The report made a number of claims, according to the graphics presented during the interview. The print version of the story on the website included the following bullet points:

• The construction of CITYPARK and its 32-acre campus created an additional $1.4 billion in economic impact since 2020.
• The direct cost of the privately owned stadium campus—which includes the stadium, team training facility and practice fields, team store, parking garage, and corporate headquarters—was $667 million.
• The overall impact includes approximately $122 million in incremental tax revenue, including $33 million in local and state tax revenue, and $15 million in infrastructure upgrades to lighting, sidewalks, bike paths and streets in the surrounding area.

Those bullet points come directly from the news story.

Kindle said in the interview “We were all very, very, very surprised” by the results of the study. I would be too. The vast research on the impact of professional sports teams indicates they generate no such economic impact. The Journal of Economic Surveys concluded in 2022 that “nearly all empirical studies find little to no tangible impacts of sports teams and facilities on local economic activity, and the level of venue subsidies typically provided far exceeds any observed economic benefits.”

Kindle added of the research, “We’re very excited, when the time is right, to share it.” When might that be? I emailed CITY SC on May 23 asking for an electronic copy of the report and heard nothing. I emailed again on May 30 and was told the next day, “We haven’t yet released the full study results, just the highlights. It is something we will likely do in the future but timing is TBD.” I asked what event they were waiting on to release the report. It has been over a week and I’ve received no response.

It’s more than fair to wonder if this report contains the flaws of other similar analyses that count only spending at the venue and discount any losses in spending elsewhere. But we don’t know, because CITY SC hasn’t shared it yet.

Does that mean KMOV ran the segment without independently verifying the information?

At the bottom of the KMOV article is an invitation to readers: “For more information on the study, click here.” That link only takes you to a page of news releases for CITY SC, in which the club makes the exact same claims that appeared in the story, word for word. My advice to news outlets is to trust but verify. When it comes to claims of economic impact such as these, the claims are often overblown and based on significantly flawed analyses. Until the full report is available, we won’t know the rest of the story.

The post Trust but Verify: CITY SC’s Claims Deserve Scrutiny appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Watch the full discussion

Brian Riedl is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, focusing on budget, tax, and economic policy. Previously, he worked for six years as chief economist to Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) and as staff director of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Growth. He also served as a director of budget and spending policy for Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign and was the lead architect of the ten-year deficit-reduction plan for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.

During 2001–11, Riedl served as the Heritage Foundation’s lead research fellow on the federal budget and spending policy. In that position, he helped lay the groundwork for Congress to cap soaring federal spending, rein in farm subsidies, and ban pork-barrel earmarks. Riedl’s writing and research have been featured in, among others, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Review; he is a frequent guest on NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, and C-SPAN.

The post Virtual Town Hall – The National Debt Crisis with Brian Riedl appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Previously, both cities refused to publicly release the details of their bids, including what tax incentives they were offering, claiming that Amazon required confidentiality. Some have questioned whether that is a legitimate claim. But regardless, both cities should, in the name of transparency, release the entirety of their proposals. Maintaining faith in government requires no less.

3:50 pm:  CBS-St. Louis/KMOX News has posted St. Louis’ Amazon HQ2 proposal.

The post Release the Amazon Bids! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This could be the result of a few things: lazy programming, bad programming, and/or purposefully bad programming. The underlying dataset the tool uses is probably based on this data, which I downloaded from HealthCare.Gov on Oct. 1. Notice that of the columns divided by age, the two ages are . . . 27 and 50. Programmers probably just split the population into the two groups they found in the spreadsheet and dropped everyone into these pricing categories, even though those prices only applied to two ages of people.

Obviously, a 27-year-old’s insurance is not priced the same way as a 37-year-old, or a 45-year-old, or a 49-year-old. Why the government’s “experts” would put out demonstrably false information — information that anyone who knows anything about insurance pricing would know is wrong — is just beyond me. Are these really the people we want running our health care system?

