Susan Pendergrass speaks with Josh Bandoch, author of “How to Get What You Want: Mastering the Art and Science of Persuasion,” about why leading with data and logic is often the wrong approach to changing minds. Drawing on more than a decade of research across psychology, neuroscience, economics, and political science, and experience writing speeches for senior government officials and advising executives, Bandoch explains how the human brain feels before it reasons, why persuasion is about shared action rather than winning, and what policy advocates get wrong when trying to move legislators. They also discuss the Granny Test, how to frame arguments around your audience’s moral values, the role of storytelling, and more.

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 Episode Transcript

Susan Pendergrass (00:00): So excited today to talk to Josh Bandoch, author of the soon to be out — or maybe by the time this airs, out — book “How to Get What You Want: Mastering the Art and Science of Persuasion.” I want to say it correctly, which is awesome. I was thinking about this topic — we were talking about this a little bit before we started recording — because we’re both right in the middle of legislative sessions. And in addition to being an author, you work in the policy advocacy space. Is this book meant to sort of address that space, or is it for a more general audience? Because we all want to get what we want, right?

Josh Bandoch (00:37): Absolutely. The book is written for a general audience. It will help folks in the policy space, but also in business, sales, or marketing. The goal of the book is to help people get what they want through persuasion. And for me, persuasion is the difference between having a good idea — whether it’s a good policy idea or a good product idea — and having others embrace that idea.

Susan Pendergrass (01:02): Yeah, I think that’s so important because oftentimes — well, speaking for myself — I come up with policy ideas that I think are great ideas, but I come from data, evidence, research. Let me write a 20-page paper on it and do a statistical model to convince you. And I think that based on what I’ve read in your book, you would say that might not be my strongest approach.

Josh Bandoch (01:24): Well, those things are necessary. Data is necessary, and folks who work at think tanks are paid to do research. I work at a think tank — the Platte Institute — and that is what we’re paid to do. But when I think about persuasion, I start by trying to understand the contours of how the human brain actually operates.

The challenging reality for a lot of folks in the think tank space who are paid to think — maybe you’re a consultant or whatever — is that since we’re paid to think, we think that means logic, data, and reasoning are the way to get what we want. The most challenging reality I’ve encountered is that this is how the human brain is wired — not just my brain or your brain, Susan, but all 8 billion of us on this planet. We feel first, then reason. Sometimes it’s feel, and we never even get to the reasoning. We’ve all been there. That means persuasion actually starts with feelings.

I know the folks in your audience who love the work you do — and you guys do great work — and love the research are going to say, no, that can’t be true. Well, it’s what all the neuroscience says. So it actually means that the logic-first approach to persuasion, whether in policy and think tank land or in sales or anything, is actually illogical — because that’s not how the brain works. The brain works feel first, then reason. We do reason. It’s just that we have to start with feelings.

Susan Pendergrass (03:06): So give me an example. We’ve been working for several years on a policy in Missouri that would allow parents to choose where their kids go to public school — just public school, open enrollment. And we get so much pushback from legislators and others who say this is going to lead to basically the destruction of the public education system. That’s their feeling. And I can provide a lot of evidence from other states that have done it for decades — even our neighbors in Kansas, not so much Illinois — and say it hasn’t happened, but they still believe it. I feel like I can’t put the words in the right order to make them understand what I’m trying to do. So what do I need to do differently?

Josh Bandoch (03:47): Yeah, so there are two parts here. First, you just observe what somebody’s feeling. Because if somebody’s feeling great and they’re inclined to do what you want to do, it’s easy, right? In this case — this is a perfect example — they have negative feelings towards the policy you want to advance. So the first thing you have to do is observe, understand, and address those feelings directly. When you’re in these conversations, what is an example of a raw, visceral negative feeling that somebody expresses?

Susan Pendergrass (04:19): They’ll say in our small rural communities, the high school is the center of it — it’s the heart and soul of the community. And if we let kids out — even though it’s the heart and soul — they’ll all want to leave. And if that happens, not only will the school close, but that will kill the community. That’s what they believe. It’s not reality, but I struggle when I go to testify at a legislative hearing to not sound like I’m just putting facts in front of them and ignoring what they feel. I don’t know how to counter that with reassurance and say, that’s just not true.

