientists when they hear about the Extra class. And even if some operators do learn facts that they wouldn’t have were it not for the exam, there are less coercive ways to achieve that goal. For instance, public libraries or community colleges could offer free classes about radio communications.

The state of Missouri doesn’t grant amateur radio licenses. But Missouri licenses many other activities, and should beware to avoid the FCC’s manner of regulating. Two pieces of advice: First, don’t issue licenses that have no bearing on the general welfare. Second, once you’ve established a licensing requirement, don’t create a license class for people who have learned more or otherwise gone the extra mile. It’s not the state’s job to give them a pat on the back, or to reward accomplishments with special privileges.

The Senate has finally passed a health care reform bill, after months of heated debate. The $871 billion plan, according to a CNN article by Alan Silverleib, must now be merged with a $1 trillion House bill passed in November, which should provide the president with a bill to sign before his 2010 State of the Union address.

The two bills share some commonalities. From the article:

Among other things, the House and Senate have agreed to subsidize insurance for a family of four making up to roughly $88,000 annually, or 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

They also have agreed to create health insurance exchanges designed to make it easier for small businesses, the self-employed and the unemployed to pool resources and purchase less expensive coverage. Both the House plan and the Senate bill would eventually limit total out-of-pocket expenses and prevent insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.

Insurers would also be barred from charging higher premiums based on a person’s gender or medical history. However, both bills allow insurance companies to charge higher premiums for older customers.

Medicaid would be significantly expanded under both proposals. The House bill would extend coverage to individuals earning up to 150 percent of the poverty level, or roughly $33,000 for a family of four. The Senate plan ensures coverage to those earning up to 133 percent of the poverty level, or just over $29,000 for a family of four.

One of the issues disagreed upon most strenuously by the two bodies of Congress is how to pay for the plan:

The House package is financed through a combination of a tax surcharge on wealthy Americans and new Medicare spending reductions.

Specifically, individuals with annual incomes over $500,000 — as well as families earning more than $1 million — would face a 5.4 percent income tax surcharge.

The Senate bill also cuts Medicare by roughly $500 billion. But instead of an income tax surcharge on the wealthy, it would impose a 40 percent tax on insurance companies that provide what are called “Cadillac” health plans valued at more than $8,500 for individuals and $23,000 for families.

The article points out that the president predicts the final bill will include a little of both proposals.

Another major divide is that the House bill includes a public option, but the Senate bill does not — instead, it includes nonprofit private co-ops overseen by the government.

Both bills would penalize those who do not purchase coverage.

The House bill would impose a fine of up to 2.5 percent of an individual’s income. The Senate plan would require individuals to purchase health insurance coverage or face a fine of up to $750 or 2 percent of his or her income, whichever is greater. Both versions include a hardship exemption for poorer Americans.

Businesses would also see an even greater penalty under both plans.

As for now, we can only sit back and wait as the House and Senate fight it out for a final bill of reform, and see whether it meets with any other roadblocks.

This article about neighborhood associations reminded me of a post I wrote earlier in the year, in which I argued that tools like Facebook and Twitter could help local governments communicate with their constituents. The article describes how groups in the St. Louis area use networking sites — or even just email — to organize and share information:

Neighborhood associations used to be built around face-to-face contact — talks on porches, chats over fences, discussions in doorways. Local groups, though, insist that computers and social media haven’t killed the neighborhood association. Just the opposite, they say — it’s a way to stay even closer and to reach more of their neighbors.

Technology doesn’t sever neighborhood ties; it brings new people into the conversation.

Online networking helps neighborhood associations, and local governments could also use technology to increase community involvement. If you sit in on a few city council meetings, you see a lot of the same people every time. Some dedicated citizens don’t miss a meeting, and others attend whenever an issue that affects them comes up for debate. But there’s an entire group of people who are absent. Those are the people who might occasionally want to voice their opinion or learn about government proceedings, if they could stay involved without too much trouble. They don’t read through the newsletters, nor do they mark all the meetings on their calendars. They would benefit from local governments’ updates on networking sites — and local governments would benefit from their presence.

This week, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post both published articles that analyze recent Census data on net domestic migration patterns. Both articles suppose that fewer Americans are relocating to southern and western states because of the recession and housing crisis. From the Washington Post article:

As the latest data suggest, hard times have led many people to abandon once-booming locales, and increasing numbers of others to stay put, when they cannot sell their houses or land new jobs.

Domestic migration data is interesting because it demonstrates how people “vote with their feet.” People typically move to states that have competitive environments that are more favorable, and away from states that do not.

Neither article includes statistics about Missouri specifically, so I downloaded the 2008 state population estimates and the 2008–09 “components of population change” data from the Census Bureau to find out. I computed the rate of domestic migration by dividing the net domestic migration by the population, and also the rate of total migration by dividing the total migration by the population. (Note: The articles use total population change, which is a different figure.)