The post HealthCare.Gov Now Delivering . . . Incorrect Plan Pricing appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Regular Show-Me Daily readers are, I am sure, nearly sick of hearing about Patrick Ishmael’s and my questions regarding that $300 million.

We wondered: Why was the state considering subsidizing warehouse construction in the St. Louis area if there was more than 18 million square feet in vacant warehouse space already available? Why did versions of the legislation give the mayor of St. Louis City and area county executives the power to restrict who could receive hundreds of millions in tax benefits? Why were the construction tax credits limited to individuals and companies who owned more than 100 acres of land? Where was a substantive cost-benefit analysis?

We would have stopped asking those questions if someone had provided substantive answers. And yet, there really were none.

It is brazen to ask for $300 million, in the public or private sector, without substantive evidence that the money is necessary and would be put to good, productive use. As such, the removal of warehouse and facility construction tax credits from the legislation is good news for Missouri taxpayers.

But, things could easily change. There is a chance that the $300 million could be reinserted at the last moment. CBS reports that the Missouri House may attempt to re-insert construction tax credits in the legislation and “ram the bill through the Senate.”

So, perhaps, this may be more about politics than good policy. I hope that isn’t the case.

The post Senate Removes $300 Million in Warehouse Construction Tax Credits From Aerotropolis Bill appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I spent some time looking for that study, or any discussion of its results. Finally, about to give up, I emailed the Midwest China Hub Commission to ask whether the study Jones had promised was available.

Here is the response I received:

The study you refer to is still underway but very close to completion. The St. Louis RCGA is spearheading the impact analysis with possible completion and release of findings to come at the end of next month or June. The findings of the analysis will be made public at that time.

So, despite statements from legislators and special interests that subsidizing freight traffic is a good idea for Missouri, no study has been published that backs up those statements.

Right now, state legislators, local politicians, and special interest groups are in a rush to award $480 million in state subsidies that they say would further the China Hub dream. But the legislative session ends in mid-May, so the promised study won’t be done in time for legislators to consider the results before awarding almost half a billion dollars in subsidies.

There’s a lot that I don’t understand about this tangle of subsidies, but this is perhaps the most mystifying. Legislators who say that they want to keep Missouri fiscally responsible are now pushing to award almost half a billion dollars without any formal attempt to weigh the costs and benefits of the proposal.

From Sen. Eric Schmitt:

This is new. This is new investment. This is new economic activity that we just don’t have. When you have zero flights a week and we want to move forward and actually create this kind of international trade hub, which is what it is, that’s activity that we don’t have now.

What evidence is there to substantiate Schmitt’s statements? Has any analysis been done demonstrating that the award of tax credits would result in increased freight traffic to Saint Louis?

From Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge, director of airports at Lambert-Saint Louis International Airport and Ed Monser, president of Emerson:

[The Aertropolis subsidy bill] has the support of organized labor because of the job impact it would bring to Missouri and support from rural legislators because of the opportunity to export Missouri beef and pork, as well as other agriculture products, to countries not currently buying these commodities.

But what evidence is there to prove that this project and related incentives would result in new jobs? What study has been done that demonstrates that China would import Missouri agricultural products if the state spent $420 million to subsidize the construction and operation of cargo warehouses?

If there were an award for unsubstantiated, overblown commentary, it would go to Rep. Caleb Jones, who told CBS:

It’s going to create demand for all of Missouri and our products and goods. Folks from my district are going to be able to load up cattle and drive it to St. louis and have it in China the next day.

What evidence is there showing that this project and package of incentives will “create demand for all of Missouri”? How do Jones’ constituents know that there’s a market for their cattle in China? Instead, isn’t there a chance the constituents of the 117th district will have to pay roughly $80 each, which is what this bill will cost every Missourian — and then receive no benefit?