Josh Bandoch (05:09): So let me briefly walk you through the process so your audience can follow along. Start with feelings — and what you have to do is generate persuasive feelings. What feelings are persuasive? Ultimately, I think it’s positive feelings. Every time I ask an audience who the most persuasive people they can think of are, a couple of people come to mind: Ronald Reagan, Martin Luther King Jr., JFK. They generated positive feelings. And you do that especially by appealing to your audience’s moral values, which in this case might be different from yours. And then the most effective way to wrap it all up is a story.

So how do you start this process? When you’re talking to folks in the community, or to lawmakers, or to local elected officials who you’d like to see change their stance, start by asking them how they feel. It just unlocks a totally different pathway in the brain.

Susan Pendergrass (06:05): But when you’re saying this — and when I was looking through your book — I was wondering: in today’s political environment, I feel like persuasion is being used a lot less, and people are just making statements and not really defending them, just saying that’s the fact because I said it. Especially with how vitriolic our politics has become in the last decade since you started this research, do you think there’s still a good solid place for the art of persuasion? Or are we just going to stand with our arms crossed and agree to disagree?

Josh Bandoch (06:35): So at one level, the answer is absolutely yes, because humans haven’t evolved radically over the last 10 years. Everything in the book is backed by a tremendous amount of research, largely based on how the human brain works, and then lots of practice. At another level, we do have real reason to be concerned, which is what you just pointed to — is persuasion still possible in today’s political environment?

Look, there are only two paths forward. One is that we continue to relish in all the negativity, toxicity, and polarization, or we step back from it. I don’t think, aside from a couple of folks who spend their lives on X, that anybody is really going to say our politics are healthy. So it’s incumbent on us to have better methods to walk back from that, as opposed to just running down that toxic lane even further.

Susan Pendergrass (07:41): So in addition to what happens in state and federal legislative bodies, where I spend a lot of my brain power, how does somebody take the principles of your book and apply them in their personal life? Is this about manifesting goals, or how do they apply those same principles?

Josh Bandoch (08:00): Well, maybe I can sketch out briefly what some of the principles are so we can talk about them. The first step for persuasion — well, I guess two things. One is understanding what persuasion actually is, and I think even this is a mindset issue. We oftentimes think persuasion is about winning. And Susan, if I win against you, what does that make you?

Susan Pendergrass (08:17): A loser.

Josh Bandoch (08:18): That’s terrible, right? You’re a loser and you don’t want to work with me. So persuasion isn’t about winning. It’s not just about launching your logic at people — we’ve discussed that already. It’s not simply about convincing somebody. The Latin root of the word “convince” means to vanquish or to conquer, and conquest is barbaric. So what is persuasion? It’s about shared action — something we voluntarily do with others. That’s the shared part, and it’s action — it’s about getting things done. That’s already a much different understanding of persuasion.

When you bring that approach to your personal and professional endeavors, it’s different because you’re really trying to work with people and figure out how to move forward together. The first step of persuasion for me is adopting what I call the persuader’s mindset — it’s about them, not you. That’s why when we talked about school choice in the community, it’s like, okay, what are their concerns? Take their concerns seriously. That applies in your personal life too — maybe you’re having a debate at home with your spouse or a friend or a child. You have to understand who they are and what they care about, and to the extent possible, proceed on their grounds, because they’re much more comfortable there. This applies to any situation you’re in, no matter what it is.

Susan Pendergrass (09:32): That’s awesome. And you mentioned professionally — sales. I feel like there are a lot of books on how to sell. How does your book differentiate from what’s come before?

Josh Bandoch (09:47): Well, a lot of folks — keeping it in the policy space — are trying to corner people into saying yes to something they otherwise wouldn’t say yes to. What I’m really trying to understand is what would motivate and excite somebody to work with me on something. And that requires generating the positive feelings I talked about, appealing to their morals, telling great stories, and some of the other things I get into in the book. But those are some of the big ones. And it all has to happen simply.

