In March of this year, KSDK 5 published an article titled “St. Louis leaders say crime is at a historic low, but public perception takes time to catch up.” The issue is that this isn’t necessarily true. Perception does not always “catch up,” although there certainly can be lag effects between the reduction in crime and the perception held by citizens. In fact, there are over 30 years of surveys from Pew Research showing that Americans believe there is more crime in the United States in the year they were surveyed than the year before. Violent crime rates have dropped by almost half over the span of these surveys beginning in 1993.

Even at the local level, citizens have misperceptions about crime and where it is occurring. Brookings surveyed people from some of the biggest cities in the United States, including Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia. One of the most common complaints was fear of going downtown due to higher crime. Data show that downtowns accounted for a very small percentage of the increase in crime in these cities. For example, Chicago experienced a 48% increase in property crime between 2019 and 2022, but downtown only accounted for 6% of this increase.

The examples above demonstrate that numbers and time don’t always solve the issue of the perception of crime not matching reality. If St. Louis is to close the gap, it must start with the appearance of the city. Police Chief Tracy briefly mentions in a quote from the KDSK article that quality-of-life crimes need to be addressed.

Quality-of-life crimes (substance use, panhandling, etc.) have an impact on how people feel about a particular area. Former New York City police commissioner William Bratton believed this so much that he implemented “broken windows” policing back in the 1990s, which was intended to crack down on these lower-level crimes. The rationale behind this was that by preventing smaller crimes, it not only prevented worse ones from occurring, but also symbolized that the city had control over the area.

St. Louis would benefit from following in the footsteps of New York and addressing lower-level crimes. A short drive across the city is enough to see the number of panhandlers and abandoned buildings in the area. Downtown is a prime example of an area where worries of crime have contributed to empty buildings. Multiple restaurants downtown have closed or cut hours due to the lack of business this year.

Preventing these quality-of-life crimes and cleaning up the streets impacts where people choose to go and helps determine how safe they feel in an area. It’s intuitive that citizens will make judgements on levels of crime based on the conditions of buildings and what is occurring on the streets more than what data shows.

Public perception to is unlikely to shift based solely on crime statistics. 30 years of data demonstrate this. Instead, it would be more beneficial to take appropriate measures to clean up the streets regardless of how much crime numbers are going down, because people will always care more about their own intuition when it comes to safety rather than the numbers.

The post Waiting for Perception on Crime to Change Is Not a Winning Strategy for St. Louis appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Numerous studies have investigated the potentially harmful effects of smartphones and social media. In fact, the U.S. Surgeon General has recently called for a warning label on social media for youth. While national leaders are considering action more broadly, numerous states are considering the issue, including Missouri. House Bill (HB) 408 proposes a statewide approach to the smartphone problem in schools.

What Would HB 408 Accomplish?

If passed, HB 408 would require every school district to adopt a written policy governing “electronic telecommunication” (primarily smartphone) use. At a minimum, each policy would need to:

• Prohibit students from using, operating, possessing, or keeping on such student’s person a smartphone or connected device during regularly scheduled instructional activities.
• Require students who bring a device to school grounds to turn it off and store it properly during instructional activities.
• Establish guidelines for using smartphones during field trips, transportation, and other “noninstructional” school activities.
• Provide exceptions for students with an individualized education program (IEP), a 504 Plan (for students with special accommodations), or those with individualized healthcare plans.

Why HB 408 Would Help

Teachers overwhelmingly report that smartphones are a major classroom disruption. A Pew Research Center study found that 72% of U.S. high school teachers say that smartphone distraction is a major problem. Additionally, 83% of National Education Association (NEA) members support prohibiting smartphone and personal devices during the entire school day.

Research reinforces these concerns, as studies have shown that receiving notifications (or even the potential of receiving them), can disrupt learning and lead to lower performance.

