The post September 6 Event – Corey DeAngelis: The Case for School Choice appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Republicans in the House of Representatives will vote on a bill that would abolish the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), eliminate the national income tax and replace it with a national consumption tax.

Fox News Digital has learned that the House will be voting on Georgia Republican Rep. Buddy Carter’s reintroduced Fair Tax Act that aims to reel in the IRS and remove the national income tax, as well as other taxes, and replace them with a single consumption tax.

The vote on the bill was made as part of the deal between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and members of the House Freedom Caucus and was pushed forward in his quest for the gavel last week.

Am I saying there’s a chance?! No, not really. The Senate and the president will almost certainly reject abolishing the income tax, and it’s not entirely clear that even the House has the votes to pass it through the chamber. Then there’s the sticky issue of repealing the 16th Amendment, which enabled the national income tax; if this law were to pass, you’d need to repeal the amendment so that we won’t someday end up with both a sales tax and a renewed income tax! Details, details.

But is a national move away from the income tax the right idea? Undoubtedly. Income taxes are destructive to growth at all levels of government, and as Institute analysts press for the elimination of Missouri’s income taxes, our federal counterparts should consider similar tax reductions and reform. Whether this latest effort is the best approach or even has a snowball’s chance of success remains to be seen, but I’m glad the conversation is at least being had. It’s overdue.

The post Federal Lawmakers to Consider (Longshot) Income Tax Repeal Bill appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Recorded on December 1, 2022 at the World Chess Hall of Fame in St. Louis, Missouri

Tony Woodlief is Executive Vice President at the State Policy Network. He helps oversee SPN operations, supports SPN’s president in her guidance of the leadership team, and helps ensure the organization’s projects and programs measure success, evolve as SPN grows, and maintain alignment with our vision and mission.

Tony previously served as president of the Bill of Rights Institute, and before that the Market-Based Management Institute. He has also served as president of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. An alumnus of the University of North Carolina, he has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan, and an MFA from Wichita State University. Tony has appeared in media outlets including Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, National Review, and C-SPAN’s Washington Journal.

Tony is also the author of I, Citizen: A Blueprint for Reclaiming American Self-Governance. In writing I, Citizen, Tony conducted extensive research on American public opinion to find out what Americans believe and uncover the source of their political animosities. Through his research, Tony discovered that America is more united than divided, despite what the pundits tell us, and traced the source of our perceived animosity to a small minority of dedicated partisans within the political establishment of Washington, DC. I, Citizen tells the story of how these partisans have created the myth of a divided America and how they’ve concentrated power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and partisan elites, and offers practical solutions for how we can reclaim our right to self-governance by focusing on solutions and commonalities closer to home.

The post WATCH: The Red Vs Blue Myth and the Real Threat to American Stability 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.

It turns out that Saint Louis residents do not, in fact, pay for new buses through local tax increases. When it comes to funding capital expenditures for transit, like new buses, the federal government provides most of the money. In a three-year period around the time of the most recent tax increase, the federal government paid approximately 77 percent of Metro’s capital expenditures, and even 10 percent of operating costs. After the last tax increase allowed Metro to continue service on some routes, Metro did buy 10 new buses. However, a federal grant paid for most of the buses.

If Metro wants new, larger buses for the 70-Grand route without making major changes to the system, the most obvious options are to receive a federal grant or raise taxes further.

This underlines the point that more than 90 percent of local taxes for Metro busses go to the operation of the system and not new vehicles. And unfortunately for Saint Louis area taxpayers, the cost of operating the Metro bus system continues to rise. Over the last 20 years, Metro’s bus fleet has been cut in half, ridership has fallen, and total passenger miles have decreased. However, the cost of operating the bus system has increased at an average of 4 percent per year. In fact, the annual operating cost per available Metro bus seat has risen from $2,869 per seat in 1991 to $9,360 per seat in 2012.  This represents a 6 percent increase per year, much higher than inflation and even increases in fuel prices.

In the last decade, Metro has failed to control costs, despite significant federal aid in capital expenditures. Metro therefore required tax increases to maintain the underutilized routes that go to low-population density areas. These factors mean Metro requires higher taxes and more federal dollars to buy larger buses to increase service on the city’s busiest routes.

What Metro needs most of all is greater flexibility to address cost issues and still provide a base level of service to outer areas.