Susan Pendergrass (10:31): In a simple way, right? I’m not going to hold this against you, but I am a grandmother. And I did see the Granny Principle in the book — so explain what that is, because I want to remind myself of this principle a lot. I have a PhD in public policy. I’ve put a lot of years into studying what’s good and bad public policy. And every single year in the halls of Jefferson City, I just see bad public policy happen in the hallway. They’ll say, well, we’ll just give that part up and add this part. And I’m like, no, no, no — you basically just blew up the quality of what you were trying to do. And I see that if I’m coming from up here and things are happening on a completely different level, I’m spinning my wheels. I’m not furthering my goals of getting good public policy passed — which I believe, no matter who’s in the governor’s mansion or the White House, good policy is good policy. And I struggle to make it happen in Missouri. I think the Granny Principle could be part of my problem, so would you please explain what that is?

Josh Bandoch (11:32): Totally. The last chapter of the book — in some ways the least exciting but the most important — is called “Ace the Granny Test.” And what’s the Granny Test? Would your granny understand what you’re saying? You assume granny is a smart lady who is not an expert in any particular thing. So you have to explain things with clarity, simplicity, and precision.

One of the troubles we encounter in think tank land is that we love to dump tons of data and logic and reasoning and examples on people, and it’s overwhelming. We also encounter the curse of knowledge — we know so much that we kind of assume our audience does too. And we oftentimes think, well, they just don’t understand me, that’s their fault and their problem. No, no, no, no. It’s your fault and your problem, because they don’t understand you and they just move on with life.

When you talk to an elected official, you have about 60 seconds to capture their attention. Maximum. So if you’re not crystal clear and simple in how you explain things, they say in that typical apologetic way, well, thank you so much, I’ll take that into account — and then they move on. Clarity and simplicity are premium virtues in communications, and they require a lot of hard work to achieve. Can you distill your 30-page white paper into 30 seconds?

Susan Pendergrass (13:01): Yeah. I’m trying to do cards now — the most simple four-by-six with colors. And in their defense, I’m not coming down hard on legislators — they’re not specialists, they’re generalists. It might be education committee and transportation committee and appropriations, whatever. They have to know a lot of different areas, and even though Missouri and Illinois have long sessions — like five or six months a year — they have other lives much of the time. It is hard for them to grasp things in a short amount of time. I’ve had some back and forth with my colleagues who say we should still write high-level academic papers. I’m like, I’m doing four-by-six cards now. I’m sure there’s a middle ground there, but it’s hard to find.

Josh Bandoch (13:59): Well, the four-by-six is a great place to start. What’s your thesis? What are you trying to say? Can you get that into one sentence? Do you have a couple of key points you’d like to make? But then how do you turn that into something compelling? I would say you do at least one of two things. Ideally, you would have a story. If you’ve got 30 seconds to pitch school choice, you might start by saying, let me tell you a story about little Bobby or little Sally — this is what it meant to him, he was here and now he’s here — and you condense that story. Or you make a moral claim that’s going to grab their attention. People’s morals differ based on, roughly speaking, their politics, but you have to make a moral claim that’s going to resonate with them.

So if you’re talking to somebody on the left, their morals are sensitive to claims over equity. If you were talking to somebody in an urban school district and you wanted to get them to support school choice, and let’s say they’re on the left, you might say, look, our school system is deeply inequitable and we need to fix it. And they’re like, huh, yeah, it is — tell me more. You’ve got to figure out what you want to say, but then make sure you’re framing it in a way that is compelling for your audience.

Susan Pendergrass (15:15): So if folks want to find your book and learn how to get what they want, when and where will it be available?

Josh Bandoch (15:22): It’s available April 21st, and it’s available anywhere you can buy books — Amazon, Barnes & Noble.

Susan Pendergrass (15:24): And you said you spent 10 years researching this — tell me about it.

Josh Bandoch (15:33): Yeah, a combination of research and practice. Ten years of on-and-off reading as much as possible — psychology, neuroscience, primarily.

Susan Pendergrass (15:41): Yeah, that’s fascinating. It is — surprisingly, for what I do full time — an easy part to forget. I’ve always felt like if I just lay out facts and fair arguments, the rest will take care of itself.

Josh Bandoch (15:58): Well, those things are necessary, but they’re not sufficient. They’re necessary because our job, working at think tanks, is to make sure the foundation is strong. We have a policy recommendation, and we have to make sure we have really good reasons to think it’s going to be effective — that it’s been tested elsewhere, or all the data indicates this is probably going to work. That’s necessary. It’s not sufficient. The persuasion layer on top of that is what takes your good idea to a good idea somebody else wants to embrace.

