Why not? Certainly, size is a consideration. MCI is a mid-sized airport and not a hub like Chicago’s O’Hare airport. But there's more to it. According to The Chicago Tribune (emphasis added):

Private contractors also work well for certain types of airports—Kansas City, for example, has a terminal with multiple checkpoints, and workers can be shifted quickly depending on need, the [airport management consultant Steven] Baldwin report found. Neither San Francisco nor Kansas City has reported the lines seen at O'Hare and Midway.

This should not be surprising. Regular readers of this blog know that we’ve been impressed with private screening and the multi-terminal design for some time. And we suspect most people who fly share this view.

An expensive new terminal may be popular among Kansas City political leaders and their developer cronies, but it is unlikely to improve wait times, convenience, or safety.

The post Long Security Lines? Not at MCI appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Chicago school strike came down to a bruising battle between two flamboyant and abrasive public figures: Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis.

With Chicago’s 26,000 public school teachers returning to work on Sept. 19, it is clear that there is no real winner in this dispute — not the union, not the mayor, and, most especially, not the students and their parents.

There were concessions on both sides in the battle between the mayor and the Chicago teachers’ union, with a final agreement on watered-down changes in teacher evaluation that may make it somewhat easier to remove low-performing teachers. While winning another round of pay increases (on top of average annual pay per teacher of $71,000 for a nine-month year), the union agreed to a longer school day, and it agreed to limit the number of sick days that teachers can “bank” as a future benefit upon retirement.

All that amounts to tinkering at the edges of a failing system. “Beyond this contract is a larger reality,” the Chicago Tribune noted in an editorial. “This school system faces declining enrollment and rising expenses. CPS needs to find a sustainable financial footing. This contract doesn’t help much.”

Kansas City public schools are facing the same bleak reality, as public school enrollment in the city has declined by roughly 35 percent in the past five years while expenditures per pupil have increased to more than $14,000 — far exceeding per pupil costs in most suburban schools. Further, just as in Chicago, Kansas City schools have an extraordinarily high dropout rate, with only about half of high school students graduating within four years.

It is hardly surprising that strong teachers’ unions in large school districts with multiple failing schools will do everything possible to maintain their jobs and to increase their benefits. But that is exactly what makes major reform from within these same school districts a near-impossible task. Reform — if it is to happen — will have to come from the outside, through increased competition and choice.

As things stand today in most large public school districts, including Kansas City and Chicago (both before and after the strike), it remains the case a) that teachers will only be fired for egregious misconduct; b) that when districts reduce staff for budgetary reasons, the most senior teachers stay on the job regardless of their fitness as teachers; and c) principals and others in positions of supposed authority are extremely limited in their ability to reward their best teachers through any kind of pay-for-performance system.

Highly unionized public school districts — where many teachers have understandably grown to feel that they are entitled to hold on to their jobs even though many of their students are failing to learn — need the spur of competition.

Still more, it is a tragedy that so many students and parents in city centers such as Kansas City and Chicago are trapped in schools that are not working. They deserve to be given a choice — and that is something that elected officials at the local and state levels must finally begin to recognize and rally around as a cause for action.

The Show-Me Institute has long called for a major expansion in charter schools to create a real alternative to today’s failing public schools.

Some educators are calling for greater “COOP-ETITION,” meaning a joining together of the traditional public school education with a big increase in the number of charter schools (mostly non-unionized and free from most regulation governing public schools).

We say: Bring it on!

Andrew B. Wilson is resident fellow and senior writer and James V. Shuls is education policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

The post Lessons For Kansas City From The Chicago Teachers Strike appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

What’s not to like?

On the contrary, what’s not to dislike? Film production incentive programs are undesirable policy for states, including Illinois and Missouri, and they have many unintended negative consequences. I have written extensively about film production incentive programs before. In this post, I’d like to highlight specific statements from the editorial and explain why they are incorrect in an economic sense.

Expect this flurry of activity to continue.

The estimated economic and fiscal impact of these programs is debatable. Film tax credits do not result in permanent economic activity because the purchases are single-time expenses and they do not create permanent jobs. The Tax Foundation recently released a study that concluded these programs fail to incite economic growth. In fact, the programs restrict growth because they force taxpayers to support an entire industry.

