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.

I really liked this piece by Sen. Jason Crowell in the Southeast Missourian about the proposed property tax increase in agricultural land in Missouri. (Thanks to Mr. Combest for the link.) What I liked most about it was that it focused its ideas on why we should not raise taxes on agriculture, instead of trying to sell the idea that agriculture is already overtaxed in Missouri — which it ain’t. (Note use of term “ain’t” as attempt by said blogger to sound country when writing about farming.) I wrote about this last month when the proposal to raise the assessed valuations of some farmland first came out.

Senator Crowell writes:

Both the director of Missouri’s Department of Agriculture and the Missouri Farm Bureau disagree with the tax Commission’s decision, warning that a tax increase could be extremely damaging to Missouri’s farmers as they work in this struggling economy.

I certainly agree with that. Now is not the time to make food more expensive, and it may never be the right time to do that via tax policy. However, sometimes in the interest of setting proper valuations on which to base property taxes, some people will see their taxes rise while others see them fall. It is important to remind people that some agricultural property would see its assessments — and, thereby, taxes — fall as a result of this study.

I’ll emphasize that I support preventing this new assessment system from going into place, but let’s not pretend for a moment that farm taxes are high in Missouri. That acre of farmland producing valuable commodities that the farmer will sell would only have been valued at $1,270 per acre. That does not entail a tax of $1,270 per acre; as explained nicely here, the tax rates would only be based on that valuation. A tax rate of $7 per hundred dollars of assessed valuation (about average for St. Louis County; it is probably lower in rural Missouri) leads to a property tax of $10.67 per acre — not very much. At that rate, it would take more than 400 acres of the most productive farmland in Missouri to equal the property taxes we pay on our 1/4-acre lot for a starter home in suburban University City. So, keep the taxes as they are; just don’t tell me farmers face a heavy tax burden in Missouri.

If we should be lowering taxes on any one area in Missouri, it should be on commercial/manufacturing property.

Missouri’s law against young people sending text messages while driving is only the beginning. Regulators want to make sure drivers can think about nothing but the road in front of them:

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood called distracted driving a “hot button” issue for state legislatures and said he’s against all distracted driving, not just cell phone use.

“I don’t care what the distraction is,” he said. “We’re going to set the highest bar possible. There should be no distractions.”

An obvious problem with outlawing all distractions is that we could never enforce such broad controls on drivers’ behavior. That doesn’t dissuade the texting ban’s supporters, who say that whether anyone is ever found to be in violation of a law doesn’t matter. Here’s how an AAA spokesman puts it:

“The benefit of having it in the statute is voluntary compliance, sort of like every other law.”

Perhaps the roads are safer because drivers willingly cooperate with texting bans, but, if so, texting bans are the exception. Most laws are effective because we can prosecute people for breaking them, and thereby deter people from breaking them in the future.

The more laws we write restricting drivers’ activities, the less we’ll be able to depend on their voluntary compliance. Drivers won’t pay attention to a laundry list forbidding every activity they could engage in while behind the wheel.

The recent Massachusetts election confirmed the fact that the health care debate is far from over. The people in the one state where every citizen nominally has health care insurance have extended their influence to the health care of the nation. Those voters may not have been addressing that issue alone, but their actions will have some effect on us all. Interestingly, depending on one’s political perspective, anxiety had been expressed about every plan being brought forward, not the least of which was the concern about the potential effect of these proposals on constitutional liberties. That may no longer be a problem. Nevertheless, even if another alternative is developed, the evolution of the discussion has helped us all.

In our open free society, there is a benefit associated with the debate itself.  Some see an increased awareness of these health concerns as a potential stimulus for continued economic growth. As we know, the United States is in the midst of a profound demographic change. There has been an aging of the population characterized by an increased proportion of persons aged 65 and older. The Congressional Research Service’s demographic charts reveal a great upsurge in the number of older people in this country. By keeping that population healthy, we should all benefit from this preserved human capital. By improving the health and well-being of the generations to follow, additional benefits accrue. As others have indicated, “the accumulation of human capital—in the form of increased knowledge and skills and improved health and longevity” will continue to play an essential role in the economic growth of this country. My contention is that making people aware of these issues has offered some benefit to our society, regardless of the outcome of the debate.

If the investments in American health care that already exist work as expected, there should be a measurable improvement in the long-term functional status of many citizens, both young and old. Not only will the Medicare generation continue to receive benefits, but people that are newly aware of these issues will have a better chance of a healthy life extending into their old age. With many people continuing to be healthy, a small part of the future demand for health care may become reduced over time.

