The state minimum wage is currently $7.65. In 2015, the City of Saint Louis sought to raise the minimum wage on businesses within its borders. This initial attempt was struck down by a circuit court judge in 2015, but Tuesday’s ruling reversed that decision. As a result, the minimum wage that applies to businesses within Saint Louis proper (not the county or surrounding areas) will rise to $10 this year and $11 in 2018.

Saint Louis businesses will face higher labor costs, putting them at a competitive disadvantage against businesses located just across the city–county boundary. If I were an entrepreneur or business owner unsure of where to locate or expand, this minimum wage increase helped make the decision for me.

Show-Me Institute analysts have written many times about the effects of minimum wages hikes; see here and here for two examples. There are two main effects from this wrongheaded action.

First, and most obvious, raising the minimum wage imposes higher costs on businesses. Some of those businesses simply will not be able to maintain current operations: they will reduce the number of workers they employ, close up shop, or move. Why is it that supporters of the minimum wage hike have so much disdain for small business owners? After all, not every employer is McDonald’s.

Liberals and conservatives alike recognize that increases in the minimum wage will negatively affect exactly those workers for whom proponents claim to be champions; namely, the least skilled, entry level workers whom this higher wage will make even more unemployable. This is perhaps the most pernicious (there’s that word again) effect of all: Of the city’s estimated 69,000 individuals earning less than $11 an hour, how many will lose their jobs or face reduced hours? Can proponents claim success if the number of employed individuals declines by 6, or 600, or 6,000? It is bad policy that claims success on the backs of those made worse off.

And how many of those who are harmed by this latest minimum wage increase will we see interviewed so that the public understands how they were put out of a job by this unwise intervention? My guess is that the answer is zero. Out of sight, out of mind.

Lawmakers and union leaders will now sing their own praises and pat themselves on the back for the “good” they have done—no matter how much harm is done to workers and business owners.

The post Pernicious: St. Louis Goes Forward with Minimum Wage Hike appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The city is correct to put the blame on the car owner for this accident. However, that doesn’t make it a good idea for a city to build a transportation system that relies on everyone studiously observing parking regulations. We put “all stops” in traffic signals, install high railings on bridges, and force McDonalds to serve cooler coffee, all because we correctly expect that some small percentage of people are just going to screw up.

Kansas City is not the only city dealing with these issues. Other metros, like Washington D.C., have had continuous problems with collisions on their recently opened streetcar line. Anecdotes aside, the federal government collects public transportation safety data, and from 2011 (when they started reporting streetcar data) to 2015, streetcars and their close cousins, cable cars, were by far the most collision-prone forms of public transportation. Streetcar revenue miles per collision were almost an order of magnitude lower than those for buses or other types of rail:

Cities should expect collisions because of the streetcar’s very design. They share the road with other vehicles and, due to fixed rails, cannot maneuver around obstacles like buses can (or avoid obstacles completely, as separated rail lines do). An object in the path of the rails means either a collision or a delayed streetcar. This safety problem is one of the factors that pushed cities away from streetcars in the first place, and is something policymakers should consider as they plan to bring a small part of that system back. 

The post Kansas City Streetcar Has First Crash appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This February, Doug McMillon – the current CEO – agreed to raise the hourly wage at Wal-Mart to no less than $9 an hour in April and to $10 an hour (or 33 percent above the current federal minimum wage) in early 2016.

How is the sharply elevated internal “minimum wage” working out for the world’s largest retailer and (by a wide margin) the nation’s largest private employer?

So far, not at all well.

In announcing the company’s third-quarter results this Tuesday, McMillon acknowledged that the wage hike had been “by far the biggest driver” in causing a 13.3 percent reduction in corporate earnings over the first nine months of its current fiscal year (ending on Jan. 31, 2016). Higher wages have added $1.2 billion in annual costs in this fiscal year and will add another $1.5 billion in costs next year.

Net income at Wal-Mart hit an all-time high of $17.0 billion in calendar 2012 (fiscal 2013, ending in January 31, 2013). According to Value Line estimates, it will drop to $14.8 billion at the end of this year and to $12.6 billion next year, which would be the lowest annual earnings for Wal-Mart in a decade.

That is no big deal to critics like Robert Reich, who served as Secretary of Labor under President Clinton. Reich pointed to Walmart and McDonald’s in a petition that he launched on MoveOn.org in 2013 urging the biggest employers to increase wages so workers can finally “get a fair share in this economy.” “Your typical employee is now earning $8.25 to $8.80 an hour,” Reich wrote. “They [Walmart and McDonald’s] can easily afford to pay [workers] $15 an hour without causing layoffs or requiring price increases.”