Susan Pendergrass (16:30): Yeah, I think it’s great. Like you said, it’s helpful in so many parts of your life. It comes right up to the very edge of manipulation, but pulls back a little bit. It is helpful for getting what you want — whether you’re buying a car or agreeing with your spouse on the paint color for the wall. It’s a really smart approach.

Well, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast and telling us all about it. It’s fascinating stuff and I really appreciate you taking the time. Thanks, Josh.

Josh Bandoch (16:58): It’s a pleasure, thank you so much.

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Take Missouri’s 2018 decision to remove the 174-day minimum school year requirement. The goal was to give school districts greater flexibility in structuring their academic calendars. It worked. By 2023, nearly one third of Missouri districts had adopted four-day school weeks. The policy also had an unintended consequence—students now spend significantly less time in school.

While schools are still required to meet the minimum 1,044-hour requirement, Institute research shows that the average Missouri student is going to school 17 to 29 fewer hours per year than before. Over the course of an entire K–12 education, this equates to losing nearly a quarter of a school year.

This phenomenon is not unique to education policy. Unintended consequences abound in economic and social policies.

• Raising the Minimum Wage: The intention is to help low-income workers earn a living wage. In practice, however, higher labor costs often lead businesses to cut jobs, reduce hours, or replace workers with automation—hurting the very people the policy was meant to help.
• Housing and Zoning Regulations: Efforts to control urban development often result in reduced housing supply, making homes and apartments more expensive. In places with strict zoning laws, such as California and New York, these regulations have contributed to skyrocketing housing costs and homelessness crises.
• Corporate Tax Increases: Policymakers impose higher taxes on corporations to generate more government revenue, but companies respond by moving operations overseas, reducing investment, or passing costs onto consumers.

Public policies are often crafted with the best intentions, yet they reshape human behavior in unpredictable ways. When policymakers overlook economic incentives and fail to anticipate secondary effects, the result is often worse than the problem they set out to fix.

As Missouri’s school calendar experiment shows, flexibility in education policy may be valuable, but policymakers must exercise caution. Legislators should weigh not just the direct outcomes of a policy but also the unintended consequences that ripple through society.

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Since September 29, 2023, Kansas City has required new home builders to adhere to the most recent energy code standards, labeled 2021 IECC. In doing so, Kansas City leaped over a few previous iterations of the code, updated every three years. The result has been a drop in the number of new construction permits sought due to the dramatically higher cost of construction the new standards require.

As a recent article in the Kansas City Business Journal points out, “Through May — the most-recent data available — Kansas City approved 132 single-family permits across the three counties it covers. By that time last year, it had granted 480. The year before that, builders pulled 346 permits through May.”

Even that number is high, because it includes applications submitted before the new energy code standards were put in place. The actual number of single-family permits issued in Kansas City under the new energy code is 32.

Proponents of the new regulations argue they are necessary to increase energy efficiency and lower energy costs. Fair enough. But those savings come with their own costs of construction. It’s a trade-off. Public policy almost always presents us with such trade-offs. If policymakers want to increase energy efficiency without abruptly killing new home construction, they need to work on some sort of compromise. Ordinance 240434 is one such effort, but its consideration is being repeatedly put off. Regardless of the exact solution, Kansas City leaders need to show some urgency to fix this problem.

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In this episode, Susan Pendergrass speaks with Ryan Bourne, the R. Evan Scharf Chair for the Public Understanding of Economics at the Cato Institute and editor of the book The War on Prices: How Popular Misconceptions about Inflation, Prices, and Value Create Bad Policy. They discuss the effects of price controls, recent interventions in the economy, how to remind people about free market principals, and more.

Ryan Bourne occupies the R. Evan Scharf Chair for the Public Understanding of Economics at Cato and is the author of the recent books Economics In One Virus, and The War on Prices. He has written on numerous economic issues, including fiscal policy, inequality, minimum wages, infrastructure spending, the cost of living and rent control.

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One of the primary problems in the affordable housing debate is that the phrase “affordable housing” means different things to different people—and, more to the point, that different people don’t know what they might be agreeing to by accepting the premise that housing is “unaffordable.”

