Liberal School Choice

Let the schools pick the students. Anything to give more power to public bureaucrats instead of to the people.

Betts suggests this: first fund the schools equally on a per-student basis. Then distribute trade-able rights to admit highly advantaged students; and allow schools to auction those rights. Schools would then be forced to figure out how much they valued the money they were spending relative to the highly advantaged children they wanted. We don’t know what the outcome would be. At one end of the spectrum you’d have schools with high concentrations of advantage and not much money; at the other end of the spectrum high concentrations of disadvantage and loads of money. It would probably take a few years for administrators to work out what the real costs of disadvantaged children were; but they would have a powerful incentive to work it out.

I'm just about speechless.

Chicago Living Wage

Cafe Hayek's Russell Roberts takes down a proposed law in Chicago. The Chicago city council has a proposal to force big box retailers (defined as more than a billion dollars in sales with stores greater than 90,000 square feet) to pay workers $10/hr plus $3 in benefits. Target and Wal-Mart have responded by suspending plans to open more stores and deciding whether to close additional stores. Mayor Daley would also like to know how the aldermen in Chicago are going to replace the 8000 lost jobs if Wal-Mart doesn't continue its expansion.

Of course, if this plays out where the "living wage" is enacted and Target and Wal-Mart leave, then we're left with the unseen effects of such a law. With no big boxes prices will gradually rise to levels seen in the non-big box retailer world. Of course, this effect will be slow and unseen, therefore no one will really complain about it. There will just be 20,000 less jobs in the greater Chicago area. But that's not what gets aldermen elected, raising people's wages with a law gets them elected. Unfortunately, this law not only won't raise anyone's wages it will end up lowering wages by having more people fighting for fewer jobs in the retail sector.

In addition, the unskilled teenagers who can't find work stocking shelves or whatever unskilled kids do at Target are not going to get any job experience. With fewer business unable to give a teenager a job because of wage standards that teenager never gets a chance to get a toehold in the labor force. How's he going to get started? What happens is the kid gets public assistance at the first opportunity, then becomes involved in the neverending circle of government dependency. This dependency is what draws him out to vote for an alderman who will raise the wages of the poor by imposing some minimum wage. The cycle starts again, relegating another generation of teenagers to government dependency.

Global Warming Skeptic

Coyote Blog once again makes a coherent and unvitriolic case against global warming alarmism. Of course, to question the conventional wisdom of future doom from global warming is to be the ultimate in wingnuttery. But until climatoligists can come up with a model that works for the past 50 years, I don't necessarily believe their model for the next 100.

City Busybodies

Mike Hendricks takes the city of Kansas City to task for outlawing selling gas to someone who hasn't already paid for it. It seems the city is tired of enforcing theft laws so they're putting the onus on business owners. Hendricks asks the next logical question.

Will bank lobbies be outlawed because that’s where bank robberies often occur?

Capitalism and Freedom

I'll let Kevin Drum's post on public vs. private education lead off my review of "Capitalism and Freedom" by Milton Friedman.

First, there's that 8th grade reading score, which is a whopping 5.7 points (about half a grade level) below that of private schools. That's a big difference.

Second, these scores confirm a widely-reported and disturbing trend: public schools seem to do OK at the elementary level, but student scores start to drop significantly in secondary school. In this study, the delta between public and private schools dropped 6.8 points in reading and 3.5 points in math between 4th and 8th grades. If the study had been extended to 11th grade, I suspect that decline would have continued.

I don't have any answers here except for a guess: namely that the pedagogy wars don't really matter much. Phonics vs. whole word? New math vs. old? Open classrooms vs. strict discipline? Without disparaging the people who work hard trying to figure this stuff out, it seems as if practically any of these approaches can succeed or fail depending on how well they're implemented.

But what does seem to show up over and over again is the effect of concentrated poverty. Nearly everything I've read suggests that when the number of kids in poverty reaches about 50% in a school, teaching becomes nearly impossible — and that this matters much more in secondary school than in elementary school.

