Bin Laden’s capture: should the U.S. military use “scapels” or “sledgehammers”

“Bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy,” was how Bin Laden described his goals.  [As if our elected representatives needed help bankrupting America. But unlike our politicians Bin Laden uses the term "bleeding" literally.]

In a blog post titled “Osama Won,” Reason magazine editor Radley Balko notes that Bin Laden succeeded in his related goals: “to draw the U.S. and the West into a prolonged war—an actual war in Afghanistan, and a broader global war with Islam.” Reuters reports that “the war expense topped $1 trillion in December 2009,” and CostOfWar.com keeps a running tally.

But have costly wars, a large troop presence, and nation building helped capture terrorists?  The operation to apprehend Bin Laden involved about two dozen Navy SEALs and years of surveillance and intelligence gathering.  ”A scalpel, not a sledgehammer, should be our primary counterterrorism tool,” notes Cato Institute policy analyst David Rittgers, a former Special Forces officer in Afghanistan.

The combination of intelligence and precisely-targeted force was also behind capturing 9/11 plotters Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh. “Most effective counterterrorism techniques do not rely on tens of thousands of troops stationed indefinitely in distant lands,” notes Christopher Preble, author of “The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free.”

Recent calls for pulling troops out of Afghanistan sound reasonable. The number of Al Qaeda members there is “at most … 50 to 100, maybe less,” said CIA director Leon Panetta last summer. Indiana Senator Richard Lugar argues that this does not justify “100,000 American troops and a $100 billion per year cost.”

A version of this was published in the Boulder Daily Camera on May 7, 2011.

Does Boulder’s 4-20 smoke-out denigrate a CU degree?

Does the 4-20 smoke-out “denigrate” the value of a CU degree “by helping to label CU-Boulder as a party school,” as CU-Boulder Vice Chancellors Frank Bruno and Julie Wong wrote in an e-mail to all students advising them not to attend?

After all, Playboy magazine ranks CU-Boulder as this year’s “top party school,” claiming that “nearly half the university’s 24,000-plus undergrads turn out for the annual 4/20 smoke-out.”  This figure is flimsy — Playboy isn’t known for hardcore scholarship after all. Wikipedia lists the peak attendance as 11,000 in 2008. Further, “University officials estimated that about 75 percent of those in attendance were not affiliated with CU,” reports the Camera.

In any case, recent research by Northwestern Professor Lauren Rivera lends credence to the Vice Chancellors’ claims. Rivera analyzed how elite investment banks, law firms, and management consulting firms “use and interpret educational credentials in real-life hiring decisions.”  She concluded the “that educational credentials were the most common criteria employers used to solicit and screen resumes.” When evaluating resumes, “school prestige was the most commonly used criterion … evaluators privileged candidates from the ‘top’ of ‘the list’ regardless of their grades, coursework, major, area of specialization, or prior work experience.”  When screening resumes, about 75% of recruiters used school prestige, while only 25% used standardized test scores.

So what to do?  One way to deflate 4-20 is to repeal the immoral and authoritarian laws against marijuana sales and use. That’s just one reason that CU Chancellors should support marijuana legalization.

This was originally published in the Boulder Daily Camera on April 23 2011.

See commentary on Rivera’s research at Arnold Kling’s EconLog post.

If low-income Coloradans spend big bucks on booze, candy, & movies, they can afford higher Medicaid copays

Are Colorado Medicaid recipients spending hundreds of dollars on candy, booze, cigarettes, and movies while the state forces taxpayers to fund their medical care?  Yes, suggests the 2009 Consumer Expenditure Survey.

“Colorado faces a deficit of about half a billion for next year,” the Associated Press reports.  Instead of increasing taxes, Colorado legislature should spend taxpayers’ money more wisely. One way is to increase enrollment fees and co-payments for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Plan Plus (CHP+). These programs account for ten percent of the state budget.

Typical Medicaid co-pays are at most $3. CHP+ co-pays are at most $5, and enrolling one child is just $25 annually. The 2009 Expenditure Survey data suggests that some Medicaid recipients and parents with kids in CHP+ can afford more.

