About the drunk walking bit, at least … and Superfreakonomics is probably right about a number of other things, too.

I’ve made my case against Parents as Teachers, and I suggested that the program limit eligibility to poor families. That idea was roundly rejected in the comments, on the grounds that Parents as Teachers would become another welfare program that taxpayers have to support but can’t benefit from. My answer to that is: It already is a program that many people have to pay for but can’t benefit from. Infertile couples and single people with no prospects of having children soon have to help pay the more-than-$1,000-per-family price tag for home visits to wealthy parents. And the Parents as Teachers educator doesn’t do anything your pediatrician couldn’t do just as well. You could spend a lot of time with a pediatrician for $1,000+.

This is a popular program that participants feel they gain a lot from, so I realize my opinions aren’t going to change how it’s run. That being the case, I wish people would stop making statements like this one in a letter published in the Post-Dispatch:

Studies have shown that parents who take part in Parents as Teachers are more involved in their child’s school once the child starts kindergarten.

Well-off parents who care about their kids will be the first to sign them up for programs like Parents as Teachers, and they’ll also be the most likely to be active in their kids’ schools. We can’t infer any causal relationship there as long as Parents as Teachers continues its current eligibility policy.

Anyone following the cyberbullying issue should read this article in the Columbia Missourian. (Thanks to Combest for the link.) The article reports on a proposed bill that would require all public school districts to write policies about online bullying.

The bill’s sponsor doesn’t see any drawbacks to it:

“I feel like this bill has the support of everybody,” Wilson said. “It’s simple, and it’s the right thing to do.”

The sponsor’s intentions are unimpeachable, but her bill still deserves to be challenged and debated. In particular, I see one potential down side to it: Passing such a bill could make people feel like the government had fixed something, when in reality little would change.

For one thing, the bill would apply only to public districts. I wouldn’t suggest expanding its reach; the state should not tell private schools which policies to adopt. But what if a student from a private school bullies a student from a public school, or vice versa? Or, what if someone’s cousin comes for a visit from out of state and bullies the neighborhood kids? How would districts’ anti-bullying policies help in those situations? Many instances of bullying wouldn’t fall under any district’s policy.

Furthermore, the bill just tells districts to write something down on a piece of paper. It’s not guaranteed that districts will enforce their policies well enough to prevent online bullying. Bullying can be difficult to detect and stop, because bullies usually harass their victims away from adults’ supervision. A district can’t track down all the emails and text messages that students send to each other, so the new policies probably wouldn’t affect communications between students as much as districts might want them to.

Yesterday, the Obama administration pledged $8 billion in federal stimulus funds to develop a high-speed rail system in the United States. This is no surprise. Congress set this money aside in February 2009, and the president described his vision for the project in April 2009.

California and Florida will receive $2.3 billion and $1.25 billion, respectively, which are the largest single awards. Obama’s home state of Illinois will receive $1.1 billion of this money, which is the third-highest amount. Missouri will receive much less money under this program: “only” $31 million, which equals 0.39% of the allocated funds.

In a recent study for the Show-Me Institute, “Why Missouri Taxpayers Should Not Build High-Speed Rail,” Randal O’Toole demonstrated that the president’s high-speed rail plan would result in high costs and few benefits:

If Missouri decides to build moderate- or high-speed rail, it may be responsible for cost overruns, operating losses, and the costs of replacing and rehabilitating equipment about every 30 years.

O’Toole has written several pieces for the Show-Me Institute about high-speed rail. He has a vision for transportation in Missouri that is more fiscally responsible than President Obama’s:

A better plan would be to use the state’s share of the $8 billion stimulus funds solely for incremental upgrades, such as safer grade crossings, longer track sidings, and signaling systems, that do not obligate state taxpayers to pay future operations and maintenance costs.

Alarmingly, the Obama administration emphasizes that this money is merely a down payment. This means that states, which are already cash-strapped, are left to pick up the rest of cost of these high-speed rail projects. For example, although the the Amtrak route from Chicago to St. Louis stretches 284 miles, the federal grant will cover only the 182-mile segment between Alton and Dwight, which constitutes only 64 percent. Illinois will have to find a way to pay for the rest of the project.

Although I understand that this money will pay for improvements to the existing rail in Missouri, I am concerned that this project will costly and will have low marginal benefits. Taxpayers are paying $31 million to increase the speed of the train that runs between Kansas City and Saint Louis by a mere five miles per hour. However, I will defer the analysis of the Missouri project and how it relates to O’Toole’s study to David Stokes, because he knows much, much more about transportation policy than I do. I look forward to reading his thoughts on this subject.

