Missouri’s minimum wage is set to go up again in January. Here’s a thorough article in the Springfield Business Journal covering both sides of the issue very well.
The increase itself is not large as far as wages go, but I’m sorry it has to happen right now, when the economy’s not doing so well. This is a problem with tying the minimum wage to inflation — you don’t get to time the increases so as to soften the blow.
A book review in today’s Wall Street Journal discusses a few of the hoaxes and scams aimed at the parents of autistic children. One is “facilitated communication,” whereby an assistant supports the arms, wrists, or even hands of a nonverbal autistic student and helps him or her point to letters on a keyboard. This method was discredited after studies found the messages to be controlled by the facilitators, not the students. (A summary of relevant research can be found on the American Academy of Pediatrics website here.)
Back to the review:
The method was easily debunked with a simple experiment: Don’t allow the facilitator to see what the child is seeing and suddenly the child’s communication skills evaporate. But facilitated communication flourished for years.
In fact, it still flourishes — in the Special School District of St. Louis County. Facilitated communication is listed on the SSD website as a term “used in special education and at SSD.” I wondered whether that meant that the district actually practices facilitated communication, so I called the district. I pointed out the term on the website, gave the same description of it as in the paragraph above, and asked whether SSD uses this method. The answer? Yes, they do, in cases where a child’s Individualized Instruction Plan prescribes it.
Facilitated communication is not just another multiplication algorithm or literacy curriculum. The Association for Science in Autism Treatment calls facilitated communication “an inappropriate intervention.”
And the following statement comes from the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics:
Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that FC is not a scientifically valid technique for individuals with autism or mental retardation.
This is from the Association of Behavioral Analysis:
Thus the use of FC directly threatens the human and civil rights of the person whose communication is purportedly “facilitated,” and may also jeopardize the rights of others. […] its use is unwarranted and unethical.
Opponents of tuition tax credits for autistic students have claimed that these students can receive a satisfactory education based on the latest scientific findings in the public schools. Sadly, I don’t think that’s the case.
I agree with every single word in this editorial by the Kansas City Star, down to and including the conjunctions. Nice linkage, John.
Saint Louis area officials have long struggled over how to fund the mass transit system. In the November elections, county voters will choose whether to increase the transit sales tax by one-half cent in order to fund Metro. If this measure passes, it will also trigger a one-fourth-cent transit sales tax in Saint Louis city. During the weeks preceding the November elections, voters will hear the arguments both for and against the tax increase. Both sides have merit.
The new tax increase, if it is approved by voters, is expected to generate approximately $87 million in additional funding for Metro, the majority of which would come from Saint Louis County’s higher tax rate and larger base. Saint Louis city’s one-fourth-cent increase would generate approximately $9 million in additional funding. About half of the additional funds raised, around $40 million, would be used to fund the current bus and light-rail system, while the remaining half would be used to fund future MetroLink expansion. Metro officials have stated that without the tax increase, the agency would be forced either to cut back on services or increase fare prices to ensure a balanced budget.
These officials view the prospect of increased fares as harmful, because they fear ridership would fall accordingly. However, this may actually be a better way to raise revenue. In the past, raising fares was a surefire way to decrease Metro patronage, but that assumption might not hold true today. As gasoline prices hover near $4 per gallon, it is plausible that most current Metro riders would rather absorb an increased fare than turn to even greater expenses at the pump. High fuel prices make it unlikely that anything short of a particularly large fare hike would spur a significant decrease in ridership.
To whatever extent possible, those who actually use Metro should be the ones to pay for its services. Therefore, any discussion of additional funding for Metro should include an estimation of the system’s popularity, and, in turn, its cost to taxpayers. For the fiscal year 2008, Metro officials project that the system will carry more than 60 million passengers. MetroBus ridership accounts for 33.5 million of that figure, while MetroLink will transport almost 26 million. Metro has always operated, however, with significant taxpayer cost. According to the agency’s 2007 figures, taxpayers subsidized Metro at a rate of $2.30 per rider, with MetroBus’s $2.61 subsidy average higher than MetroLink’s $1.39. In all, Metro received close to $124 million in taxpayer-funded subsidies during 2007, and although some of this revenue is paid by transit users in addition to their fares, the vast majority comes from non-riders. Higher fares can be seen as a fairer means of raising revenue than increasing the already-sizable tax burden devoted to underwriting Metro.
