On January 21, 2026, the Show-Me Institute hosted an in-depth discussion on crime and public safety trends in the City of St. Louis at the Knight Center at Washington University. Patrick Tuohey, Senior Fellow at the Show-Me Institute, was joined by local experts Gabe Gore, St. Louis Circuit Attorney; Janet Lauritsen, Curators’ Distinguished Professor Emerita in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri–St. Louis; and Pernell Witherspoon, Senior Professor of Criminal Justice at Lindenwood University.

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

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Over the past five years, the number of crimes committed in St. Louis has decreased, however the city is still widely perceived as dangerous. What are the actual crime statistics, what are their real implications, and what shapes public perception? Our panel of experts will address these questions and more.

Don’t miss this opportunity to gain valuable insights, share your perspective, and participate in an informed community conversation on crime and public safety in St. Louis. Two Opportunities to Attend:

Event Details
Wednesday, January 21
The Knight Center at Washington University

Tuesday, February 10
MAC West

Reception at 4:30 p.m., including beverages and light appetizers
Program and Q&A from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m.

Registration
Please register for this complimentary event by emailing events@showmeinstitute.org. Include your name and specify which date you will attend. Walk-ins will not be admitted.

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Why should we care about phonics instruction? Because it works.

There are typically two views when discussing early reading instruction: emphasis on phonics instruction involving daily lessons, and a “balanced literacy” approach which puts an emphasis on understanding meaning (three-cueing method) with occasional phonics sprinkled in. Numerous studies from independent researchers, the National Literacy Institute, and the Congressional-sponsored National Reading Panel have indicated that systematic and explicit phonics instruction is more effective in helping students learn to read than non-systematic (balanced literacy) or no phonics instruction. These results can be seen in schools that implement it, such as in Richmond or in our own backyard at KIPP Victory Academy—whose recent, explicit emphasis on phonics helped it obtain the highest English/language arts growth rate in the entire state from 2018–2021.

So why aren’t all schools using this method? Many teachers believe this approach is incredibly boring and drives the love of reading out of children. Additionally, it is hard for teachers to learn and teach; Missouri’s new phonics training program (LETRS) in Missouri takes 160 hours to complete. Finally, universities are simply not instructing future teachers to use this method effectively, or even hardly at all.

The NCTQ conducted a survey to evaluate which universities are implementing scientifically based reading instruction into their curriculum for future teachers—and the results are concerning. Per the survey, only 25 percent of higher education institutions nationally adequately address all five core components (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) of reading instruction. Missouri is no better, as nearly half of our participating* universities received an F on the NCQT’s report.

*Central Methodist University (F), Hannibal-LaGrange University (F), Lincoln University (B), Lindenwood University (B), Lindenwood University Graduate (D), Missouri Southern State University (F), Missouri Western State University (D), Northwest Missouri State University (F), Southeast Missouri State (F), University of Central Missouri (F), University of Missouri-Kansas City (A), University of Missouri-St. Louis (C), University of Missouri-St. Louis Graduate (C); all other Missouri universities declined to participate

Many universities in Missouri seem to be shying away from a strategy that can help teachers become better reading instructors. The LETRS program was a good start, but that law is primarily about identifying and addressing problems in early childhood reading, along with some additional professional development opportunities for existing teachers. We need Missouri universities to get on board and give teachers all the tools they need to effectively teach kids how to read right from the start.

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Opportunity cost. The concept is so simple that a first-grader could understand it. I know, because I used to teach it to first-graders. Had you walked past my classroom at just the right time, you might have heard 20-something first graders chanting, “Opportunity cost is the opportunity lost.” The students understood that our decisions have consequences. It was a lesson they learned every time they went out to recess. If they chose to play kickball, they couldn’t play basketball. This basic life lesson bears some repeating for the adults who set policy in our state.