(First off, Drum asserts that there really isn't much of a difference between public vs. private; the portion that I selected doesn't make that clear, but I was mostly interested in the paragraphs selected. Sorry, if I misrepresent the point of Kevin's post.) Friedman addresses the point of concentrated poverty on the public schools in "Capitalism and Freedom". His policy suggestion is vouchers which allow parents to choose their child's school based on factors they deem important rather than having the state decide based on geography. Friedman argues this would alleviate some of the problems of concentrating poverty in certain schools. Of course, another reason of poverty being concentrated geographically is the state's entry into building housing for those poverty, concentrating all of the impoverished into a small geographic area. Friedman's solution to this is to give the poor cash to use how they wish. The main part of this cash would come in the form of the negative income tax, which today is called the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Friedman's writing is truly inspiring (admittedly, I am predisposed to believing in what he is writing). Above, I chose 3 policies that I believe the government has failed it's citizens; housing, education and poverty. As Friedman argues, government control in and of itself is to blame. This control has really affected other aspects of the system, for instance Housing and Urban Development affecting the education system. Whereas, giving the power to the people would not have affect the schools as much as concentrating poverty in one location.

Friedman's argument is against the concentration of power instead, to borrow from George H.W. Bush, of the thousand points of light. This week is the FDA's 100th anniversary. Friedman also takes down the idea of giving licensing function to the government, specifically the FDA and licensing of doctors. In this OC Register editorial by Satya Thallam, you can find the Friedman influence.

The FDA requires that a manufacturer of a new drug must prove both safety and effectiveness (the latter mandate added in 1962). By increasing the time and cost necessary to bring a drug to market, fewer drugs are developed, and even approved drugs forgo years of beneficial use. Fortunately, things have been improving, with the FDA now on par with the speedier approval times of similar agencies in Europe.

Economist Sam Peltzman has shown that the number of new drugs approved declined precipitously after imposition 44 years ago of the effectiveness requirement. He also showed that the proportion of inefficacious drugs didn't change in wake of the added requirement, writing that the "penalties imposed by the marketplace on sellers of ineffective drugs … left little room for improvement by a regulatory agency." His conclusion has been confirmed by other researchers.

But even if the FDA does little in the way of ensuring effectiveness, we should sing its praises for keeping us safe, right?

Noble intentions aside, any reasonable concept of safety is at best relative. The safe use of a drug is dependant on innumerable particulars, unique to the individual. By attempting to create a safety standard for something as variable as physiology, the FDA imposes onto the marketplace a rule that is at once clumsy and constricting.

Manufactured insulin may be essential to some and deadly to others. Radiation therapy and the AIDS cocktail often entail debilitating side effects. What should be the rule for considering them safe or not?

While the regulation of dosage, side effect and precautionary information helps the FDA mitigate this one-size-fits-all problem, the agency's failure to account for variation is seen in significant off-label usage, the unregulated prescription of drugs for uses other than the ones they were approved for.

Consumers are protected by a dynamic mixture of expert consultation, individual experimentation, independent and industry certification and the tort system. The FDA should be mindful of this existing system, because no one lobbies for the patients who die, or delay treatment, while waiting for a promising therapy to be approved.

The FDA's mission is ubiquitous; it affects every aspect of our lives. And so the story goes, we have the sausage- (and law-) making process to thank.

The policy prescriptions Friedman espouses in "Capitalism and Freedom" will probably never be extremely popular, but generations will read this book and be inspired by it's expression of freedom. It is a wonderful book that is as relevant today as it was in 1962.

The Wikipedia page for the book describes the impact of "Capitalism and Freedom".

The effects of Capitalism and Freedom were great yet varied in the realm of political economics. Some of Friedman's suggestions are being tested and implemented in many places, such as the flat income tax in Slovakia, a floating exchange rate which has almost fully replaced the Bretton Woods system, and school vouchers for Hurricane Katrina evacuees, to cite a few prominent examples. However, many other ideas have scarcely been considered, such as the end of licensing, and the abolition of corporate income tax (in favor of an income tax on the stock holder). Though politicians often claim that they are working towards "free trade," an idea the book supports, no one has considered taking his suggestion of phasing out all tariffs in 10 years. Nevertheless, Friedman popularized many ideas previously unknown to most outside economics. This and other works helped Milton Freedman to become a household name. The Times Literary Supplement called it "one of the most influential books published since the war." However, many of the ideas described in this book remain radical (or, according to critics, reactionary) and controversial to this day.