For Missouri, the rate of domestic migration was 0.00 percent. How anticlimactic. This means that the number of people who moved from Missouri to other states during 2008–09 was equal to the the number of people who did the opposite. However, when we account for international migration, the rate of total migration is 0.10 percent. Compared to other states, Missouri has the 17th-lowest rate of total migration.

Data recently released by United Van Lines confirms the statement that the percentage of moves into and out of Missouri are about equal. Missouri was listed as seventh on the list of the most balanced states — its percentage of inbound shipments is 54.0, and its percentage of outbound shipments is 46.

If it weren’t for the fact that the number of births (80,865) exceeded the number of deaths (55,449) during this period, Missouri wouldn’t have grown at all.

Maintaining a constant population size has a benefit, though — Missouri won’t lose congressional seats.

The Washington Post recently published an article that describes how states’ unemployment compensation funds are running dry in the recession. When a state has more unemployment claims than it can pay, it borrows the difference from the federal government. In all, 25 states — including Missouri — have already borrowed to make their payments, $24 billion in total.

If unemployment continues to rise in the near future, then Missouri will have to borrow even more money from the federal government in order to extend benefits. According to preliminary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the seasonably adjusted unemployment rate for Missouri in November 2009 is 9.5 percent, which is an increase over recent months.

What can a cash-strapped state like Missouri do? From the article:

State unemployment-compensation funds are separated from general budgets, so when there is a shortfall, only two primary solutions are typically considered — either cut the benefit or raise the payroll tax.

Talk about being between a rock and a hard place. Although I hesitate to encourage cutting benefits, I think that that raising the payroll tax would be a particularly bad idea. Raising the payroll tax would raise the cost of labor, causing employers to stop hiring and/or further shed employees. When you tax something, you get less of it, after all. The state would have to find a way to support an ever-increasing unemployment population with an ever-decreasing employment base.

I also want to point out that employers pay more in unemployment taxes in Missouri than they do in most other states. Missouri employers already have to pay 3.510 percent of payroll in state unemployment taxes. For those in the construction-related industries, the rate is 3.600 percent. (According to the article, the average tax across states is about 0.6 percent.)

… would state math standards improve?

Lest you think that’s an odd question, let me assure you that it was inspired by national standards — specifically, by this sample problem from a Common Core State Standards Initiative publication:

If everyone in the world went swimming in Lake Michigan, what would happen to the water level? Would Chicago be flooded?

Ze’ev Wurman, who helped write California’s state math standards, criticizes that problem in an op-ed today. Wurman comments that the problem tests students’ knowledge of facts such as “Lake Michigan’s surface area” and “whether the water will spill over to Lake Huron before flooding Chicago” (as well as testing students’ credulity, I might add), but that only low-level math is required to solve it. Wurman writes that most of the other sample problems suffer from similar deficiencies, and that someone who mastered the standards but didn’t go beyond them would be placed in remedial math in California’s public colleges.

California doesn’t stand to gain much from national standards, because its state standards are widely acknowledged to be excellent. Other states that signed on to the Common Core State Standards Initiative, including Missouri, might be able to improve their standards slightly by adopting the recommendations. But why should any state agree to the Common Core Standards when there are better standards out there — namely, California’s?

Samuel Meisels, the president of the Erikson Institute in Chicago, was quoted in this article about kindergarten readiness tests:

Meisels said readiness surveys are not accurate indicators of childhood success. He advocates for teachers to observe children over time, rather than a one-time evaluation.

Districts might be inclined to use a flawed assessment rather than none at all, but Meisels explains the damage a readiness test can cause:

“It changes people’s perceptions. It can change a teacher’s perception of likely success in school. It can create parental anxiety. Worst of all, it can make a small student feel stigmatized and less capable,” Meisels said. “If any one of those consequences occur, based on a poorly designed test, it’s inexcusable to me.”

Meisels’ suggestion to observe students over time is a good one, and districts like Fulton could adopt it in place of the readiness tests they use now. The districts could accept all five-year-olds and observe them in their kindergarten class for a week or two. Then, if it’s determined that some children aren’t ready to continue with kindergarten academics, the district could place them in a separate class, have them repeat a year, or make other arrangements.

This system would give children a better chance to prove themselves ready than a short assessment provides. Kindergartners can easily fail a short readiness test because they’re nervous or distracted at the time; observing them in a classroom over several days gives a better picture of how they interact with their environment. And the only downside is that a few children with below-average hand-eye coordination or counting skills would attend kindergarten with the others for a week. (Serious developmental disabilities are not diagnosed with kindergarten readiness tests, but through more involved — and medically meaningful — assessments. So, abolishing readiness screening for all need not interfere with special education services.)

Districts shouldn’t settle for faulty readiness tests when there are better alternatives.

In a Reason article, “Have a Coke and a Tax: The economic case against soda taxes,” Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University explains that selective sin taxes are ineffectual because consumers tend to substitute one bad habit with another. De Rugy explains that soda taxes will be unsuccessful at slimming American waistlines because consumers are likely to switch to beverages that are higher in calories.