On average, the lowest income households, less than $5,000, spend almost $1,900 on sweets, alcohol, tobacco, and entertainment. Oddly, households with incomes between $5,000 and $10,000 spend less on these items – around $1,400. The groups’ non-income demographics are similar: people, wage-earners, children, and retirees per household.

Colorado CHP+ could emulate New Hampshire’s tax-funded “Healthy Kids” program. As in Colorado, parents earning between 185% and 250% of the Federal Poverty Level are eligible, though well above the poverty line. The monthly fee is $32.  Typical co-pays are $10, $100 for ER visits, and between $10 and $30 for prescriptions.

Many parents in this income range buy private insurance for their kids, reports the Congressional Budget Office. Higher fees and co-pays could encourage more parents to follow suit.

The Boulder Daily Camera published this article on March 26, 2011.

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One objection that I’ve seen to higher-copays is that patients or parents of children will forgo treatment, and wait until medical conditions get very serious before seeking treatment. If so, the argument goes, it would cost taxpayers more in the long run.

For sake of argument, let’s say this is true.  Then:

1. This shows one reason that replacing Medicaid with a voucher for  nominally “private” insurance is better. After all, government issues food stamps for food rather than running its own grocery stores.

2. Would you choose to donate to a charity that allows its recipients to spend money on entertainment and leisure while skimping on medical care?   I don’t think so. If Medicaid & CHP+ recipients respond this way to higher co-pays, this reveals a flaw with the programs themselves.  A good private charity would not allow such behavior. Or, if it did, it would quickly lose donations when word got out.

Government shouldn’t force taxpayers to donate to a specific charity, or any charity. But if government “must” force donations, at least it’s better to allow taxpayers to choose the charity. For more, see: <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-t-schwartz/questioning-your-compassi_b_574030.html”>Questioning your “compassionate” politics.

Repeal the federal gas tax, regardless of oil prices

The sharp increase in oil prices does not bode well for our finances. It’s not just higher gasoline prices. Spikes in oil prices are correlated with recessions. “All but one of the 11 postwar recessions were associated with an increase in the price of oil,” writes economist James Hamilton.

One way to decrease gasoline prices is to suspend, decrease, or eliminate the federal gasoline tax of 18 cents per gallon.  Enacted in 1932 as a temporary deficit reduction measure, it validates Milton Friedman’s maxim: “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”

A gas tax is proper to the degree that it acts a user fee. The gas tax you pay should go toward maintaining the roads you use, or are likely to use. Boulder drivers shouldn’t be taxed to finance roads in Flagstaff.  But we are. We’re “gas tax losers,” says the Environmental Working Group. Send a gas tax dollar to DC, and the Denver-metro area gets only 86 cents back. But Flagstaff, to pick a “winner” city, gets $2.30 back.

To make matters worse, many gas tax dollars don’t support roads – anywhere. As Transportation Secretary, Mary Peters told PBS that “only about 60 percent of the gas tax money … actually goes into highway and bridge construction.”  A Heritage Foundation study concurs, concluding that “as much as 40 percent of fuel tax revenues” fund costly, inefficient, and underutilized “mass-transit” boondoggles.

Eliminate the federal gas tax so drivers pay to maintain roads they actually use.

This article was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on March 12, 2011.

http://www.cato.org/multimedia/embed/2898

Thanks to Tad DeHaven for some of my talking points, which I got from his appearance on CNBC’s Streeet Signs. Not only does he make good points, but he handles the snarky comments by Jim Pethokoukis. Pethokoukis has a bit of a fit at the end at the suggestion that government planning inevitably fails.

See also:

Street Smart: Competition, Entrepreneurship, and the Future of Roads

Sell the Streets, by Benjamin Powell

Public-sector unions: Two wolves & a sheep vote on what’s for lunch

“Two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” James Bovard’s critique of democracy also applies to public-sector unions. Unions and union-backed politicians are the wolves. Taxpayers are the sheep.

Public-sector union representatives “will often be on both sides of the collective bargaining table,” explains law professor Stephen Bainbridge. Union leaders are on one side; their “bought and paid for politicians” are on the other.  Unions fund politicians’ campaigns, and the politicians reciprocate by facilitating extravagant union wages, benefits, and protections.

The “process of collective bargaining … cannot be transplanted into the public service.” warned the pro-union Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Time columnist Joe Klein adds: “Industrial unions are organized against the might and greed of ownership. Public employees unions are organized against the might and greed…of the public?”

