This information is valuable for families who want to ensure their children are assigned to good schools. And it’s also an illustration of what is, unfortunately, the most common form of school choice: moving.

According to a survey conducted by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, 31 percent of parents said they moved to their current neighborhood so that their children could attend a specific school. Among families whose annual income was less than $50,000, however, only 25 percent of parents moved to a specific school district. For those making more than $150,000, it was 36 percent.

As lawmakers consider education savings accounts, charter schools, and course access this legislative session, many of their constituents have expressed doubts about these school choice initiatives. Certainly, we should consider such programs carefully; but we should also realize than many families in Missouri already practice school choice by moving out of one district and into another.

James Shuls, the Show-Me Institute Distinguished Fellow of Education Policy, called this “School Choice by Mortgage”:

Parents with the financial means can move their families to neighborhoods with good schools or they can afford private school tuition. The problem with our current system of school choice is that it leaves many parents with no options. The wealthier a family is, the more choices they have, while the most disadvantaged are left with little or no choice.

School choice programs like ESAs and charter schools are not meant to disrupt quality public schools where parent and student satisfaction is high. Rather, these programs are designed to provide opportunities to families who don’t have the means to buy a home in a good district or pay for private school tuition. Regardless of what neighborhood a family can afford to live in, shouldn’t their children have access to a quality education—whether it is at a public, charter, or private school?

The post School Choice for Those Who Can Afford It appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

If you like paying more for your water, wait until you learn about what the EPA wants to do to energy costs. According to the Associated Industries of Missouri, the impact of new regulations on coal “will require the reduction of emissions of toxic air pollutants from power plants in the U.S. The cost, estimated by the EPA, is expected to be $9.6 billion in 2015, and nearly that amount in 2016 and beyond.” For those of us in Kansas City, the news is especially bad [emphasis added]:

The EPA estimates rates will rise by an average of 3.1% nationally as a result of this rule alone.  Because Missouri generates a major portion of its electricity from plants that will be affected by the rule, the impact to your rates are estimated to rise by 6.3% in the far western part of Missouri, 2.8% in Eastern and Central Missouri, and 3.1% in Southeast Missouri.

The city is already struggling to pay the hundreds of millions of dollars  for the construction of a streetcar system that was adopted with a vote of about 300 people.  Now we learn that once built, thanks to the EPA, the costs of operating it are apparently going to be about 6 percent higher.

The EPA is conducting “Clean Air Act listening sessions” across the country, and one of them is scheduled for Nov. 4 just across the border in Lenexa, Kan. In order to attend and tell them what you think, you have to register in advance (no surprise there). Proponents of the streetcar are already wringing their hands about a proposed Jackson County tax — they may want to take a good look at an EPA rule that effectively taxes their pet project and would make non-electric transit even more attractive.

The post The EPA And Kansas City appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

And that’s precisely what happened yesterday in Kansas City, when Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon — who recently vetoed the Broad-Based Tax Relief Act — was on hand to celebrate the opening of Freightquote’s new office in south Kansas City. Freightquote, as you may remember, was attracted from Kansas to Missouri with more than $60 million in state and local tax incentives, which begs the question: If Freightquote can get crazy tax breaks like that to move from Lenexa, Kan., a short, leisurely drive down I-435, why can’t we all get a little tax relief?

The short answer: we’re not special enough.

Tax cuts should be pursued on a “specific project-by-project basis,” [Nixon] said. “We need to come at this in an overall thoughtful way, not just throw darts.”

Giving tax cuts to everyone is “throwing darts,” but picking a few projects for special tax breaks is . . . “thoughtful”? What is this, newspeak? How is giving special, targeted tax breaks not “throwing darts”? And what makes the governor think the government’s more thoughtful and better at throwing darts than the marketplace, where poor decisions are rewarded with foreclosures and bankruptcies, not press conferences and ribbon cuttings?

He then rejected tax cuts for all Missouri residents, or what he called an “across the board tax experiment.”

Catch that? Tax breaks are OK, but they have to be government-approved tax breaks for special tax-break recipients. Tax breaks for the rest of us, the hoi polloi in the market, are an “experiment.” We apparently throw darts; the government is “thoughtful.”

Amazing to hear this sort of stuff in, of all places, the Show-Me State. You deserve better than this.

