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.

Should you trust the Colorado Trust?

Should you trust the Colorado Trust?  Its CEO, Dr. Ned Calonge, repeats a common health care falsehood: that the cost-shift from the uninsured’s outstanding medical bills justifies mandatory insurance (Nov. 19). While the cost-shift increases premiums, the amount is small compared to cost-shifting from mandatory insurance and Medicaid.

In Colorado, the cost-shift from the uninsured is just $85 per insured person. This is according to research done for Colorado’s 208 Commission, which Dr. Calonge himself praises.

Key findings include that “the uninsured pay for about half of their care out-of-pocket” while only “20 percent is uncompensated care from providers.” An Urban Institute study provides further evidence that uninsured cost-shifting is small — at most “only 1.7% of private insurance premiums.”

By outlawing affordable plans, mandatory insurance increases premiums by much more. Consider the federal health control bill, HR 3590. It requires that all plans include at least ten mandated benefits, such as maternity care and substance abuse treatment, whether you want them or not. A typical mandated benefit increases premiums by about 0.75%, concludes a 2008 MIT study.

By underpaying doctors, Medicaid is also guilty of large cost-shifting. But Dr. Calonge withholds this information when noting that HR 3590 expands Medicaid eligibility. A Milliman actuarial study concluded that the cost-shift from Medicaid and Medicare adds $1788 to the annual insurance premium for a family of four. The uninsured pay more of their medical bills than Medicaid does for its participants, reported Reuters in 2008. What’s more, a CDC study found that people “with Medicaid coverage were more likely to have had multiple visits to [emergency departments] … than those with private insurance and the uninsured.”

Dr. Calonge wants to “promote an honest debate” about health care. But the cost-shift argument for mandatory insurance has no place in one.

This letter to the editor was published in the Northern Colorado Business Report on December 3, 2010.

This is a shorter version of my article, Amendment 63 vs. Cost-Shift Hypocrisy, published in the Huffington Post.

Monarch High, Monarchy, Bongs, & the Rule of Law

The Daily Camera asks its editorial advisory board about the controversy at Monarch High School in Colorado:

A controversy over school rules, leadership and parenting erupted at Monarch High after the Boulder Valley school board decision to reinstate a student [Dylan Quick] who had been removed from the student council. The board voted 5-2 to reverse a decision by the principal and supported by the superintendent to remove a senior as head boy of the Louisville school, after he had been caught with marijuana paraphernalia at the school. The student council constitution states that a head boy can’t be removed without first being impeached by the council, and the boy’s parents, including his father — the Adams County District Attorney — had complained that the rules were not followed. What do you think?

My response:

“Monarch High is not a monarchy!” protesters could have chanted. By superseding the Student Council Constitution, the principal resembles a monarch high on power. “The King is above the law,” England’s King James I proclaimed in 1598.

Carlos Gonzalez, MVP voting, & Ken Buck’s spoilers

Has the Rockies’ Carlos Gonzalez won the National League MVP award?  The public doesn’t know yet, but we know how the voting works. Baseball writers don’t vote for one player. Instead, they rank their top ten, with higher ranked votes worth more points than lower ranked votes.  The player who accumulates the most points wins.

This version of preference voting reflects the electorate’s preferences better than our government elections do. If your favorite candidate is not a top contender, voting for him might make him a “spoiler” and help put your least favorite candidate in office. Instead of supporting your favorite candidate, you may resign yourself to voting for the proverbial “lesser of two evil” top contenders.

Newly-elected Secretary of State Scott Gessler endorses a solution: range voting. It’s like preference voting, but you can award each candidate any number of points within a specified range.  A simple version of range voting called “approval voting.” Vote for as many candidates as you like. The one with the most votes wins.  In this year’s election, if you preferred the Libertarian most and Michael Bennet least, you could vote for the Libertarian, but also for Ken Buck to help defeat Bennet. Some Buck supporters blame non-leftist candidates for spoiling a Buck victory. Instead, they should blame elected Republicans for supporting our crude voting system that makes spoilers possible.

“The state legislature should allow home rule municipalities and counties to develop voting methods that meet their needs, including approval voting and range voting,” says Gessler’s website. Boulder’s political parties should consider collaborating to bring one of these methods to Boulder County.

A version of this article was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on November 6 2010.

Thanks to Dale Sheldon-Hess for pointing out the difference between range voting and preference voting.  I was operating within a word limit and wrongly figured that the MVP-style voting was a type of range voting.

Amendment 63′s Foes Only Want You for Your Body

Should Colorado mandate that each car owner buy a comprehensive lifetime vehicle warranty? By the logic of a common argument against Colorado Amendment 63 and for mandatory medical insurance, the answer is “Yes.” Mandatory insurance treats your body as a means to political ends, rather than respecting your rights as an individual.

An editorial in the Boulder Daily Camera provides an example. It states:

The individual mandate widens the pool of people with bodies — bodies that, inevitably and without fail, need some medical care at some point — that pay for health insurance. The mix of the extremely healthy, the healthy, the sick and the acutely ill is one way to make our health care system healthier.

This argument illustrates H.L. Mencken‘s observation: “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

Read the rest of this article at the Huffington Post: Amendment 63′s Foes Only Want You for Your Body.

Quoted in Remapping Debate on mandatory insurance, Amendment 63

Remapping Debate, a publication of the The Anti-Discrimination Center, quoted me in its article about Colorado Amendment 63:

Amendment 63 does state that Colorado is prohibited from either initiating action on the state level or from taking action “at the instance” of the federal government. However, the entire scope of “at the instance of” is similarly not clearly defined. According to Brian Schwartz, a blogger at the Independence Institute, one circumstance this would cover is where — perhaps in the aftermath of the federal act being found unconstitutional — “the federal government might pressure states to do what they want [them] to do.”

For more, read this articles that summarize arguments against mandatory health insurance.