Page 733 – Show-Me Institute

Gross National Happiness Index on Facebook

Posted on October 6, 2009May 5, 2026 by Christine Harbin

Facebook recently introduced a Gross National Happiness Index, which measures the relative overall happiness of Facebook in the United States per day. It’s based on the number of positive and negative words that people use to update their status messages. The graph of the index over time is unsurprising — users are happier on holidays and sadder on days in which celebrities die.

In a blog post dated today, a Facebook representative explains:

We adapted a collection of positive and negative emotion words built by social psychologists. Examples of positive or happy words include “happy,” “yay” and “awesome,” while negative, or unhappy words, include “sad,” “doubt” and “tragic.”

Although I find this index to be very interesting, I have some questions about its methodology and its accuracy.

First, this index does not account for the overall happiness of people who do not use Facebook. The population that does use the site is not representative of the general population; Facebook users have been demonstrated to be more affluent.

Why does the graph indicate that people are happier on Thanksgiving than on Christmas? Is that because people typically say “Happy Thanksgiving” and “Merry Christmas?” Plus, holidays are more highly trafficked than others, since people are home from work. If the Y-axis is a simple summation of the status updates (is it?), then this extra traffic would exaggerate the quantity of overall happiness.

Furthermore, the accuracy of this index depends on the genuineness of the status updates. Do status updates accurately reflect the relative value of a person’s sentiment? I am skeptical. On my own profile, I recently posted:

Chrissy Harbin loves her new coffee maker !!!!

But did I really? If I won the lottery, how many exclamation marks would I have to use to demonstrate my relative excitement? Did I unintentionally inflate the level of gross national happiness that day?

Innovation, Monopoly-Style

Posted on October 5, 2009May 5, 2026 by Sarah Brodsky

For public schools to be innovative, it helps to have a competitive education market surrounding them. Then, schools are on the lookout for ideas that are truly new. Otherwise, a school can dress up a tired old idea in fancy language and pass it off as something original, because there aren’t any competitors to call its bluff.

Oregon, as I’ve written in my coverage of charter schools there, is holding on as tightly as it can to its education monopoly. That’s glaringly obviously when you examine the “innovative” ideas that Oregon’s traditional districts have come up with.

This article gives an enthusiastic account of “proficiency-based learning”:

Transparency is key in credit for proficiency. Students are told what they are expected to learn and how assignments or lessons help meet those goals. Report card grades are determined by what a student knows, rather than by absences, tardies or extra credit, which traditionally factor into grading.

So this special method involves telling students what they are expected to learn. In every class I’ve been in, we called that a syllabus. And yes, attendance and extra credit do factor into grades at many schools, but no school with a decent grading system will give an “A” just for showing up and doing extra credit. I hope that attendance didn’t make up such a large fraction of a student’s grades in Oregon that leaving it out of the equation could be called a radical change.

If grading based on knowledge is a new idea, what will they think of next? Studying the textbooks?

Fundamental Economic Principles Illustrated in This AP Article

Posted on October 5, 2009May 5, 2026 by David Stokes

I really enjoyed this Associated Press article about the current recession in today’s Post-Dispatch. Not because I like the recession, trust me — I feel the same way about it that everyone else does. But I did enjoy the article for the way it demonstrates basic Economics 101 principles, like the role consumer expectations can play in altering the demand curve:

The more shoppers expect prices to fall, the less they shop until prices drop. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that forces companies to keep cutting. That reduces profits, making it less likely companies will hire workers or raise wages.

Or how the price of complementary (or substitute goods) can affect both demand and quantity supplied:

Dominick’s supermarkets announced in late August that prices on a range of items in its 81 stores would fall by as much as a third. Included in the cuts were both private-label goods and national brands […]

Dominick’s hopes the low prices will attract customers, who will also buy enough full-priced items to make up the difference.

“Hey, this case of Budweiser is on sale for $15.00! Let’s go buy some pretzels to go with it. Dammit, the pretzels aren’t on sale. Oh, hell, let’s get them anyway.” (There is always a lot of swearing in the liquor aisle.) I definitely recommend the entire article.

