Neal McCluskey explains what the president’s speech to students has in common with new math and evolution: It’s something we fight over because taxpayers fund a single system of schools. One person’s inspirational message is another’s exploitative propaganda, just like one person’s sound instruction is another’s educational fad. Political discussions will be less shrill when we have a marketplace of diverse schools for everyone to choose from.
Tort Reform 3: Final Judgment
Hopefully, this will be my last post about tort reform for a while. Combest has a couple of KMOX links today dealing with the issue. The question has largely been settled in Missouri, given that comprehensive tort reform was passed five years ago. How has it worked out? Very well for the insurance companies, as well as for the doctors who are paying lower malpractice rates.
I truly believe that the passage of tort reform was the best change for long-term economic growth that Missouri has made in decades. The benefits are realized every time a doctor decides against moving her practice across the state line. But I still don’t think a preemptive federal reform would be appropriate. This is a state issue, and Missouri has properly addressed it.
Trucks and Tolls and Stuff
According to the Kansas City Star, Missouri has been approved to move ahead with a plan to install truck-only lanes within a new I-70 across Missouri. Now, these plans take a long time, so we shouldn’t expect to see this realized anytime soon, and perhaps it will never actually happen. MoDOT is hoping to get funding for a demonstration section of 30 miles of truck-only lanes in western Missouri.
In the long run, there is exciting potential here for both safer highways and economic growth:
[MoDOT Director Pete] Rahn said there has been talk at the national level of coming up with a dedicated funding source for so-called freight corridors, something that could boost I-70’s chances of getting money in the future.
Missouri is well positioned to take advantage of this proposed “freight corridor,” but there is not much current discussion of using tolling to pay for these truck-only lanes. The talk still centers on a general sales tax increase to fund highway improvements, which is a fairly horrible idea and serves to even further externalize the externalities of driving, to use some fancy economics lingo I got out of a book somewhere.
We have written before that the most preferred use of the stimulus money would be for infrastructure, such as transportation-related projects — sort of a “least bad”–type thing. So, I hope Missouri gets stimulus funding for the demonstration area, and I hope it works well — which I am confident it will. Beyond that, though, MoDOT should use the hard-to-get waiver it received a few years ago from the FHA to toll I-70 and pay for both road improvements and truck-only lanes with highway tolls.
There would be nothing wrong with using some tax dollars to offset in part the cost of the tolls, thereby helping to guarantee heavy use of the toll roads. This idea was suggested by Professor Ken Small in his study about private financing of highways written for the Show-Me Institute last year. However, tolling needs to be the primary way Missouri pays for its highway system, although I have no illusions that this will happen quickly or easily.
Speech to Students
I hope you had a good vacation; now it’s time to get in a straight line and listen to your teachers. Welcome to kindergarten.
The president’s address turned out to be apolitical, as promised — it was all about paying attention in class and doing your homework, the kind of stuff they tell little kids at the start of any school year. I didn’t hear any socialist indoctrination, and although I take issue with the assertion that it’s the government’s responsibility to set standards for everyone, that idea was only mentioned in passing.
One striking feature of the speech was its emphasis on going to college — and on going to a good college. I say “striking” because the competitive post-secondary education market stands in sharp contrast to the k–12 public school system. We take it for granted that students will choose a college, which may be either public or private. There’s no expectation that people will attend the college closest to their home. And, while the importance of rankings is a contentious issue, it’s widely accepted that some schools are better than others and that students should try to get into a good school.
However, for younger students, the prevailing attitudes are different. Many people assume that parents aren’t capable of choosing good schools over bad — a comment I often receive when I write about choice within public education. Children in the wealthiest families are encouraged to go to a good high school, or even a good kindergarten, but it’s a foreign idea for children on the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum. Those children will go to a school determined by their street address.
America’s colleges and universities thrive under a competitive system. When politicians encourage students to aim for college, they should also think about how to make k–12 schools more like the successful post-secondary schools.
Amtrak and High-Speed Rail
There’s a nice article in the Kansas City Star discussing the improvements made to Amtrak service in Missouri. In fact, spending a (comparatively) small amount of money on improving the existing service is another reason, among many, not to implement high-speed rail.
Much more to come from the Show-Me Institute about this very topic in about three weeks.
Why the Secrecy?
It took awhile to find in today’s paper, but the Post-Dispatch had a good article about developer Paul McKee’s $8 billion pitch to redevelop Saint Louis’ north side. As I wrote before, this development involves Tax Increment Financing, eminent domain, and debate about the role that city agencies should play in the real estate business.
Tim Logan, author of the McKee article, did a great job of talking to the people involved. There’s also some good context. But my recent experience at a public meeting about the development, held at Zion Lutheran Church by McKee, Alderman Marlene Davis and Alderman April Ford-Griffin makes me doubt the thrust of Logan’s article.
Is McKee really winning people over?
At his meeting at Zion Lutheran Church, which was open to the public, Ford-Griffin actually told a journalist to stop recording. When McKee spoke, he told a girl in the back of the church basement to stop videotaping, because it makes people “uncomfortable.”