Bullying has routinely been connected to smartphone use, with devices being used for recording fights, cyber bullying, and spreading harmful content on social media. Missouri has seen a rising number of disciplinary incidents despite a smaller student population. In the 2012–2013 school year, there were 11,703 suspensions of 10 or more consecutive days—that number rose to 14,890 in 2022–2023.

In January, Normandy Schools Collaborative enacted a total smartphone ban on district property, citing that smartphone use has been a primary cause of bullying, staged fights, and sexual misconduct. However, the success of the policy will hinge on effective enforcement.

When asked about the total ban on school property, a director of security at the Normandy School Collaborative stated: “We tried a policy where you could have a cell phone, just not in class. The students did not adhere to the policies.”

It would be inaccurate to completely scapegoat smartphones for all the aforementioned issues in schools, but it would also be difficult to argue that they are not exacerbating the problem.

HB 408 is a policy that would potentially improve the academic and social environment for Missouri schools, but its success still hinges on how districts and parents enforce the policy. If passed, it will be fascinating to see which strategies (such as allowing cell phones but not smartphones) prove most effective.

The post Hanging Up on Smartphones in Missouri Public Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

We’ve argued this basic fact for years, and some of the better-known pipers have even changed their tune (but not without charging the townspeople nonetheless). According to a recent study published by SmartAsset based on Pew Research data, Kansas City, Missouri, is not in the top 25 destinations for millennials. Overland Park, Kansas, ranked 14th.

More noteworthy, SmartAsset previously released a study indicating that two Kansas City suburbs ranked in the top 25 places in the United States where millennials are buying homes. Olathe, KS ranked first (!) and Overland Park 11th in the entire country. Kansas City, Missouri—despite our entertainment district, Sprint Center, streetcar, and subsidized corporate headquarters and high-rise luxury apartment buildings—did not appear anywhere in the top 25.

None of this should be surprising. We know that millennials are looking for exactly what previous generations wanted: homes in the suburbs, cars, and good schools. Yet Kansas City leaders persist in telling us we’re a millennial magnet. We aren’t.

There is no shortcut to growing a city; no magical policy that can reverse national demographic trends. A better investment, as Show-Me Institute analysts have argued for years, is for government’s action to be broad and neutral: keep taxes low for everyone, maintain infrastructure, deliver necessary city services, and ensure quality education. Maybe those aren’t as appealing as shiny new construction projects, but they are more successful.

The post Millennials *Still* Prefer the Kansas City Suburbs appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The researchers partnered with The New York Times to create a searchable data visualization of every county in America and its neighborhood effect on lifetime earnings. Missouri is shown below  (on the map, blue is good and red is bad.) 

The three best counties to grow up in, paired with the extra money a child from a poor family will expect to make by age 26 for having grown up there, are:

• Osage County +$5,260
• Chariton County +$4,660
• Perry County $4,460

The three worst counties, paired with the negative financial repercussion of growing up there, are:

• St. Louis City –$3,780
• Boone County –$1,470
• Mississippi County –$1,320

The authors point to five factors driving better rates of upward mobility: less segregation by income and race, lower levels of economic inequality, better schools, lower rates of violent crime, and a larger share of two-parent households. 

Each of those factors is important, but here I’d like to focus on the role that educational attainment plays in increasing economic mobility.  Take a look at this graph from the Pew Research Center:

The gap between the wages of high school graduates and college graduates is widening. Helping more students successfully complete high school and then get a meaningful postsecondary credential (it doesn’t have to be a four-year degree, but it’s critical to choose one’s field of study wisely) can be a huge boost to upward mobility. Consider the following graph from the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project:

Visually, what jumps out are the dark bars, which show how difficult it is to progress to a better economic situation without a college degree. But the light bars tell a much more hopeful (and frankly amazing) story. At the far right edge of the graph we see that with a college degree, even someone born into a poor family has a 19% chance of making it into the top quintile of income distribution. By definition, only 20% of the entire population is in that top quintile at any given time, so this finding suggests that those who earn a college degree in spite of the formidable challenges of poverty really do achieve economic mobility.