I don’t have a precise answer to the Show-Me Institute Question of the Week, which asks which lifestyles are most heavily subsidized, but I agree with David Stokes that rural communities should be high on the list. The first rural subsidies that come to mind are agricultural ones, like the cotton subsidies that appear in this Southeast Missourian article. Here’s the rationale behind them:

Michael Milam, an agronomy specialist with the Missouri Extension in Kennett, Mo., said that underscores the important role subsidies play in the survival of farmers.

“The subsidies have kept farmers in business,” Milam said. “The help from the government allows the farmers to compete on a level playing field with the rest of the world’s cotton producers. If the farmers that produced not only cotton but other crops dropped out because they didn’t receive the subsidies, I believe you’d see a domino effect of higher prices passed onto the consumer.”

The effect of ending the subsidies wouldn’t be as disastrous as this specialist imagines. Everyone could enjoy a lower tax burden if the government stopped paying Missouri farmers to grow crops that could be grown more cheaply someplace else. And there’s no reason to assume farmers who grow both cotton and more profitable crops would drop out of farming altogether. More likely, they would concentrate on raising crops that the market will pay for.

We shouldn’t try to level the playing field between Missouri and other places, because it’s a waste of money. We could pay farmers to grow oranges and level the playing field between us and Florida, but what would be the point? We can just ship in oranges with less trouble and expense. It’s the same for cotton and all the other crops that don’t bring in a profit when grown in Missouri.

Few policy issues are as as uncontroversial as the idea that the federal government should provide some kind of national defense. Realizing that funding the military is almost universally considered to be a federal obligation, advocates of other policies try to piggyback on that popular support by associating their programs with defense or comparing their concerns to a battlefield.

The latest example is this essay in the Huffington Post by Debra Eschmeyer, Media Director of the National Farm to School Network. Eschmeyer argues for a direct link between school lunches and national security:

Do tater tots, pizza, and soda rise to the level of calling in Janet Napolitano or David Petraeus? Oddly, yes, because the National School Lunch Program was originally created to promote “nutrition in the national defense,” as a solution to young men who were unfit for service in WWI and WWII. The lunch line was actually designed to prepare soldiers for the front lines. (And sadly, 27 percent of the population for military service today are too obese/overweight to serve).

Eschmeyer then turns her attention away from history and calls for a “fight” against poor nutrition.

Is Eschmeyer correct that we need better cafeteria food to keep out foreign invaders? I don’t think so. There are many other factors that prevent people from joining the military, such as criminal records, lack of education, and health problems that are not related to food (including poor eyesight, mental illness, and others). It’s worth noting that the report Eschmeyer cites about military service recommends expanding preschool education in an effort to improve graduation rates, but makes no mention of school lunches.

Fortunately, we don’t need a large percentage of the population to defend the country right now, so it doesn’t really matter that so many people can’t serve for one reason or another. Problems like obesity don’t determine whether we have a military, but which people are employed by it. As a country, we can still enjoy the benefits of national defense. The only people who lose out when the army excludes lots of overweight people are the overweight people who want to serve. And if someone wants to join the armed forces but is barred by weight, he can make nutritional or other lifestyle changes to improve his fitness. In this sense, overweight people are in a better position than others who are disqualified, because it’s possible for them to bring their weight down to military standards through their own initiative.

The fact that a small percentage of the population is eligible for military service can be a good thing, depending on how you look at it. It means that we are living in such a peaceful time in history that our military can afford to be selective, excluding people who don’t have quite enough education or whose weight is just a little higher than the ideal.

The defense argument for better school lunches doesn’t pass inspection. If states like Missouri think kindergartners don’t eat enough vegetables, they shouldn’t frame that as a national security crisis. There’s no need to call in the federal government — or to call forth the militia.

Oregon, a state that we talk about a lot on this blog because it seems to be in the forefront of a lot of good and bad ideas, just raised taxes through a ballot initiative. Meaning, the good people of Oregon used the power of initiative petition to just jack up the tax rates on business and the “wealthy” in Oregon. A famous anonymous quote (often misattributed to Alexander Tytler and Alexis de Tocqueville) observed, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury.” Luckily, the people of America have mostly proven that prediction wrong. However, votes like the one in Oregon, as well as the inevitable entitlement crisis we’ll face in about 20 years, may prove it right one day.

And, yes, I am aware that the entitlement crisis is just as much to blame on the elected officials who put the programs in as on the people who support them with their votes.

The German family that fled to Tennessee in search of freedom to homeschool has been granted political asylum. They can stay in Tennessee and continue to educate their children as they choose — although, as I’ve written before, if they want to see really great homeschooling laws, they should check out Missouri.

Gov. Jay Nixon’s State of the State Address on Jan. 20 identified three main objectives for the coming year:

We must keep the jobs we have, and create thousands more.