Though the term opportunity cost was not coined until 1914, French economist and writer Frédéric Bastiat provided one of the most salient examples of the concept in his 1850 work, “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen.” Using the parable of the broken window, Bastiat explained how money being spent on one activity is money that cannot be put to more productive use elsewhere. Imagine that a pane of glass is broken at a baker’s shop. Obviously, the money that the baker must pay to have it repaired becomes revenue for the window repair man. Anyone walking by can see the repair man doing work and recognize that he’ll be paid for his labor. But it makes no sense to look at the repair man’s good fortune in isolation. Doing so would lead to the harebrained conclusion that breaking windows leads to economic growth! Instead we need to remember that, had the window stayed intact, the baker could have done something else productive with the money. The problem is that we can’t see what the baker could have done with the money—only what he actually did with it.

Unfortunately, our board of aldermen and other policymakers regularly make decisions based on what they see without accounting for what they can’t see. Take for example the earnings tax in Saint Louis. Policymakers can see the revenue generated by the tax, but they can’t see the economic activity that has been lost. They can’t see the jobs that might have been created had those dollars been reinvested by the businesses. Nor can they see the economic activity that might have been generated if those dollars had remained in workers’ pockets.

Think about opportunity cost the next time you see a ribbon-cutting at some new development that has received tax breaks or some other form of support from the government. Whether it is a property that has been blighted and given property tax abatements for development in the Central West End or a big box store that receives tax-increment financing, we can see the product of those government actions. We cannot see the harm they do to other businesses through unfair economic competition.

I was reminded of these ideas when I read Lindenwood economist Howard Wall’s most recent paper for the Show-Me Institute, “Is Growth in Outstate Missouri Tied to Growth in the Saint Louis and Kansas City Metro Areas?” Wall uses an econometric model known as Granger-causality to estimate the impact of employment growth in Saint Louis and Kansas City on the rest of the state. He finds a statistically significant downstream relationship between Saint Louis and the rest of Missouri. That is, employment growth in Saint Louis leads to employment growth in the state. He estimates that a 1 percentage point increase in growth in Saint Louis would lead to an increase of 0.35 percentage points in outstate Missouri within two or three years. Why this connection exists (he doesn’t find a similar relationship in Kansas City) is a matter for some hypothesizing or future research. Nevertheless, the point is clear—Saint Louis is an economic driver for the state.

While Wall’s paper does not deal directly with the idea of opportunity cost, his findings make it all the more important for policymakers to understand the importance of their actions. When they support an earnings tax or other policies that harm the city’s economic growth, they are hurting the economic growth of the entire state.

Missourians, not just those who live in the city, benefit from a thriving Saint Louis economy. That’s why we need policymakers to put in place pro-growth policies that create the economic conditions for the market to thrive.

The post Opportunities Squandered in St. Louis Affect All of Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Using household employment data, Wall, a professor of economics at Lindenwood University, tests whether employment growth in the two major cities appears to cause employment growth throughout the rest of the state.

Interestingly, the data show a statistically significant relationship between growth in Saint Louis and outstate Missouri. For example, a one percentage point gain in employment in Saint Louis would lead to a half percentage point gain in outstate Missouri the following year and then smaller gains in the years after that. Wall did not find as strong of a relationship in Kansas City, though the results were not far from being statistically significant.

Why these findings occur is a matter that can be explored further, but the point is clear. Saint Louis and, to a lesser extent, Kansas City are economic drivers for the state. Missourians have a vested interest in seeing sound policies put in place to help these cities flourish.

Click here to read the full report.

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On May 9, 2023, Jay Nordlinger delivered a talk titled “Adventures in Journalism” at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri.

During the talk, Nordlinger surveys today’s media landscape with what has become frequent dismay.

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“We’ve never had so much journalism and so many outlets, which is great,” the National Review senior editor says. “But politics and journalism have merged, and … I’ve seen a lot of journalists begin to act like politicians with political calculations. That’s crippling to a writer.”
“You’ve got to be free at the keyboard,” he says, “to pursue the truth as you find it.”

Nordlinger, who lives in New York, writes the column “Impromptus” for NationalReview.com and is a book fellow of the National Review Institute. He’s the author of two books: Peace, They Say: A History of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Most Famous and Controversial Prize in the World and Children of Monsters: An Inquiry into the Sons and Daughters of Dictators. Selections of his work have been republished in two anthologies.