To see Friedman explain his theories, Radley has a link to a '60's era taxpayer subsidized television interview.

School Choice

When we stop calling school choice and vouchers a satanic idea maybe we can have a real debate about it. Milton Friedman explains his revolutionary idea from 50 years ago in the linked article.

“The fundamental thing that’s wrong with our present setup of elementary and secondary schooling is that it’s a case in which the government is subsidizing a product,” he says. “If you subsidize the producers, as we do in schooling, they have every incentive to have a status quo, and a non-progressive system, because they are a monopoly.”

Friedman finds it unfair that a mother who sends her child to private school should also have to pay to educate children whose parents send them to public school — an injustice made more egregious in his view by the fact that the private school mom probably has more money and so has already paid more in taxes.

But he is just as ticked off by what he sees as the great unfairness to poor kids.

“It’s very clear that the people who suffer most in our present system are people in the slums — blacks, Hispanics, the poor, the underclass.”

When I ask him about the “achievement gap” separating low-scoring black and Latino students from better-scoring whites and Asians, he blames my “friends in the union.”

“They are running a system that maximizes the gap in performance. . . Tell me, where is the gap between the poor and rich wider than it is in schooling? A more sensible education system, one that is based on the market, would stave off the division of this country into haves and have-nots; it would make for a more egalitarian society because you’d have more equal opportunities for education.”

But how would overburdened minimum-wage workers be expected to find the time to research a slew of school options, I ask — hearing the patronizing tone of my question as it crosses my lips.

“Who’s in a better position?” Friedman asks.
...
“In the last 10 years, the amount spent per child on schooling has more than doubled after allowing for inflation. There’s been absolutely no improvement as far as I can see in the quality of education. . . .
The system you have is like a sponge. It will absorb the extra money. Because the incentives are wrong.

“Would you really rather have your automobile produced by a government agency? Do you really prefer the post office to FedEx? Why do people have this irrational attachment to a socialist system?”

Friedman says that Americans have benefited enormously from free market competition in virtually every other part of their lives. He thinks it’s a matter of time before consumers demand the same right to choose how their children’s minds will be nourished as they do in deciding what food to feed them.

Kitchen Confidential

Over the past several weeks I have been enjoying "Kitchen Confidential": Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain has a show on the Travel Channel where he goes to exotic locales and eats their local fare. Fox had a sitcom last season based on this book starring Bradley Cooper, or as I refer to him, Sack Lodge. I liked that show which was a behind the scenes look at a kitchen at a fine dining restaurant. Wow, what an introduction.

The book was eminently enjoyable. There were no punches pulled by Bourdain. He describes kitchens as unbridled cruelty and pain, what I like to refer to as scraped knuckles. There is no coddling in a kitchen; slice your hand open? Stick it in ice water, wrap it up, get back on the line. Burn your hand? Shut up and get back on the line. Get your feelings hurt? Leave.

Bourdain takes several enjoyable detours through his life story, such as items for your home kitchen, how to cook like a chef, and what not to do at a restaurant; such as don't get fish on a Sunday. Bourdain's life story is rough. His early line cooking days were done as a junkie as well as copious amounts of weed and coke. Nowadays, just 7 or 8 drinks while doing a shift in the kitchen.

Bourdain tells a great story and his love of cooking shines through his surprisingly good writing, being that he's a cooking school graduate and never went to college. I'm probably the only person to put this combination together but "Kitchen Confidential" reminded me of "The Things They Carried". The way Bourdain tells story is not unlike how O'Brien tells a story. Towards the end of "Kitchen Confidential" when Bourdain is telling of how a chef he greatly admires runs a kitchen is completely unlike how he himself runs a kitchen, writes that everything the reader has read in the book before is obviously wrong. That reminded me of O'Brien's chapter explaining that it didn't matter whether a war story actually happened because it could have happened. Bourdain's explanation just struck me as being similar.

