Boulder’s proposed grocery bag fee is garbage. It trashes our liberties

A version of this article was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on May 19, 2012.

By Boulder’s standard of “zero waste,” the City Council’s plan to restrict plastic bag use is garbage. Regardless, such restrictions are foul rubbish. They empower bag bullies to self-righteously trash our liberties.

Plastic bags contribute just 0.4 percent of Boulder County’s municipal solid waste, says a recent Waste Composition Study.  By weight, there’s more than ten times as much recyclable plastic, “clean dimensional lumber,” and items accepted at the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials. Instead of shaking down shoppers, bag banners should wade through dumps to extract these items for reuse or recycling.

Bag restrictions stifle reuse and recycling trends. Consumers reuse plastic grocery bags at home, and restrictions increase sales of thicker, single-use plastic bags. Plastic bag recycling has increased by 50% since 2005, yielding durable plastic and lumber products,reports Moore Recycling Associates. RecycleYourPlasticBag.com lists local places to recycle bags. The City Council should add its meetings to this list.

Meanwhile, durable bags meant for reuse “are seldom if ever washed” and “almost all” contain bacteria, concludes a Loma Linda University study. Just last week MSNBC reported that one such bag spread “nasty … norovirus infections” to a youth soccer team.

Comparing various bag types, the British Environment Agency found that plastic bags had the lowest “environmental impact,” which is most determined by resources required for manufacturing, rather than transport and disposal.

Regardless of which bag is best, retailers have a right to distribute bags, and customers have a right to discard them through voluntary means. Boulder City Council, stop your bag bullying.

If you say government authorities can justly restrict voluntary exchange of a plastic bag, then you’re conceding that can justly restrict any other type of voluntary exchange. You can no longer you can no longer oppose any government action by arguing that it violates people’s right to liberty.

Why college costs so much: government financial “aid” is more harm than “aid”

This originally appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera on April 9, 2012.

Are tax-funded student loans and grants financial “aid” or financial harm?  ”Harm,” political scientist Gary Wolfram would say. Tax-funded financial aid “results in increased tuition, leading to political pressure to further increase aid. This in turn leads to higher tuitions,” he writes.

Basic economics predicts that subsidizing the purchase of a product increases demand for it, and hence increases the price.  For example, in four-year public schools, a one dollar increase in student loans was associated with a 93-cent increase in average tuition students paid, writes Dr. Andrew Gillen in his study “Financial Aid in Theory and Practice.”

Dr. Gillen shows that since 1986, the federal government’s financial “aid” has nearly tripled. During this time per-student fees and tuition have almost doubled, Gillen shows. Student debt “has generally outpaced inflation” and family incomes, reports US News and World Report.

Educational opportunity hasn’t faired well, either.  In 1972, students in the top income quartile were six times more likely to earning a bachelor’s degree by age 24 than those in the bottom quartile. Today, upper income students are eight times more likely, notes economist Richard Vedder, author of Going Broke by Degree.

Politicians win points for being “pro education.” But politically-driven financial “aid” for college is truly harmful.  Low graduation rates show that “aid” distorts people’s career choices by encouraging them to attend college, even though learning valuable skills in an unsubsidized apprenticeship might be wiser. They drop out after realizing they’ve wasted time learning unmarketable skills. Then they must pay off debt, if they can find a job in today’s “stimulated” economy.

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See also:
“Higher Education Subsidies” at DownsizingGovernment.org.
The Center for College Affordability and Productivity

How Peyton Manning could increase your income

This article originally appeared in the print edition of the The Boulder Daily Camera on Saturday, March 24, 2012.

The Broncos’ quest for world championships now “starts with Peyton,” says executive VP John Elway.  If you don’t follow the Broncos, should you care?

Yes, say economist Michael C. Davis and psychologist Christian M. End, co-authors of the journal article “A Winning Proposition: The Economic Impact of Successful NFL Franchises.” They find a positive correlation between an NFL team’s winning percentage and local per-capita income.

Last season the Broncos won eight games, four more than the previous season. Professors Davis and End conclude that such an increase correlates a $120 local per-capita income gain, adjusting for inflation.  How do the authors explain this?

They examine the possibility that higher local incomes contribute to a team’s winning, or that team salaries push up the per-capita income, and conclude that neither is significant. Instead, they suggest that winning teams increase local workplace productivity. The authors then present psychology research supporting this effect.