In regarding any profit as proof that a company can afford to pay more to its workers – without doing harm to its customers – that viewpoint disregards the realities of a competitive marketplace.

For one thing, Wal-Mart competes with other public companies in striving to maximize returns to shareholders. To say that Wal-Mart has been getting hammered in this regard is something of an understatement.

Wal-Mart’s shares have lost a third of their value since the beginning of this year – falling from a high of $90 a share in January to $60 at the close of business on Nov. 17. Meanwhile, its biggest rivals have done substantially better. Costco has climbed from $140 a share to $159, and Amazon.com has more than doubled in price.

In July, Amazon passed Wal-Mart to become the most highly valued company in the retail sector and it has shot further and further ahead since then. It now has a total market capitalization of $308 billion, compared with $195 billion for Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart lags far behind both Amazon and Costco in productivity – measured in sales per employee, with Wal-Mart at $219,000, Costco at $565,000, and Amazon at $578,000. It is clear that Wal-Mart is intent on closing the gap by slowing the growth of bricks-and-mortar stores while putting much greater emphasis on e-commerce. As McMillon put it in his presentation on Tuesday:

We will be the first to deliver a seamless shopping experience at scale. No matter how you choose to shop with us – through your mobile device, in a store or a combination – it will be fast and easy. Online retailers are testing physical store experience because they recognize the same customer desire that we do. There’s a race to do this right.

But consider the impact on total employment at Wal-Mart if the company were to close the productivity gap between itself and Amazon by 25 percent over the next three years while also achieving its stated objective of growing annual sales from about $485 billion to $530 billion or more.

In this situation, Wal-Mart would need a global workforce of 1.7 million associates, compared to the 2.2 million it has now – a loss of approximately 500,000 jobs. That would entail a loss of about 320,000 associates out of the U.S. workforce of 1.4 million associates.

While those numbers are speculative, they clearly point to the conclusion that Wal-Mart will no longer be the great job-creation machine that it was years past, which is something that self-declared champions of working class should be thinking about in agitating for higher wages. Paying higher wages has made the company more focused on achieving higher levels of productivity.

At the same time the company may water down if not abandon its historic commitment to serving less affluent shoppers with rock-bottom prices across a vast array of merchandise. The late founder Sam Walton said his dream was “to serve the under-served.” That is less of a priority today. “Globally, we know growth will come from middle- and upper-income households in years ahead,” McMillon stated at an analysts’ meeting in October.

The post Killing the Golden Goose: How Walmart’s Left-Wing Critics Destroy Job Creation appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A business hires an employee because that employee will add value to the business. If you force businesses to pay more for each individual employee without increasing the value of the employee’s services, you’re encouraging businesses to find a way to get by with fewer low-skilled employees. Stand up KC’s tactics—calling strikes, advocating a local minimum wage hike, and agitating for a statewide $15 minimum wage—all seek to increase pay without increasing the value of services rendered.

The picture above is a McDonalds in Rolla. At this location you can order your meal from a user-friendly touchscreen computer. These computers are never late, they don’t go on strike, and they’re getting cheaper every year.

If Stand Up KC successfully drives up the cost of low-skilled labor, we’ll probably see a lot more restaurants with computers like this.

The post Stand Up KC Organizes Misguided Fast-Food Worker Strikes in Kansas City appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

McDonald’s’ “Create Your Taste” kiosk allows customers to fully customize their burgers by selecting different buns, cheeses, and toppings without having to interact with a real person. The automation occurring in McDonald’s and other places might be an inevitable feature of the the 21st-century economy, and this has the potential to put many people out of work.

In a purely free market, this is creative destruction. Some jobs are destroyed in the process of delivering increased efficiency. That’s not to diminish the pain of those now out of work; however, it is necessary for the economy to grow. Even though some job losses are inevitable, government should not be expediting the process through regulations. Mandating increased labor costs through a higher minimum wage will encourage employers to use less labor. They instead will substitute other inputs, such as capital, that may have a lower relative cost because of the increase in wages. In other words, if you make labor more expensive, you give employers an incentive to invest in ways to cut down on labor. Forcing employers to pay their lowest-skilled employees more is such an incentive.