The tax credit is something lawmakers got just right — in size, scope and sustainability.

Tax credit programs in Missouri are anything but “just right” in size, scope and sustainability, because they are growing at a much faster rate than the state’s revenues. This is why the Missouri state auditor’s report on tax credits recommends that government officials set both expiration dates and annual and cumulative limits for all tax credits programs, including those for film productions. The state of Missouri has awarded nearly $13 million in film tax credits since 2000, and this money comes at the expense of basic government functions, such as education.

“It creates jobs without breaking the bank.”

This is fundamentally false. First, as Henry Hazlitt explains in Economics in One Lesson, this kind of spending destroys jobs in the private sector. As a positive consequence of eliminating the program, there will more workers available to do other kinds of work. Second, for reasons I described earlier, this program is very expensive!

“And it has the potential to make Chicago not only a destination for big Hollywood productions, but also a center of independent film activity.”

States like Missouri and Illinois do not have a comparative advantage in filmmaking, so most film productions are more efficient and cost-effective when undertaken in states that have this comparative advantage. Spending public funds to bring film productions to Missouri means that extra resources are expended to make films, which also means that those resources are no longer available for use in other industries. If Chicago, Kansas City, or Saint Louis were truly suited to be a center for the film industry, it would happen in an unregulated market, independent of government assistance.

Furthermore, it seems to me that practically every state aspires to be a center for the film industry. First, by definition, they can’t all be the center. Second, from the perspective of a government agency, why is filmmaking preferable to any other activity? The free market — not the government — should decide which economic activities occur in an area.

“[T]he value of Chicago’s film infrastructure overcomes bigger tax credits from neighboring states. […] And a plethora of talented stage actors call Chicago home. In other words, you have a place that provides everything a filmmaker might need.

The availability of desirable resources is already a significant incentive to locate in an area. If a state boasts resources that are attractive to filmmakers, then it should not need to use tax credits to encourage firms to locate within its borders.

States like Missouri and Illinois do not have an absence of supply of film production; I disagree that this is the issue, however. Instead, what these states experience is an absence of demand for filmmaking. Unless other factors change over time, there is not enough demand in Missouri for the film industry to exist here without a considerable level of government assistance.

The post So Much Misinformation in This Editorial … So Little Time! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Both locally and nationally, operators of licensed and accredited day cares — centers that typically cost more because of their recognized quality standards — are taking hits as financially strapped parents find other options, usually with parents or friends or in smaller, often unlicensed arrangements.

In many places — including traditionally stable suburbs — this means more day care closures and a reduction in quality slots that adhere to regulatory standards and quality curricula.

Sure, the reporter fails to consider whether there is any evidence of the superiority of licensed day care centers, but at least doesn’t refer to the unlicensed neighborhood mom who watches three of her neighbor’s kids during the day as a “fly-by-night” operation, as the Trib would have.

The real issue here is that the licensed day cares charge more, and they are being hit the hardest as families cut back during these tough times. I hope that supporters of stricter day care licensing in Missouri read both the article and this post, so they can see how licensing raises business costs, and how consumers actually react to those price increases. If we impose the day care licensing changes that were considered during the last legislative session, and will almost certainly be brought up again, we will impose a further economic drag on Missouri families. They will then respond just as they have in this article: by using families and neighbors (often under the table) as sources for day care, and, more drastically, cutting back working hours themselves.

I don’t think any of those above options are necessarily bad alternatives to using ordinary paid day care, except for the last one when it is a matter of necessity rather than choice. Obviously, the supporters of licensing do think those options are harmful, or they would not be working hard to regulate the industry further. The state of Missouri should not dictate who families choose to watch their children. A state license is a poor substitute (and it often becomes a substitute) for doing the work necessary to make sure your child is in a safe environment.

Assuming that the day care licensing bill is introduced again, I look forward to being the children-hating jerk deep thinker who stands up to oppose it. I honestly think this legislation will accomplish nothing but raising costs for Missourians and protecting current day care centers from future competition, which is usually the point of occupational licensure in the first place. (My final caveat is to acknowledge that the supporters of this licensure are genuinely concerned about children, so this is a rare exception to that rule.)