Public-sector unions are organized against the tax-paying public. A unionized private-sector firm risks losing customers if its union successfully strikes, protects lazy workers, resists labor-saving technologies, abuses pension policies, secures excessive job security, or demands exorbitant compensation. Not so with public-sector unions. Taxpayers are stuck paying for expensive government services.

How expensive? Wages for unionized local and state government employees exceed their nonunion counterparts by more than 11%, concludes labor economist James Sherk.  They are also more likely to receive pensions and have their employers pay all of their medical insurance premiums. It’s no surprise that highly unionized governments burden taxpayers with more debt, as Cato Institute policy analyst Chris Edwards notes.

With public-sector unions, taxpayers just get fleeced.

The Boulder Daily Camera published this article on February 26, 2011.

See also:

• Chris Edwards, Public-Sector Unions,” Cato Tax & Budget Bulletin, March 2010. (3 pages, good place to start, many good references to follow.)
• Chris Edwards, “Public Sector Unions and the Rising Costs of Employee Compensation,” Cato Journal, Winter 2010. (29 pages)
• Rand Simberg, Who’s Been Overreaching, Again? (many great points & links), via his article in Pajamas Media.

 

Education needs freedom, not phony “investments” in the government school cartel

Beware politicians’ “investment” con. People typically invest their own money for their personal gain.  But politicians “invest” by confiscating taxpayers’ money for their own political gain. The education “investments” in the 2011 State of the Union address take your money to strengthen the bloated government school cartel. In return, the President and his political allies receive campaign contributions from teachers’ unions.

President Obama praises the post-Sputnik “investment” in education. But subsequent PSAT math scores fell or stagnated for decades while school funding soared. Now he wants to “prepare 100,000 new teachers” in engineering, science, and math. Why? Since 1970, the number of teachers per student has increased by 50% and the cost of K-12 government schools has almost quadrupled. Meanwhile, national standardized test scores have not improved.

The president is no better with higher education.  He has increased tax-subsidies for higher education and says the United States should have the “highest proportion of college graduates in the world.”

But thanks to political meddling, there may be too many college students already.  ABC news just reported that “After four years, 36 percent of [college] students did not demonstrate significant improvement” in “key measures of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing.” Economist Richard Vedder found that “30 percent of the working college graduates in the U.S. … have jobs that do not require a college degree.”

President Obama says “our free enterprise system … drives innovation.” Then instead of restricting parents’ school choice with monopolistic politically-controlled schools, he should promote free enterprise in education.

A version of this article was published in the Boulder Daily Camera on January 29, 2011.

Other responses to the state of the union:

• John Stossel his own address
• economist Don Boudreaux:
  

  My concern about the president’s cozying-up to business differs greatly from the concern that animates the political left. Contrary to popular presumption, being friendly to business is not the same as being pro-economic growth or pro-free-market.

• columnist David Harsanyi: “Obama says that ‘none of us can predict with certainty what the next big industry will be or where the new jobs will come from.’”  But then Obama goes and picks winners with your money.

Colorado Medicaid reform: federal matching funds promote waste

The Colorado legislature should cut wasteful spending by Medicaid and the Child Health Plan Plus. When these programs spend a dollar from a Colorado taxpayer, the federal government gives them a dollar taken from a taxpayer in another state.  Hence, Medicaid and the Child’s Health Plan program administrators are rewarded for spending more and punished for spending less.

These programs devour about ten percent of the state budget. Hence it’s no surprise that “Colorado faces a budget deficit of between $50 million and $257 million for the rest of this fiscal year,” reports the Denver Business Journal. Balancing next year’s budget could require $1.1 billion in cuts — about 5% of the budget.

Federal matching funds rewards extravagant spending. Administrators can expand their budgets, staff, and salaries. Programs stray from serving the truly needy, as the Independence Institute’s Citizens Budget documents. So lax was the recent Child Health Plan Plus expansion that about six of every ten new enrollees had private insurance.

Low enrollment fees and copayments also encourage imprudent spending. For example, it’s just $2 for a podiatrist visit.

A penny squandered is a penny “earned.” Colorado Medicaid made errors processing claims more often than private insurance, which cost taxpayers thousands of dollars. But the feds reward them for this, too.