What is meant when someone says that we don’t have affordable housing? What if my underlying definition of “unaffordable housing” is “housing that isn’t free”? To have a useful conversation about affordable housing, we must establish some consensus around what our expectations are for both “affordability” and for “housing.”

From my perspective, the first necessary point of consensus has to be that able-bodied Americans are expected to pay at least something for their housing. While that might seem like a superfluous thing to stipulate, it isn’t. If housing is in fact a “human right” as some activists assert, then assigning any dollar figure or percentage of anyone’s income is inherently a violation of that right. What sort of “human right” could be denied on the basis of cost?

If there is an expectation that people (in general) should be paying for their own housing, how much should people be expected to pay?

As the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, notes, there are many ways in which “affordability” can be defined by researchers and policymakers. Researchers and policymakers could look at average incomes in a metropolitan statistical area (MSA). They could use median incomes in a county and establish an absolute floor for affordable housing costs. They could create ratios, they could bundle together utilities with housing costs or not consider utilities at all, and they could transform data in myriad ways to come to reasonable, but radically different, conclusions.

You can see the issue.

But despite the plethora of possible (and possibly contradictory) affordable housing definitions, HUD has generally settled on a set definition of what is “affordable” that it applies to many of its programs. As the department explains on its website:

In the 1940s, the maximum affordable rent for federally subsidized housing was set at 20 percent of income, which rose to 25 percent of income in 1969 and 30 percent of income in 1981. Over time, the 30 percent [gross income] threshold also became the standard for owner-occupied housing, and it remains the indicator of affordability for housing in the United States. Keeping housing costs below 30 percent of income is intended to ensure that households have enough money to pay for other nondiscretionary costs; therefore, policymakers consider households who spend more than 30 percent of income on housing costs to be housing cost burdened.

Defining affordability can be like listening to good music—you recognize it when you hear it, and others may still disagree with you. But the HUD definition would seem to be a reasonable one, and that it has been adopted beyond the bureaucracy as a general rule makes it more compelling as a starting point for this discussion. While this “general rule” is a good starting point, the details for defining “affordable housing” matter, too. More on that in the next blog.

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On May 10, 2022, Aaron Hedlund, chief economist at the Show-Me Institute, and Tyler Goodspeed, Kleinheinz Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, discussed the impact of decades-high inflation on the economy, workers, and consumers, as well as the role of the Federal Reserve in solving the problem and the risk of the next recession.

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Aaron Hedlund is chief economist at Show-Me Institute and an associate professor with tenure in the economics department at the University of Missouri-Columbia as well as a research fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

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They discuss the recent GameStop stock controversy, the idea of a $15 federal minimum wage and more.

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Missouri’s Cosmetology and Barber Licensing Board is designed to consist of 11 members (though there are only 9 currently): 7 members who hold either a cosmetology or barber license (only 5 currently), 2 members who own accredited cosmetology or barber schools, and 2 members of the public. With these numbers, this board is dominated by license holders, and they have the influence to make one of two things happen: They could relax regulations and make things easier for themselves as licensed workers, or they could make regulations stricter and make it harder for others to enter into the industry. More often, we see the latter occurring because license holders don’t want more licensed workers in the market—that’s just more people competing with them for customers. And stricter regulations can translate into fewer options and higher prices for consumers.

Of course, those in the industry have specific knowledge, which could be helpful in creating rules and regulations for a given industry. However, it’s difficult to reconcile this with the fact that those in the industry have direct self-interest in keeping the barriers to entry high.

If regulators are creating and enforcing regulations based on their interest and not the interest of the public, we have a problem. This isn’t to say that this is definitively happening with the Cosmetology and Barber Licensing Board, but the incentive is there. Occupational licensing puts a burden on workers and consumers, and if there are additional problems such as regulatory capture, Missourians may be burdened even more. It may be time to rethink some aspects of occupational licensing, such as the structure of the boards or if these occupations need to be licensed at all.

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Economics must not be relegated to classrooms and statistical offices and must not be left to esoteric circles. It is the philosophy of human life and action and concerns everybody and everything. It is the pith of civilization and of man’s human existence.