He also is a music critic for The New Criterion and the host of two podcasts, Q&A and Music for a While.

The event was co-presented by the Show-Me Institute, National Review Institute, the John W. Hammond Institute for Free Enterprise, and Show-Me Opportunity

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About the Program and Speaker

Jay Nordlinger surveys today’s media landscape with what has become frequent dismay.

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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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But don’t take my word for it. Look at the research. An economic impact study was conducted by the Center for Economic Information at the Department of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City that indicates between $15 and $17 million will be generated from the Zero Fare initiative. For those living paycheck to paycheck, as most Americans are, the cost of a monthly bus pass or cumulative single fares can make the difference in deciding which bills to pay. Tax revenue alone is expected to increase about $700,000 from the increased spending, and 100 jobs would be created.

UMKC’s Center for Economic Information (CEI) has no such study on its website. And the public information officer at KCATA responded that the CEI had not yet presented the final version of its paper. So I asked for a copy of whatever the KCATA CEO had used to make his claim. I was sent a four-page “draft mini report” dated December 5, 2019. (A PDF copy of this mini-report can be found at the bottom of this page.) The report does not list an author. But it didn’t require a degree in economics to see serious flaws in the analysis.

First, the study does not contemplate the net effect of a fare-free bus system—it simply adds up the costs saved by passengers and ignores any additional cost occurring elsewhere. It does not consider any additional tax, reduction on city spending in other programs or additional costs to the KCATA due to increased demand and wear and tear. Like a child arguing in favor of getting a family dog, the report counts all the benefits and none of the cost. For this reason alone this mini-report ought to be dismissed immediately.

I shared the draft report with some university economists for their comments. Each of them pointed out the failure to account for additional spending to cover the lost fare revenue.

Dr. Howard Wall at Lindenwood University in St. Louis pointed out that the authors misapplied the model they used to calculate the benefit. Understood correctly, the model, called IMPLAN, calculates the impact of additional money injected into an economy from outside—such as the local impact of a large federal grant. But this is not the case with fare-free buses in Kansas City. The policy would only move money already within the local economy by shifting the burden of bus fare. The UMKC mini-report argues, in effect, that one can fill a bathtub by moving water from one side of the tub to the other.

Dr. Byron Schlomach at Oklahoma State University was dismayed by the speciousness of the claims of growth in regional gross domestic product (GDP).  The only way regional GDP could rise by the amount claimed in the analysis is if free buses attracted huge numbers of people (or made workers more productive) and added money or physical capital such as buildings and machines. As you can guess, there is no evidence for this anywhere. It’s hard to imagine any scenario in which eliminating bus fare in Kansas City attracts significant residents, jobs, or capital.

Dr. Schlomach also offered another compelling point. He wrote by email, “Pricing plays an important role even in 90% subsidized, publicly-owned enterprises like bus transit. It can provide information for where and when the service is most highly valued and serve as an indicator for where resources should be allocated.” How would KCATA collect information on the popularity of routes if not through the farebox? Perhaps it could install people-counting sensors on every bus entrance, but then that too is an additional expense not considered in this analysis.

But the giveaway from UMKC is on the last page. The draft mini-report spends one-fifth of its total content discussing the ideas of Henri Lefebvre, a 20th-century French Marxist philosopher and sociologist. Why this is included in a memo claiming to be an “economic impact” analysis is a mystery. But it indicates that this was not an attempt to understand the impact of a significant change in public policy—it does none of that.

Rather, it seems that advocates of fare-free buses, aware that the research and experiences of others who have considered fare-free buses, sought out someone willing to make dubious claims of a positive economic impact. That UMKC lent its name to this is a shame.

The post About That “Economic Impact Study” Conducted on Free Bus Service in Kansas City . . . appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

So how should cities measure success? Typically, city success is characterized by periods of sustained growth, whether that growth is in population or employment. Booming local economies bring businesses to an area, and those businesses bring more people to a region who can then contribute to the same economy. The idea seems simple, but not every city is going to have a booming economy. So what can struggling cities do to turn things around and grow their economy?