Instead of federal matching funds for Medicaid, Colorado should request a lump-sum block grant. This would reduce perverse incentives.

A version of this article was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on January 15, 2011.

Men’s suits at 1910 prices! … In gold, not U.S. dollars.

A man’s suit costs about the same today as it did 100 years ago. Not in dollars, but gold.  For at least a century, an ounce of gold could buy you a quality man’s suit. In 1910 the suit would cost around $25, according to the Morris County historical prices survey. Today an ounce of gold is around $1,400, or a nice suit at Nordstrom.

Why tolerate our government’s monopoly on money? Money is a medium of exchange and a store of value. But our government produces inflation-prone fiat money. The Federal Reserve devalues your earnings by effectively printing more bills. The Fed also manipulates interest rates, which promotes economic booms and busts fueled by malinvestment. A million YouTube viewers learned this from the hilarious rap video, “Fear the Boom and Bust.”

Money wasn’t always like this. My 1935 dollar bill says “silver certificate” across the top and “One dollar in silver payable to the bearer on demand” under George Washington’s portrait.  A dollar was a unit of measure — a specific weight of gold or silver. A dollar was a certificate of deposit for a real commodity with stable value over time – independent of its use as money.

If you like fiat money like today’s U.S. dollar, fine. But that’s no reason to support its having a government-granted monopoly on money. Let dollars compete with other monies, such as those backed by previous metals, in a competitive market, as 2009′s Free Competition in Currency Act would allow.

The Boulder Daily Camera published this article on December 18, 2010.

Further reading:

• What Has Government Done to Our Money? by Murray N. Rothbard. Full text and excellent audio version (you can download the mp3s) on-line at Mises.org.
• “Is the Gold Standard Still the Gold Standard among Monetary Systems?” by Lawrence H. White, Cato Institute Briefing Paper, 2008.

Donations vs. Taxes

Here’s a short video illustrating the coercion behind government-mandated charity.

For more, see GeorgeOutToHelp.com.

I discuss related issues in my Huffington Post article, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-t-schwartz/questioning-your-compassi_b_574030.html”>Questioning your “compassionate” politics. For example, if you really care about helping a certain group of people, asking government to do it is the last thing you should want. This is like committing yourself to donate to a charity forever, regardless of its efficiency and effectiveness.

I found this post via a link to Reason.tv in comment on Arnold Kling’s post, “Donations vs. Taxes.”  In response to criticism, Kling writes:

[T]he idea that I need to show my gratitude to others by expressing support for coercion seems perverse. I would think that voluntary donations would be a much more sincere expression of gratitude than joining in the project of collective coercion.

Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan: buy open space yourself, don’t tax others

If you want open space, buy it. Don’t tax others.

Billboards tarnish the Flatirons while houses climb the foothills to meet them. This is what “city planners believe the Flatirons could look like today if the city had not enacted restrictive land-use policies,” reported the Daily Camera. Boulder’s Department of Community Planning and Sustainability spent your tax dollars on such images to convince residents that only its authoritarian land-use restrictions can prevent such a dystopian scene.

Not so. For over a hundred years private land trusts have preserved open space — not with government force — but through voluntary cooperation and donations.  The Land Trust Alliance lists 34 local Colorado land trusts.  “Land trusts have protected over 1.57 million acres in Colorado, more than 80% of all conserved land,” reports the Colorado Coalition of Land Trusts. This is four times the acreage that local Colorado governments restrict through forced open space policies.

Leonard May of PLAN-Boulder County refers to those with a “philosophical objection to (government and) restrictions” to whom he “can’t explain” the benefits of open space. He ignores the difference between preserving open space through land trusts versus doing so through legal restrictions.

Land trusts depend on voluntary cooperation, taking responsibility for promoting one’s own values, and respecting the rights of others to pursue theirs. Compare this with government-enforced open space, which forces everyone, willing or not, to fund it. It’s elitist legislation that effectively excludes poor residents from town by propping up homeowners’ property values.

The Boulder Daily Camera printed this article on December 4, 2010.

For more on open spacing and planning, see the work of Randal O’Toole and R.J. Smith.

Photo credit: The Daily Camera article on the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan.