Several of the speakers have since noted the growth in both the quantity and quality of young liberty activists over the last few decades. In his Washington Examiner column, Cato Institute Vice President Gene Healy recollects that when he founded a college libertarian group in the early 1990s, “we considered ourselves lucky when we could get a couple of dozen socially awkward malcontents together to grumble about the government.”

But economist Bryan Caplan probably summed it up best: “Twenty years ago, a pack of libertarian students would have been roughly as awkward and freakish as attendees at Comic-Con … or, say, me. Now I see hundreds of students who aren’t just smart, but smooth.”

My college experience was not nearly as benighted as Healy’s or Caplan’s. I helped lead a libertarian group at Washington University in Saint Louis from 2001 to 2005, and we were extremely active: holding weekly meetings, bringing speakers to campus (sometimes multiple times per semester), debating other student groups, helping to publish a biweekly conservative-libertarian student newspaper, etc. The group was a major force in campus political life, but we were still outnumbered and isolated. There were only a few other large and active libertarian college groups across the country (Loyola New Orleans, Hillsdale College, and George Mason University spring to mind), so we felt like the last of a dying breed, a remnant of brighter days.

At one point, we tried to launch a national libertarian student group, much like what SFL has become. When we started planning for a conference, we thought 100–200 student attendees would be phenomenal, but we never achieved that because there wasn’t a great deal of interest in the idea outside of those few groups. If someone told us that, less than 10 years later, there would be a pro-liberty student group hosting a convention with more than 500 attendees (and many others turned away because of a lack of space), we would have laughed in his face.

I don’t think it has ever felt this good to be wrong. (Maybe in 2006, when the Cardinals surprised even me by beating the Tigers and winning the World Series, but I’m pretty sure this is better.) Students and young people in general are listening to the message of freedom being articulated by talented writers, filmmakers, artists, etc. — and by groups like the Show-Me Institute. I get dispirited on an almost daily basis when I see the government grow and grow, seemingly without end, but I have seen real changes in people’s beliefs since I first started tilting at these government windmills. That’s no guarantee that things will change for the better, but it is something. It’s hope.

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But did you know that there is an entire journal devoted to explaining what tax credits are and how to get them? And, yes, you can subscribe to the print version.

The existence of this journal makes sense. After all, if governments are giving away relatively easy-to-obtain public money, we would expect businesses to crop up in order to make a profit by helping others access taxpayer money. This journal, and all the other companies and websites dedicated to encouraging others to apply for public tax incentives are illustrative of the strange activity that is a byproduct of government-manufactured incentives.

(special thanks to Christine Harbin for suggesting that I shamelessly copy Tyler Cowen.)

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Math skills are more the result of drill, whereas you have to learn how to love to read and much of that happens within the family, not at school. Math is therefore easier to “teach by central planning,” so to speak.

I do think that children can learn to love reading in school, but I agree with Cowen that skills like reading are not amenable to state control. Math at the K–12 level entails learning a limited number of facts and procedures, in a set order. Although there are different ways to write out the algorithms and explain the concepts, nobody goes very far in trigonometry or calculus without first learning arithmetic and algebra. The government can say, “Teach x, y, and z in math class,” and then give a test to see whether schools complied.

Students’ reading ability does not develop in a linear fashion like math skills. People learn to read by reading widely and building up reading experience over time. There’s no obvious, direct route to a high level of reading comprehension, so it’s harder to legislate improvements in reading skills.

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The next point Sarah references in her post is about the difficulties of remaining as a small-business in a newly popular area. I have two solutions for the issue of independent businesses being forced out by higher rents and taxes in fashionable area. Solution # 1: Lower the tax rate. Really, most downtown areas have special taxing districts (both downtown St. Louis and Clayton have them). If the rents and property values rise quickly (we should be so lucky in downtown St. Louis) it is easy enough to lower the special taxing district rate to make it easier for the smaller or merely less-hip businesses to remain. Solution # 2: If that is the way it is, than so be it.

I don’t mean to sound cruel, but I LOVE GENTRIFICATION! If a business can no longer make it because a new cultural center moves into the area and brings with it all the hipness (and expensiveness) you can handle, well, those are the breaks, independent bookstore-dude. I should be very clear here that I am not encouraging eminent domain to forcibly remove Mr. independent bookstore and Ms. clothing resale shop. In fact, I like both of them very much, but change and progress are not meant to be easy, and if an art center comes to your neighborhood and the free market decides other businesses compliment it more, than so be it.

But back to government funding of arts. I like it local, low level and without strings. I don’t think it should be a large amount of money and certainly not a gravy-train for artists, but oftentimes the results are well worth the investment. “Man on a Horse” right here in Clayton, for example.

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"Public support of the arts should be driven less by ranking and more by just trying to help local organizations enrich people’s lives and create the sort of cultural amenities that are important in attracting knowledge-based workers and fostering economic development,”GOV. MATT BLUNT

Many economists disagree. Tyler Cowen writes that studies of the economic impact of arts funding "treat arts expenditures as creating value out of nothing." And David Galenson says that government funding for arts centers can actually drive independent businesses out of an area as property values rise:

Like a professional sports team, the value of a cultural center is in adding status to a city. Often, the only people who directly profit are real estate developers, Galenson says.

Funding for the arts is great for the people who get the money, but it’s not a formula to turn tax dollars into economic growth.

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