The problem is that so few among the economically disadvantaged are able to earn that college degree. Several factors—broken families, lackluster schools, and unsafe streets, to name a few—contribute to opportunity inequality that is too often overlooked by those who consider income inequality to be the primary (or even the only) concern. But rather than hold out for a single solution to all of these interconnected problems, why not see if serious educational reform (as Show-Me Institute writers have suggested here and here and here, for example) can help give students the opportunities they need to improve their lives?

The post Opportunity and Mobility in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The time for enrolling in health exchanges is now upon us. Recent polls show that the majority of Americans continue to disapprove of the health care law — the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare — enacted in 2010. But how many of us really understand what we can expect and what we will pay for this “affordable” health program? The simple fact is that most of us are just plain bewildered, not knowing how the controversial law will affect us.

A September 2013 USA Today/Pew survey provides some evidence on this. Of those surveyed, only one-quarter believed that they had a very good understanding of what the law’s impact would be on them and their family. When asked what the impact of the law would be on them in the future, over 40 percent thought it would have a mostly negative effect. Only one-in four thought it would have a positive effect.

How the law affects us is becoming clearer, sort of.  The Kaiser Health News reported that Obamacare affects treatment choice for many patients in eastern Missouri. This is because policies offered by Anthem BlueCross BlueShield, made available through Missouri’s online insurance marketplace, would not include Barnes-Jewish Hospital, or St. Louis Children’s Hospital. As reported in this newspaper, subsequent reporting revealed that BJC Healthcare will be part of another insurer, Conventry. Even with that mystery solved, just which services will or will not be covered under the new plan remains uncertain.

There also are broader negative economic affects that will arise from implementing the new law. What are the tax consequences that the average individual will face? How will these tax changes affect decisions to work?

Answering such questions is the purpose of a recent study by University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan. (Read Mulligan’s New York Times article, “Health care inflation and the arithmetic of labor taxes“) The basis for his research is the observed fact that policies that raise taxes on your income reduce your incentive to work more. You may need to work to pay the bills, but your incentive to work a second job or someone in your household to take on a part-time work is reduced at a higher tax rate. The after-tax income may simply not be enough to induce you to work.

Mulligan’s study finds that implementing Obamacare will create significant implicit and explicit tax increases that negatively affect the decision to work for many individuals. One avenue for these higher taxes is through employer tax penalties. It also comes through higher taxes on individuals. Mulligan estimates that, on net, “all provisions combined raise marginal tax rates in 2015 by 10 percentage points of total compensation” for about half of the nonelderly adult population.

In other words, under Obamacare a large portion of the working population will experience a significant increase in their effective tax rate. And this increase comes on top of existing tax rates. The disincentive to work is larger under Obamacare than currently exists.

Mulligan’s analysis explores the labor market effects of Obamacare by considering the new, higher implicit tax on full-time work. That is, many individuals currently working full time would find it economically advantageous to shift to part-time, given the provisions of the law. “Some middle-class workers,” Mulligan writes, “will find that they can work substantially less [fewer hours] without losing any disposable income.” That is not a recipe for improving prospects for greater economic growth.

Obamacare will disrupt markets for medical care, forcing individuals to choose hospitals and doctors that they would not have chosen otherwise. Obamacare also will create substantial negative incentives for many individuals to work.

As an increased proportion of the population moves into retirement, this puts increased pressure on government social programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and now health care.

The tax increases under Obamacare will reduce the labor force as people opt out of working by retiring or they chose to work fewer hours.  Either way, the growth of output slows and with it income.

Since income funds Social Security and Medicare and now Obamacare, to fund these programs at existing levels — and with even more individuals enrolled in retirement programs — it puts strains on those still working, which is a shrinking proportion of the population.

Unless you cut back on existing programs (coverage, services, etc.) and/or raise taxes on those employed, there simply is not enough inflow of funds in out years to pay for all of these programs at current levels of coverage.

The disincentives created by the Affordable Care Act decrease the likelihood that the economic growth will rebound any time soon.