Many businesses already have a financial incentive for installing more kiosks like the ones McDonald’s is introducing. According to the Harvard Business Review, “Taco Bell recently announced that orders made via their new digital app are 20% pricier than those taken by human cashiers, largely because people select additional ingredients. Chili’s, after installing self-service tablets, reported a similar increase in dessert orders. Cinemark theater’s new self-service kiosks have ‘had concession spending per person climb for 32 straight quarters.’”

The intention behind raising the minimum wage is presumably to help low-wage workers make more money. However, with this oncoming wave of automation, policymakers might just put these people out of work altogether. Government should encourage work, not mandate that people lose it. 

The post Incentivizing Unemployment appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

CIDs are independent taxing districts created to collect sales and property taxes and spend money to improve an area in a variety of ways, including beautification and infrastructure. There are two primary problems with CIDs. The first problem is transparency. The auditor’s office has consistently found deficiencies in reporting and documentation for these districts.

The other issue with CIDs is their lack of a cap on property taxes. Under the current proposal, the CID would levy an additional 47 cents per $100 of assessed value of property taxes on top of what people/businesses already pay. However, there is no statutory language preventing the CID from increasing property taxes further. An extreme example is when a CID in the Lake of the Ozarks levied an additional $4 per $100 of assessed value. I’m not saying this proposed CID will have taxes go up that high, but there is nothing stopping such an increase from happening except the restraint of the CID board.

Given these problems, what is the compelling reason for establishing a CID, especially since the area is already seeing redevelopment? As the Columbia Tribune states:

He also cited Miller’s 2012 purchase of the old Commerce Bank building at 500 Business Loop 70 W., Head Motor Company’s recent upgrades and his own redevelopment of the Parkade Center as examples of the type of redevelopment he would like to see along the corridor. Further east, Business Loop 70 boasts a newly remodeled Burger King and renovated McDonald’s.

“We’re starting to see redevelopment occur, and we want to make sure we have pro-redevelopment policies in place,” Burnam said.

If this article tells us anything, it appears that legal restrictions on renovating existing lots are the problem. Maybe proponents should work on fixing the regulatory environment instead of raising taxes.

CIDs have serious issues and should only be undertaken without serious safeguards in place, if at all. The Business Loop in Columbia might not be a paradise, but is it so blighted that the only thing left to do is establish a CID? Color me skeptical.

The post The 411 on a CID in the B70 appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

If proponents are successful in raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, there will be a lot of pain. First, such an increase will cause job losses. A Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report estimated that if the minimum wage went up to $9 an hour, 100,000 jobs would be lost. If the wage went up to $10.10 an hour, the number of jobs lost would increase to 500,000. If the CBO is correct about job losses, one shudders to think about how many jobs would be lost if the minimum wage went up to $15.

Is the loss of so many jobs worth the increase in wages for those workers who manage to keep their jobs? That’s a question for proponents to consider. They also should consider the fact that many people who work for minimum wage are not poor. Why mandate raises for them while risking job losses for the same people wage-hike proponents are trying to help?

There is a better way to help poor families. Both the CBO report and Professor David Neumark’s 2012 study on the minimum wage find that the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a better alternative for helping poor families than increasing the minimum wage.

The EITC is a refundable tax credit that provides direct cash assistance to low-income families. The tax credit is more effective at helping poor families because it is specifically targeted toward them. The minimum wage is not. For example, a teenager working a minimum-wage job whose father is a corporate attorney and whose mother is a surgeon would receive the same monetary benefit as a single mother of two working at McDonalds. That would not be the case with the EITC. If Missouri and other states really wanted to help poor families, expanding the EITC would be a more effective tool than increasing the minimum wage.

The post On a Scale of 1-10, It’s 15 appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Hundreds of thousands of American workers are paid the minimum wage. It’s $7.25 nationally and $7.35 in St. Louis. While the perception may be that minimum and low wage jobs are mostly held by teens, the vast majority, 75 percent, are adults over the age of 20.

Recent local news reports have highlighted protests by minimum wage earners. They are demanding that their pay be nearly doubled. The campaign is called “St. Louis Can’t Survive on $7.35.”

Host Don Marsh talked with Martin Rafanan, a Lutheran minister, activist and director of the St. Louis Can’t Survive on $7.35 campaign. Angela Harrison, a local 33-year-old McDonald’s employee who makes $7.75 an hour also joined the program to talk about the challenges she faces with making just above the minimum wage.