This quote by Ludwig von Mises in his magnum opus, Human Action, is a plea to the common citizen to learn economics. At first glance, it might seem exaggerated. Is economics really relevant to everybody and everything? And is it really the essence of civilization?

In fact, it is. As Mises argues elsewhere in the book, society is simply the cooperative interaction of different individuals. But how does this cooperative interaction come to be? Human nature is selfish, so why don’t we just fight each other to get the things we want?

The answer, according to Mises, is the division of labor. By specializing in tasks and exchanging goods, each individual actually benefits more in the long run than if they were to fight each other. Division of labor is cooperation. This is the foundation of economics. It’s also the foundation of civilization.

However, the fact that the division of labor is more productive is not, in itself, sufficient for cooperation to take place. Each individual must also recognize this fact. Without understanding the benefits of cooperation, individuals would give in to their short-term instinct of plunder. Thankfully, humans are rational beings and eventually realized that cooperation and exchange are better than barbarism.

However, cooperation through the division of labor—the foundation of civilization—is constantly under attack by socialists who want to dismantle the market system. This market system based on property rights is nothing but the extension of the division of labor and exchange.

This is why Mises makes his plea for everyone to learn economics. If people lose this insight about the benefits of cooperation and give into short-term instincts for plunder and control, our society would suffer greatly.

Mises summed it up nicely in Human Action:

Everybody thinks of economics whether he is aware of it or not. In joining a political party and in casting his ballot, the citizen implicitly takes a stand upon essential economic theories.” Giving into rhetoric without examining economics yourself is “tantamount to the abandonment of self-determination and to yielding to other people’s domination.

Don’t let the political winds sway you. Don’t let ideas go unchallenged. Learn economics yourself. The teachings of Ludwig von Mises are a great place to start.

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The first truth is that it’s impossible to list all the supplies that go into the creation of any item. Sure, your morning coffee is coffee beans and water, but don’t forget about the bag for the beans, the coffee filter and maker, the cup, the delivery truck it all came on, and the barista. Each of these items has individual components as well. The coffee cup includes paper and plastic, and it comes from a factory, which needs metal for machines, electricity, and workers who need safety training and gloves—this can go on forever. The supplies that went into your morning joe are so complex and widespread that they are innumerable.

The second truth from “I, Pencil” is that no one is directing the infinitely complex process of getting that cup of coffee in your hand. No one person decides how much electricity to give to the plastic factory, which paper should become coffee cups, where the cups should be delivered, or who should buy the coffee today. No one person controls the supplies for your coffee, and yet there it is every morning at your local coffee shop.

Here’s the ultimate insight: your coffee is ready every morning because of people working in the free market. Millions of people have the freedom to make their own decisions using their individual knowledge. These decisions linked the supplies together that brought you your coffee. If it were up to one mind, or even the government, to link these innumerable pieces together, it would take an impossible amount of time and resources. Worse yet, your coffee would be much more expensive, and it might not be there every morning!

So when you buy your next cup of coffee, think of “I, Pencil” and remember that markets work.

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As anyone who took Economics 101 would expect, the increase in hotel room supply will drive down prices. And a drop in prices can hurt hotel operators. This is why—in a free-market system—hotel operators may be hesitant to build new hotels. If they overbuild, their investment won’t be as profitable.

But in Kansas City, they aren’t just spending their own money. They are receiving subsidies in the form of abatements and tax-increment financing to shield them from risk. Recall that one development attorney made exactly this point in a recent letter to the folks who dole out such subsidies.

As a result, Kansas City is in a predicament: too many hotels rooms resulting in lower than ideal occupancy rates. To fill as many rooms as they can, hotels will reduce their rates and settle for lower profits. VisitKC refers to these completely expected free-market forces as “destabilization.”

VisitKC wants to avoid this. So one of their “strategies for combatting the destabilization” is “increased resources for VisitKC” including a “re-focused” sales and marketing strategy. (A copy of the Visit KC presentation is available below.) In short, they want to spend money doing what hotels should be doing themselves: selling hotel rooms. To their credit, they have also called for a halt in development subsidies for hotels.