Rik Hafer is a distinguished research professor in the Department of Economics and Finance at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and a scholar at the Show-Me Institute.

The post Obamacare: Less Choice, Higher Taxes, Slower Economic Growth appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Unfortunately, in many cases, the financial situation of these pensions is worse than the Pew report indicates. The 77 percent figure comes from an aggregation of several pensions. Individually, many pensions have funding ratios below 77 percent. In 2011, the Missouri State Employees’ Plan (MSEP) had a funding ratio of 79.2 percent, but the Missouri Department of Transportation and Highway Patrol Employees’ Retirement System (MPERS) had a funding ratio of 43.3 percent.

To make matters worse, the state’s monetary contributions to some of these plans is below what is required to keep up with the plans’ new obligations (this includes interest on obligations, which in the case of MSEP, is not fully funded). Thus, in many cases, the financial situation of these pension plans is getting worse, not better.

The Missouri Legislature has taken steps to deal with the pension shortfall. The state raised the retirement age to 67 from 62, along with requiring the workers to contribute 4 percent of their pay toward their pension benefits. Given the current financial situation of some of these pensions, I would suggest an additional common sense change.

The state should index the retirement age to life expectancy. Thus, as life expectancy increases, the retirement age would increase along with it so that the entire plan would be on firmer financial footing. This would not be the only change that could be made, but it would be a rather simple one to accomplish.

The post The Missouri Pension Problem appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Perhaps because these handouts consume so much of our state budget, our government does pay some attention to where the money is going. As such, Missouri ranked high as one of the states that is “leading the way” in the Pew Center’s study.

While tax credit transparency is a laudable goal, it has accomplished little. Many of our state politicians call for tax credit reform, and then support tax credit programs soon thereafter. Consider Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, who made news last year when he told journalists that it was time for tax credit reform. And yet later that year, he urged legislators to pass expansive tax credit legislation.

Our state may have a somewhat transparent tax credit system, but taxpayer dollars continue to be misused. Just last week, Missouri Journal reported that Brown Shoe received $2.4 million in jobs training tax credits this year — and is laying off 132 workers. Missouri Journal has also reported that Ford Motor Co. received $1.85 million in job training tax incentives, despite plans to lay off more than 1,000 Missouri workers temporarily. This would have been surprising, if it had not happened before: Despite issuing many of its employees pink slips, Liberty Mutual remained eligible for job creation tax credits.

And, regular Show-Me Daily readers certainly are familiar with the state-level reviews of tax credits with a 2010 audit report that found that the state Department of Economic Development had inflated some job creation numbers associated with tax credit awards, and another 2010 state audit report that found that tax credits are more expensive than advertised. The Governor’s Tax Credit Review Commission report had all kinds of strong recommendations for tax credit reform, but those have, perhaps predictably, not been implemented.

I wonder, if Missouri is considered to be “leading the way,” what is going on in states that Pew considers to be “trailing behind”? It seems we have all kinds of accountability problems with our tax credit programs.  Sadly, transparency seems to have given our politicians enough information to provide tough talk about reform, but not the gumption to implement it.

The post At Least We Are Transparent About Our Cronyism In Missouri! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Editor:

The editorial board recently oversimplified our views on rural broadband access (“It’s a wired world, after all,” Aug. 20 issue). We do not oppose the proliferation of broadband into rural areas, merely the government subsidization of such expansion. Greater broadband penetration in rural areas indeed provides social benefits, but we remain skeptical that those benefits will outweigh cost of millions in taxpayer dollars.

Solutions for extending broadband exist in the private sector. I-Land Internet Services, for example, is expanding broadband into rural western Missouri at no cost to taxpayers. Fifty percent of people living in rural areas already have home broadband Internet service, according to a Pew Internet study released earlier this month. Furthermore, of the people who do not have high-speed Internet, only 6 percent cited a lack of access as the primary reason for not subscribing, compared with 48 percent who find the Internet irrelevant and 18 percent who have usability issues. Eighty million dollars is a very high cost to benefit such a small subset of people.