In the second half of the program Jack Strauss, Director of the Simon Center for Regional Forecasting at Saint Louis University, and Patrick Ishmael, Policy Analyst at the Show Me Institute, joined Marsh to talk about the pros and cons of raising the minimum wage.

The post Ishmael on KWMU: Raising the Minimum Wage appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Greg Glassman is a true entrepreneur. He is the CEO and founder of Crossfit, a rapidly growing fitness program (of which I am a huge fan). This week I heard him speak at a conference about the development of his business.

If I could recite his whole speech for you I would, but here is my takeaway: Glassman uses freedom to grow the Crossfit movement. Standardization works for some businesses, such as McDonalds, but Glassman realized that Crossfit would touch more lives if he allowed affiliates to use his fitness program and run their businesses how they chose.

None of the Crossfit methods are protected, and affiliates only pay to use the Crossfit name. There are no requirements to use a certain brand of equipment, to operate specific hours, or to run the gyms in any specific way.

Because of this, Glassman has enabled thousands of Crossfit gyms to open in the past few years. Glassman gives all of his affiliates an equal opportunity to survive and thrive on their own. This is important. Entrepreneurs like Greg Glassman create jobs, not the government.

Missouri, please learn from Glassman’s success. Show-Me Institute analysts have written about the importance of treating businesses fairly and allowing them to grow or fail on their own. Business growth means more job creation, less unemployment, and happier Missourians. Entrepreneurial growth such as Glassman’s means all the above plus more individual and economic freedom for all. Isn’t this what all of us want?

The post Crossfit Creates Jobs appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Read what David Martin wrote in The Pitch:

The project, which has neighborhood support, sounds worthwhile. But there’s a catch. The public has to provide assistance. The developer is asking for a tax break worth $2.76 million.

The Kansas City City Council will be told that the project won’t work without the incentives. Yes, West 39th Street is vibrant with restaurants. Across the state line, the University of Kansas Hospital is expanding.

The developer concedes that the failed Qdoba sits on a valuable piece of land. But here’s where the proposal begins to look like blackmail.

“Sure, it’s an attractive piece of property for development for lots of different uses,” Aaron March, an attorney working for Price Development, tells The Pitch. “But if we were just in it for the money, we would sell it to McDonald’s or QuikTrip. But we’re not.”

[…]

So what will you have, Kansas City, a spiffy new apartment building or a McFlurry? “If you’d rather have a convenience store or a gas station or a fast-food restaurant,” March says, “then don’t give the incentives.”

This is the view from the property’s doorstep.

View Larger Map

It takes real je ne sais pas quoi to go to the government, concede that your property’s valuable, and then claim that if you don’t get a tax abatement, your only option would be to build a gas station or a fast food joint. That may be business as usual these days when it comes to the private sector’s interactions with the government, but it’s bad business, and bad policy.

The post Hot New Argument for Tax Breaks in Kansas City: Abate My Taxes, Or I Just Might Build a QuikTrip appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

While many restaurants don’t offer health coverage, McDonald’s provides mini-med plans for workers at 10,500 U.S. locations, most of them franchised. A single worker can pay $14 a week for a plan that caps annual benefits at $2,000, or about $32 a week to get coverage up to $10,000 a year.

Last week, a senior McDonald’s official informed the Department of Health and Human Services that the restaurant chain’s insurer won’t meet a 2011 requirement to spend at least 80% to 85% of its premium revenue on medical care.

McDonald’s and trade groups say the percentage, called a medical loss ratio, is unrealistic for mini-med plans because of high administrative costs owing to frequent worker turnover, combined with relatively low spending on claims.

Brian Hook of Missouri Watchdog points out that McDonald’s is among the top 20 employers in the Saint Louis metro area, with between 5,000 and 9,999 employees. Furthermore, this problem is hardly limited to McDonald’s employees:

Insurers say dozens of other employers could find themselves in the same situation as McDonald’s. Aetna Inc., one of the largest sellers of mini-med plans, provides the plans to Home Depot Inc., Disney Worldwide Services, CVS Caremark Corp., Staples Inc. and Blockbuster Inc., among others, according to an Aetna client list obtained by the Journal. Aetna also covers AmeriCorps teaching-program sponsors, who are required by law to make health coverage available.

Aetna declined to comment; it has previously indicated that the requirement could hurt its limited benefit plans.