But there is another activity occurring, one discussed less often. In many cases, as people grow older, they continue to work and contribute to the GDP. This had been noted in the past, but few paid attention to it. However, even before people were aware of the developing “sea change” in American health care demographics, there was an increase in the proportion of the workforce older than age 65. Most of those workers are people who are not obligated to work because of reduced economic circumstances. Instead, these individuals have chosen to continue on their jobs, and contribute to society in other ways, because it gives more meaning to their lives.

Going forward, one expects still another “sea change” to develop as a result of the health care debate, but this would be in the doctor-patient relationship arena. What had been a paternalistic situation, with the physician in the role of an all-knowing father, is in the process of shifting. When most patients are older (and more experienced) than their primary care providers, physicians will need to explain their activities in greater detail. The Internet has created a standard of health care knowledge that is free and open to the public. As a result, at every patient interaction, physicians will have to show that their expertise is greater than what one can look up online. Otherwise, why would a patient want to participate? That is, the doctor encounter has to continue to be a “value added” experience that the patient can measure.

At present, from an economic perspective, the prices of health care are not informative, and consumers cannot use dollar-related data to compare physicians and/or hospitals. The existing problem of health care information asymmetry has kept patients at a disadvantage.  Reforming that situation may be an added benefit developing from within the current discussions. This seems to be included, to some degree, in every version of the health care bills. No matter on which side of the aisle one sits, everyone appears in favor of improving knowledge.

Be sure to check out this article by John Eskew of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, about the unionization of home health care workers in Missouri. It is well worth your time. I recall being part of the 24 percent that voted against this measure. Unfortunately, we were 27 percent short.

John Combest linked today to a very well-written story by Fox 4 in Kansas City. I commend them for asking tough question about the autism legislation that is almost certainly going to be passed and signed into law this year. The answer to the Fox question is that yes, autism mandates will cause premiums to rise for everyone. It may well be a very small increase, and the public good of covering autism may indeed be worth it, but let’s not pretend that this legislation won’t increase insurance costs for everyone.

I won’t add much to my TIF post from the other day, I just want to note and link to this Kansas City Star article about the TIF lawsuit in Jackson County. As promised in the press conference the other day by Co. Exec. Mike Sanders, the county has sued the city over the makeup of its TIF Commission. This should be an interesting case, and while much of it focuses on some narrow issues of the board’s procedures and make-up, I hope it can lead to larger debates over who should be making these decisions.

A group of homeschooling parents in Oregon have applied to form a charter school. They want to continue homeschooling, and to use the charter for in-school resources and to meet weekly with a teacher.

Given Oregon’s track record on charters, I’m not expecting the idea to be approved easily. And I actually hope the district turns down this proposal. I see a few problems with it:

• The charter would give each student $1,000 to use for their education. Families’ ideas of educational purchases vary so widely that this is sure to lead to conflicts or allegations of misuse. What if a family thinks a golf lesson is physical education but the charter doesn’t?
• It seems extravagant to establish a school resource center for a couple hundred families who won’t spend much time there. People could just go to a public library and access most of the books, maps, or CDs that the charter would provide.
• If students in the homeschool charter perform poorly on state tests, other people might view that as an indictment of all homeschoolers. An unsuccessful homeschool charter could provoke stricter regulation of other homeschoolers who were never involved with it.

I would support a charter for homeschoolers if it were structured more like a part-time school. Students could attend the school two or three full days a week, and it could assign homework for them to do with their parents on the other days. Rather than give students money to spend, the school could lend them computers, musical instruments, or other things they need for their studies. Students would still get to spend lots of time at home, but it would be clear to everyone that the charter was a real school and not just a place to stop by for an hour.

Is a part-time charter a good idea for Missouri? Charters can form in St. Louis and Kansas City, so out-state homeschoolers won’t have this option. St. Louis families that want to combine homeschooling and public education are already free to choose the SLPS Virtual School. There might not be enough demand for a homeschooling charter there. That leaves Kansas City. I can imagine homeschooling families in Kansas City forming a charter, especially if they participated in the Missouri Virtual Instruction Program and are looking for something to take its place. However, the charter idea won’t go very far if homeschoolers are satisfied with existing homeschool coops and don’t want help from the state.

I’ve criticized the Parents as Teachers program for, among other things, giving services to kids who don’t need help and sending a stiff bill to taxpayers. I’m probably the only one who’s happy to see Parents as Teachers take a $4 million cut in Missouri’s budget.