We must build a granite foundation for Missouri’s future growth.

And we must balance the budget without raising taxes.

These are goals that Missourians can agree on, regardless of partisanship. The first goal is of particular interest to people in a state where the unemployment rate stands at 9.2 percent. No wonder it was first on the list.

In his speech, Nixon said he wants Missouri to be first in job creation. But, as of now, the state is 16th in a Tax Foundation ranking of the best environments for business. The state corporate income tax stands at 6.25 percent, the 16th-lowest in the nation. Although these numbers are good, they could be better. As the governor said, he wants to be number one.

Nixon points to the elimination of the franchise tax for 16,000 small businesses as contributing to job creation and business expansion. He is thereby acknowledging that reducing the tax burden on businesses has a positive impact on job creation. So, why not cut the corporate income tax rate? This would allow Missouri companies to reinvest more money into their businesses and generate more jobs. It would also make Missouri an even more attractive environment for other businesses to move into.

Opponents of such tax cuts often argue that they would result in a decrease in the revenue needed to support important state programs that assist needy families. However, the revenue generated from the state corporate income tax is a small fraction of all state revenue. More importantly, many of these programs are bloated and don’t serve their intended purposes effectively. A cut in the corporate tax rate, on the other hand, would help provide necessary jobs for people who are in need of a source of revenue to support their families. It would do this both by allowing current Missouri companies to expand hiring, and by drawing other companies to the state. Those already employed would also benefit, because workers bear slightly more than 70 percent of the burden of corporate taxes in the form of reduced wages, according to the Congressional Budget Office. A cut in the corporate tax rate also increases the value of companies, which would benefit anyone with a 401(k). Opponents of tax cuts for corporations argue that these tax cuts only benefit the companies themselves. But the burden of corporate taxes ultimately falls on people, whether it’s the customers, the workers, or the shareholders.

I commend Gov. Nixon for resisting the impulse to raise taxes, but even more impressive would be an effort to cut them.

Here’s another reason that allowing alternative teacher certification in Missouri was a good idea: Teachers who are anxious about math can transmit that attitude to their students, who may then lose confidence in their ability to learn math. Specifically, a study has found that girls who were taught by female teachers with math anxiety were more likely to believe that boys are better at math. The girls who formed that opinion also earned a lower average score than their peers on a math test. The difference in scores did not appear at the beginning of the year, before the students had been influenced by their teachers.

Alternative teacher certification is a good way to fill the teaching force with people who are both knowledgeable about math and comfortable with it. Proponents of alternative teacher certification have long highlighted the knowledge that teachers bring to the classroom. Obviously, a teacher with little math background won’t have the same level of expertise as someone who’s worked in a math-intensive field. But this study shows that a teacher’s feelings toward her subject are also important. A teacher who hasn’t developed confidence by using math can change how students think about their potential to learn. And that could prevent them from learning from other teachers later on.

While this study focused on negative effects of teachers, it would be interesting to see whether teachers can inspire previously reluctant students to like a subject. Can a confident teacher turn around students’ attitudes and make them enthusiastic about math and science?

Readers, commenters, Missourians, lend me your keyboards.

What do you think is the most heavily subsidized lifestyle: urban, suburban, exurban, rural, or small town? Think of subsidies of every level and in every way — so, basically, when you choose to live in one of these five locations types, which is the one the depends most on other people giving you money through involuntary government subsidies?

Let’s briefly define our terms: By “urban,” I mean within major cities; “suburban” should be the mainline suburbs of those cities; “exurban” should be the extended suburbs that came into being about 20 years ago; by “rural,” I mean farming, ranching, etc.; and by “small towns” I mean towns within rural areas, including small cities like Joplin or Cape Girardeau.

Here are my votes, from most heavily subsidized to least subsidized: urban, rural, exurban, suburban, small towns.

I think there would be a big gap between numbers 2 and 3, and a pretty good space between 3 and 4. I’ll try to find some data to get some answers after I have enough responses. Go!

An entertaining AP story reports on the popularity of FarmVille, a game application on Facebook that allows users to manage virtual farms and sell crops. People praise the game for being fun and simple. The AP suggests that it may be also be instructive:

Since its launch last summer, the cartoonish simulation game [...] has become a Facebook phenomenon, luring in everyone from urbanites [...] to actual farmers while gently nudging people to think more about where their food comes from.

I applaud FarmVille for disseminating knowledge about the origins of food without help from preferential local food laws. Advocates of farm-to-school programs and gardening subsidies cite learning about food as one of the main benefits of those policies. It’s good to see that a voluntary activity like playing FarmVille can be just as educational — at no cost to taxpayers.