"Kitchen Confidential" was a very enjoyable read. I will probably read Bourdain's new book, "The Nasty Bits" and another book called "Heat" which has interested me on the New Releases table at Barnes & Noble. Having never worked in a restaurant before, yet loving restaurants, I enjoy the look that Bourdain gives.

Worst People in America

The folks at Right Wing News (a funny title for a 'news' organization) compiled a survey of right of center bloggers, as to who are the worst people in America. They used the definition that Keith Olbermann is using for his upcoming book "The Worst Person in the World: And 119 More Strong Contenders"; "It's a euphemism for somebody who's wrong and egregiously stupid and abusing their own position."

Some interesting names on the list are Pat Robertson and Fred Phelps. So, I must conclude that Robertson and Phelps basically offend most people, not just one side of the political spectrum. The not so interesting names are Barbra Streisand, George Clooney and Natalie Maines. They're just lightweight celebrities without the power to make drastic change and, I believe, when they speak, most people take what they say with a grain of salt. Of course, the usual suspects, Hillary and Bill, Al Gore, Barbara Boxer, Howard Dean and Harry Reid are strongly represented, no real surprise there.

The people on the list that I would include are Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman, Michael Moore, Jesse Jackson, Ted Kennedy, Cynthia McKinney, Nancy Pelosi, Jimmy Carter, Phelps and Robertson. Chuck Schumer made Honorable Mention on their list, but, he would definitely have a spot on mine. I would also throw in Dick Durbin, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Mike Nifong, Morgan Spurlock, Don Fehr, Dusty Baker, the investigator who raided Jason Grimsley's house and Dennis Hastert. Coming up with 20 is kind of hard so Baker has to be included. I don't like to pick on people because they have opinions and express them, right or wrong. The people on my list, I believe, have opinions, but express things they don't believe to further their own careers in a niche that they've carved out for themselves. Offer suggestions in comments if there's anybody I missed who should be on this list.

Bias

I've been enjoying for the past couple of days the 'discussion' between Jane Galt at Asymmetrical Information and Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber about alleged bias in an Economist story. Without giving away my feelings on the issue at hand, organized labor and immigration, I enjoyed Ms. Galt's eloquent refutation of the perceived bias in the Economist article.

it's the natural human tendency to find things more believable when they agree with what you already believe. Mr Farrell, I'd suggest, simply doesn't notice it in other papers because, well, they agree with him more, and hence he finds them more believable. The Economist is no less methodologically rigorous than any other paper anyone I know has written for; indeed, it is rather more rigorous than most about things like fact-checking. The difference is that The Economist states its opinions, rather than maintaining a facade of neutrality while slanting the article so that the readers come to the same conclusion that the reporter did. This, of course, is more irritating if you happen to disagree with the analysis, but it is not measurably more "objective".

I have the same view. Fox News is nearly universally hated in the liberal blogosphere for being 'right-wing hacks', but what if they only feel that way because watching Fox News makes liberals question the story because they viscerally disagree with how the story is presented, balanced. I'm not saying that Fox News is balanced, but I definitely think it's more balanced than CBS News or CNN. Liberals just can't see the bias in CBS because they believe the stories presented.

Shelf Blogging

For Father's Day, I was tasked with hanging some shelves. I'm very pleased with how they turned out. I measured, used the level, employed some power tools and now I have 3 very sturdy shelves which I can use to hold picture frames so the desk is a little less cluttered.

Inspiration for shelf blogging comes from Radley. I'm sure he'd be as proud of this as being cited in Breyer's dissent from Hudson.

North Korea Photos

Every time I see photos of North Korea, I'm always amazed at the empty roads. More depressing pictures can be found here.

Bare Breast Being Broadcast Briefly

If you're going to fine someone $325,000 per incident of indecency, you should probably define indecency.