The post No Soup For You: Nixon Wants ‘Project-by-Project’ Tax Cuts, Not Tax Cuts For All appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But we must not ignore the shopkeeper’s opportunity cost of fixing the window, namely those products and services that she had to forgo. The businesspeople selling these forgone items take a hit as a result of the broken window.

I was reminded of all this while reading a recent report from goodjobsfirst.org. One section outlined the subsidy programs offered to incentivize private enterprise to move from Kansas to Missouri. The Show-Me Institute’s Patrick Ishmael and Michael Rathbone have expressed concern about such programs over the past few months (here and here).  In 2012, Freightquote moved its headquarters from Lenexa, Kan., to Kansas City, Mo., which landed the company $64.3 million in tax incentives. In 2011, North American Savings Bank received almost $6 million in subsidies to relocate to Missouri. Velociti benefited from $1.6 million in corporate welfare for moving to Riverside, Mo. The list goes on . . .

Such programs are defended on the grounds that they bring much-needed jobs to the state, but one cannot ignore the means by which they are financed. The government is not an exogenous entity, magically creating wealth out of nothing. (Trillion dollar coins notwithstanding.) To provide anything, it must first take from others. This confiscated wealth constitutes revenue that would have otherwise been spent, invested, or saved in the private economy. Accordingly, it is not a stretch to contend that the state creates jobs only by means of destroying them. Bastiat’s sage advice unfortunately seems to have been lost on many of our public officials.

The post The Cost Of Ignoring Opportunity Cost appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There has been a lot of talk from legislators and others about how tax subsidies are an important policy tool that states can use to keep jobs within their boundaries. In recent weeks, both AMC Theaters and Jack Stack Barbeque made news because the companies moved from Kansas City, Mo., to nearby locations in the state of Kansas.

Previously, Missouri’s Department of Economic Development (DED) used the promise of more than $12.5 million in tax credits to lure the corporate headquarters of Applebee’s across state lines into Missouri.

But to what end? Jobs in the region are down, and the loss is nearly the worst in the country.

I was curious to see how the Missouri and Kansas bidding war fit within the job loss news. So, I looked at the Kansas City core metropolitan statistical area (the area that lost more than 12,000 jobs). I then checked the three companies that made news when they moved across state lines to see from where they moved and where they relocated. These three companies’ relocations resulted in elected officials calling for the use of tax incentives to lure companies from one state to another.

Jack Stack Barbeque: The company is located in downtown Kansas City, Mo., and announced plans to move just across the state line to Overland Park, Kan. It is not clear whether tax incentives will be awarded to the company. Both locations are in the Kansas City metro area.

AMC Theaters: The company announced that it was moving from downtown Kansas City, Mo., to Leawood, Kan., also just a short few miles. The state of Kansas reportedly offered about $47 million in tax incentives, or more than $100,000 for each job. Both locations are in the Kansas City metro area.

Applebee’s: The company moved its headquarters from Lenexa, Kan., to Kansas City, Mo., just across state lines. The state of Missouri offered about $12.5 million in tax incentives, or about $35,000 per job. Both locations are in the Kansas City metro area.

In the grand scheme of things, all of the taxpayer money used to lure one company or another a few miles doesn’t really matter when it comes to the health of the region. The Kansas City metro area still lost more than 12,000 jobs, including those jobs that moved across state lines. Moving companies a short distance merely rearranges the deck chairs, it doesn’t accomplish anything productive.

In fact, given the administrative costs of running tax incentive programs, the Kansas City metropolitan area actually loses when the states attempt to lure companies away. We take tax dollars from the private sector to give to bureaucrats in the public sector whose job it is to figure out (i.e., use discredited economic modeling to guess at) which companies to attempt to lure across state lines. The money certainly could be put to better use, especially in light of some of the DED’s recent failures.

It’s time to stop playing petty economic development games and work instead on implementing public policies that have been shown to encourage economic growth, rather than shuffle it around.

I know it’s September, but a good place for us to start would be the list of New Year’s Resolutions for Missouri Public Policy that Policy Analyst Christine Harbin put together last year. Maybe there’s still some time to get started.

The post A Race to the Bottom appeared first on Show-Me Institute.