The trouble is that sin taxers don’t appreciate human creativity: Consumers have a knack for replacing one sin with another. When the price of a “sinful” good increases, people often substitute an equally “bad” good in its place.

As I have blogged about previously, selective taxes on sinful goods are an application of libertarian paternalism. I’m skeptical of plans to implement “nudges” à la Sunstein and Thaler for two main reasons.

First, they assume that the government/”choice architect” actually knows what the “right” choice is for other individuals. The answer to the question “What is healthy?” is a subjective one; it depends on who you ask and when. It also depends on who holds political office and which business interests have his ear.

Second, the government/”choice architect” could restrict free choice by artificially raising the cost of “bad” choices too much. I agree with David Friedman’s deducement that nudges can all-too-easily turn into compulsions. When the government has the authority to micromanage the eating habits and desired weights of its citizens, the individual isn’t free to choose how to eat as she desires.

Instead of nudging people into eating habits that are considered to be healthy at the time, choice architects should focus their efforts on improving the quality and availability of information to consumers, who can decide for themselves.

If America were serious about reducing the caloric intake of its citizens, then officials would eliminate the subsidies that it pays to corn producers rather than instituting sin taxes, because that would be more efficacious. Then food products that are made from corn would be relatively more expensive, and the quantity demanded would decrease. It’s a different means to the same end.

American should also stop pretending that such selective taxes (such as those on fatty food, cosmetic surgery, or indoor tanning) are actually implemented in order to improve public health — their real purpose is to raise enough tax revenue to support the government’s spending habit.

English is the official language of the state of Missouri. One official language is bad enough, but at least we don’t have two. Ottawa is finding that multiple official languages can cause hassles after a ceremony featuring speeches in official English left out any mention of official French. The mayor apologized — the news report doesn’t say in which language.

I can think of two explanations for the fact that people didn’t speak French at the ceremony: Either it’s reverse psychology, or people just speak whatever language they want without regard for state approval.

My kindergarten readiness posts met with some disagreement from readers, who responded that if children can’t complete the tasks on readiness tests, then they’re not mature enough to learn in a classroom.

I’d like to ask those readers how they explain the success of Building Blocks, a federally-funded preschool curriculum based on neuroscience research. This program takes four-year-olds who, by the customary measures, aren’t ready to learn math:

In one videotaped exam, a 4-year-old boy in a FUBU jersey and long dreadlocks who entered P.S. 99 in 2006 was unable to count or match cards with 3, 5, 2, 1 and 4 on them to cards with equivalent numbers of grapes.

And it teaches them, along with addition and subtraction, math concepts like quantity and cardinality that most schools don’t introduce until students are certifiably ready kindergartners. They learn it, averaging 26 percentile points higher on math tests than their peers who didn’t participate in Building Blocks. A year later, the Building Blocks kids are still ahead by an average of 21 percentile points.

It’s always exciting when you find an intervention that works. But I’m not surprised that the four-year-olds were able to learn, with the right program. Because unlike Building Blocks, kindergarten readiness tests are not based on neuroscience. The “research” behind them consists of not-always-strong correlations between kindergartners who couldn’t tie their shoes and later academic problems. They’re like the personality tests some companies have tried giving employees, reasoning that if the last star employee answered the questions a certain way, maybe the next one will too.

Building Blocks’ creators took the right approach to teaching students who were considered unready. They didn’t wait for them to catch up on their own, which probably would have set them further behind. And they didn’t waste time developing unrelated skills to satisfy a testing requirement. Instead, they developed a curriculum that teaches math despite students’ supposed unpreparedness.

Districts like Fulton Public Schools would do well to learn from Building Blocks and stop asking, “Are the kindergartners ready to learn?” A better question is, “Are we ready to teach them?”

Last week, the State Tax Commission proposed a plan that would change the levels of taxation for Missouri farmland. Combest had a number of links to stories about this. In short, taxes on higher-quality farmland would rise, and taxes on the lower quality land would decrease. I'll admit that I learned a lot about how farmland is valued and assessed because of this story — which is nice, because it's my job to know stuff like that.

Let's start by admitting that property taxes on farms and farmland in Missouri are very low. That does not mean that I think they should be higher, just that we can all admit they're low. Under the new plan, the value of an acre of the best farmland, for tax purposes, would be $1,270. An acre of land in a nice part of St. Louis County can easily be valued at $50,000 for tax purposes — and that is the assessed value, not just the appraised value. I realize there is a big difference between someone paying taxes on those higher valuations for one or two acres, and a farmer paying them on hundreds of acres, but still it is quite a difference — especially when the farm land is making money for its owner, while the residential acre just sits there and looks pretty.

Farm buildings and equipment are also valued lower than personal property: 12 percent, compared to 33 percent. So, I pay higher taxes on my car than the farmer does on his or her tractor. Then again, my car just gets me around, while that tractor helps feed the world.