I don’t like Parents as Teachers the way it has been run for the past couple decades, but I’m optimistic that it can evolve into a better program. Parents as Teachers could move in one of two directions to control costs and better serve families. It would also be possible to split it into two separate programs with different missions.

Here’s the first route Parents as Teachers could take: Continue to serve all interested families, including wealthy ones, but do away with home visits. A Parents as Teachers educator could be stationed at a public library or in a public school. Parents could make appointments to bring their kids to the educator, and there might be drop-in hours too. Some services could be provided to multiple families at once. For example, an educator could teach a group of parents about activities for toddlers, and only parents who still had questions would consult with the educator one-on-one. Holding sessions in a public building would allow educators to direct parents to other resources (such as children’s books in a library), but its main advantage would be efficiency. Home visits to individual families are expensive — and also unnecessary, because educators give much of the same advice to everyone.

The other option is to model Parents as Teachers on the Harlem Children’s Zone’s Baby College program, providing intensive help to the people who need it most. Baby College serves disadvantaged families by restricting enrollment to residents of a neighborhood; Parents as Teachers could likewise confine itself to poor neighborhoods, or it could limit enrollment by family income. Baby College incorporates home visits, but it also brings parents together for a class one morning a week. The group sessions allow parents to get support from each other, and they also allow Baby College to bring in outside speakers. The once-a-week format means Baby College can reinforce what it teaches in a short period of time, unlike Parents as Teachers’ home visits, which might be spread apart by a few months. A Parents as Teachers program resembling Baby College would still be expensive, but at least it would be targeted, and families would get more out of the experience.

Do you have plans tonight? The Saint Louis chapter of Liberty on the Rocks is meeting today at 6 p.m. at Sasha’s on Shaw for wine and, of course, to discuss issues of personal freedom.

Our last meeting, at the Martini Bar, included some heated discussion with the Motorhome Diaries guys about whether anarchy is feasible. It’s cool, though — we’re all Facebook friends now.

Liberty on the Rocks is not a Show-Me sponsored event, but I figured that a lot of our blog readers would be interested in attending. If you’re looking for good wine and good discussion, drop by.

Missouri intends to give only half of its Race to the Top grant, should it receive one, to districts. The rest would pay for expanding high-speed Internet access.

When a state plans to spend a large portion of Race to the Top grant money outside of schools, that’s a sign that the Department of Education is offering too much money.

One objection to open enrollment is that districts would have trouble accommodating changing numbers of students. I explained in this post why open enrollment needn’t hamper districts’ planning; one reason is that districts could limit the number of additional students they’d accept. In my argument that open enrollment wouldn’t do any harm, I neglected to point out that open enrollment could actually make planning easier for some districts. In particular, districts like Ladue that are experiencing enrollment booms and space shortages would benefit from a policy that allows students to transfer out.

As more people move into the Ladue district, class sizes go up and its schools have to scramble to find space. Some of that enrollment growth is inevitable, because Ladue has a good reputation. But the problem could be mitigated if students were able to choose schools in neighboring districts. Not every family that moves into Ladue does so for education; some choose a house in Ladue for other reasons, and would prefer a school that’s less crowded. Those people wouldn’t mind transferring their children to nearby districts. Other parents originally moved in for the district’s academics, but after class sizes reached a certain point, they no longer thought it was worthwhile to stay. They would also choose to transfer under open enrollment.

Under the current system, people with the preferences I just described can’t send their children to a different school unless they sell their houses and move. That’s a time-consuming process, and many would consider it a last resort in today’s real estate market. So, people stay put and keep their kids in the district, contributing to the crowding problem.

This is not to say that if Missouri institutes open enrollment, everyone would flee Ladue. Rather, some families that care about class sizes would send their children to other districts — perhaps just for a few years, while Ladue acquires more space. Open enrollment would act as a safety valve so that enrollment doesn’t increase faster than Ladue can open new classrooms.

The New York Times has a nice analysis of health care cost control using the insights of economist William Baumol, whose work reminds us to be wary of indulging in excessive optimism about cutting health care costs with new legislation. Essentially, Baumol has argued that technological improvements do not significantly reduce the demand for health care professionals. Given the inflation of wages and other commodities relevant to health care, Baumol’s work predicts that health care costs are unlikely to rise slower than inflation.

Here’s a good bit:

Dr. Baumol and a colleague, William G. Bowen, described the cost disease in a 1966 book on the economics of the performing arts. Their point was that some sectors of the economy are burdened by an inexorable rise in labor costs because they tend not to benefit from increased efficiency. As an example, they used a Mozart string quintet composed in 1787: 223 years later, it still requires five musicians and the same amount of time to play.