To recap: city hall spent so much taxpayer money subsidizing hotels that more hotels were built than necessary because developers were shielded from the risks of expansion. Now that overproduction risks reducing hotel rates, city hall wants to spend taxpayer money. As I said on KCPT’s Ruckus, yes, this is as stupid as it sounds. Kansas City must do better.

tif april 10 2019.pdf

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Kind of.

At a certain point the grill gets cramped and workers elbow for space. The fourth or fifth flipper might increase burger output, but at a decreasing rate relative to the gain in burger production from the first or second hire. This is what is known in economics as the “Law of Diminishing Returns.”

Unfortunately, when it comes to education, this is a law that many don’t believe exists.

Last week, the Kansas Association of School Boards (KASB) released the State Education Report Card for 2016. In it, KASB ranks states, including Kansas and Missouri, on fifteen performance measures. It then compares that ranking to state spending per pupil. The Executive Director for KASB speaks to Kansas coming in at 29th for spending per pupil in 2014 and then elaborates,

In the long run, this threatens our ability to compete with other states economically for not just high-paying jobs, but almost any job.

Really? If the state doesn’t spend a few hundred more dollars per pupil it will set the entire economy back? This argument suggests that the more you spend, the better you’ll be—or the more flippers on the grill, the more burgers you’ll make.

As it turns out, the data they present offer a great example of the law of diminishing returns.

 In the chart below, I plotted funding per pupil on the horizontal axis and educational ranking on the vertical axis. Each point on this chart represents a state. I noted Missouri, Kansas, and states that KASB “aspire to be” on this chart. If the KASB’s diagnosis is accurate, then we would see a steep downward sloping line (or trend), because that would mean that an increase in education spending comes with a significant improvement in outcome rankings (lower-ranking numbers are better). The flatter the line/trend, the weaker the relationship between funding and outcome rank. This is a concept in statistics known as the coefficient of determination.

The line is pretty darn flat. In fact, education funding per pupil only explains about 10% of a state’s improvement in educational outcome rank.

So, what does this mean? Well, since 90% of the variation in state performance is determined by factors other than spending (a good example of which might be how that money is spent), we need to look beyond simply pumping more money into our schools if we want to improve those schools’ performance. School funding is subject to the law of diminishing returns. And I think now is a good time to go get a cheeseburger.

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Scholars and analysts at the Show-Me Institute have written extensively on this topic, arguing that raising the minimum wage is not good policy. That is still the case, since the fundamentals of economic theory have not changed.

Instead of reading another installment from me, I’ll defer to Christina Romer, former chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. Here is what she wrote in the New York Times about her former boss’s proposal to raise the federal minimum wage back in early 2013.

There is a belief that the lack of competition fosters a lower wage. Romer writes, “I suspect that few people, including economists, find this argument compelling today. Company towns are a thing of the past.” In the end, “Robust competition is a powerful force to ensure that workers are paid what they contribute to their employer’s bottom line.”

Some see using the minimum wage as an anti-poverty tool. “Most arguments for instituting or raising a minimum wage are based on fairness and redistribution,” she notes. But contrary to this view she rightly observes that “It’s precisely because the redistributive effects of a minimum wage are complicated that most economists prefer other ways to help low-income families.” Instead, like anyone else committed to really helping the poor, Romer advocates using the existing tax system. The earned-income tax credit “is very well targeted—the subsidy goes only to poor families—and could easily be made more generous.”

“So where does all this leave us?” she asks. Her reply is that “the economics of the minimum wage are complicated and it is far from obvious what an increase would accomplish.”

What Romer believed in 2013 is still true today, and it applies whether one is talking about federal or city minimum wages. Imposing minimum wages is just bad economics and misguided policy that does not help the most needy.

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This paper examines the history of benefit enhancements in Missouri’s main teacher pension plan from 1975 to the present. The key organizing principle of this analysis is pension wealth, a standard measure, well established in the economics literature, which reflects both the size of an individual’s annual pension as well as the number of years over which it is collected. Missouri repeatedly and considerably enhanced its pension benefit formula from 1975 to 2001, resulting in large increases in pension wealth, particularly for those retiring in their 50s with 25-30 years of service. Although many states have reduced benefits in recent years, especially for new teachers, this has not been the case in Missouri. Indeed, two enhancements that were scheduled to expire in 2013 were extended or made permanent.

Read the full case study:

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