In one of the more memorable exchanges of the interview, Donahue asks Friedman a question many are still asking today:

When you see around the globe, the maldistribution of wealth, the desperate plight of millions of people in underdeveloped countries. When you see so few “haves” and so many “have-nots.” When you see the greed and the concentration of power. Did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism and whether greed is a good idea to run on?

Friedman’s reply has become standard among capitalists like me. “Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed?”

Friedman continued:

You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who is greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests.

The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way.

In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade.

If you want to know where the masses are worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.

In the years since the Donahue interview, the free enterprise system has continued to improve the lot of ordinary people. Yet today, possibly more than in Friedman’s day, Americans are showing support for socialist policies. Shockingly, a 2019 Gallup poll found that four out of ten Americans supported some form of socialism.

What happened? How can socialism be gaining popularity even as confidence in capitalism wanes? The problem is that a defense of capitalism like Friedman’s satisfies the head but not the heart. When people—especially young people—look around the world today, many of them see it as Donahue described it. As a result, they question the morality of capitalism.

Enter Arthur Brooks.

Brooks is the past president of the American Enterprise Institute, a social scientist, a former university professor, and a former professional French horn player. Yes, you read that right. Brooks has written best-selling books such as The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America and Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt.

Recently, Brooks released a documentary, The Pursuit, which is now available on Netflix.

In it, he asks, “From 1970 until today, the percentage of the world’s population living at starvation’s door has decreased by 80 percent. Two billion people have been pulled out of starvation level poverty. What did that?”

His answer is the same as Friedman’s—free enterprise. Indeed, the messages of Free to Choose and The Pursuit are essentially the same: No other system has succeeded like free enterprise in allowing people to direct their own destiny and pull themselves out of poverty.

The key difference between the two is that when Brooks discusses how to help the most disadvantaged, it’s clear that he’s making not just an intellectual argument but also an emotional appeal. He cares about human flourishing.  From the very beginning, he frames the argument for capitalism as a moral one, saying “the point of the American experience is basically a moral consensus that our society should push opportunity to the people who need it most. This is our pursuit, and it’s predicated on two fundamental moral principles: human dignity and human potential.” Brooks shows us this as he walks the streets of India, once a scene of abject poverty during the days of democratic socialism. Now, after free enterprise has been released, we see progress. Hindol Sengupta, editor-at-large of Fortune India, says it like this, “Capitalism allows human beings to choose an action to fulfill their own destiny. . . . Forget per-capita GDP—we didn’t even have per-capita hope.”  

None of this is to say Friedman did not care about the poor, but his arguments can come across as those of an academic. They are for the head. Through The Pursuit, Brooks provides the answer for the heart.

Add The Pursuit to your list of required viewing. Go watch it . . . after you watch the Friedman interview.

The post Movie Review: The Pursuit appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

So why is President Donald Trump taking Harley-Davidson—another U.S.-based global super-brand—to task?

A day after the company announced plans to serve the European market with motorcycles built in Europe, the president thundered: “A Harley-Davidson should never be built in another country—never!” He accused the company of hoisting the “white flag” of surrender and predicted “If they move, watch, it will be the beginning of the end.”

Harley-Davidson, Inc., made its announcement after the European Union raised tariffs on U.S.-made motorcycles by 25 percent—in retaliation to the 25 percent tariff on European exports of steel to the U.S. imposed by the Trump administration. Noting that the higher EU tariff would add approximately $2,200 to the average cost of a motorcycle exported from the U.S. to Europe, the company said:

Increasing international production to alleviate the EU tariff burden is not the company’s preference, but it represents the only sustainable option. Europe is a critical market for Harley-Davidson. In 2017, nearly 40,000 riders bought new Harley-Davidson motorcycles in Europe, and revenue generated from the EU countries is second only to the U.S.

The president said that he had “chided” Harley-Davidson executives on an earlier occasion for moving production to India as a way around high motorcycle tariffs in that country. But is it reasonable to expect a profit-seeking enterprise to keep all production and employment in the U.S., regardless of the cost in lost sales, profit, and overall competitiveness?

Certainly, the Trump Organization has not followed such a policy. Under licensing or other arrangements, it has fancy hotels bearing the Trump name in four different cities in India (Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, and Kolkata). Apart from Chicago, however, the Trump Organization has no luxurious hotels anywhere in the great American heartland. Why not?

Presumably, it made more sense from a business perspective to build hotels for the super-rich in India—though other cities in the American Midwest would have welcomed the same investment.