One study found that a team’s victory or defeat affected how ardent fans perceived their “personal competencies on mental, social, and motor skill tasks.” The positive response to a team’s victory is what psychologists call “BIRGing”: basking in reflected glory. The authors note research showing that positive self-regard and mood contributes to job satisfaction and performance. Meanwhile, ardent fans also report lower self-esteem after their team lost.

Janet Lever’s 1969 study in São Paulo, Brazil illustrates the phenomenon: After a popular local soccer team lost, productivity decreased and workplace accidents increased.

Apathetic about the Broncos? Maybe you shouldn’t be.

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Thanks to Michael C. Davis for his assistance with this article.
Photo courtesy of TheBigLead.com.

Concealed carry allowed at Colorado’s public universities

A version of this article was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on Saturday, March 10, 2012. It’s in response to the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision that CU regents cannot prevent conceal-carry permit holders from being armed on campus.

The “make my day” moniker for House Bill 12-1088 trivializes the traumatic stress of defending one’s life. It also reflects baseless prejudice against gun owners.  Like the fictional Dirty Harry who popularized “make my day,” arguments against self-defense rights fit in Hollywood scripts, but not in reality. (Continues below video.)

Jim Manley of the Mountain States Legal Foundation was the lead attorney in the case to overthrow the concealed-carry ban at the U. of Colorado. He explains the basic facts & rationale regarding the decision.

CSU has allowed concealed-carry since 2003, while Colorado community colleges have since 2010. Writing in the Camera that year, Jimmy Calano of the Camera’s editorial advisory board opposed campus concealed-carry by describing horrors that could occur — but never have.  In its amicus brief for the case, County Sheriffs of Colorado say they “are not aware of any incident since 2003 involving firearms misuse on a Colorado state campus by a person with a licensed carry permit.” Or in Utah, which also allows campus conceal-carry. Nor has opposition to campus conceal-carry cited an incident.

Also in 2010, board member Dave Ensign says he “cannot understand the obsession with carrying at all times a weapon that’s sole purpose is to kill people.” But killing is not the purpose. Like police officers, civilians carry guns for self-defense against violent criminals, as documented in the Cato Institute’s “Tough Targets” study and books by Robert A. Waters.

These civilians include heroic life-savers Joel Myrick and Tracey Bridges, who thwarted school shootings after retrieving guns from their vehicles, notes scholar Dave Kopel in “Pretend ‘Gun-free’ School Zones: A Deadly Legal Fiction.”  Self-defense is a basic human right. Abridging this right is morally equivalent to disabling seat-belts in someone’s car.

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Here’s an excerpt from my longer article on this topic, published in the Denver Post:

Here’s a challenge for the CU Regents and Boulder Faculty Assembly. They’re OK with armed campus police, but not armed citizens with the training and qualifications to have earned a concealed-carry permit. Then why not issue special campus gun permits to those who, at their own expense, undergo the same firearms training as the CU Police?

If this is not acceptable, how about more rigorous training, or limiting permits to faculty and staff? If a regent or CU faculty member opposes this, you should wonder about his actual motives for opposing concealed carry on campus.

See also: Students for Concealed Carry.

Economic indicators that best correlate with presidential election results

This was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on February 25, 2012.

Which economic indicators best correlate with presidential election results?  Last year New York Times statistician Nate Silver presented an elegant answer to this question.  For the sixteen presidential elections since World War II, he computed the correlation between the incumbent party’s margin of victory and the value of 43 indicators in the first nine months of the election year. The results? Change in employment rates matter. Market indexes and oil prices don’t.

The Institute of Supply Management’s manufacturing index best correlates with incumbent party victories, with a 46 percent correlation. Close behind are changes in non-farm payrolls and changes in the unemployment rate – both above 40 percent correlation.  Since World War II, incumbent presidents ran for reelection seven times. Only Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush lost – both when the unemployment rate increased.

Note that the change in unemployment rates matter, not the rate itself, which had zero correlation.  Meanwhile, gain of the Dow Jones index had only a six percent correlation. Silver also found a 15 percent correlation between lower gas prices and an incumbent victory.