Granted, these plans are far from perfect, but for many of the people who use them, it is likely the best they can afford. If the plans are outlawed, these people will either seek taxpayer-subsidized coverage or opt for no coverage at all. Mini-med plans are evidence that the market can insure the overwhelming majority of people, but not when it is so frequently hobbled by government restrictions.

The post Law to Expand Health Coverage Limits Health Coverage appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For starters, basic economic intuition would suggest that the payday lenders operate in a competitive marketplace. Fairly low barriers to entry (both legal and financial) into the market and the vast number of storefronts implies that individual stores face strong incentives to underprice their competitors. The result, barring collusion or market distortion, would be that prices are efficient, and not exorbitant.

The empirical evidence bears out this claim. A paper released by the FDIC Center for Financial Research used panel data from a large vendor to demonstrate that, despite the high interest rates on payday loans, the profitability of payday lenders does not statistically differ from the profitably of other financial intermediaries, like “reputable” banks. This should appeal to intuition: Payday lenders cater to risky populations that are vulnerable to financial stressors and prone to defaults. Risky customers warrant high rates to compensate for high default rates. This understanding regarding the level of market competitiveness and the condition of interest rate efficiency is crucial to understanding the policy effects of regulation in the payday loan market.

Last week, in a conversation with state Sen. Mary Still — one of Missouri’s most vocal critics of the payday lending industry and author of regulatory legislation in the General Assembly — I hoped to identify her latitude of acceptance for various payday lending policies (including deregulating the market further). I discovered that the two policy tools that are most likely to hear debate in the General Assembly are interest rate caps and providing incentives for banks to become “legitimate” vendors of payday loans. In some important ways, these approaches are troubling. If the market is already competitive and interest rates are efficient, an interest rate cap will choke the market and force lenders out — and banks shouldn’t have the ability to offer significantly cheaper rates on similar products. At any rate, revealed preferences would suggest that there is a reason banks aren’t willing to offer payday loans without incentives.

As I’ve discussed earlier, payday loans have the potential to be both helpful and harmful. Imposing interest rate caps on the market will stifle the ability of payday loans to help consumers, and incentivizing banks to offer such loans will do little to shield consumers from harm.

The post Payday Policymaking appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The power of consumers to influence producers with their money is something we’ve discussed before on Show-Me Daily. It is not a pipe dream, either, considering that companies like McDonald’s are listening.  Entire businesses (like Whole Foods) have sprung up around the environmentally-conscious consumer.

Last semester, as a final project for my research methods class, my group conducted a survey about people’s meat-buying habits and their knowledge of farm conditions. Although I can’t mention specific results — we conducted the project for educational purposes only — we generally observed that most people claimed price to be the biggest factor when they bought meat. After we showed them pictures and information about industrial farms, a significant percentage said that knowledge of farming practices and conditions would affect their future purchasing decisions.

If these sort of things are important to you, voting with your wallet — and encouraging your friends to do the same — is the best way for the market to select for companies that most closely align with societal norms. One common misperception about free markets is that profit is the only important factor, and that the only way for a company to survive is for it to offer the lowest prices — and cut quality accordingly. But that’s merely a straw man: Product quality and any number of social considerations, including “eco-consciousness,” can have value for consumers.

Price is a limiting factor for some people, and they may not be willing or able to pay a higher price in order to make purchases that satisfy whatever environmental concerns they may have — and that should be their prerogative. Many people say they want environmental concessions, but they may not be willing to pay the difference in price that those concessions would require. Government regulations can therefore harm some number people by increasing compliance costs and therefore raising the price of food. By using the market as a tool to affect change instead, people can make their own cost/environmental-consciousness trade-offs. Voting with money allows companies with successful business plans — for some, that will mean alternative production methods or types of food — to succeed. It is the most democratic of processes, because each person is able to decide where they wish to draw the line.

The post Free Market for Farmers’ Markets appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Back in June, I heard a conversation on “Bob Edwards Weekend” with the filmmakers behind Food, Inc., in which they made a point about the power that food consumers can wield by virtue of the fact that they make choices every day about where and what they will eat. Consumers tell companies what they like and dislike by the way they spend. We don’t have to look to state or federal governments to accomplish change in the food industry. If consumers let companies know that it’s important enough for them to maintain certain standards for the way their food is raised or prepared that they will favor businesses that conform to their preference, eventually even corporations as large as Walmart or McDonald’s will take notice.