The president faulted Harley-Davidson for not being more “patient”—suggesting that his deliberately provocative approach to trade negotiations would force other nations to bend to his will for fear of losing access to the rich U.S. marketplace. As he said a couple of months ago— “Trade wars are good, and easy to win.”

But as Joe Haslag, the chief economist for the Show-Me Institute, notes, the president is playing “a very dangerous game,” because “the size, scale, and scope of the products that we are now talking about in increasingly acrimonious trade negotiations are staggering—a potentially U.S.-GDP-changing event.”

A grand strategy? Maybe, but early results are not promising. Mid Continent Nail in Poplar Bluff says its orders have dropped in half as a result of having to raise prices to make up for the higher cost of importing steel from Mexico. It has laid off 60 workers and says it may have to dismiss all of its 440 remaining workers by Labor Day.

In 2017, the Trump administration withdrew from the Trans Pacific Partnership—an agreement that would have reduced tariffs in Asian markets on motorcycles made in the U.S. That seems to have prompted Harley-Davidson’s earlier decision to build a manufacturing plant in Thailand. It may also have been a factor in the company’s decision to close its Kansas City manufacturing facility by 2019.

What caused the world-famous company with the “HOG” stock exchange symbol to make those choices? Surely it was rising tariffs on manufactured goods—a problem that does not exist in the luxury hotel business.

The post Trump vs. Harley-and the World appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Could the airport just be a legacy project? Two years ago, then–Aviation Department Director Mark VanLoh made it seem that way when he told the Northland Regional Chamber of Commerce, “You don’t have [all the information] yet. We don’t even have it yet. I know what I want because I want a new airport.” He just wanted it.

VanLoh is gone, but the strange enthusiasm for a single terminal continues. The new plan is just as over-the-top as the old one. The justifications for the spending come and go—claims of EPA mandates, TSA concerns, and airlines’ refusal to expand services—but the project itself remains the same: a $1.2-billion single terminal that is actually a downsizing of what we have now.

What is new in this round of the discussion is the financing and no-bid contracting. But regardless of who finances and builds the airport, the risk to Kansas City comes from the possibility of increased fees to airlines and passengers. Right now, Kansas City’s airport is very cheap for airlines, and travelers benefit with lots of flights from here. Increase the costs to airlines, and we risk losing that competitive advantage. Other airports have suffered after building new terminals for just that reason (Consider Cincinnati, Sacramento, or San Jose.).

The good news is that the city is no longer claiming that the airlines agreed to finance the project. This was never the case, despite incorrect claims from the Kansas City Star and the Kansas City Business Journal. In truth, the airlines merely agreed to pay higher rent for a new terminal while reserving their right to renegotiate once the terminal is built. They did not issue or back any debt; they accepted no risk.

Proponents of a new terminal are fond of telling us that the new terminal idea is not a Taj Mahal. In fact, they’ve been using that curious term over and over again for years (see the Google search here). The Taj Mahal, of course, is a 400-year-old elaborate mausoleum in India built to house an emperor’s wife. Such determination to settle for nothing less than a new terminal, however, combined with the candor of Mark VanLoh and the out-of-hand dismissal of cheaper alternatives, suggests that this is exactly what the new terminal is: a modern monument to political ego—not what is best for Kansas City.

The post Kansas City’s Airport: A Monument to Political Ego appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Dr. Strauss appears as part of a KMOV report on the status of the “China Hub” proposal in the Missouri Legislature’s Special Session, calling Aerotropolis a “pie in the sky” project. That segment is below:

Meanwhile, Dr. Haslag has written an article for the Columbia Business Times expressing similar concerns on the jobs front, saying that “the models used by DED [to estimate tax credit project success and job creation] have been discredited” predominantly because they fail to incorporate the cost of the government taking money from the private sector to fund the project. Dr. Haslag also tells a brief but useful story about the problem of trying to “count” jobs. (Emphasis mine)

There is a legend about employment and government projects involving Dr. Milton Friedman. During a visit to India, an official was taking Friedman on a tour of a public works project. New machinery was being used, and the official touted the number of jobs that were created by the project. Friedman responded by saying that if you wanted to count new jobs, the project leaders should have provided the workers with spoons instead of state-of-the-art construction equipment. If it is jobs we want, there are lots of silly ways to get those jobs created. A nobler goal is to find a set of rules that promotes opportunity for all, not just gifts graciously handed to a select few.

