Thanks to our former intern Calvin Harris for pointing out this great Freakonomics blog post. Excluding federal taxes, the income tax base here in Missouri is a great deal flatter, unless you happen to live in St. Louis or Kansas City. Thankfully, there are currently some exciting tax breaks for working Missourians on the horizon that you may want to track with Policy Pulse.
Advance Your Career While Advancing Liberty
There’s a fantastic offer on the table for anyone interested in promoting the cause of free markets and individual liberty — the Charles G. Koch Summer Fellow Program.
Included in the offer:
- $1,500 stipend
- Housing allowance, up to $2,000
- An eight-week internship at the Show-Me Institute
- Seminars on policy analysis and classical liberal/libertarian thought
- Career workshops on writing, public speaking, and media relations
- Travel reimbursement to the D.C. seminars and your internship (low-cost, discount airfare)
There’s no drawback to applying, but there is a deadline. I strongly encourage all who meet the eligibility requirements (undergraduates, graduate students, and recent graduates between the ages of 18 and 30) to apply before January 31. Don’t forget to mention your interest in the Show-Me Institute on your application, and good luck!
No More Free Stuff for Doctors
After reading this article in the Post-Dispatch, I took a quick inventory of some odds and ends I have lying around. A pen from a bank. A refrigerator magnet from a private elementary school. A notepad from a real estate agent. A calendar from a nonprofit. I’m being influenced right and left! (Maybe that magnet is the reason I’m continually writing about the benefits of parental choice and a free market in education.)
The article reports on pharmaceutical companies’ recent voluntary ban of “non-educational gifts” to doctors. The ban comes in the wake of much criticism of drug companies’ practices, which criticism seems unlikely to go away:
Skeptics say the ban on gifts is an empty gesture that doesn’t adequately address the financial relationships between pharmaceutical companies and the doctors whose decisions on drugs have a direct impact on patients.
What this ban overlooks is that pens, notepads, and the rest can be educational. True, they don’t have a lot of statistics and side-effect warnings on them, but they call attention to a product so a doctor can investigate it further. A doctor isn’t going to prescribe drugs that don’t work just because he got some free office supplies. If he didn’t treat people effectively, he’d lose business, which would be more costly than losing a few pens. And pharmaceutical companies know that their products have to be effective in order to generate sales.
The gifts spread awareness about a product and help prevent a situation in which a patient could have been helped by a drug, but wasn’t because a physician didn’t know it was available. That sounds far-fetched, but only because pharmaceutical companies do such a good job of putting their products in the spotlight, using advertisements, gifts, seminars, brochures, and other methods. If they didn’t, you couldn’t expect med schools to call up all the people who graduated 15 years ago and say, “Guess what? This drug wasn’t invented back in the day, but now that it’s on the market, you should know. …”
I doubt this voluntary gesture will put a halt to the continuing regulation of pharmaceutical advertising, but I hope legislators will consider how much good that advertising can do.
Public Service in Belgium and Missouri
On KY3 in Springfield and in the newspapers, I have called for a reduction in the number of state employees as one solution to resolving the budget deficit. I understand the opposing argument (made by people who might even philosophically agree with me): that a recession is the worst possible time to add former government workers to the unemployment rolls, especially when the state unemployment fund is close to going broke right now.
However, tough economic times are also just about the only time there is a real opportunity to reduce the number of government employees at all. When times are good and budgets fat, nobody says, “Hey, jobs are easy to come by; let’s fire the worst 10 percent of the public payroll and reduce both the size of government and the tax burden, right here and now!” Sometimes, you get a combination of factors that actually helps to make some reductions successful, as was the case for Gov. Blunt. He deserves great credit for that, even though it was nothing quite like the radical reduction in non-public-safety-related government employees that we need right now, in my opinion.
I don’t mean to single out Missouri state government employees, in contrast to local, state, or federal bureaucrats thoughout the county — which gets me to the point of this post. Today’s Wall Street Journal has a hysterical article about government workers in Belgium, and their abuse of sick leave. Read the whole thing.