Just a month or so ago, this principle was on full (and ironic) display. Many patrons of Whole Foods shop there because of the company’s commitment to high-quality natural and organic products. But when the company’s CEO published an op-ed advocating a free-market approach to health care reform and opposing President Barack Obama’s proposals, many previously loyal Whole Foods shoppers decided to take their money elsewhere to communicate their displeasure. This sort of revolt can be incredibly effective, although bringing these issues into such high profile might also inspire (as it did in the case of Whole Foods) new patronage from a group of people who had otherwise been disinterested in a company’s goods or services.

Utilizing such a “boycott” strategy, however, means that those saying “no” must be willing to give up goods and services that they would really prefer to have — at least until the market responds to their demands. And, because these consumers don’t want to give up those goods and services, they all-too-frequently utilize the coercive power of government to force providers to offer those goods and services on the consumers’ chosen terms.

Examples of this mentality leap from recent headlines. Don’t like the limitations offered by insurance companies, but you’re worried about going uninsured? Get your state government to mandate the kind of coverage you want. Wish that your favorite restaurant didn’t permit smoking, but you can’t bear to go without their signature dish? Get your city or county to pass a smoking ban. Want to build a corporate headquarters, but you can’t get the current property owners to sell at the price you want? Get your city to use eminent domain. Want an iPhone or a Blackberry Storm, but you don’t want to sign a long-term contract with AT&T or Verizon? Demand that Congress outlaw exclusive service agreements.

In every one of these examples, consumers have the power to change the market as long as they have the willpower to say “no.” Think health insurance premiums are too high? Refuse to carry insurance until a company offers a deal that you think is reasonable. Want to enjoy your meals without a smoky environment? Tell that restaurant owner that you won’t be back until his establishment has gone smoke-free. Don’t think that a property owner’s asking price is reasonable? Choose a different location or figure out a way to build around them. Prefer to stick with your favorite wireless service provider? Tell Apple or Blackberry that you won’t purchase their products until you are free to use them with a carrier of your own choosing.

The challenge here is that realizing the power of “no” in this context requires a willingness to sacrifice having something that you like in the short term so that in the long term you will be able to enjoy it under more favorable circumstances. Our nation still has a fast-food mentality when it comes to our desires, which is why it is so tempting to use the government as a shortcut to get what we want. But giving the government the authority to destroy someone else’s liberty — to the extent that they must give you what you want on the terms that you demand — is a double-edged sword. That same power can (and almost certainly will) be turned back against you.

The post The Power of Saying “No” appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Steinmetz says it’s a slippery slope:

[T]he sale of this subway station seems to be a harbinger of more distressing and confusing sales to come. Another commenter satirically encapsulated this worry in “Modern Subway Directions”: “Get on at McDonalds and go five stops to Starbucks. Transfer to the Walmart and continue on to Staples.” And if subway stops are for sale, why not streets? If streets are for sale, why not whole towns? Will Missourian legislators be someday casting votes in Microsoft City?

Let’s not get so attached to the names of our streets and bus stops. Even without corporate sponsors, these names can change. In cases where a street retains its name for decades, people usually forget the original significance anyway. The only problem I can imagine with saying, “Get off at Staples,” is that passengers could be confused whether they should look for a Staples store or a stop named Staples. The ambiguity would diminish as people get used to the new names. Some people were confused when St. Louis Bread Company became Panera, too, but they survived.

Things get murkier when the advertisers aren’t harmless office supply stores. What if, instead of cleaning up trash on a highway, the National Socialist Movement decided to sponsor a bus stop instead? While most drivers overlook the “Adopt-a-Highway” signs, bus stops get more attention. Would we have to rename the neighboring stops to get back at the neo-Nazis?

Such issues regarding advertising in public spaces will need to be sorted out — if only because we can’t name everything after a dead president or a British province.

The post Sacred Bus Stops appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Zoning is one of the main areas of disagreement among the staff here at the Show-Me Institute. I, as well as Justin before he left for the big city, favor the rights of local government to enact zoning. Dave Roland does not. (I expect he’ll comment on this later.) I admit that zoning can easily lead to silliness and regulatory hoops, like with the issues outlined in the abovementioned story, but I still feel citizens have a right, through their elected officials, to lay a basic groundwork for which types of activities can take place within certain areas. Dave, if I may put words in his mouth, would say that those restrictions are improper and neighbors should recover in civil court any damages they might incur from a certain type of activity taking place near them. (I think that is way too optimistic a faith in our civil court system; pretty common among lawyers.)