We keep farm property taxes low because high property taxes are an impediment to productivity in a resource-heavy usage like farming. Higher taxes on farms would lead directly to higher food prices for the rest of us. The people of Missouri decided a long time ago to encourage farming by levying lower taxes for it than for other land uses. I think that was a good decision then, and still a good decision now. The changes that would result from an average increase in farm taxes are not a good idea for Missouri.

An article in the Columbia Daily Tribune explains the commotion over the Columbia Public Schools’ brand-new elementary school building. The problem with it? It looks too nice — much nicer than the districts’ other buildings. Some people say it’s inequitable for one school in the district to have handsome facilities while other school buildings need repair.

Those people would probably prefer that the district divide up expenditures, improving each building a little bit at a time. But that’s not always practical. It can be more cost-effective to build a new structure than to continually patch up an old one. And seldom (if ever) does any district have the opportunity to build new schools for all students simultaneously.

Some children in Columbia Public Schools enjoy nicer buildings than others, and some districts have more expensive auditoriums and science labs than Columbia Public Schools. However, that’s not the main cause of educational inequity. Much more important than the appearance of buildings is what children learn inside of them. A school that looks drab on the outside may have excellent teachers and a great curriculum. On the other hand, a new building is no proof that classroom materials or teaching practices have been improved.

No matter how good your building is, you’ll always be able to find a school out there that’s physically superior in some way. (For example, although the Ladue School District has many new classrooms, it recently sent out a newsletter stating that various cafeteria and library spaces fall short of Missouri School Improvement Guidelines.) The quest for perfect buildings could be unending, but it would be better to pursue perfect academics instead.

Supporters of increased government involvement in health care — such as Michael Moore, as seen in his film Sicko — are always keen to show private insurers denying legitimate claims for medical care. That does happen, but it’s less than half the story. As Mary Theroux at the Independent Institute points out, Medicare denies claims at a far higher rate than private insurers:

According to the American Medical Association’s National Health Insurer Report Card for 2008, the government’s health plan, Medicare, denied medical claims at nearly double the average for private insurers: Medicare denied 6.85% of claims. The highest private insurance denier was Aetna @ 6.8%, followed by Anthem Blue Cross @ 3.44, with an average denial rate of medical claims by private insurers of 3.88%

In its 2009 National Health Insurer Report Card, the AMA reports that Medicare denied only 4% of claims—a big improvement, but outpaced better still by the private insurers. The prior year’s high private denier, Aetna, reduced denials to 1.81%—an astounding 75% improvement—with similar declines by all other private insurers, to average only 2.79%.

Maybe there’s something to be said for the need to keep your customers satisfied in order to make that profit after all.

And not only is Medicare more likely to deny claims, it is also driving up health care costs for everyone. Our August policy study on health insurance reform shows that Medicare and other government health care expenditures drive a wedge between consumers and producers that fuels price inflation.

Government interference in health care markets only gives Missourians higher costs while leading to coverage of fewer claims. Effective health care reform must go in the direction of markets, but now that the Senate seems set to vote for cloture on the health care bill, that seems very unlikely in the near future.

Last summer, I had the privilege of being a Koch Summer Fellow for the Show-Me Institute. It was a terrific experience, and I recommend it to anybody who is interested in public policy and liberty. The Charles G. Koch Summer Fellow Program flew me (and the other 81 fellows) to Washington, D.C., for a week at the beginning and end of the summer, where we listened to lectures about liberty, participated in career workshops, made group policy presentations, and had an overall good time.

For the other eight weeks of the program, I interned at at the Show-Me Institute in St. Louis. As a state-based organization, the Show-Me Institute gave me more opportunities to research and write about policy issues than I would have had at a larger national organization. There were also weekly deadlines for the KSFP program, writing op-eds and letters to the editor, and watching online lectures.

And why should you care about my summer internship experience?

The Koch Summer Fellowship Program (run through the Institute for Humane Studies) is accepting applicants for next summer! Any college or graduate student interested in free-market public policy (whether at the federal or state level) should apply. (Make sure to specify the Show-Me Institute as a preferred destination on your application!)

This 2010 program lasts from June 5, 2010, to August 13, 2010. As a state-based fellow, you receive:

A $1,500 stipend for the duration of the fellowship

Travel allowance to and from D.C. (for both of the week-long seminars)

Housing allowance

The deadline for applications is January 31, 2010, and admissions are rolling. APPLY TODAY!

The Missouri State School Board voted today to close the Wellston School District. Wellston students will be Normandy students after this school year.

Normandy is only provisionally accredited; its student MAP scores are better than Wellston’s, but not by much. Normandy has shown admirable willingness to accept new students; however, it hasn’t demonstrated that it can provide a significantly better education than Wellston did.

If Wellston students were given a choice, some might wish to attend Normandy, and others would probably prefer other schools. It’s too bad that the board assigned everyone to a single district and did not allow the students and their families to make the decision.

Wellston students are left with one option besides Normandy: They can attend the St. Louis Public Schools’ Virtual School.