Matthew Kahn on Charter Schools

Posted on October 5, 2009May 5, 2026 by Sarah Brodsky

Caroline Hoxby has found that students who were randomly selected to attend charter schools earned better test scores than other students who applied for charter schools but lost the lottery. This research controls for an important factor in charter students’ achievement: motivation to attend charters. You can’t compare scores for students who enroll in charters with the group of traditional public school students as a whole, because applying to a charter indicates an extra degree of commitment. By restricting the study to students who applied, Hoxby shows that charter school attendance, not initial motivation, accounts for the difference in achievement.

Matthew Kahn (scroll down to the Sept. 28 post) wonders how much of this effect can be attributed to what goes on in the classroom. He suspects that when parents see that their child’s new school is better than the old one, they work harder to supplement the child’s education at home. For instance, they might be more careful in checking that homework is completed on time.

I think this parental response probably does account for part of the charter effect. Caroline Hoxby herself points out in her talks about charters (you can watch one here) that parents may approach education differently when they’ve chosen a school, just as customers expect more from a restaurant they’ve chosen than from an office building cafeteria.

It’s an interesting question from the point of view of econometrics, but less relevant to policy. What matters is that charters spur student achievement. Whether 100 percent of the learning happens in school, or whether some of the benefits come from changes within homes, the fact remains that students who switch to a charter generally do better than their peers who lost the charter lottery. That’s one more good reason to let students attend charters if they want to.

The Story of Stuff Update

Posted on October 5, 2009May 5, 2026 by Sarah Brodsky

Recently I returned to The Story of Stuff Blog to see what had transpired since I last wrote about The Story of Stuff in May. I learned that Annie Leonard is planning to release a follow-up video in November, with more videos to come. The biggest news, from my point of view, is about the ongoing promotion of The Story of Stuff to schools:

We’re developing a two-week educational curriculum—aligned to national standards, with a strong focus on critical thinking—that provides teachers with a fuller set of tools to help students consider and debate the message of The Story of Stuff.

The deferential nod to “national standards” and “critical thinking” notwithstanding, the fact remains that The Story of Stuff presents a controversial and one-sided view of how a market economy works. It’s regrettable that this is taught as fact in the public schools.

Leonard acknowledges that The Story of Stuff promotes her opinions, but she says that students are free to disagree and debate her argument’s merits. I might see her point if teachers showed both The Story of Stuff and a documentary from a competing point of view (perhaps something from Free to Choose Media!), then held a discussion. However, when a school adopts this as a curriculum for two straight weeks, it goes way beyond showing a short documentary. It’s one thing to discuss a cartoon; it’s another matter entirely to challenge the curriculum.

I’m reminded of the presidential address back in September. Apart from the Department of Education’s curriculum, the speech was much like any other speech that politicians have given in schools. The questions and activities recommended by the government, which presupposed that students would be inspired by the speech, were the aspect that many critics found troubling.

Illinois Attorney General Files in Support of Autism Service Dog

Posted on October 5, 2009May 5, 2026 by Sarah Brodsky

The Post-Dispatch reports:

Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed papers with the 5th District Appellate Court in Mount Vernon announcing her office’s intention to file a brief in favor of Chris and Melissa Kalbfleisch. Madigan was granted a temporary extension Monday to file them.

This is the case of the boy with autism who recently began attending a private school after his public district refused to admit his service dog.

I think the boy’s family has a good case, considering that Illinois law requires schools to accommodate service dogs. The district can continue to argue that the dog is just a pet. But, because the dog was ordered by a physician and is specially trained, and because autism is now widely recognized as a disability that requires comprehensive treatment, I doubt the district will win.

At the same time, I would be surprised if the district allows the boy to return to the traditional public school with his dog. I expect that the district will continue paying tuition at the private school if the case is decided in the boy’s favor, and it may be ordered to pay the full cost. But you can’t force a district to teach someone who needs extra, specialized services. There are other districts that pay to send students with autism to private schools — and they do this even for students who don’t have service dogs to complicate matters.