The good news is that it appears the two new funeral homes will be allowed to open. While you might bemoan the hoops they jumped through to get going, if the fact that there was a zoning fight now means that there won’t be a lawsuit by the neighborhood later, then they are no worse for the wear. That is more hard realism than good logic or policy, but it’s probably accurate.

The best part of the article are the comments from the litigious neighborhood activist who appears to take his role very seriously. This guy really believes in his neighborhood, but apparently not in the free market. If I had discussions about zoning with this guy, I’d probably switch over to Dave Roland’s opinion. His comments are revealing (emphasis added):

Peter Anger, secretary of the Parkade Neighborhood Association, spoke at the September meeting of the Columbia Planning and Zoning Commission, where the Carr-Yeager request was discussed.

“My only concern is the zoning,” Anger said at the time. “I have no problem with a funeral home without a crematorium in there. I think ‘office’ zoning is appropriate.”

Anger yesterday said zoning would outlast any business that establishes itself on the site. “Whatever happens to be on that tract of land is governed by the zoning,” he said. “Businesses come and go at the whim of the economy, and I don’t want to see a McDonald’s on that corner.”

Anger is no stranger to modifying zoning ordinances and once appealed a city zoning decision to allow a concrete and asphalt plant all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court. He said office zoning would be appropriate for mortuaries without crematories.

“My recommendation, as an experienced neighborhood executive and spokesperson, would be to rewrite zoning to allow a mortuary without crematorium. It would be a great buffer” between residential neighborhoods and commercial districts, Anger said. “We have these buffers for very specific reasons

The post No Sure Things Except Death and Zoning appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I could go on for some time here about budget constraints, the individual spending decision, and future value; but, instead, I will merely say that probably everyone (especially people who do not regularly read this blog, unfortunately) could benefit from increased reading on the topic of retirement saving. On that note, I think it’s appropriate to link to our recent policy study about Missouri’s public pension programs. A bit unnerving, but I learned a lot from it.

The post Would You Like a Comfortable Retirement With That? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

:In New York City this summer, a law kicked in requiring chain restaurants — from Starbucks to Burger King — to display on menus and menu boards the caloric content of the food they serve. In five other cities and counties elsewhere, similar labeling laws will take effect in coming months.

If the regulators’ goal is to help people make healthier choices, these regulations will probably do just the opposite of what they intend. Collecting information on calories is expensive, and the cost of complying with these laws will be most easily borne by the big fast-food chains. Small restaurants with potentially healthier fare will face this huge obstacle to setting up business. So we could end up with a situation where people know exactly how many calories are in each hamburger at McDonald’s but don’t care because that’s the only place to eat out.

(Not that they care so much now. Everybody knows that fast food isn’t good for you, even if they don’t have the exact calorie count in front of them when they order. It sells anyway.)

Fortunately, this concept hasn’t caught on in Missouri. Let’s hope things stay that way.

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This is an excellent example of how for-profit firms respond to customer feedback. When complaints about the program grew, McDonald’s — not the district — ended the program. In contrast, parents in Columbia are protesting new math all over the place, but the district just holds some meetings and avoids making changes.

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“It’s a terribly troubling trend,” Ms. Linn said, because “it really, clearly links doing well in school with getting a Happy Meal.”

Well, yeah, it does. I don’t feel the need to get up in arms about this, but I can see how the program could annoy parents. Some people don’t eat at McDonald’s because of health reasons, beliefs in strict vegetarianism, or dietary restrictions imposed by any of several religions. Parents who fall into those categories don’t want to see a McDonald’s ad with every report card or to have to explain to their kids for the millionth time, "No, we can’t go get a Happy Meal like all your friends do."

An obvious solution is to offer rewards that don’t involve food. In some schools in Missouri, kids get to go to a Cardinals game as a reward for good grades. Bookstores could reward kids with a paperback novel, and kids might even read it and learn something.

If I were a parent in the McDonald’s school district (just kidding, it’s actually called the Seminole County School District) I would probably ask the company to donate the $3 or so that a Happy Meal costs to the Ronald McDonald House Charities. That way you avoid Happy Meals and teach your kids about helping others at the same time.

A general policy lesson to learn from this controversy is that involving private organizations in public education is great, but it works better if you let parents make a choice. That goes for big things like choosing schools or curricula, but it’s also important for little things like rewarding good grades. There’s no reason everyone needs to get the same reward. If you offer a few different options, parents will be just as happy as the kids.

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