The post Licensing, the Recession, and Day Care With Love appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I discussed this article with two of my best friends while returning from a golf vacation in Michigan yesterday. Although both of them, as lawyers, work in a heavily licensed profession, each thought the example provided in the article amounted to government control run amok. (As an aside, each also agrees that their own profession is overly regulated, but neither went so far as to support totally ending licensure for attorneys. Even I don’t go that far for that particular profession, so we all basically agreed. Given that licensing leads to higher costs, which can then lead to a shortage, I will change my opinion if you can find me one person in the entire country who thinks the modern United States does not have enough lawyers.)

But back to the article. There are so many terrible quotes that I have to settle on just one or two. How about:

Going with an unlicensed mover leaves consumers little or no recourse if the outfit overcharges, items go missing or there’s damage, Bonnema said.

How about the entire civil court system at your disposal for each of these examples? Has the reporter ever heard of small claims court? The sentence should have read “leaves consumers less recourse,” because there is no licensing board to complain to, but there are still plenty of options for the market to work itself out. One such market-correcting force is discussed at the end of the article, but in a negative — not positive — manner. While discussing somebody who had a bad experience with an unlicensed mover, the article reports:

A customer posted a complaint about him on Craigslist after chairs were damaged during a move.

Traditionally, service-oriented businesses increase market share through the word of mouth of trusted people. You might be more inclined to select a plumber because of your neighbor’s recommendation. Now, websites like Craigslist, which often have extensive review sections, are playing more of that role in the market. This is something to be celebrated, not feared. (Note: I wussed out on linking to the “Craigslist” section that would have been the funniest.)

Nowhere does the article discuss the positive aspects of consumers having more choices at lower prices for this particular service. Nor does it offer any criticism of this (emphasis added):

The Illinois Commerce Commission employs 10 police officers in the northern region, four more than last year, said Craig Baner, commander of operations. The officers flood high-traffic moving areas during the busy months and target unlicensed movers.

Doesn’t anyone else think that perhaps the resources of 10 police officers could be put to better use in Chicago than in tracking down unlicensed movers? Am I on crazy pills, here? Ten cops for moving-specific licensing issues!

I could go on and on, but I’ll end here after directing you to some of the more scholarly work we’ve released about the harmful effects of occupational licensure in Missouri and across the country.

The post Atrocious Article About Occupational Licensure From the Chicago Tribune appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It’s a step in the right direction when districts experiment with new ways of doing things. It would be even better if they gave parents a choice between year-round school and a long summer break. Making the year-round schedule optional would prevent conflicts with parents who liked the old schedule better.

When a district gives parents a choice, it has an opportunity to learn about parents’ preferences. Do they value long vacations? Do they think year-round school helps students retain the material? It’s more pleasant for everyone if these preferences are expressed through enrollment decisions, rather than through angry phone calls after the district puts all families on a new schedule, whether they like it or not.

The post School All Year appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

We think it is time for America’s first national online campus of virtual schools–an Amazon.com of courses and curricula where students, parents, teachers, principals and school administrators could shop for a better education. Virtual courses open to everyone would tear down the chief barrier to student achievement–access to a quality education.

The most striking difference between Amazon and a hypothetical national virtual school is that Amazon came about naturally in the competitive marketplace, while government programs don’t. A national online school would be like any other unwieldy federal bureaucracy, and very unlike Amazon.

A better idea is for individual states to take down the barriers to entry that they’ve set up. Some states, like Missouri, have only one virtual school. Others allow several virtual schools to compete with each other, but hit them with all the restrictions that apply to brick-and-mortar charter schools. Each state should allow its students to participate in a virtual school based in any other state. The money should follow the student.

This would work like the system of public colleges and universities. You can attend a public college in your own state, or in another state, but you don’t have to go through a “national campus.”

While I’m on the topic of virtual schools, it occurs to me that online education might be a way to cut down on the costs of the public service academy everybody’s talking about. Let people learn to be bureaucrats online.

The post Say No to National Schools – Even Virtual Ones appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

“In too many places, including Illinois, we are lying to children now. [When] we tell a child they are meeting the state standards, the logical implication is that child’s on track to be successful. In too many places, including Illinois, if you are meeting state standards you are barely qualified to graduate from high school and you are totally unqualified to go to a university and graduate,” he said.

