In this episode, Susan Pendergrass speaks with Robby Soave, a senior editor at Reason.
Robby’s latest book is Tech Panic: Why We Shouldn’t Fear Facebook and the Future
Emergency 911 call centers represent one of the clearest opportunities in Missouri to combine regional services. It is a vital public service ripe for cost savings and technological improvements via system sharing or consolidation. The Post-Dispatch has an update on the proposal to combine the City of St. Louis’s three different 911 centers into one centralized system. I think this is a great plan for the city to upgrade the current system and save money. We don’t need a bunch of small, independent 911 call centers. Larger, well-staffed centers with top technology are what we need in this area. This is not like other government services where there are trade-offs between the tax savings due to economies of scale with larger service providers and the preferred service benefits of smaller operations closer to residents and taxpayers.
The Post-Dispatch story notes that some politicians and employee unions are upset that they have not been included in these plans so far. Fine, include them in the planning going forward. Problem solved. But don’t let them—especially the employee unions— stymie this plan. I don’t see why they would—there are so many vacancies in the current 911 systems that I would be surprised if any jobs would get cut. If employee unions have constructive ways to improve the 911 system changes, then we should listen to them. If the Board of Aldermen does its job and asks tough questions about the plan, then those questions should be answered.
But keep the new plan moving forward. This is the low-hanging fruit of changes that could improve public safety for the people of St. Louis and save tax dollars at the same time.
On October 5, David Stokes joined The McGraw Show on The Big 550 KTRS to provide an update on the Douglas Hill Development in Webster Groves.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis recently took a (perhaps surprising) stance against income taxes. At the Steamboat Institute’s Freedom Conference, Polis said that Colorado’s state income tax should be zero. Governor Parson (and governors across the country) should take note.
Colorado’s governor defended his call for an income tax rate of zero with basic economic theory. When you tax something, you make it more expensive and discourage buying or doing it. With sin taxes such as cigarette taxes, the tax is added to do just that—make the price of cigarettes higher and discourage cigarette smoking.
But is that really what we want to do with income taxes? Do we want to discourage people from earning income? Show-Me Institute researchers have asked these questions for years as they’ve written about Missouri’s income tax and the earnings taxes in St. Louis City and Kansas City. The individual income tax accounted for more than 26 percent of Missouri’s total revenues in 2020 (Colorado’s 4.63 percent individual income tax contributed almost 20 percent of the state’s revenues in 2020). Given the adverse incentives created by income taxes, it would be in Missouri’s best interest to rely less on this harmful tax.
Missouri legislators have taken steps to lower the state income tax, perhaps indicating a general acknowledgment of the negative effects of income taxes. For example, the online sales tax bill from earlier this year includes mechanisms to incrementally lower the top state income tax rate to 4.8 percent. This is a great step in the right direction, but we are still far from zero. As Polis said: “We can find another way to generate the revenue that doesn’t discourage productivity and growth . . . and we should.” I agree, and I hope that Missouri lawmakers share this sentiment and continue to lower income taxes in our state.
Susan Pendergrass speaks with Gerard Robinson, Fellow of Practice and Vice President for Education, Advanced Studies in Culture Foundation.
Show-Me Institute Analyst Jakob Puckett responds to some of the comments he received about his recent report, Improving Missouri’s Transportation System through Tolling.
On Tuesday, September 28, Patrick Ishmael joined Pete Mundo on KCMO Talk Radio to discuss a Missouri State diversity official’s recent comments asserting that CRT is “not being taught in the public schools, it’s not even being trained in the public schools.”
Our friends at the Illinois Policy Institute have a new report out on education spending in the Land of Lincoln. The numbers are gobsmacking.
In the 2021–22 school year, 39 percent (yes 3-9 percent) of education dollars will be spent on pensions. While education spending has grown 17 percent since 2000, teacher and administrator pension costs have risen 458 percent. 458 percent!
When the pension part of the state spending pie grows, the other slices of the pie shrink. That means that money that could be going to today’s teachers is going to yesterday’s.
Pensions are a perfect storm for governmental jiggery-pokery. The bill for bad decisions doesn’t come due for years after most of the people making decisions are out of office. The benefits are clear to those receiving them but are opaque to taxpayers (who tend to focus on metrics like teacher salaries, not total teacher compensation). Legislators can hide behind actuarial alchemy to obfuscate the magnitude of their decisions. Everyone wants teachers to have a safe and solid retirement, so quibbling with how much is spent can come off as teacher bashing.
Thankfully, Missouri is not nearly in the dire straits that Illinois is. Now, Missouri pensions are unfair. They invest in riskier assets to chase higher returns when they are underperforming. And, they are a bad deal for most teachers. But Illinois still serves as a cautionary tale for us.
And ballooning pension costs are bad for everyone (except, to be fair, those who are receiving them). It is bad for current teachers and students, who miss out on funding that could be used to support them. It is bad for current legislators, who have less money to spend on higher education, healthcare, roads and bridges, and more. And it is bad for future teachers, students, and legislators, who will be hemmed in by the decisions that their forebears made.
The great political philosopher Edmund Burke argued that the social contract is “a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” Irresponsible pension policy violates that social contract and should be roundly criticized. Well done to the good folks at Illinois Policy for doing so.
Wes Pratt is the chief diversity officer of Missouri State University, and late last week Mr. Pratt gave a presentation on black history in Springfield and his own memories growing up there. As reported by the Springfield News-Leader, Mr. Pratt discussed a wide array of issues, several of which sound very interesting. But per the article, Pratt appears to have asserted in his talk that “[critical race theory is] not being taught in the public schools, it’s not even being trained in the public schools.”
Mr. Pratt is plainly wrong on both counts.
As the Kansas City Public School District has admitted and as we’ve demonstrated repeatedly over the last few months, critical race theory (CRT) and its associated concepts are appearing in curricula and teacher trainings across the state. The Columbia Public School District can misrepresent what it is teaching all it wants. The Springfield and St. Louis Public School Districts can hide what they’re teaching all they want. But we know these materials are showing up in classrooms across the state—in both big districts and small districts—and in diversity, equity and inclusion training materials with many teachers.
It is bizarre that a Missouri State diversity official would assert that CRT is “not being taught in the public schools, it’s not even being trained in the public schools.” Like I would for anyone interested in exploring CRT issues, I would be happy to sit down with Mr. Pratt so he can see the sorts of materials we’re finding. It may not be helpful to the audience he told otherwise, but finding out the facts late is better than never.