While the unemployment rate has been decreasing for about a year, it’s not necessarily a good sign for Obama.  The rate has decreased partly because many have stopped looking for work. Classifying these people as unemployed would increase the unemployment rate by 1.25 percentage points, reports the Congressional Budget Office.  Worse for Obama, economist James Sherk shows that despite job growth, this is the “weakest recovery in more than half a century.”

Colorado’s ban on text messaging while driving: ineffective, misguided

The originally appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera on Saturday, February 11, 2012.

The Boulder Daily Camera‘s article on the Safe Streets Boulder report says “drivers who follow too close and rear-end other vehicles” cause the most accidents by far. No doubt texting while driving has contributed to some of these. But does this lend credibility to Colorado’s 2009 prohibition, sponsored by Rep. Claire Levy (D-Boulder), against texting behind the wheel? The evidence suggests not.

Like other driver distractions, texting increases accident risks. But it doesn’t follow that banning text-messaging helps. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety compared collision accidents rates in four states that had banned texting. “Crash rates rose in three of the states after bans were enacted,” reports the USA Today. Researchers suggest that “drivers try to evade police by lowering their phones when texting, increasing the risk by taking their eyes even further from the road and for a longer time.”

Enforcement is also problematic. When drivers poke at phones, police “can’t tell … whether they’re dialing a phone number” or texting, said Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle, who called the prohibition a “feel good law.” To promote safety, Pelle says that police should “focus on pulling people over and writing tickets for bad driving.”

The Sheriff is right. As journalist Radley Balko argues, to promote safe streets, “we should be punishing reckless driving. It shouldn’t matter if it’s caused by alcohol, sleep deprivation, prescription medication, text messaging, or road rage. … The punishable act should be violating road rules or causing an accident, not the factors that led to those offenses.”

(Image via Reason.com)

Obama’s State of the Union: You’re just part of his “blueprint”

This originally was published in the Boulder Daily Camera on Saturday, January 28, 2012.

For refutations of the President’s flawed claims and statist economic plans, see the Cato Institute‘s website, blog, and YouTube channel.  Regarding Obama’s “Buffett tax” on millionaires, the Associated Press explains that the wealthiest Americans already “pay a lot more taxes than the middle class,” including secretaries

To understand Obama’s statist fervor, ask yourself: Are you a machine cog?  Surely not. But like many politicians, Obama disagrees, at least tacitly. How? Linguist George Lakoff explains how metaphors are key to understanding political discourse.  In his speech, the President expressed his desire to “lay out a blueprint for an economy.”  At least twice he’s mentioned starting a health care “system” from “scratch.” This speaks volumes.

“The economy” refers to people producing and exchanging goods and services. In a freed economy, government respects people’s right to trade voluntarily. But Obama sees the economy as a machine to be manufactured, or a cake to be baked.

Obama has the same conceit that better economists have warned about for centuries. Describing the “man of system,” Adam Smith wrote: “He seems to imagine that he can arrange … members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges … pieces upon a chess-board.” “Socialists look upon people as raw material to be formed into social combinations,” wrote French economist Frederic Bastiat in 1853. Or, as 1974 Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek wrote, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

Boulder’s “Climate Action Plan”: inefficient, ineffective

This was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on Saturday, January 14, 2012.

The Boulder City Council’s website touts a “Climate Action Plan” as one of its primary goals. “The current goal is equivalent to the Kyoto Protocol target – to reduce emissions to a level seven percent below 1990 levels by 2012,” it says. With the city’s carbon tax set to end early next year, it’s worth asking: Is reducing carbon dioxide emissions the best way to respond to global warming?

Reviewing analysis by retired NCAR Senior Scientist Tom Wigley, Boulder’s University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) states that even if the “industrialized and nearly industrialized countries called upon to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the protocol … continued to abide by Kyoto’s limits” through 2100, global average temperatures would be at most 0.38 degrees Fahrenheit less than midpoint warming projections. Put in perspective, global temperatures decreased by this amount between 1900 and 1910, according to NASA.

Given this tiny effect, I’m not surprised that expert climate economists commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus Center ranked emission reductions last among cost-effective responses to climate change. More efficient methods, listed at FixTheClimate.com, include adaptation, climate engineering, and carbon storage technologies.

With or without global warming, people — especially those in developing nations –face threats from extreme temperature, coastal flooding, hurricanes, malaria, poverty, starvation, and water stress. While global warming may increase these risks, scholars including Indur Goklany and Bjorn Lomborg convincingly argue that directly reducing these threats and promoting prosperity save more lives at lower cost than attempts involving emissions reductions.