Figuring out how to attract new residents and businesses is something cities of all sizes across the country struggle with. Aaron Renn, of the Manhattan Institute, argued that cities should take steps to harness their unique characteristics and build a more desirable brand. Gary Ritter, of St. Louis University, explained that quality schools are essential to the recruitment of businesses and their employee’s families, but also help adequately train the workforce for the emerging jobs in that city’s economy. Howard Wall, of the Hammond Institute at Lindenwood University, asserted that rapid population growth for cities over an extended period of time is rare and quite difficult, and that perhaps St. Louis’s success has been hampered by its previous growth.   

Eileen Norcross, of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, discussed some of her research surrounding the rise and fall of historically successful cities. She found ultimate success for older cities was tied to how it responded to the decline of the local manufacturing sector.  Despite her assertion that regulatory and institutional environments are more important for prospective businesses, many of these cities spent incredible sums of tax payer dollars to lure businesses without otherwise addressing the business environment. In the end, those moves hurt the city’s long-term financial health without providing the desired opportunity for future economic growth.

While there doesn’t appear to be a silver bullet for city success, the seminar provided a variety of ideas for research and reform, including occupational licensing, regulatory changes, and tax policy.

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Why the marked differences in population growth between Missouri’s two major cities and their surrounding areas? Undoubtedly, there are a number of factors involved, like housing prices, amenities, and school quality. But what about taxes? Specifically, what about the 1 percent earnings tax that both cities impose on everyone who works there and on everyone who lives there even if they work someplace else? A new study by Howard Wall, commissioned by the Show-Me Institute, suggests that the earnings tax could be impeding the population growth of both cities.

In 1947 the Missouri Legislature authorized cities with populations of 70,000 or more to levy an earnings tax, capped at 1 percent. Only Saint Louis and Kansas City chose to impose this tax. But earnings taxes are known to have bad economic side effects. A study by Dr. Joseph Haslag of the University of Missouri–Columbia found that Saint Louis and Kansas City’s earnings taxes help explain the decline in personal income in those cities relative to the surrounding non-taxed metro areas during the first part of the 2000s. Wall, the director of the Hammond Institute for Free Enterprise and the Center for Economics and the Environment at Lindenwood University, tackles a different question: Does the imposition of earnings taxes help explain differences in population growth across cities?

Wall conducted his investigation using population growth rates for 185 cities (population 25,000 or more) over the period 2000 through 2010. Seventy-nine of the cities included in his study levy an earnings tax. Nineteen Missouri cities are included, of which only Saint Louis and Kansas City have an earnings tax.

After controlling for other factors that might explain differences in population growth, Wall finds that having an earnings tax has a statistically significant, negative effect on population growth. And the impact is not small: A 1 percentage-point increase in the earnings tax is associated with about a 4 percentage-point reduction in population growth over a decade.

What does that mean for Saint Louis and Kansas City? Based on his results, Wall suggests that the earnings tax in Saint Louis accounts for about half of the population decline experienced over the decade. For Kansas City, the earnings tax may have cut its population growth in half.

The effects of the earnings tax apparently do not stop at city borders. Wall finds that there are negative metro-wide effects emanating from the central city’s earnings tax. The population loss of Saint Louis City dwarfs the population increase in its ring cities, yielding a net reduction in the metropolitan population. The effect is similar for Kansas City. There are substantially fewer residents living in the metro area than there would have been were it not for Kansas City’s earnings tax. Employing an earnings tax has adverse effects on population growth for the taxing city that spill over into surrounding communities.

Even though the earnings tax produces such negative effects, how would cities replace the lost revenue if they were removed? One option is to reorder tax priorities. Wall notes that, on average, property taxes account for about 17 times as much in revenue as income taxes in cities across the country. In sharp contrast, Saint Louis and Kansas City rely more heavily on taxing income. In Saint Louis, the earnings tax revenue is more than twice that from property taxes; in Kansas City it is a little over 1.5 times as big.

The evidence in Wall’s study and in previous research lends credence to the view that shifting priorities from taxing income to taxing property may be the answer to reversing the negative economic effects of the earnings tax on Missouri’s major cities.