The aerotropolis tax credit bill does not have to be passed this year. After all, there’s no firm commitment from China, the legislation contains hidden costs, and no study has been produced demonstrating that this proposal makes financial sense.

What’s the rush?

The post Where’s the Evidence That the China Hub Makes Financial Sense? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Last Tuesday, Nov. 9, David Stokes and Dave Roland appeared on the Bernie Hayes Show on WGNU St. Louis AM 920 to talk about occupational licensing generally, and African hair braiders specifically. You can listen to the whole show here.

On Thursday, Nov. 11, Audrey Spalding was a guest on a panel discussing public education and the film Waiting For “Superman,” at Plaza Frontenac. Audrey was quoted in the St. Louis Beacon and on the St. Louis Business Journal‘s blog about the film and the issues of school quality and choice that it addressed.

Thursday night, David Stokes was quoted in a KMOV CBS Channel 4 story about public pensions. Show-Me Institute scholar Dr. Susan Feigenbaum was also interviewed for the story, an issue that the institute has addressed previously. If I could stress one point further, it would be to repeat the point Dr. Feigenbaum made in her interview that governments themselves are to blame for much of the public pension shortfalls by not making adequate contributions during good fiscal times.

On Friday, Stokes was quoted in a St. Louis Business-Journal piece by Dave Drebes about the potential for the city of St. Louis to re-enter St. Louis County. (You need to subscribe in order to access the full story online.)

Last, but not at all least, is yesterday’s major Post-Dispatch article on economic development, tax-increment financing (TIF), etc. Show-Me Institute intern Tom Duda and Stokes were both quoted in the story on how “economic development” in the St. Louis area amounts to nothing more than using tax dollars to lure business from one part of the area to another — sometimes only a few blocks away.

As a fun parlor game from the Post-Dispatch article, I’ll give 10 Show-Me Institute bonus points (whatever those are) to the first commenter who correctly cites the blatant red herring argument used by someone quoted in that last story.

The post Show-Me Institute in the Media appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Thoma’s article mentions that this very problem is currently becoming manifest in the U.S. Congress. Two pending bills are circulating in Congress, one that seeks to eliminate much of the Fed’s regulatory authority and the other to allow its monetary policy to be audited. These bills were developed as a safeguard against the Fed putting the brakes on the political business cycle, during which monetary policy plays out quicker with regard to output and unemployment than it does with regard to inflation.

So, if an incumbent politician wants to increase his chances of getting reelected, he may want output to peak right around the time of the election. To do this, he increases the money supply months before the election to reap the benefits of increased output; however, the consequent inflation will not hit until months after output peaks. This politician has begun a cycle of manipulation. It would be a wise next step to tighten monetary policy after the election to avoid inflation, but more often than not this step is not taken, because cutting the money supply will decrease output, and output is already in a state of decline after having peaked. So, rather than being perceived as responsible for a decline in output, in order to to avoid inflation, the politician lets inflation take the lead.

In addition to this sort of scenario, there is the added problem of government debt. Of the three ways to finance government purchases — increasing taxes, issuing government debt, and increasing the money supply — the most beneficial choice from a politician’s perspective would be to increase the money supply, because its drawbacks aren’t as easily seen by constituents. This also results in inflation, and can be referred to as monetizing the debt. Luckily for the politician, the blame for this inflation can be readily placed on increased prices for oil and other commodities.

As health care costs rise, and the public debt becomes more of a problem, worried politicians are resorting to the application of pressure to the Fed to act in ways that will make their political skills seem more attractive to their constituents. Consequently, it is a real possibility that the price for Fed independence — which is vital to upholding a healthy economy from the yo-yo effect of political whims — may, in the end, be that very independence.

The post Fed’s Independence Vital for a Stable Economy appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Chicago currently has the dubious honor of having the highest consumer gasoline prices in the country. In large part, this is because of its very high gas taxes. People are up in arms. In fact, the local CBS-affiliate of “Chicagoland” reports today that long lines await Indiana suburban commuters hoping to fill up before the Illinois border. One commuter summarizes the current tax incentive best:

"It was $4.20 [in Illinois]. I can come over here and get it for $3.93," said Tikvah Wadley, one of the many fleeing Illinois taxes.