Nashville’s mayor has announced the creation of a charter school incubator to train principals. The center will start out as a nonprofit financed by private donations.

Supporters hope the incubator will teach school leaders about the features of successful charters:

Ideas about common traits shared by good charter schools — longer school days, a strong school culture — have become important training tools as the number of schools expands.

Missouri, with two cities among the top 10 list of cities with highest charter school market share, is home to several charters that principals in training could learn from. Either St. Louis or Kansas City would afford ample opportunities for incubator participants, and would be a good site for an incubator like Nashville’s.

The diversity of Missouri’s charters could make this an especially attractive place to start an incubator. Future principals who want to learn about charter schools in general, rather than one particular “brand” of charter, would be able to study a wide range of schools. Charters here are a mix of elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools, so participants could observe charter classrooms at any grade level. And the Missouri charter market is not dominated by any particular chain of charters. Some charters belong to national chains and some belong to groups of affiliated schools, but there are also charters that stand alone. And still other charters combine common elements with a unique focus; one such charter that comes to mind is City Garden Montessori. This school employs the same educational approach as other Montessori charters, while concentrating on a small geographic area — which most charters don’t do.

If a charter school incubator is established in Missouri, I’m sure its proximity to a variety of excellent charters would be a key selling point. But Missouri’s less-successful charters might be instructive examples for participants, too. If a future principal who wanted to study charters came into a market where every charter was applauded, he might conclude that running a charter is always easy and glamorous. He would be in for a rude surprise if, once he had his own charter to manage, he encountered challenges or didn’t see drastic improvements in student achievement.

Missouri is already in a good position to welcome a charter school incubator, and a few improvements would make it the perfect choice. To be an even more favorable site for an incubator, Missouri could expand charter schooling in these areas:

• Online charter schools. These would be essential in training anyone who intends to work for a virtual charter, of course. And future principals of brick-and-mortar schools could look to virtual schools for ideas about incorporating technology into the curriculum. They also might want to familiarize themselves with online education in case they eventually decide to expand their schools’ enrollment beyond the classroom walls, like these private schools did.
• Single-sex charter schools. There are single-sex classrooms within charter schools in Missouri, but no all-girls’ or all-boys’ schools. Single-sex charters are growing more popular in larger markets like New York, and although Missouri probably couldn’t support a dozen of these schools, opening one or two would keep the state on the cutting edge of charter education.
• Rural and suburban charter schools. Missouri law confines charters to Kansas City and St. Louis. As charters crop up in other states’ suburbs, and as rural districts convert to charters to attract students, educators may expect to find these kinds of schools in a well-rounded market.

I definitely recommend this piece about property taxes in today’s Springfield News-Leader that Combest linked to today. My favorite line from it:

When did $98,560 household income qualify for welfare in Missouri?

This is the new America. Everyone’s on welfare. I guess we have to get used to it.

In this KMOX article from yesterday, Saint Louis Mayor Francis Slay comments about Missouri’s film tax credit program:

They (filmmakers) spent a lot of money, had about a $50-$60 million dollar economic impact on the St. Louis area.

Hold on — $50–$60 million? Where is he getting this figure? Allow me to crunch some numbers and demonstrate that an impact of this magnitude is unrealistic.

In the comment section of my recent post about film tax credits in Missouri, Econdiva provided an estimate that the producers of Up in the Air spent “just shy of $12 million” in the state. I will grant her estimate for the sake of argument, because she worked on the film and is more likely to know this information.

For an economic multiplier, I’ll reference a fiscal note from Louisiana regarding the estimated economic and fiscal impacts of film and video tax incentives (emphasis added):

[T]he current statewide economic multipliers, supplied by the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce, for the motion picture and sound recording industries estimate that each dollar of expenditures in those industries generates about 40¢ of earnings throughout the entire economy (a final demand earnings multiplier of 0.3982).

Using this figure, an expenditure of $12 million for Up in the Air would generate only $4.8 million for Missouri’s economy.

Even if Mayor Slay used the January 2009 prediction of $30 million in the Saint Louis Business Journal, the amount generated for the state’s economy would only be $12 million.

Both numbers fall pretty far short of $50–$60 million. This is just wishful thinking.

There’s a bill before the D.C. Council that’s even worse than this one that was proposed during Missouri’s past legislative session. The D.C. bill would mandate 30 or 45 minutes of physical education per day, depending on grade level, and would order schools to buy “minimally-processed” food from local farmers. It would also establish a program to oversee and expand school gardens.

The Missouri bill was rife with nitty-gritty exercise and food regulations, too, but in some ways it wasn’t so bad. It was aimed solely at public school districts, whereas the D.C. bill would burden both districts and charter schools with new rules. And I can say this for the Missouri bill’s litany of caloric requirements: It stayed on the topic of student nutrition without straying off toward fads like school gardens and local food.