Our skepticism of the wide array of Aerotropolis job estimates has been well-documented. Dr. Strauss’s and Dr. Haslag’s analyses of the project again confirm the questionable nature of proponents’ jobs assessments.

The post SLU and Mizzou Economists Weigh in on Aerotropolis Jobs Estimates appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Countries where more people choose to invest in private schools may have other attributes, such as higher income levels or a greater commitment to education, that lead to better achievement. If this is the case, any positive correlation between private schooling and student achievement could reflect a country’s income or educational commitment rather than any beneficial effects of competition. Or it may be the case that low-quality public schools increase the demand for private schooling. If so, then it could seem that competition lowered public school quality when in fact the causal connection could be in the opposite direction.

To solve for this, West and Woessmann exploit a technique that economists call an instrumental variables approach. Essentially, they found a new variable — the size of a country’s Catholic population in 1900 — which is a useful predictor for the current share of schools that are private. Because the new variable is a good predictor of the variable they are really interested in (share of schools that are private), but is presumably not influenced by higher income levels or greater commitment to education, using this new variable is more useful for determining causality.

Their results (emphasis added):

Our results indicate that the share of schools that are privately operated has an economically and statistically significant positive effect on student achievement in mathematics, science, and reading, even after controlling for the current levels of Catholics and for the share of funding that privately operated schools receive from the government. Larger historical Catholic shares that translate into a ten percentage point larger private school sector today increase average student achievement on the math test by 9% of an international standard deviation. Science and reading achievement increase by roughly 5% of a standard deviation. These patterns are evident despite the fact that the contemporary share of Catholics in each country is negatively related to student achievement, suggesting that distinctive cultural features of traditionally Catholic countries are unlikely to be driving these results. Importantly, much of the positive effect of private school shares accrues to students in public schools, suggesting that the overall effect is not simply due to privately operated schools being more effective, but rather it reflects benefits of competition.

It’s not clear how applicable these results are to private school competition within only the United States or within individual states such as Missouri. However, if the same pattern holds for educational institutions in Missouri, then policies that encourage private school competition, like vouchers or tuition tax credits, will have spillover benefits for public school students as well — not just the recipients of educational aid.

By the way, those readers who are now beginning to suspect that I spend most of my free time perusing the economics of education literature would be correct in that suspicion.

The post Externalities of Private School Competition appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Later this month, Gov. Jay Nixon will travel to Taiwan and South Korea in order to lobby to them to buy Missouri agricultural exports. Previously, I discussed how this would lead to the subsidization of foreign consumers by Missouri taxpayers. From an article in the Kansas City Star:

On Wednesday, Nixon announced that a trade mission planned for Dec. 10-16 was expected to produce a letter of intent with Taiwanese businesses that will agree to buy Missouri corn, soybeans and other products during the next five years.

At a rate of about $120 million of exports a year, the new agreement would outpace the $69.1 million worth of exports Missouri sent to Taiwan in 2009.

The governor is traveling to Taiwan with the intention that it will influence their government’s public policy decisions. My fingers are crossed that the direction of this knowledge transfer will be in the reverse. Policymakers in Missouri can learn much from Taiwan.

Hopefully, this trip will serve as an opportunity to learn that Taiwan has developed rapidly and meets the needs of its citizens well because it enforces public policies that embrace the free market. If the state government in Missouri were to remove itself from arbitrarily picking winners and losers in the market, the economy would achieve a greater rate of growth. As I have commented before, centrally planned economies have not worked historically, and there is little reason to believe that they will work any differently in Missouri.

I encourage the governor to watch Free to Choose, a multipart PBS television series by Milton and Rose Friedman from the early 1980s that communicates how the economy benefits from free-market principles. Perhaps it would make for good viewing on the flight to Taiwan. (And he might be further interested to know that Arnold Schwarzenegger, a governor from another mother, provides a commentary to the updated 1990 version of the series.)

The first episode, in which Dr. Friedman visits Hong Kong, is particularly relevant to this trip to Taiwan. Friedman explains that Hong Kong has experienced success because it has established basic economic policies that are rooted in free market principles — principles that would benefit Missouri as well. From Friedman’s narrative:

This thriving, bustling, dynamic city, has been made possible by the free market — indeed the freest market in the world. The free market enables people to go into any industry that they want; to trade with whomever they want; to buy in the cheapest market around the world; to sell in the dearest around the world. But most important of all, if they fail, they bear the cost. If they succeed, they get the benefit and it’s that atmosphere of incentive that has induced them to work, to adjust, to save, to produce a miracle. This miracle hasn’t been achieved by government action — by someone sitting in one of those tall buildings and telling people what to do. It’s been achieved by allowing the market to work. Walk down any street in Hong Kong and you will see the impersonal forces of the market in operation.