What does this tell us? It tells us that economic incentives matter, particularly when they are distortionary taxes. When consumers feel the effects of high taxes, they vote with their feet and flee to lower tax areas (in this case, choosing to fill up their gas tanks on the Indiana side of the Chicago metropolitan area).

But how does this relate to Missouri? Well, we have our own equally pernicious tax in the Kansas City and St. Louis metropolitan areas. The earnings tax is a 1 percent income tax on gross earnings levied on those who live and/or work in Missouri’s two largest cities. But if you happen to live and work in the metro areas outside of the city limits, you don’t have to pay it. We’ve written about this topic extensively.

If Chicago’s high gas taxes are having an impact on consumer behavior in Illinois, then imagine what the earnings tax might be doing to consumer behavior in Missouri Think of it this way: Combined federal and state gasoline taxes are 57.9 cents per gallon in Illinois (compared to 36 cents in Missouri). Chicago levies an additional 12.75 cents per gallon on top of that, for a whopping total of 70.7 cents per gallon. Indiana’s gas tax is 50.1 cents per gallon.

Ok, so here’s where the numbers get fun (and exciting!). Say that you live in Chicago and decide you’re fed up with high gas taxes, and want to fill up your car in Indiana instead. If you drive 12,000 miles per year and get about 25 miles per gallon on average (which seems reasonable), then you’d pay only $240.48 in gas taxes in Indiana this year instead of $338.88 in Chicago, for a total annual savings of $98.40. This $100 savings has been enough to promote long gas lines and impact Illinois gas stations. Apparently small incentives matter. I mean, think how hard it is to drive out of your way just to save a few cents.

OK, back to Missouri. Imagine you’re working in Clayton but that you live in St. Louis. If you make $35,000 year (the current per-capita Missouri household income), then you can save an extra $350 per year just by living a couple of blocks down the road. This is 3.5 times more in tax savings than the Chicago drivers are saving by filling up in Indiana! Wouldn’t you think this might be having an effect on urban growth?

Let’s take it a step further. The marginal income tax rate in Missouri is 5.91 percent. In Illinois, it’s only 3 percent. Do you think that might have an impact, also? Perhaps we can provide a pretty good answer to the question David Nicklaus poses in today’s Post-Dispatch as to why the St. Louis-area lost 5,000 jobs over the past year. Maybe taxes matter.

Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t throw in a plug for our new Missouri tax estimator, too. See how outraged you can get. Or read here about how small tax payments can affect your lifetime wealth.

The post Fun With Numbers (and Economic Incentives)! Hooray! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

According to CNN, both Florida and Michigan have considered mail-in ballots as a method for tabulating votes if their respective primaries are to be redone. This method of vote tabulation — already used in Oregon for all elections and as the primary mechanism for absentee voting in most other states — has a number of benefits that are specifically tailored to the current democratic situation. An all-mail primary would cost considerably less than a traditional one, and as recognized by Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean, such an exercise would ease the balloting process for all:

"Every voter gets a ballot in the mail. It’s comprehensive. You get to
vote if you’re in Iraq or in a nursing home," he said on CBS’ "Face the
Nation."

Additionally, a mail-in primary could lead to more attention for the process within Missouri. In February, state Representative Jake Zimmerman introduced House Bill 2088, which would establish an all-mail election system for all elections that take place within the state. Currently, the bill has not been referred to a committee, and as reported by Suburban Journals, there is little confidence of it being given serious consideration. However, as the resident intern in favor of election reform, I’m hoping that any attention given to mail-in balloting by Florida and Michigan leads Missouri lawmakers to reconsider it as an electoral method.

The post Mailing It In appeared first on Show-Me Institute.