The sponsoring D.C. Council member takes a different point of view; she says that the local food her bill is preoccupied with should really be the bread and butter of the school day:

“You don’t work on math scores and say the heck with nutrition,” she said. “It’s not that these are fluff ideas. I don’t see this as something subordinate.”

It’s another case of a policymaker mistakenly assuming that local food and healthy food are one and the same. If a school says “no thanks” to local food preferences, that’s different from saying “to heck with nutrition.” It just means the school is open to buying nutritious food from wherever it’s grown.

[Author's Note: I incorrectly reported that the agreement with the ADA ended Alaska's program; it is, in fact, still thriving, and the second class graduated this past week. Thanks to Fiona Brosnan of the ANTHC for this correction. — Caitlin Hartsell]

Oral health is a huge public health issue in Missouri: The state is 47th in the nation for the percentage of the population that visited a dentist last year. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently ran an article highlighting the lack of dentists in rural Missouri and its effect upon dental health.

Alaska had a similar dental problem in the tribal areas, which had the worst rates of oral health in the country. Alaskan dental therapists — trained to do most basic dental work, except for oral surgery — became a much-needed solution to the problem. The New York Times ran a story last year about that program:

After two years of training in a program unique to Alaska, Ms. Johnson performs basic dental work like drilling and filling cavities. Some dentists who specialize in public health, noting that 100 million Americans cannot afford adequate dental care, say such training programs should be offered nationwide. But professional dental groups disagree, saying that only dentists, with four years of postcollegiate education, should do work like Ms. Johnson’s.

The American Dental Association (ADA) sued the Alaskan Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC), and they ultimately reached an agreement that essentially ended the program. The ADA argued that dental therapists cannot adequately provide health care. Some groups have argued that there are too many dentists already; this site features a quote from a dentist in Missouri who argues that a dentist is at most an hour from all rural areas.

But, if dentists are so accessible, why are Missouri’s oral health outcomes so low? Cost and access are both issues; even if a person can get to a dentist, they may deem dental services to be too expensive when money is tight. Dental therapists, because they need only two years of training rather than four post-college, are able to provide comparable care at a more affordable rate. Anyone who needs more than basic drilling and cleaning can then be referred to a professional dentist.

Dental therapists have been successful in England, Canada, and Australia at providing quality dental care. Dental therapists in Australia are proving their worth beyond just basic oral health care. A recent study found that 95 percent of restorations done by dental therapists were successful, and patients were satisfied.

Dental therapists provide more than just quality, affordable health care. They also provide jobs, especially in depressed economies in rural areas that have trouble attracting professional dentists on a permanent basis. Unemployment in Missouri, while lower than the national average, is still higher than 9 percent. A change in the law would benefit both those newly employed therapists and their patients, who would have significantly better access to dental care.

The health care reform debate has focused primarily on health insurance. The majority of people who have health insurance, though, still do not have dental coverage. The best way to improve the dental health of Missourians is to lower the cost in order to improve access. Dental therapists provide an economical way to combat tooth decay, and plans to implement training programs in the United States have already been suggested. The only obstacle to their introduction in Missouri — and to subsequent improvement in the oral health of Missourians — is the regulatory barrier of professional licensing.

Here at Show-Me Daily, we have long documented the efforts of the Missouri Municipal League to prevent this state’s citizens from voting on constitutional amendments that would severely limit abuses of eminent domain in this state. For years now, the league (its leadership is made up of elected officials from across the state) has successfully persuaded cities to use your taxpayer dollars in order to help support their effort. Part of that effort has included litigation that the filers claimed to be an attempt to get a “fair” ballot title — but, in reality, it was intended to keep the measure off the ballot entirely by so delaying the signature-gathering process that it would be impossible to collect the necessary number within the limited time available.

Up until a few weeks ago, advocates of eminent domain reform had no real proof that the Municipal League’s lawsuits had this suspected insidious purpose. On Nov. 20, however, at a meeting of the Missouri Bar Association’s Eminent Domain Committee, a managing partner in the law firm representing the Municipal League was asked to give an update on the litigation. She had this to say (audio transcript; emphasis added):

It’s not a real big update, but … um … from the standpoint of the initiative petition, uh, we did partially win, uh, in the … at the trial court level, and it’s on expedited appeal for the western district, um, which will be argued in December, with the main objective being to delay the gathering of signatures and, um, hopefully we’re … we’re accomplishing that.

Missouri Citizens for Property rights, the group spearheading the petition effort, has asked the court for permission to supplement the record with the audio evidence of the attorney’s statement, and should hear today whether the court will agree. If the court chooses to take her statement seriously, it could assign sanctions against her firm for violating the ethical rules (yes, attorneys are supposed to understand ethics) governing the legal profession.

The story has started to gain interest nationwide — as it should. It is yet another example of powerful people trying to prevent ordinary citizens from having their own say on important issues. The AP article has so far been run by media outlets in Atlanta, Phoenix, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Miami, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and Dayton, Ohio. Here in Missouri, the story has been reported in Kansas City, Springfield, Columbia, Jefferson City, Joplin, Cape Girardeau, and St. Louis — although it is interesting to note that the Ost-Pay Ispatch-Day, for some reason, has not yet covered this story.