R. W. Hafer is the distinguished research professor of economics and finance at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and a research fellow at the Show-Me Institute.

The post Taxing a Population: Saint Louis and Kansas City’s Earnings Tax Draw People Away appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In February, the Show-Me Institute released “Live Free and Learn: A Case Study of New Hampshire’s Scholarship Tax Credit Program,” written by Jason Bedrick of the Cato Institute. Bedrick also discussed this school choice program at an event we hosted at Lindenwood University (see video above [starts at 4:00]). At the time, he noted that the scholarship program was being challenged in the New Hampshire courts. Yesterday, the New Hampshire Supreme Court issued a big win for the families benefiting from the program.

Blogging about the ruling, Bedrick writes:

“The New Hampshire Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s flawed and unprecedented decision, which had forbidden scholarship recipients from using the funds at religiously affiliated private schools. The lower court held that the scholarship funds constituted ‘money raised by taxation’ and therefore violated the state’s historically anti-Catholic Blaine Amendment, which states:

“[No] money raised by taxation shall ever be granted or applied for the use of the schools of institutions of any religious sect or denomination. (New Hampshire Constitution, Part II, Article 83)

“The New Hampshire Supreme Court did not address the merits of the lower court’s decision because it held the petitioners were unable to demonstrate that ‘their personal rights have been impaired or prejudiced.’ Similarly, the U.S. Supreme Court, in rejecting the petitioners’ standing in ACSTO v. Winn, held that the tax-credit funds did not constitute public money because they had not ‘come into the tax collector’s hands.'”

Like New Hampshire, Missouri has a Blaine Amendment that prohibits public dollars going to religious institutions. That is why this ruling is important for private school choice supporters in Missouri to take note of this case. Because the funding in a tax credit scholarship program does not enter into the public treasury, the funds should not be considered public dollars. For this reason, a tax credit scholarship program may have the best chance of passing constitutional muster in the Show-Me State.

The post Vindication for New Hampshire’s Scholarship Tax Credit Program appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Show-Me Institute and the Hammond Institute for Free Enterprise at Lindenwood University hosted a discussion about tax credit scholarships, explaining what they are and how they might be beneficial to Missouri. During the event, Jason Bedrick and Jonathan Butcher presented information from their recent Show-Me Institute case-studies and Paul DiPerna presented the findings of a new poll. The discussion also included a legislative panel that included Missouri Senators John Lamping and Maria Chappelle-Nadal and Missouri House Speaker Tim Jones. You can view the papers and video of the presentations via the links below.

• Bedrick case study:
• Bedrick presentation:
• Butcher case study:
• Butcher presentation:
• DiPerna presentation:

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When I speak about tax credit scholarships, I get a lot of questions: What is a tax credit scholarship? How would that work? What are the chances of that passing in Missouri?

If you want to find out the answer to these and other questions, join us on April 25 at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo. We are partnering with the Hammond Institute for Free Enterprise at Lindenwood University to present a dynamite event, “Expanded Opportunities: A Discussion About Tax Credit Scholarships.”

Jason Bedrick, of the Cato Institute, and Jonathan Butcher, of the Goldwater Institute, will present information about how these programs are working in other states. You can download their recent case studies for the Show-Me Institute about the New Hampshire and Arizona programs directly from our website.

Attendees also will be able to take part in a panel discussion with Missouri Sen. John Lamping (R-Dist. 24), Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal (D-Dist. 14), Missouri Speaker of the House Tim Jones (R-Dist. 110), and Rep. Michael Butler (D-Dist. 79).

RSVP online, mark your calendars, tell your friends, and join us on April 25.

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Today, the Show-Me Institute is releasing a new policy study on the effectiveness of tax credits: “Tax Credits as a Tool of State Economic Development Policy.” This study, by Howard J. Wall, director of the Institute for the Study of Economics and the Environment at Lindenwood University, reviews academic studies of tax credit programs in other states and discusses some of the broad arguments made in favor of tax credits.