Conversely, those who ride the Metro regularly are not the only people who benefit from its services. For example, in 2007, Metro carried almost 2 million riders attending special events, which includes sporting events and conventions downtown. If not for Metro, the roads would have been more congested, with more people vying to park — perhaps driving up parking space prices. The reduction in gas usage that Metro facilitated on these occasions, paired with reduced congestion on our roads, are factors that benefit us all — even those who don’t use public transit.
Some of those opposed to the tax increase, however, simply don’t think the money will be spent wisely. Half of the revenue raised from new tax proceeds will fund MetroLink’s expansion, which is an enormously expensive project. For instance, the recent Cross County Extension added eight new miles of track for an estimated cost of $650 million. MetroBus has a much lower operating cost per mile than MetroLink, which means that bus routes can cover more ground at a cheaper rate than rail, while avoiding MetroLink’s large infrastructure requirements. However, it’s likely that increasing gas prices will gradually shrink the margin of efficiency that MetroBus now enjoys.
Metro funding has always been — and probably always will be — a struggle. Yet there is an important role for the government play in public transit provision. How best to provide crucial transit services is debatable. Are widespread taxes fair, or should costs focus on those who actually ride Metro? Those interested in a wider array of possible solutions should delve into the research about public-private partnerships conducted by the Show-Me Institute and the Reason Foundation. Cities like Denver and Las Vegas have already saved millions by allowing private firms to participate in operating mass transit.
Patrick Eckelkamp was a summer 2008 intern at the Show-Me Institute, a Missouri-based think tank. He is currently studying at Saint Louis University’s campus in Spain, pursuing an economics degree.
Rail transit has become such an albatross around the necks of the American cities that have it that it is hard to imagine that anyone of good will would wish it upon Kansas City. Rail transit is expensive to build, operate, and maintain.
One of rail transit’s dirty secrets is that the entire system — rails, cars, electrical facilities, stations — must be replaced, rebuilt or rehabilitated roughly every 30 years. This costs almost as much as the original construction, which means for taxpayers that rails are a “pay now, pay more later” proposition.
The Chicago Transit Authority is on the verge of financial collapse. The agency estimates it needs $16 billion it doesn’t have to rehabilitate tracks and trains. To keep the trains running, the agency siphoned money away from the city’s bus system and lost a third of its bus riders between 1986 and 1996.
Newer systems face other financial challenges. San Jose’s light-rail system put the city’s transit agency so far in debt that when sales tax revenues fell short early in this decade, it was forced to cut bus and rail service by 20 percent.
Rail construction almost always costs more than the original estimates. Denver voters approved a 119-mile rail system in 2004 on the promise that it would cost $4.7 billion to build it by 2017. The current estimate is up to $7.9 billion, and the regional transit agency says the system might not be complete until 2034.
Once built, light-rail systems never live up to their promises, even in places like Portland. Before building light rail, Portland’s bus system carried 9.8 percent of the region’s transit riders to work. Today, thanks to cutbacks in the bus system forced by the high cost of rail, transit carries just 7.6 percent.
Nor is rail transit good for the environment. Most U.S. light-rail lines use more energy, per passenger mile, than an SUV. Considering that most of Missouri’s electricity comes from fossil fuels, a Kansas City light rail, like the ones in Dallas, Denver, and Cleveland, is also likely to produce more greenhouse gases per passenger mile than an SUV.
Buses can provide better, faster, safer transit service than light rail at a far lower cost. Light rail is a hoax perpetrated on taxpayers by companies that profit from designing and building rail lines.
Rail advocates tell Kansas Citians that they need to catch up with other cities that have rail transit. I suggest instead that Kansas City should be proud not to fall for the light-rail hoax.
Randal O’Toole is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and author of the Show-Me Institute study, “Review of Kansas City Transit Plans.”
In case anybody thinks that charter schools and parental choice programs don’t encourage urban districts to improve, here’s an article about Cleveland’s public school system. The Cleveland public schools are facing a significant amount of competition. This is their response:
He is pinning the district’s hopes for revival on niche offerings, like single-gender schools and two new high schools specializing in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Where have we heard about those niche offerings before? They sound a lot like specialized charter schools and private schools. Cleveland’s public schools could have given parents these options earlier, but they had no incentive to change until they began losing students to single-gender schools and science academies.
Maybe the expanding charters in St. Louis will trigger similar progress.