By increasing American imports to countries like Taiwan, China, and India, the rising living standards in those regions will continue, and this will lead to the demand for more American goods. This change does not require the lead of the government, however. It happens spontaneously and incrementally in unrestricted markets. Missouri could achieve a higher annual rate of growth if it stopped subsidizing and protecting favored industries and instead let the free market work.

The post Policymakers in Missouri Have a Lot to Learn From Taiwan appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

If free trade is one area that this contentious group can agree, why do elected officials in Washington and in Jeff City continue to pass measures that impede, rather than proliferate, free trade?

As the latest example of impeding free trade, the U.S. Senate is targeting companies that outsource, particularly to India:

Democrat Senator of Missouri Claire McCaskill on Thursday said the proposal would increase fees for particular companies that exploit two categories of visas — H-1B and L.

Not only do legislators seem to ignore economists, they also seem to ignore history. The fact that protectionist policies do more harm than good has been repeatedly demonstrated in the past (e.g., the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930, the steel import tariffs in 2002, and protectionism in the vehicle manufacturing industry).

When a country or a state protects certain industries, those companies do not have to innovate their product to compete in the marketplace. As additional negative consequences, such protectionism dampens downward pressure on consumer prices and reduces the variety of goods and services available to consumers in a region, who are more limited to that which they can produce themselves because goods from elsewhere are artificially priced out of market availability. If this proposal progresses, perhaps the same problems could plague the IT services industry.

Subsidizing favored companies and industries and simultaneously imposing restrictions on those that are not favored is an expensive and inefficient practice. In doing so, the government sends the fallacious message that it can pick winners and losers in the marketplace. Overall welfare would improve if the United States and Missouri both embraced the creative destruction of their respective economies, instead of cementing favored activities for reasons of nostalgia and/or xenophobia.

The post Legislators Should Listen to Economists, History appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

From the article:

State incentives:

• $8.6 million through the Missouri BUILD Program
• $14.7 million through the Missouri Quality Jobs program
• $4.2 million in new jobs training
• $300,000 for customized job training
• $412,500 worth of recruitment assistance
• Sales tax exemption on personal property under the Chapter 100 program

Local incentives:

The city of Columbia will buy the building at 2810 LeMone Industrial Blvd. for $3 million and will lease it to the company for $1 per year for 10 years with an option to extend it for an additional 5 years at the same price.

Boone County will provide a 50 percent property tax abatement on personal property for the depreciable life of equipment and will exempt personal property from sales tax.

According to another article in the Columbia Missourian, IBM has promised to bring 600 jobs to Columbia during the next 10 years. Given the $31 million incentive package, this means that taxpayers will be subsidizing each job by $51,670. Meanwhile, IBM will only have to pay its employees a minimum average annual wage of $43,750, and it will contribute zero property tax revenue. In exchange, IBM will provide exactly $10 in rent over 10 years.

Furthermore, because the city owns the property and is leasing it to IBM, the company will not have to pay property taxes on it — this is a bigger subsidy than the $3 million the city paid for the building. IBM will not be required to contribute personal property tax revenues for this facility to the state government, either.

The government shouldn’t carve out sections of its tax base, via methods like property tax abatements or tax increment financing, because this type of behavior shifts and increases the burden to those who do pay taxes. Additionally, this $31 million cannot be spent on other services, like education, or returned to taxpayers to spend in the private sector.

The incentives may increase employment in Columbia in the future, but given that the increase will come at such a supreme cost, it may not be worth it.

The post Thanks to Government Incentives, It May Be Cheaper to Locate a Service Center in Columbia, Mo., than in India appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

One of the most interesting results of this study is that incentives created a spillover effect. The teachers facing incentives were rewarded if students did well in two subjects, but the benefits weren’t limited to those subjects. This is good news, showing that a little incentive can go a long way. It also indicates that the test score gains reflect real learning rather than cheating, for if teachers were to artificially inflate scores in hopes of a reward, they would have no reason to distort scores in subjects that are unrelated to the incentive.

How do incentives for one subject improve test scores in a separate subject? It could be that students are taking the skills they learned in reading or math class and applying them in other areas; students who are well-prepared in math can go farther in science, for example.

The spillover could also be because of another effect of merit pay: Incentives change the way people view their profession. When teachers are paid according to a set schedule, they may feel, “I’m just like any other teacher with the same amount of experience. We all do the same work, and we earn the same amount. I don’t need to try to be exceptional.”