The post Where Are The Metro Buses We Paid For? (Part 2) appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The National Center on Time and Learning reports that more than 170 schools around the country have extended their school year to more than 190 days, including at least two schools in Missouri. Both schools in Missouri and the majority of schools across the country that are opting for longer days or longer years are charter schools. For example, the renowned national charter network Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) lists “more time” as one of their strategies for delivering a high-quality education to their students. Students at KIPP Inspire Academy in Saint Louis attend school from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. every other Saturday. Additionally, students are required to attend summer school. Having visited several KIPP schools, I commend their efforts to improve education outcomes for disadvantaged students. Nonetheless, I do not believe their strategy should be mandated everywhere.

As Hess notes, many families are able to provide enriching activities for their children in the summer, like vacations and summer camps. For these families, summer school may stifle their learning. On the other hand, some students may benefit from the additional learning time. Too often, researchers and policymakers develop a “we know best” mentality. When they believe a program or solution will benefit individuals, they attempt to mandate that strategy for everyone. In reality, people are different and need different solutions.

When we mandate solutions, we stifle innovation. Rather than dictate how, when, and where students must attend school, we should give families the ability to choose the school that best meets their needs.

The post Extending The School Year: Good Strategy, Bad Public Policy appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Hilton asks, “Greedy Or A Coincidence?”

I respond “hypocritical,” largely for the following two reasons:

(1) Moore is doing exactly what he is condemning in his film: accepting taxpayer money.

In the film, he assails Wall Street executives for their greed and for accepting bailout cash, but apparently he is not opposed to accepting tax credits himself. From a Fox News article on the subject:

Any amount of taxpayer subsidy is a potential black eye for Moore, who argued emphatically in “Capitalism: A Love Story” that Wall Street banks and other big companies didn’t deserve the bailout money they received from the federal government as the economy was tanking.

(2) Moore was vehemently opposed to film production incentives such as tax credits before he was a recipient.

At a conference in July 2008, Moore said what I’ve been saying all along on this blog:

“These are large multinational corporations — Viacom, GE, Rupert Murdoch — that own these studios,” said Moore at the Traverse City event. “Why do they need our money, from Michigan, from our taxpayers, when we’re already broke here? I mean, they play one state against another, and so they get all this free cash when they’re making billions already in profits. What’s the thinking behind that?”

The post The Tragic Ironies of Capitalism: A Love Story appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Snyder’s story is getting a lot of attention in the national media. “The Today Show” and Fox News have both reported on it.

By requiring licenses, the government is telling individuals that it knows better than they do. It’s paternalism in another form. The parents in Snyder’s neighborhood know her very well, so they are in a much better position to determine whether her home is a safe environment for their children.

Furthermore, having a daycare license does not ensure that a person is fit to supervise children. Earlier this year, for example, a woman running a licensed daycare in Arkansas accidentally placed windshield wiper fluid in her refrigerator and later served it to children! As a parent, I would much rather leave my kids under the supervision of a person like Lisa Snyder than a person who can’t tell the difference between wiper fluid and Gatorade. The Department of Human Services would feel differently, apparently.

Daycare licensure requirements do not result in better outcomes (e.g., fewer ER visits), nor do they improve the general welfare. In this case, all the involved parties (i.e., Snyder, parents, and children) are happy with their current arrangement. If the DHS gets its way, the parents will either have to stay home from work or pay a licensed daycare provider to watch their children.

Professional licensing has many negative consequences, which contributors to this blog have discussed extensively. The Show-Me Institute has produced scholarly work on this subject, as well.

The post No Good Deed Goes Unpunished in Michigan, the Literal Nanny State appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I assume this piece was not original to the Post, but it may have been. I remember about 15 years ago when a state rep from south Saint Louis County wrote a similarly themed article for the Post, and then got in a lot of (political) trouble when it turned out she had just copied it from somewhere else. I remember her name, but don’t feel like printing it. She did lose her next election, if I recall correctly. (All that stuff predated the web by a few years, so no free links are available.)

Not everything he (or she) writes here is crazy or wrong, so feel free to take my lack of comment on certain areas as being along the lines of agreement in those instances:

Dear Tea Party Members:

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly, Ameren UE, regulated by the US Department of Energy.