McKee said then that he doesn’t ask media outlets like the Post-Dispatch to attend such meetings. I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure area journalists know this. In order to fairly characterize the community response to this proposed project, you have to go see what community members are saying to the developer himself. I hope some Post-Dispatch journalists have at least tried to attend.
If McKee is winning over the north side community, and there is really a sea change, why doesn’t he want the media to come to meetings and see that? Why would an elected official tell a journalist to shut off his microphone at a meeting open to the public?
Well, in the case of the Zion Lutheran Church meeting, the meeting didn’t go smoothly. Some attendees muttered about the aldermen’s chances at reelection. Others stood and made long speeches about eminent domain. There was some shouting.
In response to some community members criticizing her by name, Davis said, “No one is in love with anything. This is business.”
To be sure, there were some vocal critics at the church who make it a point to go to all of McKee’s meetings and attempt to cast the development in a bad light. However, I’ve been to a number of meetings organized by the critics. I know their faces. And there were a lot of other faces at Zion Lutheran Church that I hadn’t seen before.
I personally can’t wait for the updated TIF application to come out tomorrow. McKee, Davis, and Ford-Griffin say that the use of eminent domain has been ironed out of that version. If that’s the case, then north side residents will know that their property won’t be taken away from them by the government for the use of a private developer. But I’m still wary. After all, if the application is the answer to all of the critics’ concerns, why wasn’t it made available for scrutiny as soon as possible?
The Council on Women and Girls
The Council on Women and Girls has a new website. It provides a list of council members, as well as the Council’s mission, which is to “ensure that each of the agencies in which they’re charged takes into account the needs of women and girls in the policies they draft, the programs they create, the legislation they support.”
Since women and girls make up more than half of the United States population, government agencies should definitely take us into account. If agencies are not even considering half the population in their routine work, they should start today.
Separate councils for different demographic groups are not the way to go, however, for several reasons. First, they imply that all members of the designated group are affected by regulations and other government actions in the same way, which is not the case. The Council on Women and Girls lists several bills that would purportedly help women, without providing any counterarguments or suggesting that any women might disagree.
Second, these councils lead to a proliferation of boards and committees, with the potential to burden all levels of government. There are women’s councils at the state level, too; here’s the one in Missouri. What’s next? A women’s council in every county and township? (Local governments also need to take women into account.) It’s unfair to have councils for only certain sexes, age groups, and ethnic groups, but it’s also impossible to create new councils for all the groups that don’t have them.
And, finally, councils take pressure off of government agencies. When regulations turn out to be harmful to segments of the population, regulators can say, “That wasn’t our responsibility. The council was supposed to investigate how it would affect that group.”
Virtue and Government-Compelled Charity
Recently, several of my colleagues from Vanderbilt Divinity School sat in on President Barack Obama’s conference call, in which he tried to persuade faith leaders that the nation has “a core ethical and moral obligation” to make sure that everyone in America has access to health care. The Show-Me Institute tries to remain focused on issues that uniquely impact Missouri, so I decided to withhold comment on this point. But, over the past couple of weeks, there has been a string of stories about Missouri religious leaders calling for the government to pursue health care reforms. I think it’s time I offered my own perspective.
I’ll start by saying that I agree that there exists a moral and ethical obligation to see to the well-being of our neighbors. As I noted in a speech I delivered a couple of months ago, this was also an opinion shared by most of our nation’s founders, and it bears no small significance for the approach they took in shaping our Constitution. As they were debating how the American republic should be structured, one of their major influences was Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws, in which the French philosopher described the attributes that must be cultivated for different types of government to be successful. In regard to a republic, virtue was deemed to be the most important quality that citizens could possess.
Virtue, as the founders understood it, was displayed when individuals willingly set aside their own personal interest and, fully understanding the risks and possibility of mistakes, voluntarily acted for the improvement of those around them. The virtuous person understood that they had a responsibility to assist their neighbors and community when the circumstances called for it, and they would not shrink from this duty. A major reason that the founders insisted on high levels of individual liberty was because they recognized that virtue could not exist without liberty. People may be compelled to take action that has a positive outcome, but if they do so unwillingly it is merely obedience, with no moral value. In the eyes of the founders, only a people free to make choices for themselves can truly be virtuous.
From a policy standpoint, this sort of virtue is the ideal way to try to address society’s challenges, for a couple of reasons. The first is efficiency. Private organizations, like private businesses, are more immediately accountable to the people giving them money than are government agencies. If a private organization is doing a poor job, people will simply quit funding that group and either identify or create another organization that will use their money more wisely. A government agency, on the other hand, does not face the same pressure because its funding is not usually dependent on its effectiveness. People are required to fund government projects regardless of whether they agree with them and regardless of whether they prove to be beneficial. Thus, private voluntary organizations have a much stronger incentive to become as efficient as possible.
The second reason that private virtue is favorable to government-driven charity is that government funding does not grow on trees. Every dollar that government spends is a dollar that will ultimately come from one of its citizens. And the consequence of that dollar going to the government is that the citizen cannot spend it on a good or service that will improve his own life — or, as the case may be, the lives of those around them.