Despite all sorts of technological advances, health care, like the performing arts, suffers from the cost disease. So do other public services like education, police work and garbage collection. While some industries enjoy sharp increases in productivity (cars can be built faster than ever, retail inventory can be managed better), endeavors like health care are as labor-intensive as ever.

Here’s another:

At the same time, demand for health care never lets up. So while slow sales of video games or clothing can reduce prices, health care prices never ease. And while the robots that help build cars have replaced human beings on the assembly line, robots that help out in modern operating rooms are not as economically efficient.

“We do now have robots performing surgery, but the robot is under constant supervision of the surgeon during the process,” Dr. Baumol said. “You haven’t saved labor. You have done other good things, but it isn’t a way of cheapening the process.”

It’s important to note, then, that the most effective ways to cut cost inflation given Baumol’s insight is through market-based means: shock the supply or rein in demand in the market. The current health care proposals passed by the United States Senate and House of Representatives do the opposite. As I’ve written before, both proposals would, by expanding coverage or insurance, impose an economic wedge between the price consumers pay and the price producers receive. When this wedge occurs, over-consumption of resources is all but guaranteed. So, effectively, the health care bills will increase demand and thus increase costs beyond the baseline level of inflation.

Fortunately, there are other options. The Show-Me Institute has written before about certain health care reform proposals, like health savings accounts (HSAs), that restrain demand without exacerbating the harmful effects of an economic wedge. Unfortunately, the House bill and especially the Senate bill attack HSAs and make them significantly less attractive.

Jefferson City has grudgingly lifted its ban on tattoo parlors. They are now legal, but subject to several regulations: The shops can’t open before 9 a.m., and must close by 8 p.m. They can’t display any neon lights. And they can’t stand out:

The Jefferson City News-Tribune reports that another stipulation requires the businesses to aesthetically blend in with their surroundings.

That last requirement is the least reasonable. No store can look just like the establishments surrounding it while simultaneously advertising itself to customers. And the burden of this regulation will only increase over time, for if neighboring businesses come and go, a tattoo shop will have to continually redesign itself to blend in with the changing scene.

I can’t imagine what tattoo shops will look like under this ordinance. Will a tattoo parlor next to an office building have to masquerade as corporate headquarters?

The new policy doesn’t satisfy all tattoo shop critics; some would prefer that tattoo shops stayed out of Jefferson City. One council member explains why he opposed ending the ban:

“Many times these things are done randomly without much forethought and individuals do regret this,” said Pope.

I would expect people who share this opinion to call for waiting periods before anyone can get a tattoo, rather than bans. Completely banning tattoo parlors prevents people who do exercise foresight from getting tattoos — and why should they be punished for someone else’s lack of judgment? This council member should at least be happy with the new policy’s regulation of operating hours, because whoever decides to get a tattoo after 8 p.m. will have all night to reconsider.

Today, the Show-Me Institute launched four new online tools that enable Missourians to track state spending, employee pay, tax credits, and stimulus projects. These tools take state-provided datasets and make them understandable and intuitive for just about anyone. You can create your own graphs or quickly compare detailed information among state agencies.

In my opinion, there couldn’t have been a better time for Missourians to have these tools. At 7 p.m. today, Gov. Jay Nixon will deliver his State of the State address. Given the continuing decline in state tax revenues, Nixon could soon announce another round of budget cuts, on top of the hundreds of millions already cut from the state budget this fiscal year.

Sen. Jason Crowell has argued that tax credits should be part of the state budget process, instead of allowing government agencies to dole out credits with little regard for how much the state can afford to give out each year. And, of course, state agencies and local governments across the board have accepted hundreds of millions in federal “budget stabilization” dollars, which lets them stave off cuts, for now.

Our online tools can help you put these issues into perspective.

Although a $200 million round of budget cuts may seem drastic, state expenditures in 2009 were up more than $1.5 billion from 2008 (see the “Spending Overview” tab). As for state tax credits, I was surprised to see that the amount issued each year varies wildly (see the “Overview” tab) — from a high of more than $500 million in 2006 to less than $150 million in 2009. Most startling is the amount of federal money that state agencies and local school districts are leaning on. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has spent nearly $350 million of federal budget stabilization money, and has less than $100 million left (See the “Spending & Revenue by Program” tab).

The data behind these tools will be updated each week, which means you can check back periodically to see what’s new. It’s my hope that these tools are an easy way to keep up with what the state is actually doing, instead of the latest political rhetoric.