One of the most striking findings in Wall’s study is the following: “State tax credits do not tend to lead to higher levels of employment for local residents, nor, by extension, do they lead to higher levels of employment for state residents.”

Consider the academic evidence:

• In a 2009 Michigan study, the authors found that tax credits were associated with a decline in employment.

• Some academics say that tax credits would be effective if used in distressed areas. However, an Ohio study found that tax credits generally are not awarded in distressed areas – a pattern that I suspect exists here in Missouri. Just look at The Chase Park Plaza, a luxury hotel and recipient of a great deal of tax credit money.

• In fact, tax credits may be awarded to companies that would have expanded anyway. A Georgia study found that 75 percent of tax credits were awarded to companies that would have hired more workers without receiving tax credits.

• There have been three prominent surveys of tax credit research in recent years. None of the surveys concluded that tax credits are an across-the-board, effective tool. In fact, one concluded that legislators should abandon tax credits altogether.

Most academic research on tax credit programs across the U.S. has shown that tax credits don’t work. Why do some legislators think that the situation in Missouri is any different?

The post What Do Academic Studies Say About Tax Credits? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I saw my fair share of floods while growing up. During the flood of 1993, I watched the Meramec River slowly creep toward my house and into my basement. A few years earlier, my family and I had to evacuate our home near George Winter Park because of excessive flooding. The severe damage that floods can cause makes living in the flood plain risky. When flood damage occurs, state and federal governments typically subsidize reconstruction through government grants and loans offered at subsidized rates, a practice that unintentionally sets the stage for worse devastation later on.

Government aid to flooded areas isn’t necessarily bad. Sending in the National Guard to help people evacuate, for example, fulfills an essential role of the government: protecting the public from real, physical harm. Subsidizing the cleanup and reconstruction, on the other hand, has nefarious long-term consequences.

The intention to help people is never misguided. However, the means used to help people may be ill-advised. So, it’s worth asking: Will this sort of flood relief actually relieve the pain that floods cause? In the short term, the answer is simple and obvious: yes. We can all see a farmer rebuilding his barn. Even more concretely, we’ve seen Chesterfield sprout back up after the 1993 disaster. This isn’t the entire story, though. What isn’t as obvious is that subsidizing reconstruction actually causes more flood damage over time, undermining the intended goal of relief.

It’s not difficult to figure out that lowland areas near rivers have a tendency to flood — or that this can be very costly for home and business owners. To varying degrees, people tend to take these extra costs into account when deciding where to move or set up a new business. But by providing aid to rebuild flood-prone areas, federal and state governments reduce the potential costs of a flood, and thereby the risk associated with living and doing business there. This essentially becomes a subsidy for areas that are likely to be flooded.

Any astute student of economics knows what will happen next. Somewhere in the state, there are people who enjoy the many benefits of living next to a large river like the Mississippi — the boating and fishing opportunities, for instance. But, all things considered, many of these people would ordinarily consider it just a bit too risky to live in such an area. Economists characterize these people as being “on the margin.” When the costs associated with flooding are mitigated by the expectation of disaster assistance, some of the people on the safe side of the margin cross to the risky side — they now see living by the river as an attractive option. Flood relief spurs some marginal home buyers to move into flood-prone areas.

This happens not only with potential residents, but potential business owners, as well. The decreased risk brought by relief efforts means that businesses on the margin build new facilities in the flood plain rather than somewhere else, while businesses already in the area purchase new equipment and improve their buildings rather than limit possible losses.

As a result, these areas contain not only more potential victims, but also a much greater potential for damage. So, while government assistance for flood reconstruction can certainly help people who have been hurt by flooding, it also encourages some people to set themselves up for disaster. When the next flood comes, the damage will likely be much worse than if there had been no flood relief at all — in terms of both dollars and human suffering.

To answer my original question: Does subsidizing reconstruction actually help ease the pain caused by floods? In the long run, the answer is a most emphatic no. Although this sort of relief does some immediate good, it will only cause a great deal more harm down the road.

Matt Simpson is an intern at the Show-Me Institute, a Missouri-based think tank. He is currently pursuing undergraduate degrees in philosophy and math at Lindenwood University.

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