This leads directly to the third reason that private virtue is favorable: It gives individuals a sense of personal investment in the causes to which their charitable dollars are flowing. When the government forces citizens to pay taxes, those citizens may have no clear idea as to how that money will be spent, and therefore they are unlikely to take any pride in or ownership of the programs they are funding. On the other hand, when people contribute to private charity — especially local charities — they are far more likely to take a personal interest in helping them to succeed.
For much of our nation’s history, virtue as expressed through private charity was a very important aspect of the American way of life. Alexis de Tocqueville, whose Democracy in America offered the definitive outside assessment of society in the early United States, was stunned to find the prevalence of voluntary associations dedicated to assisting the needy and accomplishing public goods. Indeed, this sort of voluntary philanthropic association remained the status quo through the 19th century and into the early 20th century.
Every once in a while, however, a disaster would arise that inspired Congress to dedicate taxpayer dollars toward recovery efforts. Especially early on, these efforts did meet with considerable opposition. My favorite example comes from when Davy Crockett (a native East Tennessean like myself) served in the House of Representatives. A bill arose that would have appropriated $20,000 to help citizens in Georgetown recover from a devastating fire, and Crockett voted in favor of the bill. At a later date, a similar bill was proposed. This time, Crockett opposed the measure — but he also offered to contribute a week’s worth of his own pay to the recovery effort. Asked about his reasoning, Crockett explained that after the first vote, one of his constituents had confronted him, reminding him that even if there was great cause for charity, it was the responsibility of the private citizens to provide it. As the constituent put it to the congressman, elected officials must remember that unless an expenditure was being made for the common good of all citizens, rather than the targeted subset of citizens toward which charity is directed, the tax money was not within the elected officials’ purview to give.
Precisely 100 years after Davy Crockett explained his opposition to federally funded charity efforts, Congress confronted with a much larger concern. In 1927, the Mississippi River overflowed its banks, killing hundreds, rendering thousands homeless, and destroying hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of property throughout the Midwest and South. Concern quickly mounted that private charity alone would not be able to address the needs of those suffering, and many in Congress believed that if any situation ever justified the application of tax dollars, this one did. President Calvin Coolidge expressed major reservations about allowing the federal government to intervene in the matter, but he ultimately acquiesced to the political pressure and signed the bill.
From that point forward, most lawmakers (and, increasingly, private citizens) took it for granted that the federal government should be able to require taxpayers to foot the bill for charitable programs of various stripes. This led to Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” which arguably prolonged the Great Depression, and later Lyndon Johnson’s catastrophic “War on Poverty.” Even though the American impulse toward private charity has remained present, private voluntary organizations have ceded more and more ground to government-driven charitable efforts.
And so this all comes back around to the current health care debate and the role being played by some religious leaders. Churches and other religiously affiliated organizations used to dominate the charitable scene in the United States. If someone was hungry, homeless, or otherwise in need of help, they would look to a religiously affiliated organization for help — which was good, because it allowed those organizations and the private individuals who supported them to live out the virtue that our founders believed was so important, and it kept individual citizens personally invested in their neighbors’ well-being.
Eighty years later, we should be very concerned that we now have religious leaders and people of faith — for whom acts of virtue should have an even higher spiritual significance — calling upon the government to do their charitable work for them. I understand — and share! — these leaders’ desires to see an alleviation of suffering in the world, but where charity, virtue, and morality are involved the means are every bit as important as the ends. A work that would have been good if accomplished as a result of funds and labor willingly given can itself become evil if accomplished with stolen resources and slave labor.
I hope that these faith leaders will realize that abdicating the charitable roles to which they have been called to a government that will accomplish its goals by compulsion is directly destructive of the virtue and moral development that should be their objective.
Health Care Is a Growth Industry
Robert Fogel explains why controlling health care costs is counterproductive:
Expenditures on healthcare are driven by demand, which is spurred by income and by advances in biotechnology that make health interventions increasingly effective. […] It is a leading sector, which means that expenditures on healthcare will pull forward a wide array of other industries including manufacturing, education, financial services, communications, and construction.
The statistics on health care expenditures may seem alarming at first glance, but they aren’t so out of the ordinary when you compare health care to other sectors of the economy. The average consumer spends a lot more on personal computers than she did 40 years ago. That’s because people are wealthier, computers are more readily available, and technology has improved. The increased spending on computers has created jobs directly, as more people work to build the hardware and software components that go into computers. Computer spending has also helped the economy indirectly, because when people use computers to work more efficiently, they free up resources for new investment.
Health care is similar. As Fogel points out, people tend to purchase more health care as their incomes rise and medical technology advances. These spending increases are not a sign of rising costs, but of the changes in resource allocation that come with wealth. Controlling health costs — i.e., limiting health care expenditures — would hold back this sector of the economy and keep new jobs from materializing. No one would want to control spending on computers; health care spending should also grow unfettered.