The bill does not apply to cable or satellite broadcasts, and does not try to define what is indecent. The FCC says indecent material is that which contains sexual or excretory material that does not rise to the level of obscenity.

Basically this bill will ensure that what we see on network TV will be increasingly more vanilla and cable networks such as FX, Comedy Central, Bravo and TNT will be the go-to places for real comedy and drama. Next will come an FCC power grab to regulate the cable networks, because they're showing T&A all evening long.

After I saw Janet Jackson's breast on the Superbowl, I knew this would happen. I can't believe (actually I can) that people are so offended about a bare breast being broadcast briefly. Maybe I could understand a little more if it was Bea Arthur's breast instead of Janet Jackson's.

Breast-Feed or Else

The New York Times yesterday ran a story explaining Tom Harkin's bill to put warning labels on cans of formula expressing the supposed virtues of breast feeding. Of course, I find this whole business utterly annoying. For the mothers of multiples, breast feeding, while not impossible, is certainly much more difficult and pretty unhealthy for the mother. In addition, several women don't produce enough milk to adequately feed their children. In any case, it's ridiculous to put a warning label extolling the supposed virtues of breast feeding on formula. Clark has more outrage at this proposed bill.

Library Lurking

I can't believe reporter Carl Monday could look himself in the mirror after reporting this story. The incident happened 2 years ago and Monday just baits the poor kid who has no idea what this interview is about. Very poor journalistic ethics, but, sadly, that's the case with most of these types of investigative reporters.

1776

During my vacation I read"1776" by David McCullough. I've always been more of a Revolutionary period buff than WWII or Civil War and greatly looked forward to this book. Fortunately for me, McCullough delivered a wonderful book. I'm not much of a war book reader, more of a fan of Constitutional Convention history, but the beginnings of the Revolutionary War are pretty interesting when written well.

The interesting things I learned were George Washington's relative ineptitude in early 1776 and while not a surprise, the ragtagitude of the Rebel army. It is shocking that the Rebels were able to overcome the beginning of the war and defeat the vastly superior British army and navy. The other interesting thing was the contempt the British army felt for the rebels. McCullough points out that the Americans had a higher standard of living in 1776 than any other people in the world at the time. The British could not understand why these relatively wealthy people would revolt against the king and held them in very low regard because of their rebellion.

The revolution could have very easily gone the other way, but for the, in retrospect, utter ridiculousness of the British generals deciding to sit out the winter and allowing the rebel army to take the offensive and do a surprise attack that turned the tides of the war. In late December of 1776, Washington was able to muster a master strike against the sitting British army that put them completely on the defensive. This battle forced the British to employ a new southern strategy that wasn't focused on in the book but extended the war for several years.

"1776" didn't really focus on any of the ideas of the founders that eventually found their way into the Declaration of Independence, instead focusing on tactics of the war. Nevertheless, it was an interesting and quick read, that was very fitting to read over Memorial Day weekend. Reading about how much our first soldiers suffered over the first winter campaign in American military history really puts in perspective how lucky we are to live in the greatest country in the history of the world and just how trivial many of the matters we fight about are in the grand scheme of things.

Vacation

Sorry to my regular readers, I've been on vacation for the last week and neglected putting up any posts while away. I'm back now refreshed and ready for regular posting.

School Closings

Some are worried about No Child Left Behind school closings. With the closings, they believe, students will struggle trying to find new schools and class sizes will increase. However, that's not the case, charter and private schools can pick up the slack, espescially with vouchers for children who have been cheated in a failing school.

A problem many charter schools have, though, is finding space to hold classes. The school from "Our School" had that problem. Well, public school closings help fill that need as well.

"If we could get the building this year, it would be awesome," said Murdock, whose plan is to open the Nia Community Public Charter School in a Baptist church annex that she expects to outgrow in three years. "I would hate to see [the school system] close down facilities and let them sit vacant when charter schools could use them."

For charter school officials, who are marking the 10th anniversary of the launch of their movement with festivities this weekend, the downsizing of the regular school system is a golden opportunity to relieve a longstanding space crunch. The District's pricey real estate market has forced many of the independently run schools to hold classes in less-than-ideal places -- community centers, church basements, warehouses, even spaces above or beneath convenience stores.