I agree that the standards are low and don’t reflect what students need to know for college or life. Many parents are happy when their children do fine on state tests, not realizing that in a few years, their children will be competing with people from China, Singapore, Sweden, and other countries with more rigorous school systems. Another drawback is that school use the low standards as an excuse, saying they can’t teach anything more advanced because they have to prepare students for the (easy) state tests.

I disagree with Duncan’s proposed solution. He wants the federal government to tell the states what to do — imposing his favorite ideas, like a longer school year, with threats like this:

“Illinois has a chance to compete for hundreds of millions of dollars. I would love to see Illinois compete,” Duncan said. “But Illinois has to change its behavior.”

Rather than bringing in the federal government to pick winners, mediocre public schools should get out of the way and let parents act as consumers. Parents with the opportunity have been choosing schools with longer school years, like KIPP schools, long before Duncan decided to impose that reform from above.

You can read my thoughts on Duncan’s charter school remarks here.

Feel free to make more blogging requests in the comments, or to email me with requests at sarah.brodsky@showmeinstitute.org.

The post Sarah to Arne: Let Parents Choose appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California-Berkeley, said he feared focusing on universal prekindergarten?making preschool a middle-class entitlement?could divert help from low-income families that need it most.

"Why would we use scarce public dollars to subsidize all families if we know the biggest impact is with poor kids?" he said.

The article quotes James Heckman, too; Heckman is a Nobel laureate in economics who’s found that early childhood education has a large positive effect on social and academic outcomes when kids get older. I was disappointed that the article doesn’t mention Heckman’s support for voucher programs that would allow parents to choose between competing preschools. Just because the state subsidizes preschool for low-income children, that doesn’t mean it needs to reinvent the wheel and actually operate preschools, too.

The post Early Childhood Education appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The weapons turned in during buy-backs overwhelmingly are older guns, such as revolvers, which in some cases don’t even work. A Harvard study of buy-back programs in Boston in 1993 and 1994 found nearly three-quarters of the guns recovered were made before 1968. In Seattle, one-quarter of the guns collected were inoperable.

Basically, the city is doing nothing more than giving people tax money to go purchase newer, better guns. If the city is trying to become the living embodiment of Robert Heinlein’s statement that "An armed society is a polite society," than I would call the buyback program a success. Somehow, I think the city was going for something else — mostly stemming from a delusional belief that this program was going to improve safety in the city.

The best thing to say about this program is that it only lasted for one day. A study I linked to in last week’s post on this subject found that long-term programs actually increase gun ownership as they lower the overall costs of gun ownership. Among the ways it would do this is by creating a floor value of $50 for any gun, no matter how low the market value, if any, for that gun. Come to think of it, if we could change all stupid government programs from permanent fixtures to one-day events, that would be real progress!

The post Gun Buyback Program Provides Seed Money for New Guns appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The 1991 cache was a huge success — but it was based on a 30-day program. The 2007 effort is one day only.

We are going to do it again. It was such as success in 1991 that the City of St. Louis became one of the safest cities in America in 1992 and has remained so ever since. Oh, wait — check that — it has consistently been one of the murder capitals of America since right about that time. …

I got rid of an old shotgun a few months back, and now I feel like a moron. I should have held onto it and sold it to the city police for $50. That’s $50 more than I got for it.

These programs are like the forced sterilization programs in India in the 1970s. If I recall correctly from history class, the government ordered every family to have at least one male be sterilized in an effort to control population growth. Not surprisingly, a lot of 80-year-old grandpas showed up for their vasectomies. A gun buyback program is exactly the same. If someone has an old gun lying around, this is a good time to git rid of it. Check out this study for evidence. (Sorry, but I can only link to the summary. You have to pay for the whole thing.)

Economist Glen Whitman writes on this subject:

Consider the case of gun buy-back programs. These programs aim to reduce the number of guns on the streets by having authorities buy them up. Cities with gun buy-back programs tout their success by announcing the number of guns purchased. It’s possible, however, that people will bring guns to town just for the purpose of selling them?after all, if the city paid less than the market price, gun owners would sell their guns privately. The real question is not how many guns are purchased, but how many guns remain on the street. And this is setting aside the difficult question of whether reducing the number of guns actually reduces violent crime. Since criminals presumably have the greatest need for guns?their livelihoods depend on them?they are probably the least likely to sell them.