But when teachers are rewarded for student achievement, they think, “My students’ success depends on my individual effort and creativity. I don’t have to wait years for a pay raise; I can get one immediately if I bring achievement up far enough. We earn bonuses because outstanding teachers are valuable, and I want to be outstanding.” This attitude can motivate teachers across all subjects, not just in the areas linked to a monetary incentive.

For more about why I like merit pay for teachers, see this recent post.

The post Incentives for Teachers: Empirical Evidence appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

With that said, I agree completely with Bob Compton’s statement in the comments: “My conclusion is every community should have at least one BASIS Charter school.” I would be very happy for this choice to be available to parents everywhere. Even if BASIS fails to have a broad, transformational effect on American eduction, it’s still a good school, and the option should be there for people who want it.

These are some things BASIS does that I hope other schools will emulate:

1. BASIS pays teachers according to their performance. This system attracts good teachers and rewards them for teaching well. Here, BASIS is a bright spot in U.S. education; the vast majority of schools instead reward seniority or other factors that are irrelevant to student learning.
2. BASIS teachers are knowledgeable in the subjects they teach. Although I find the requirement that teachers have a graduate degree in their subject to be somewhat arbitrary — the most important qualification is that they have expertise, not a diploma — these teachers are better prepared than their counterparts in other schools, who often earn degrees in education theory without bothering to study the information they’re supposed to convey to students.
3. BASIS doesn’t require a test for admissions, nor does it ask entering students to prove “giftedness.” BASIS reminds me of a gifted-and-talented magnet, with one important difference: The students don’t have to be gifted. Undoubtedly, the admissions process involves a lot of self-selection, but that’s a better form of selection than the one practiced by traditional accelerated schools. It’s unfair when a high-level middle school education is limited to those who passed intelligence tests. At BASIS, it may be that not all students can keep up, but at least the lottery winners can give it their best try.

The post Things I Like About the BASIS Charter Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I went to the film’s website and found that they have a set of seven short exams available to see how you would fare on a typical high school evaluation in India. While a few of the questions could reasonably elude American test takers (particularly where they focus on Southeast Asia or a distinctly non-American turn of English phrasing), I found that most of the questions, while quite difficult, fell in the range of topics covered in my high school and college education. I encourage anyone interested to give the exams a try and (if you’re not embarrassed), report your results in the comments below. In the meantime, I’ll try to attend the film screening tomorrow night and offer an assessment next week.

The post Two Million Minutes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

They are private, parent-funded, and they outperform the public schools,
After application of the best econometric tools.

He also mentions that education markets for after-school tutoring are thriving in the U.S.:

Just think of “Kumon” here at home or of the “Sylvan” chain.
They thrive and make a profit ’cause the ed. monopoly’s inane.

You can watch the original scene from the operetta here.

The post “The Very Model of a Modern Major-General,” Parental Choice Version appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The message is clear: While Americans are partying, Asian students are playing the violin, learning math, and preparing to take over the world economy.

I’ve commented on the difference between U.S. test scores and those of other countries, because the gap shows that we could be doing better. However, I do not think that Asian education systems have no problems and we should try to be just like them. With all the recent talk about national standards and tests, we should keep in mind a few reasons not to panic and become just like China or India:

1. In some countries with rigid public education systems, poor children do better in private schools. Their test scores are better, and they’re more likely to have access to a sufficient number of computers, drinking fountains, and bathrooms. That’s right, bathrooms. If we really wanted a public education system just like the ones in Asia, we would need to scale back on our plumbing for the poor.
2. State-run education systems are unjust. For example, in Singapore students are segregated by ability into different tracks in seventh grade. Which track you’re in determines where you’ll go to high school and college, and what kind of job you’ll eventually get. Students who start out behind aren’t given a chance to catch up.
3. Some Asian students get burned out by intense competition as kids, then do nothing when they go to college. Gary Becker notes that this is a problem in Japan.
4. The global economy opens the world to competition, but it also means that the relative position of your country matters less. In every country, good students and hard workers will be rewarded. It’s true that foreign countries can be expected to keep catching up with the U.S. economically. It’s called convergence, and it happens naturally in the absence of wars and other trade barriers. This will happen no matter what our education system is like.

We should improve our education system because we’re not as good as we could be, not because we need to be a certain distance ahead of the rest of the world.

The post Why We Shouldn’t Try to Be Just Like Asia 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.