It’s funny in many ways, but in a bigger way, it is just pathetic. This is what socialism (or quasi-socialism) does to people: It takes their initiative away, and any sense they might have of controlling their own destiny, all in the name of equality and fairness. So, you eventually get a nation of losers who can’t go to work because they are depressed that their girlfriend dumped them. No wonder InBev is actually run by Brazilians. …
Showcasing the Free Market
I would be remiss if I didn’t take the opportunity to point out that the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) started yesterday. This is not only a great opportunity to showcase the next — or even the next-next — generation in electronics, but also to see where consumers are pointing the market. Great leaps and bounds have been debuted at the CES in the past, like the first Pentium chip, the Nintendo Wii, and the next version of Windows. I can point to a number of occasions that show how this electronics show is great at reading the market — some might even say hypersensitive to the feelings and sentiments of consumers, but I won’t. I just want to point out that this is a great exercise in the free market, and a phenomenal insight into the dynamics of supply and demand. You should all take a look, because it shows where the market is going. With the rapid rate of technological innovation, the CES exemplifies how a market can quickly and easily be dictated by consumer sentiment. Each year, you can see which ideas pop up again and again, and which ideas fizzle by the wayside, based on relevant consumer demand.
If you’re looking to follow what is going on, you can visit the official site at CESWeb.com, or you can visit several sites that follow electronics, like CNET or Wired.
An Exception to the Minimum Wage
Minimum wage laws don’t apply equally to all endeavors. One result of such laws is that they encourage businesses to have children do their work in exchange for small prizes like stuffed animals. Here’s a cookie company that doesn’t have to pay its salespeople $7.05 an hour!
Learning English
Valerie Schremp Hahn is blogging about English language learners in the Missouri public schools. The latest news on this topic is that Education Week has given Missouri a less-than-spectacular grade in its English Language Learners report:
The number of certified Title III ELL teachers to serve these students is dismal – 372 students per teacher in Missouri and 19 students per teacher nationwide. The report says there are no teacher standards for ELL instruction in Missouri while 33 other states do have such standards.
Is there cause for concern here? Yes and no. The lack of official standards and certification doesn’t worry me. After all, many recent college graduates are successfully teaching English all over the world through programs like Fulbright. They do get some training beforehand, but nothing like what’s required for an education degree or ELL certification in the U.S. Teaching English in this country should be less challenging, because students here are simultaneously exposed to new English-speaking peers and hear English during the entire school day. Teachers shouldn’t need special credentials to teach English in this setting.
However, Missouri should strive to do better in this area, because only about 55 percent of Missouri English language learners are showing improvement on the MAP tests. (That’s not bad when compared to other states, but clearly far from ideal.)
I’m looking forward to seeing how well language-immersion charter schools are able to teach English language learners. For example, a native Spanish speaker starting kindergarten at the St. Louis Language Immersion Schools would have an advantage in the early grades, and then would be formally introduced to English in late elementary school. Perhaps the strong foundation in the student’s native language would ease the gradual transition into English.
In Case You Missed Me on Missourinet
Here is the link to the story Missourinet did last week about my occupational licensing study. I appreciated Steve Walsh taking the time to do the interview. Combest picked it up at the time, bless his little heart. …
I also want to thank Greg Rennier and John Schultz for having me on the Eagle 93.9 in Columbia over the holidays, to talk about the study and licensing. The interview is not online, so I can’t link to it, but it was great to be on the show with them.
New Anti-Lead Law Designed to Help the Poor Will Definitely Hurt the Poor
There’s a Post-Dispatch article that’s really worth a read. It briefly describes, then goes on the illustrate the impact of, a new federal law aimed at protecting children from dangerous lead levels in clothing and other products sold to children 12 and under. And, make no mistake, lead is very dangerous.
The economics of this are worth considering. It represents a restriction on supply that will raise costs for producers, thus raising prices for consumers. Are the costs worth the benefits? Ostensibly, the people currently buying clothes for their children from risky businesses are the people most in need of protection, because they can’t afford to shop at more reputable dealers and almost certainly can’t afford to comparison shop for the least risky low-end retailer.
However, this is not a case of “society bears the cost to help the less well-off.” The increased cost will be born quite directly by the people buying the clothes. If the manufacturer or retailer must perform expensive testing to comply with federal standards, the cost will surely be passed along to the consumers. As mentioned in the article and here, this could even lead to secondhand stores throwing away large amounts of merchandise, or even closing entirely.
For the record, the biggest risk of lead poisoning for children is probably not their toys and clothes. Frankly, this all seems to me a bit reminiscent of my helmet law post. Namely, lawmakers impose a rule, gleefully ignorant of cost/benefit analysis, and secure in the knowledge that everyone will agree: The Children Must Be Protected.