All true, as it goes, but are you really that dependent on the government to get you out of bed in the morning? And didn’t the alarm clock get built in the first place by the mechanics of the free market?

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility, Missouri American Water.

This is the first flat-out error: Missouri-American is a regulated, private company, not a municipal water utility.

The water was heated by the public natural gas monopoly, Laclede Gas,

Laclede Gas is a private company.

and disposed of by the the municipal sewer utility, Metropolitian Sewer District of St. Louis.

A government entity — ask Tom Sullivan about them.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the Federal Communication Commission regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

This totally ignores the role that private companies and people played in all of this, and ignores the fundamental question of whether this regulation is necessary. I can guarantee you the television needs of Americans would be met just fine without government regulation.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

This is all true, and a legitimate role for various levels of government, but let’s not pretend that nobody in America was able to feed their families before the government got involved. A nation of farmers fed itself just fine.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory,

Does the author really think people could not tell time before the government got involved?

I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation,

The private provision of highways is very common in other countries.

possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service.

The Post Office versus FedEx and UPS? Enough said.

If I had kids, I would probably drop them off at the nearby public school funded by the state and federal Department of Education.

Many Americans choose private education for their children for a number of reasons, the failure of certain public school systems among them. Clearly, there are many excellent public school systems as well.

At lunch time, I pick up a bite to eat at a nearby restaurant that has been inspected by the local department of health which enforces state and federal guidelines for food safety and workplace safety. I then return to my cubical where I listen to the local FCC regulated radio station

As with television, I will guarantee you that, beyond distributing the channel spectrum as a common good, government involvement is not necessary for radio to operate, at all.

as I work on a computer that has been certified by the Consumer Products Safety Comission to be safe and compliant with FCC Part 15B regulations.

The computer industry has grown as it has during the past 40 years because of private markets, not government involvement.

Sometimes instead of work, I go on a business trip and use an airplane inspected by the Nation Transportation Safety Bureau to travel. But first I have to take off my shoes and anything metal as a walk through the the inspection station set up by the Transportation Safety Adminstration.

Watching grandpa get a body cavity inspection because he shares a nickname with a terrorist is not an argument for government success.

After checking the weather with the National Weather Service, the Federal Aviation Adminstration gives the all clear for the airplane taxi off the tarmac and to take off.

Then, after spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the US Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, I drive back to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes

People CAN build things on their own, you know.

and the fire marshall’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

It’s a sad view of society that assumes we would all descend into chaos without government force — perhaps a true view, but still a sad one. I tend to think people cooperate in many more ways without government coercion than the author does.

At home, I can call up my grandparents on a cellular telephone that is FCC Part 15B complaint and designated on a frequency regulated by the National Telecomunication and Information Administration.

As with computers, the telecommunications revolution is attributable far more to private initiative than to government control and regulation.

I then log onto the Internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration, an agency of the Department of Defense which is the parent agency of the US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps who are defending our country so that I can enjoy my freedom to post on Freerepublic and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.

End of letter. Many of the points the writer makes are valid to varying degrees, but he discounts or ignores the role individuals and private actors played in many of the advancements he credits to government. What is also missing is any even remote debate over whether or not these things are the proper role of government as set by our Constitution. As it stands, the letter makes Americans sound like a nation of people who could not blow their nose (the closest to a clean scatological reference I could think of) without government involvement and approval.

Seriously, you thank the government for helping you get out of bed in the morning? That is not the type of life I want to live and not the type of country I want the United States to become.

The post Intriguing, Yet Frightening, Comment Over at Political Fix appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As for the price of the ad, which ran in USA Today and the Wall Street Journal (among others), Judson Berger with Foxnews.com found that “A full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal runs between $206,000 and $264,000, and a full-page ad in USA Today runs between $112,000 and $217,000.” So, there is little surprise that the advertisement has spurred some critical remarks.

On the same topic, Citigroup’s $400 million contract to name the newly built Mets stadium “Citi Field” came into question as Republicans Vincent Ignizio and James Oddo suggested the stadium’s name be modified to “Citi/Taxpayer Field” in order to pay homage to those who kept the company afloat.