This story continues to serve as a reminder that traditional school districts can’t educate everyone. The idea of all students coming together in a common school simply doesn’t work in practice.

John Mackey on Consumer-Driven Health Care

Posted on October 5, 2009May 5, 2026 by Christine Harbin

The Wall Street Journal published an interview with John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, on Saturday. Among other interesting topics, he talked about his contentious op-ed, “The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare,” which ran in the Wall Street Journal in August. In the interview, Mackey reasserts that the Whole Foods health insurance program is better and less expensive than the proposals in Congress.

He describes how Whole Foods has empowered its employees in their own health care decisions by sponsoring health savings accounts (HSAs) and high-deductible health insurance plans. The Show-Me Institute has produced scholarly work that demonstrates the advantages of such plans, and even offers this type of plan for its own employees.

Mackey also refutes the claim that individuals can’t make good health care decisions for themselves, and need a central authority to make the decisions for them. (This relates to our previous discussion on paternalistic policies in health care.) He says:

The assumption behind that is that people don’t care about their own health, and that somebody else has to—a nanny or somebody—has to take care of me because people are too stupid to make these decisions themselves. That’s not been our experience. We find our team members [employees], not surprisingly, seem to care a whole lot about their health.

Your Weekend Irony

Posted on October 2, 2009May 5, 2026 by David Stokes

We have had a little bit of irony recently here at the Show-Me Institute. Randal O’Toole came into town to release a study arguing against high-speed rail, and when he traveled to Springfield, Ill., from St. Louis to do some work for another think tank, he rode … wait for it … Amtrak. So, perhaps there is a little irony there (I try to be careful about the use of that term, and not confuse it with “coincidence,” “strange occurence,” or even “deus ex machina.”

For the real recent irony here in Missouri, I give you this story in the Kansas City Star. A guy about to be sentenced to prison for embezzling money to pay for a lottery addiction … wait for it … wins the lottery! And just in time for the court to take his winnings to pay most of the restitution. He could pay all of it back if the government didn’t take its bite, which is funny because just a few months ago a friend and I decided that the absolute worst piece anyone at a think tank like ours could ever write would be one arguing that lottery winners should be exempt from income taxation.

Some of you may recall the most tragic example of irony in Missouri (that I can think of) back in 2002, when an international pedestrian safety expert who came to St. Louis for a conference on that issue died when she was run over by a bus. That was horrible irony, which is generally the worst type, as opposed to the “you lucky son-of-a-bitch” irony of the guy who won the lottery.

I recall an attempt last year to find irony on an issue by Show-Me Progress (which is not affiliated with us at all — much to the relief of both parties, I’m sure), but I think they were stretching in their use of the term. Not a lot, but a little.

Have a nice weekend. And I REALLY hope I don’t turn that last phrase into something ironic by going and dying this weekend and pulling a Pistol Pete Maravich on all of you. (Scroll down to the end of the story if you don’t already know the sort-of-ironic part.) (If Pistol Pete had died upon uttering those words after doing anything other than playing basketball, it would have been just a sad coincidence.) (So, I guess, to be truly ironic, I’d have to die of something related to blogging, like death from carpal tunnel syndrome — which is thankfully unlikely.)

“Little Pink House” Author Jeff Benedict Tells Story of Infamous Kelo Eminent Domain Case

Posted on October 2, 2009May 5, 2026 by Eric D. Dixon

The Show-Me Institute was pleased to be able to host Jeff Benedict, author of Little Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and Courage, for speaking engagements in both Kansas City and St. Louis earlier this month. The first of those events, held in conjunction with the Kansas City Public Library, is now available for your viewing pleasure on our website. Hear how Susette Kelo’s heroic fight to save her New London, Conn., home turned into the landmark Supreme Court case that outraged homeowners and sparked a legislative backlash across the nation. Kicking off the event is R. Crosby Kemper III, executive director of the Kansas City Public Library and chairman of the board of directors for the Show-Me Institute.

I’ve also posted it below, for your convenience. This playlist consists of seven separate parts. After each individual part has finished playing, the playlist should automatically load the subsequent part until the sequence has finished. You may also choose to view any individual part on its own:

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