The Columbia Tribune is fun to read when the math wars flare up. Sometimes, the intensity of the debate seems to be out of proportion to what’s at stake. Take a look at this exchange from a recent school board meeting:
Math teacher Teresa Barry challenged the notion that all students should be learning only one method of calculation, and to prove her point, she asked board members to multiply 12 by 16. When member Tom Rose said he got the solution by first multiplying 16 by 10 in his head, Barry was quick to mockingly chastise him for not using the traditional algorithm.
Sorry to bring out the snarkiness for which this blog is known, but if by “traditional” they mean long multiplication, then that is the traditional algorithm. (You might write it out by first multiplying 16 by 2, but the order doesn’t matter.) At any rate, even if a board member used some obscure ancient Chinese algorithm, is that really worth calling a meeting about?
I’ve concluded that the math wars are less about specific algorithms — the competing methods are, in some cases, algorithmically equivalent — than about philosophies of education. Even if all parents agreed on how to write out a multiplication problem, there would still be passionate debates about explicit instruction vs. exploration, how much practice kids need, what topics should be taught at each grade level, etc.
It just goes to show that one standard form of education can’t satisfy everyone. Why not offer a few different math courses, based on different approaches, and let parents choose which ones they want for their kids? That system works well enough for other subjects. Some students study Spanish, others study French, and nobody argues at board meetings about which language is better.
Several elements came together allowing me to write this blog post. The first was an ongoing series of articles from the Post-Dispatch and other outlets detailing the Missouri Clean Energy Initiative, scheduled for the upcoming November ballot. The second element was the electric bill I received from Ameren yesterday. And, finally, a few days ago I watched Back to the Future again — so Doc Brown has been on my mind a lot lately.
According to the Post article, the initiative’s sponsors released a study finding that, over time, as the percentage of power Missouri gained from renewable energy grew, the more money we would eventually save:
over a period of 20 years, an average utility bill of $80 a month would see a peak increase of 53 cents a month during the first four years the standard was in place. Over the course of 20 years, that home-owner would see a peak savings of $1.65.
This depends, of course, on all other factors remaining stable — such as amount of energy used, and the overall price rate. The Missouri Clean Energy Initiative has issued a brochure containing some useful facts.
Cheap energy sounds great, but 20 years is a long way away. I want to know what my options are now, and how much they would cost me. And what better tool to use in my research than Dr. Emmett Brown’s time machine?
As we all know, the DeLorean time machine’s flux capacitor requires 1.21 gigawatts of power to function. This is the same as saying 1,210,000 kilowatts of power. Now, while the average home in St. Louis city only uses between 1,000 and 4,000 kWh (kilowatts per hour), I feel as though the DeLorean time machine is an example we all know, love, and respect.
Now, if Doc Brown were to fire up the DeLorean today (in late September), he would be charged a rate of 7.92 cents per kWh. When you do all the crazy math (which I have), you find out it would cost Doc $95,839.50 to use the DeLorean one time during the summer months. Great Scott! When you add in the 12-percent proposed rate increase, his total reaches $107,340.24. Maybe stealing a sports almanac from the future isn’t such a bad idea anymore.
If Doc was to be patient, and use the DeLorean during the winter (October–May), he would be charged a rate of 5.62 cents for the first 750 kWh, and then 3.78 cents for each additional kWh. This comes to $45,759.05 — or $51,250.14 after the rate increase.
One would think a person as smart as Doc Brown would consider alternate, renewable energy options. Luckily for him, Ameren offers Pure Power options. As a resident, Doc would have the option of paying an additional 1.5 cent per kWh, or he could buy blocks of 1,000 kWh for $15 apiece. If Doc chose the “100% P.U.R.E.” energy block option, he would have to buy 1,210 blocks, paying only $18,150. This would cost much less, and he would have the satisfaction of knowing he’d gone green while time traveling.
We have written extensively on this blog about the unconstitutional scam that is the red-light camera industry. Those cameras are just horrible. Ed Martin adds to the discussion with a great first-person account of getting a ticket from a camera. My addition to Ed’s comments: The suburbs that do this are just as bad as the city of Saint Louis. I highly recommend Ed’s post, and thanks go to Combest for the link.
P.S. — I know I used the word “extensively” and then posted just one link. Trust me, I’ve written about it many more times, I just didn’t feel the need to find every one of the posts. Ed’s article is the main point here, anyway.