Christine Harbin, research analyst, Show-Me Institute
John Payne, research assistant, Show-Me Institute

Of additional note, contributors to Show-Me Daily have discussed this issue before.

The post Letter to the Editor: Government Subsidy Too High for Broadband Extension appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The difference is Pew includes all the costs of running a railroad, like depreciation — that’s wear-and-tear on tracks and trains — and overhead, like the legal and HR departments. Taxpayers pick up those costs too. Amtrak got $1.3 billion in funding last year.

The program even quoted Randall O’Toole, a Cato Institute senior fellow and self-described “Antiplanner”:

Best thing we can do for mass transportation would be to privatize it, let the private operators respond to the market, and then we’ll have a more efficient system that might be attractive to more people.

O’Toole has written several policy studies for the Show-Me Institute on the subject of high speed rail and its free-market alternatives. His most recent, “Why Missouri Taxpayers Should Not Build High-Speed Rail,” was published late last month.

High-speed rail is relevant to Missouri, particularly as officials consider upgrading the tracks from Saint Louis to Kansas City to accommodate high-speed trains. As David Stokes testified before the Joint Committee on Transportation Oversight earlier this month:

For Missouri to build true high-speed rail — the type that American tourists ride in Europe at 150 mph — would cost Missouri taxpayers billions more, all to serve the small percentage of the population that uses passenger rail.

The post The High Cost of High-Speed Rail appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That being said, the only thing you can really do after a long drive is riff on the news you missed:

• The Pew Center on the States (which also released a study I commented on last week) released Grading the States 2008, its annual report card on the performance of state governments. Missouri was one of five states ranked as a B+, behind only three states ranked as an A-. According to the Post-Dispatch, the improvement comes largely from improvements in state-sponsored road projects. Yay, MoDOT.
• The St. Louis Metropolitan and County police departments are going to start pursuing fugitives without warrants for their arrest. Despite the fact that without warrants these individuals are technically not "fugitives" per se, there is an administrative step that prevents warrants from being sought until an individual is first apprehended. This is, coincidentally, why lots of fugitives miss court dates in the first place: Often in St. Louis County, a suspect will be released from custody and assume that everything is hunky-dory until he gets pulled over for rolling a stop sign two years later and finds out that he’s had a warrant for his arrest out since the day after he was first brought in. Happens all the time. That said, pursuing individuals without warrants isn’t the step that needs to be taken. Rather, warrants should be made easier to get in the first place.

The post Quick Hits After a Journey appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

According to data made available by the Missouri Department of Corrections, there are 30,685 inmates (as of February 2008) incarcerated in Missouri penitentiaries, along with another 71,000 under some alternate form of corrective state supervision. Thus, with Missouri’s population hovering around 6 million, this means that about 1.6 percent of Missouri’s population is currently restricted by the DOC.

This information means nothing, though, without context. Last summer, the DOC and state officials were quick to brag about how well the state’s new recommended sentence system was doing at lowering the prison population and reducing recidivism, stating that the 2.1-percent drop from 2005 to 2006 was one of the best in the nation. However, since that time, inmate populations have begun to increase yet again, with 2007 seeing a .5-percent increase, according to the Pew Center Study.

More important than the amount of increase, though, is that inmate numbers are increasing at all in a corrections system that, like most others around the country, is becoming more and more overcrowded. Missouri’s 20 penitentiaries currently boast a capacity of 29,988 — a capacity that has already been blown past and is looking to be stretched even thinner in coming years, with the looming threat of recession.

Granted, a half-percentage-point increase in prison population isn’t as bad as that seen by Kentucky (12 percent) or Iowa (8 percent), but Missouri’s lawmakers should be looking for new methods to reduce the prison population itself — especially when, according to the report, Missouri spends only 67 cents on higher education for every dollar it spends on corrections.

I wonder: If that ratio was switched, would more than one problem be solved?

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