Jared Polis on U.S. Postal Service: end its “monopolistic protections and special treatment”

This originally appeared in the Boulder Daily Camera on December 3, 2011 in response to this question: The United States Postal Service is facing major financial constraints, and it is forecasting a record $14.1 billion loss for fiscal 2012. … What do you think the USPS should do?

Break free, USPS! Leave your over-protective and controlling parent: the U.S. government. Yes, the perks are nice. The Feds grant you monopolies on mail delivery and mailbox access. They exempt you from costs such as vehicle licensing, parking tickets, threats of antitrust suits, and taxes on sales, income, and property. The fifteen billion dollar U.S Treasury credit line is nice, too.

But Federal controls cripple you. The Feds make you deliver mail almost everywhere, six days a week, while restricting your ability to increase prices. Freedom to adjust prices and deliver on fewer days would save billions annually. Three of four Post Offices lose money. But U.S. Code prohibits closing them “solely for operating at a deficit,” and Congress must approve any layoffs.

Further, you must pre-fund your retirees’ health benefits, which your Postmaster General says is “effectively bankrupting” you. Yes, USPS retirees get health benefits! As your website says, “federal statutes hamper [your] ability to craft a market-based benefits package.” Indeed. DownsizingGovernment.org describes how your employees enjoy a “postal pay premium” between 20% and 35% compared to comparable private-sector employees.

USPS, listen to what Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, wrote ten years ago. Ending “monopolistic protections and special treatment enjoyed by USPS” would “benefit … postal customers, postal employees, and businesses in the delivery sector. … Unless we unshackle USPS and allow it to leverage its infrastructure effectively as a normal privately owned company, then USPS will sadly fade away as it becomes increasingly irrelevant in the marketplace.”

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Thanks to Ari Armstrong for the Jared Polis reference.

Technocrats violate our right to buy and sell incandescent light bulbs

This letter appeared in the November 2011 print and on-line issue of APS News, the newsletter of the American Physical Society, the world’s second largest organization of physicists.

Physicist-turned-Congressman Rush Holt supports legislation banning conventional incandescent light bulbs (Back Page, August/September APS News). His statements about the legislation are misleading. Worse yet, his support of the ban embodies an elitism that supplants people’s right to choose with authoritarian dictates of a technocratic ruling class.

To the Wall Street Journal‘s claim that “Washington will effectively ban the sale of conventional incandescent light bulbs,” Holt glibly replies, “This was, of course, untrue. No type of light bulb was banned.” Sure, the legislation does not ban all incandescents, but it does ban conventional ones, as the Journal claims. The legislation will “make current 100-watt bulbs obsolete” and such bulbs will “disappear from store shelves,” reports the New York Times.

To justify the ban, Dr. Holt narrowly defines efficiency to mean only energy efficiency. But the most “efficient” light bulb best achieves the user’s purpose. Energy efficiency is important, but so are an appealing color spectrum, quickly reaching full brightness, low-cost dimming, and tolerance to vibration and heat.

The Congressman also decries proposals to repeal the bulb ban, as it could undermine Congress’s “tradition of supporting innovation.”  But when companies spend money to satisfy government demands, they invest less on innovation to satisfy perceived customer demand.

Businesses in relatively free markets innovate just fine. Consumer electronics is an obvious example, but product packaging has also become more efficient. Soda cans use less metal, while bottled beverage manufacturers advertise bottles using less plastic or petroleum-free plant-based plastics.

Meanwhile, the bulb ban exemplifies “innovative” ways for bulb makers to increase profits through political pull. Conventional bulbs are a “ubiquitous commodity” with a “negligible” profit margin, the New York Times magazine recently noted.  “No amount of subsidy or ‘green’ branding has managed to woo consumers away from Edison’s bulb.” So the lighting industry endorsed new efficiency standards that force consumers to buy more expensive products.

“We are taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money,” quipped Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics. Even if this is true, wasting one’s own money is every person’s right. Moreover, if a consumer has good reasons to prefer conventional incandescent bulbs, buying them is not wasteful. What’s wasteful is being forced to buy less desirable alternatives.

A physics PhD and a high-profile government job is not a moral sanction to violate consumers’ right to choose.