Tater Tots and Tanks

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

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.

Show Me a Tax Cut

Posted on by Charis Fischer

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.

What Teachers Know Matters; How They Feel Matters, Too

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

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?

Show-Me Institute Question of the Week

Posted on by David Stokes

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!

More on the Proposed Tax Increase for Farmers

Posted on by David Stokes

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.

Missourians Can Combat the Political Influence of Moneyed Interests

Posted on by Dave Roland

 

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court announced, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, that the First Amendment does not permit the government either to ban certain speakers from engaging in political speech or to restrict the amount of money that a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign. Many commentators nationwide are extremely concerned that this influx of cash will distort the political process, allowing wealthy individuals, corporations, and labor unions to purchase political influence and degrade the ability of ordinary citizens to affect the political process.

While the fallout of this case is not likely to be as dire as many are predicting, there is reason for voters to be concerned about the degree to which these moneyed interests might influence the political process. As the system currently exists, politicians have every incentive to prioritize fundraising because they believe (rightly or wrongly) that the more they spend, the more votes they will ultimately receive. Thus, particularly as elections draw near, they spend a large percentage of their time soliciting contributions for their campaign’s “war chest,” and many focus on paid advertisements more than on debates.

But despite these concerns about wealthy interests’ ability to commandeer the political system, ordinary Missourians have at their disposal the wherewithal to neutralize the influence of campaign contributions without spending a dime — if only they demonstrate the doggedness and cooperation necessary to do so. You see, regardless of how much money a politician or interest group spends, only a voter can control their vote. If enough citizens believe strongly that the influence of money in political campaigns should be limited, they can use their most valuable assets — their votes — to change the incentive structure for politicians.

My proposal is that such a group of concerned voters could pledge to ignore party, ideology, and rhetoric, and to cast their ballots based solely upon how much money each of the candidates raised — and the lower the amount of contributions, the better. If as few as 5 percent of registered voters (which in many elections could constitute a decisive margin) committed to voting for the candidate in each major race who amassed the third- or fourth-largest “war chest,” I’d wager that politicians in close races would quickly respond by de-emphasizing the importance of fundraising.

Yes, this is a radical solution. At least in the short term, it depends on the idea that no single candidate is worth electing if doing so will only perpetuate a political system that depends more on the power of the checkbook than on the power of ideas. Many may be unwilling to make a commitment that might result in casting a ballot for a Green Party candidate, a Libertarian, or even an independent, “tea party” candidate. But the formation of this sort of voting block is the most immediate, most direct way for those concerned to send a message that when it comes to campaign financing, perhaps less is more.

Dave Roland is a constitutional law expert and a policy analyst with the Show-Me Institute, a Missouri-based think tank.

 

No Distractions

Posted on by Sarah Brodsky

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.

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