This is just a depressing AP article on federal budget expenditures, from beginning to end. This has everything you need to make you sick, unless you love the idea of going deeper into debt while giving up your freedoms little by little.

Thank God the employees of the federal government got their pay raises. I was definitely worrying that millions of government bureaucrats would not get a raise during the recession, while millions of others lose their jobs completely. Who cares that there has not been a cost of living increase? Let’s give them one anyway!

Federal workers would receive pay increases averaging 2 percent, with people in areas with higher living costs receiving slightly higher increases.

Do you love earmarks? Well, it’s got earmarks!

The measure contains 5,224 pet projects for lawmakers totaling $3.9 billion, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based watchdog group.

And don’t worry, Missouri got ours, too. I love Kit Bond, and would absolutely vote for him if he was running for reelection, but why can’t Kansas City pay for its own community center?

[...] Christopher Bond of Missouri, pulled down 21 projects worth $32.5 million from the some portion of the bill, including $2.5 million for a community center in Kansas City.

Don’t take that personally, KC — if they had cited a St. Louis project, I would have gone with that instead. Hey, while we are at it, let’s stick it to the children:

It also would phase out a D.C. school voucher program favored by Republicans [...]

And I won’t do anything but quote the article when it comes to Missouri’s other senator’s vote:

The Democrats opposed were Sens. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, and Claire McCaskill of Missouri — who voted “no” only after Lieberman arrived to ensure the bill would advance.

I realize this kind of vote planning happens all the time in politics, but still. … This entire story makes me need a drink.

Frédéric Bastiat

My recent op-ed against film tax credits was published as a guest commentary in the Columbia Missourian today! As regular readers of this blog will know, it was also discussed by Steve Walsh on MissouriNet and by David Nicklaus on Mound City Money last week.

Over the weekend, I thought a lot about the arguments that were raised in favor of the film tax credit program. I’d like to take this opportunity to respond to them.

(1) The debate over the appropriateness of film tax credits is a natural application of the general principle of the parable of “The Broken Window” by Frédéric Bastiat (1850), which was later developed in Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt (1946).

I am impressed with the sheer amount of commentary generated by my recent blog posts arguing against film tax credits in Missouri. I have heard from people who worked on the Up In the Air set, professors of film, and representatives of the Missouri Film Commission, among others. In his book Economics in One Lesson, Hazlitt explicitly warns that this will happen (emphasis mine):

The group that would benefit by such policies, having such a direct interest in them, will argue for them plausibly and persistently. It will hire the best buyable minds to devote their whole time to presenting its case. And it will finally either convince the general public that its case is sound, or so befuddle it that clear thinking on the subject becomes next to impossible.

To paraphrase Bastiat and Hazlitt, government should consider ce qu’il voit et ce qu’il ne voit pas au même temps when it is deciding policy. In plain English, this means that it should consider “the big picture” instead of only one group of people when forming policy that affects everyone. Hazlitt thinks that this concept is so important that this is his “one lesson,” further reduced to a single sentence (emphasis mine):

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

Here’s how this relates to the film tax credit program. If we only consider that which we see, ce qu’on voit, then the tax credit programs are considered to benefit everyone. The recipients of the tax credits do assuredly benefit, as they testify in their commentary (Econdiva provided an estimate that the producers of Up in the Air spent nearly $12 million in the state). Bastiat and Hazlitt warn that it is dangerous to ignore the hidden costs, ce qu’il ne voit pas, that affect everybody. Missouri should not focus solely on the benefits of bringing filmmakers to Missouri and ignore the cost of the program to taxpayers.

While certain public policies would in the long run benefit everybody (e.g., eliminating the earnings tax or commercial property tax surcharges), other policies would benefit one group only at the expense of other groups. Film tax credit programs fall into the latter category. When tax revenue is spent on film productions, taxpayers cannot spend that money in alternative ways, such as education or infrastructure; they face an opportunity cost that is equal to the amount of the subsidy.

(2) There is not enough demand in Missouri for the film industry to exist in Missouri without a considerable level of government assistance.

In their comments, both Cat Cacciatore and Dave Rutherford provided proof of this point — they both travel out of state because there isn’t enough demand for film production work in Missouri (even in today’s status quo, in which we offer a $4.5 million tax credit). If an individual decides to live in a location in which there is not enough demand for him to work full-time, why should the taxpayer have to subsidize his employment?

Let’s say that I am a trained lobster farmer and I choose to relocate to Missouri, which is at a competitive disadvantage for lobster farming because it is very far from the ocean. I have two options: (1) I can petition the government to subsidize my employment; or, (2) I can transfer my knowledge, skills, and abilities to an industry for which there is demand. I believe that the second option is better because it does not burden taxpayers.

