Red-light cameras can blame drivers for poor traffic engineering

A movement against red light traffic cameras “appears to [be] gaining traction across the country,” reported MSNBC last week. Boulder officials want to add more red light cameras. Is this a good idea?

Say an intersection has an abnormally high rate of red light violations. Using red-light cameras puts blame on the drivers. But this seems unfair, as the same drivers also use safer intersections nearby. It’s more reasonable to first look for deficiencies in signal timing, visibility of signals, signs, and lane markings.

To encourage such solutions, the National Motorists Association offers a “$10,000 Ticket Camera Challenge” for intersections with high red light violations. The NMA guarantees “a minimum 50-percent reduction in red-light violations through the application of engineering solutions” or it will “pay the community $10,000 [for] any traffic safety program or project it chooses.”

Traffic cameras are also legally questionable, as defendants cannot confront their accuser.  A California Superior Court Judge recently struck down eight cases of alleged red light running for these reasons. “Defendants here are entitled to be confronted with the testifying witness at trial,” she wrote.

As for effectiveness, data from the Boulder’s Transportation division shows decreased accidents at intersections after camera installations. But other factors could have been relevant. For example, changes in signal timing, all-red durations, and traffic volume. Further, there was no mention of how accident rates changed at intersections without cameras.

These shortcomings are typical of red light traffic camera studies showing benefits.  A report by the Transportation Research Board states: “In many cases, the flaw in the analysis was the lack of a proper control group.”  In some cities, traffic accidents increased after the addition of cameras, as the NMA’s website documents.

A version of this article was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on July 2, 2011.

Maintaining Boulder open space trails: user fees & sponsorships should replace taxes

How Boulder County finances its trail maintenance is unjust. The county sales tax forces people to finance hiking trail maintenance, whether or not they use them. Meanwhile, people who don’t shop in Boulder County can use trails without paying.  The County should strive to replace tax-funded trails with user fees and sponsorships.

As a type of user fee, parking fees and annual parking passes for cars registered in other counties are a step in the right direction. The assumption is that a typical hiker coming from outside Boulder County pays less county sales tax than a trail user who resides in the county. The parking fee is an attempt to resolve this difference.

A drawback is that the fee makes some out-of-county hikers “pay twice.” Meanwhile, the sales  tax still forces county residents who do not use trails to fund other people’s recreation. To resolve this, the County should both decrease taxes and extend trailhead parking fees and passes to cars registered in the county.

In addition to user fees, corporate sponsorship of trails is another way to raise revenue through voluntary means. The Continental Divide Trail Alliance does this. Since 2009, REI has contributed more than $15,000, while Home Depot, Salomon, Coleman, and Smartwool have each contributed more than $1,000.  Trailhead maps and direction signs along the trail could identify sponsors: “This trail is maintained by a generous donation by …” and include the sponsor’s logo — tastefully sized of course.

A version of this article was printed in the Boulder Daily Camera on Saturday, June 18, 2011.

Boulder & Denver bike-share: boon or boondoggle?

B-cycle is Boulder’s new bike share program. Denver’s B-cycle program is a year old. Does “B” stand for boon or boondoggle?  The Boulder program’s start-up costs included half a million dollars taken from taxpayers: half collected by the City of Boulder, half from federal “stimulus” funds.  Denver B-cycle received $210,000 from the “stimulus.”  Yes, B-cycle’s bikes and technologies do sound impressive. But if it’s a true boon, then it should have been able to raise sufficient start-up funds from investors, sponsors, and donors.

Some might argue that private funding could not have built B-cycle. But as economist Henry Hazlitt would say, B-Cycle “has in fact been built by private capital – the capital that was expropriated in taxes.”  We won’t see the goods, services, and non-profit ventures that never materialize because governments took money by force from people who would have spent it differently.

Potentially expensive bike maintenance may deter private investors from investing in bike-share ventures. As law professor Steve Clowney describes: “No individual bears a significant portion of the costs if they damage a bicycle … users have little incentive to take care of the bikes.”  The New York Times reports that sustaining Paris’s bike-share requires the repairing “some 1,500 bicycles a day,” or seven percent of its fleet.

Or maybe Montreal’s experience deterred investors. Because of high start-up costs, “the non-profit agency that runs the city’s bike-rental program … is running a $31.7 million deficit,” reported the CBC.

Voluntary donations, sponsorships, and investments should fund B-cycle. It should be a revenue source for Boulder and Denver, not an expenditure of taxpayers’ money. For example, they could charge B-cycle for placing “B-stations” on city-owned land.

A version of this article was published in the Boulder Daily Camera on May 21, 2011.

Thanks to Marc Scribner at the Competitive Enterprise Institute for his post on Washington DC’s bike-share program.

The Henry Hazlitt quote is from his excellent book, Economics in One Lesson, which the Foundation for Economics Education has put on-line.

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.

*          *          *

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.

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.

How to keep New Year’s resolutions

“New year’s resolutions doomed to failure,” trumpeted a Guardian.uk headline this time last year. The article describes a study by psychologist Richard Wiseman, which found that not even one in four people “managed to stick to their resolutions.”

But we can learn from the minority who kept their resolutions. They “tended to have broken their goal into smaller steps.”  This echoes the advice of David Allen, author of the best seller Getting Things Done.

Those successful with resolutions also told friends about their resolutions and rewarded themselves when achieving goals, reported the Guardian. Economist Tyler Cowen offers an intriguing way to combine these practices. If you resolve to exercise, you can “post a bond with your friend, your spouse, your exercise partner, or someone you won’t (or can’t) lie to. You lose the money if you don’t exercise according to a pre-arranged plan with well-defined quantitative goals.” Cowen suggests that gyms can be the “enforcer” by collecting “a bigger upfront fee and they pay us each time we show up” and complete specified exercise program.

If this sounds far-fetched, consider the success of similar strategies for smokers who want to quit.  Known as contingency management programs, participants receive a reward when they stop smoking. Summarizing a study published this month, Local Tech Wire reports that “smokers will quit if rewards are right.”

This was published in the Boulder Daily Camera on January 1, 2011.