Or you can read this article, which originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune.

I know somebody who reads this is going to think to themself, "But if it just saves one life it is worth it." And, yes, that is an impossible argument to refute, and saving one life is wonderful. But you will never know whether the program saves one life — you just have the data which tells you it is totally ineffective and a waste of money. But it makes people feel good and provides good PR, so if you have a crappy gun lying around and would like to get $50 toward a better one, this is your opportunity.

The post Good Time for Criminals to Sell Old, Crappy Guns in Order to Buy Better Guns appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Ever since HB 818, the groundbreaking consumer-based health insurance reform bill, passed both houses of the Legislature by wide bipartisan margins in May, news reports have focused on a small provision legalizing midwifery in Missouri. This is understandable — it was inserted at the last minute using a word, “tocology,” that most legislators wouldn’t understand or research before voting. The provision spurred dissent from several quarters — legislators complaining that they’d been duped, constituents complaining that legislators didn’t bother to understand the legislation they voted for, and doctors complaining that the midwife provision would reduce the safety of childbirth in Missouri. Although a circuit court judge recently struck down the provision, after the Missouri State Medical Association challenged its legality under the state constitution’s single-subject requirement, advocates for midwifery say they plan to appeal.

It’s easy to understand why the midwife provision overshadowed the rest of the insurance bill; it’s a juicy story of political controversy and legislative dysfunction. But what about the actual effects of the provision? Would legalizing the practice of midwifery without the presence of a doctor reduce the quality of childbirth? The evidence suggests otherwise.

In 1998, the National Center for Health Statistics and the Centers for Disease Control released a study finding that “the risk of experiencing an infant death was 19 percent lower for births attended by certified nurse midwives than for births attended by physicians. The risk of neonatal mortality (an infant death occurring in the first 28 days of life) was 33 percent lower, and the risk of delivering a low birthweight infant was 31 percent lower.”

One contributing factor to these statistics may be that midwives generally will not accept high-risk patients — sending them to normal doctors instead. Pregnant women who are extremely overweight or diabetic, drug users, those who have a history of hemorrhaging, or who have previously had a cesarean section, are all likely to be rejected by a midwife. This means that childbirth statistics for doctors might be less favorable simply because they’re treating a higher proportion of risky patients — but it also means that midwives tend to avoid foreseeable complications, which makes their services much safer than detractors might have you believe.

Midwifery advocates often point out that childbirth, in and of itself, is not a medical event — although it can become one. As skydivers and mountain climbers know, adults can legally engage in any number of risky activities without the presence of a doctor. Although these activities can escalate into medical emergencies, most do not. The midwife provision in HB 818 would have ensured that midwives who are legally allowed to practice will be those with the training to mitigate risk, and who can recognize when medical intervention is necessary.

Expectant mothers are capable of weighing their childbirth options without the aid of state law, and each one of those options carries its own risks. Giving birth in a hospital exposes both mother and child to infectious diseases that they wouldn’t encounter at home — and hospitals generally do not disclose their infection rates. In 2002, the Chicago Tribune reported that “Deaths linked to hospital germs represent the fourth leading cause of mortality among Americans, behind heart disease, cancer and strokes, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These infections kill more people each year than car accidents, fires and drowning combined.” Access to medical technology during childbirth may be worth the risk of infection, but that’s a judgment call best left to expectant parents.

One fact that’s often overlooked in the debate about the safety of midwifery is that it’s already legal for just about anybody to deliver a baby in Missouri. You can have your neighbor or your mail carrier or your pizza guy deliver your baby without legal repercussion. It’s only when you seek out someone with relevant experience and pay her to perform a delivery that it becomes against the law. Any system that penalizes training and competency just because money is involved needs to be altered.

Hopefully, this provision will be resurrected — either on appeal, or through a less controversial legislative action. It’s important that consumers be allowed autonomy not only in choosing insurance policies, but also in choosing what type of care they want to receive.

Eric D. Dixon is the editor for the Show-Me Institute, a Missouri-based think tank.

The post Missourians Should Be Allowed to Use Midwives appeared first on Show-Me Institute.