The FDIC recently clarified that transparency concerning federal bailout money is a requirement rather than a suggestion. Three major companies in Missouri that received financial aid include: Blue Valley Bancorp (Kansas City), which received $21.75 million; Hawthorne Bancshares Inc. (Lee’s Summit), which accepted $30.26 million; and Enterprise Financial Services Corp. (Saint Louis), which accepted $35 million.

The post The Reality of Tax Appropriation Via Bailout Sets In appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Before the law went into effect, however, opponents filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn it. The case has since made it to the Missouri Supreme Court, though attorneys don’t expect oral arguments until sometime next year.

For now, the issue has captured a nationwide audience and has been spotlighted on media outlets such as Fox News. And it’s the talk of midwifery circles.

However, the article does include a picture of a bunch of cute kids who were delivered by midwives, and some useful definitions of different kinds of midwives for those of you who haven’t been obsessing over the midwife saga like I have need a refresher. I just had to point out this article because I couldn’t let Midwifery Week go by without a post on the subject.

The post All Eyes on the Midwives appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In the 1991 remake of the classic movie Father of the Bride, Steve Martin goes into a grocery store and begins ripping open hot dog bun packages. When confronted by a store clerk, he explains: “I’ll tell you what I’m doing. I want to buy eight hot dogs and eight hot dog buns to go with them. But no one sells eight hot dog buns! They only sell twelve hot dog buns. So I end up paying for four buns I don’t need. So I am removing the superfluous buns.”

Martin’s character would probably have favored government regulation of bun-packaging practices. More recently, activists have begun demanding “unbundling” in another industry: they want to require cable TV companies to sell channels “a la carte” rather than bundling them together in “tiers.”

This effort to force cable companies to sell their cable channels individually is just as misguided as Martin’s demand to purchase individual hot dog buns. Companies don’t bundle products together to “force” customers to purchase things they don’t want. Rather, bundling is a mechanism for lowering the per-unit cost of goods and services by spreading costs over a larger number of units. That benefits consumers because the price per bun—or per channel—is lower than it would be if the company were forced to sell their product one piece at a time.

This is easy to see in the case of hot dog buns. The price of a 12-pack of buns includes the manufacturing costs of the buns, but it also includes the labor and materials needed for packaging, shipping, stocking, and ringing up the product. Packaging a 12-pack of buns, for example, might only require three times as much material and labor as packaging an individual bun by itself, thereby reducing the per-bun packaging costs by a factor of four. These savings are passed onto the consumer.

The same can be seen in another example of bundling—the newspaper. Some readers read the business section but not the sports section. So why don’t newspapers let their customers pick and choose which sections of the newspapers they want to receive?

The reason is that most of a newspaper’s costs don’t vary by the number of customers who take a particular section. Delivering the paper, for example, costs virtually the same whether the paper is fat or thin. And the columnists and reporters who produce the content in the sports sections will collect the same salary regardless of how many readers get their section. So the better question is: if it doesn’t cost more, why not include every section in every paper?

Precisely the same considerations apply to cable TV. Most of the costs of delivering cable content to a consumer’s home are fixed costs that don’t change with the number of channels an individual subscriber receives. The Fox News Channel, for example, costs the same to produce whether it has one viewer or a billion. And the infrastructure that delivers that content to a consumer’s home costs virtually the same to deploy whether the consumer takes one channel or 100.

Advocates of a la carte pricing seem to think that, if 50 cable channels cost $50/month, then one cable channel ought to cost $1/month. But that’s absurd. Taking only one channel doesn’t make cable infrastructure any cheaper to build or maintain. In fact, more staff might be needed to cope with the greater administrative overhead of keeping track of which customers have chosen which channels.

But won’t cable companies at least save money by not having to pay as much in license fees to the studios that create television channels? It’s not likely. Cable channels keep their rates low by spreading the costs over tens of millions of households. If the number of subscribers per channel dropped dramatically, the channels would be forced to raise their rates dramatically.

In practice mandating “a la carte” pricing would force cable companies to drastically raise per-channel prices in order to cover their costs. The result would be that consumers would pay about the same, on average, but would get a lot fewer channels for their money. That’s every bit as irrational as Steve Martin’s bun crusade.

Timothy B. Lee is an editor at the Show-Me Institute, a non-partisan public policy research organization based in St. Louis. This article originally appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times.

The post ‘A La Carte’ Cable: Bad Economics, Bad for Consumers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.