The St. Louis Business-Journal has a story about what one government program has recently done. The Business-Journal article is just a news story about the St. Louis development loan program, but it gives a perfect example of a government program that has absolutely no reason to exist and should be eliminated tomorrow. It is nice to be able to get specific once in awhile, rather than just expressing general “cut government” statements, so here I go.

The revolving loan fund of the St. Louis Local Development Corporation serves no need that the private sector cannot meet. It serves no legitimate public purpose, and should be abolished. It should be a market decision whether two restaurateurs can get backing to open more restaurants in St. Louis. Tax dollars have no business being involved in these projects. I am fully aware that this is a loan program, not a gift program, but I don’t care. Even if they get every penny back with interest, the loans serve no legitimate public purpose, the government has no business being involved in things like this, and it still takes tax dollars above and beyond the loan amounts themselves to employ the people who work for the STLDC. The program deserves to be abolished.

All right, so the title of this post is a bit misleading — I just wanted to get as many acronyms and abbreviations in there as possible. Jackson County Executive Mike Sanders announced today that Jackson Co. will file suit against the make-up of the TIF Commission in Kansas City. Prime Buzz has the early scoop here.

This is a big issue, and you will see a lot more from the Show-Me Institute about it as it goes forward. Basically, I completely agree with the county on the larger issue of the KC TIF commission’s fairness. (Debating the details will have to wait a day or so until I have time to read everything carefully.) TIF commissions at the municipal level are a rigged game. The city gets to appoint so many members that the whole commission is clearly stacked. In St. Louis County, they are currently working with a modified TIF commission that gives the county more influence and the various cities less. It has not faced a real test yet, but I support the increased county role. I would support it for Jackson County, too, and I wish Co. Exec. Sanders and the county luck in this dispute.

I wrote about this issue in some detail nearly two years ago, in an op-ed arguing that all TIF decisions be made at the county level, and another piece commending St. Charles County for its resistance to the use of TIF. It looks like both of these pieces are very applicable to Kansas City and Jackson County right now. Nifty stuff.

It would be nice if every person had health insurance that covered every possible medical expense. Unfortunately, that sort of insurance would cost an astronomical amount of money. That is a simple fact in a world with scarce resources. However, that fact does not deter politicians from trying to force everyone into insurance plans that cover an ever-wider array of treatments and thus cost ever-greater amounts of money. The most recent effort for expanded coverage focuses on treatments for autism. From the Political Fix:

About one in 100 children are diagnosed with some form of autism, studies have shown.

The bills’ sponsors, Sen. Scott Rupp, R-Wentzville, and Rep. Dwight Scharnhorst, R-St. Louis County, want to make sure families can get coverage for expensive therapy known as Applied Behavioral Analysis, which often involves 20 to 40 hours a week of one-on-one sessions with therapists.

As filed, the bills would require insurance policies to cover $72,000 a year in treatment for children and adults up to age 21.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with buying insurance to cover treatments for autism, but not everyone needs or wants this insurance, so they should not have to pay for it. For example, as I read the article, a family of four would be forced to continue paying for this insurance even if neither of their children showed any signs of autism. Not everyone requires the same kind of medical coverage, but by mandating that everyone buy similar high-end insurance policies, the only thing we ensure is higher prices for everyone.

The forms that the Census Bureau sends out aren’t directed at children, and when Census workers go door-to-door collecting information about households that didn’t respond, they can’t accept answers from anyone under 15 years old. So this cute jingle telling people to raise their hands and say “Here we are” appears to target the wrong audience.

There are a few other Census promotions that I just don’t get. One is this public service announcement that urges viewers to “make your voice heard.” The Census asks people very specific and limited questions, as it should. It doesn’t ask for your opinion or for a personal statement. People who fill out every line of the Census form won’t be making their voices heard — they’ll just be reporting basic details about their households to the government.

And then there’s a clip from a legislator from the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota that’s both inspiring and scary. I say “inspiring” because it starts off with a message of being true to yourself and overcoming whatever obstacles you face. (The legislator then loses me by saying that the way to overcome those obstacles is to participate in the Census.) The scary part is the end of the segment, when the legislator ominously warns that federal funding for health care will be insufficient if some tribal members don’t fill out their forms.

I hope Show-Me Daily readers will mail back their Census forms, in accordance with the Constitution. But I’m not expecting thunderbolts from heaven if a few of you don’t participate. And, to the people who want to express themselves: Blogs are a better medium than government paperwork.