Now they are eyeing the six schools that Superintendent Clifford B. Janey wants to close, as well as space in nine other school system facilities that would be available for leasing under his plan. The school board plans a final vote June 28 on the proposal, which would eliminate 1 million square feet of space. The board has promised to shed another 2 million square feet by August 2008.

"This is the best opportunity we've had to solve the facilities problem," said Robert Cane, executive director of the advocacy organization Friends of Choice in Urban Schools (FOCUS), which is sponsoring a gathering in Anacostia Park and open houses at most city charter schools tomorrow to celebrate the anniversary of the law allowing such schools to be established in the District.

There are currently 51 D.C. charter schools, with more than 17,400 students, while the school system's enrollment has dropped from 80,000 to 58,000 over the last decade. Members of the D.C. Council and Congress have pressed the school board to lease the unneeded space to charter schools, which are spending $16 million a year on leases in the commercial real estate market.

Charter school officials have long complained about difficulties they've faced in getting hold of former public school buildings, and the closings plan could increase those tensions. A dispute already has broken out over whether federal law gives charter schools a right of first refusal on the buildings to be vacated this summer.

Political Posturing

Radley's Fox column this week is about political posturing in the face of high gas prices. Politicians, typically, are pretty free market until the laws of supply and demand produce results that make their constituents jumpy. The best thing to do, of course, is let the market play out, alternative energy sources will become profitable and energy prices will go down.

The really perverse thing about all of this is that at the same time they're carrying on about high gas prices, the same politicians are talking about the importance of alternative energy and our "oil dependence." But alternative energy sources will emerge the day they become more efficient and profitable than gasoline.

So long as gas is cheap, gas will continue to be our preferred source of energy. Once gas grows scarce, and consequently more expensive, other fuel sources will become lucrative -- at which point someone will develop them, sell them, and get rich from them.

But politicians can't just sit back and let the market take its course. They need to control things. So even as they're bending over backward to keep gas artificially inexpensive (staving off market incentives to develop alternative fuels), they're giving billions of taxpayer dollars to research and development boondoggles (read: corporate welfare) to find replacements for gas. It's waste stacked on waste stacked on waste.

Brewing Up a Business

I read Brewing Up a Business: Adventures in Enrepreneurship From the Founder of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery by Sam Calagione. If you live in the midwest it's doubtful you've ever heard of Dogfish Head, actually if you live on the east coast you're probably just as likely to have never heard of Dogfish Head brewery. Sam Calagione founded Dogfish Head because of his love of craft brewing and experimenting with different beer styles. Calagione likes to use nontraditional ingredients and infuse them into traditional beer styles making them his own. His brews are the premium of the premium, costing, in many cases $10/6-pack. Beers such as Immort Ale and Raison D'Etre are not really accessible to Joe Six-Pack swilling Budweiser sixers, but to beer geeks these are great flavors and interesting brews.

Anyway, Calagione tells of his experiences, failures and successes in opening his microbrewery and brewpub. It's an interesting story, expecially for someone who enjoys entrepreneurial stories, small business and most of all beer. It's like the perfect storm of stories for me. Dogfish Head Brewery would fit perfectly in the "Small Giants" book. Calagione is seeking to make the most creative brew, not necessarily the beer for the average beer drinker. Dogfish Head beer is for the beer geek and is pushing the bar for breweries nationwide.

Calagione tells a compelling and entertaining story. His management and leadership insights are fun and well reasoned, citing real situation examples that really cement ideas in your head better than many management books. "Brewing Up a Business" is a real accessible management book, much more accessible than their beer, which I've never tried. Sam if you read this send me a sixer, I'd love to try it. If you really want I'd like to have it on tap at the house. At the very least, I'll look for it on my next trip east.

Willis Shocker

Bruce Willis apparently digs the Shockers.

In answer to Clark's question, I'll bet he's a fan of Blueberry Tofu.