Most Missourians work in industries that don’t have targeted tax credits. Their jobs exist because there is enough demand for them. The demand for bakers, babysitters, yoga instructors, doctors, lawyers, and free-market research analysts in Missouri is high enough so that their employers choose to pay for their jobs without government assistance.

Furthermore, if the state stops subsidizing these jobs, then it has more workers available to do other kinds of work. In the comments, Josh Smith notes that:

There is not some fixed “pool of jobs” which can only be expanded by spending tax dollars in the right way. There are many different types and amounts of work that can be done to earn a wage, specialization and trade tend to lead to a more efficient economy.

(3) The $4.5 million applies to state tax revenues, not total expenditures.

I realize that there is some confusion here, and I admit that I should have stated this more clearly in my op-ed. State tax revenues and total expenditures are different numbers. To an out-of-state production crew like Reitman’s, Missouri issues a tax credit to for up to 30 percent of the amount that they spend in state. This means that they get $3 million back if they spend $10 million in Missouri (which they can turn around and sell, because these tax credits are fungible). Given the low multiplier for the film industry (described herein), there is no way that the state would be able to recover that amount of money, whether it be through sales taxes (4.225 percent) or personal income taxes.

(4) These programs do not result in permanent economic activity.

As Sarah Brodsky points out, the purchases cited are single-time expenses (e.g., $30,000 for ice, $185,000 for set dressing items). Few permanent jobs, if any, are created when a filmmaker comes in to the state, works on a film for a finite period of time, and then goes back to California.

Additionally, according to “The Economic Impact of the UK Film Industry,” a 2007 study by Oxford Economics, the film industry has a multiplier of only 2.0. This is lower than the multiplier for the economy average, and indicates that the indirect impacts on employment and output from the film industry are not very far-reaching.

(5) Missouri should leave filmmaking to states that have a comparative advantage in it.

Why is it important that Missouri try to compete in the national or global marketplace in filmmaking? I disagree that states like Missouri should focus on developing industries for which they are at a competitive disadvantage. Missouri would be better off if it focused on the products and services that it produces best (e.g., Budweiser beer, hog farming, mining limestone, manufacturing) and then traded with other states. I agree with Josh Smith that the statement “Other states are doing it, so Missouri should too” is an insufficient reason. He observes:

If other states want to spend their residents’ tax dollars to attract filmmakers, and the result is that Missourians (1) are still able to get the benefits of the product by paying to see the movie (perhaps more cheaply if the tax credits are spent in making the film more affordable, whatever that might mean) and (2) don’t have to spend our tax money to entice the film’s production to locate here then we have a few obvious benefits.

Also, the Michigan economy is in terrible shape! Why would Missouri want to model its tax policies after Michigan’s, even when legislators there are already discussing discontinuing the program? Right now, Michigan has a unemployment rate of 15.3 percent, which is the highest in the country. (By comparison, Missouri’s current unemployment rate is 9.5 percent, which is below the national average of 10 percent). Even before the recession sharpened, Michigan had the highest rate; in September 2008, it was 8.9 percent.

As its comparative advantage, California has more sunlight than the Midwest, which allows for longer shooting hours, as well a variety of landscape types within driving distance, which can stand in for locales around the world. (Remember how Austin Powers remarked, “You know what’s remarkable? That England looks in no way like Southern California!” while driving on an “English” country road in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me?)

(6) Subsidized industries have difficulty weaning themselves off government assistance.

When a state coddles an industry that does not have a competitive advantage (a so-called “infant industry”), the industry tends to remain dependent on that aid. Industries that are subsidized are not subject to the same competitive pressures as those that are unsubsidized, and they consequently do not have an incentive to innovate. In “The Case For Free Trade,” Milton and Rose Friedman describe some additional negative implications of these infant industries.

The infant industry argument is a smoke screen. The so-called infants never grow up. Once imposed, tariffs are seldom eliminated. Moreover, the argument is seldom used on behalf of true unborn infants that might conceivably be born and survive if given temporary protection; they have no spokesmen. It is used to justify tariffs for rather aged infants that can mount political pressure.

Kevin Horrigan confirms my suspicion that the idea for a state dog was thought up by some schoolchildren. Several of Missouri’s symbols had their start as class projects, and the Newfoundland proposal continues that trend.

Besides serving as convenient research topics for fourth graders, state symbols appeal to people in general because of the shared experiences they represent. Politicians have known this for a while. Congressman William D. Vandiver mentioned some features of the state to elicit listeners’ sympathy in his famous speech:

I come from a country that raises corn and cotton, cockleburs and Democrats; and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I’m from Missouri, and you have got to show me.

Vandiver apparently thought that people would associate those things with the state back in 1899. Clearly, such associations change over time. Cotton is no longer the first thing that comes to mind when people think of Missouri, and our state flower is the white hawthorn, not the cocklebur. Legislators might be more cautious about approving new symbols if they considered how obsolete the symbols may become. Just as no one would call out the cocklebur in a speech today, future fourth graders may laugh about our state invertebrate or dessert.