This Kind of School Choice Is Superior to Vouchers

Commentary from Corey DeAngelis on FEE.org (Feb. 2):

Private school choice programs in the United States come in four basic forms: individual tax credits, tax credit scholarships, vouchers, and Education Savings Accounts (ESAs).  Voucher programs are the most well-known type of private school choice.  While voucher programs are desirable for individual students and the societies in which they reside, ESAs have a few important advantages that make them more effective, according to economic theory.

Voucher and ESA Definitions

Vouchers allow families to use a fraction of their public school funding for tuition at a private school of their choice.  ESAs allow families to allocate a portion of their public school funding amount to a government-authorized savings account, if they choose to opt out of their public school.  ESA funds can be used for various education-related expenditures such as private school tuition and fees, online learning, tutoring, and even college costs.

Five Economic Advantages of ESAs

While the flexibility of ESAs appears beneficial relative to vouchers, it is important to examine the economic implications of the policy.  Here are five reasons why ESAs are expected to outperform vouchers:

1. Specialization:  Education and schooling are not the same thing.  While vouchers allow for private school choice, ESAs allow for educational choice.  Since all children are unique, the enhanced customization granted through ESAs should lead to a better match between students and their educational needs.
2. Price Differentiation Incentivizes School Improvement:  When tuitions are fixed, as in a voucher program, the price of all schooling gravitates towards that amount.  Since schools will move towards the set price, quality will deteriorate.  Why take the risk of producing an innovative educational product if you know that you will not be compensated?  ESAs allow families to reward high quality private schools.
3. Price Differentiation is Needed for Efficiency:  Since families know that they can save their ESA funding for other educational expenses and even college costs, they have a huge incentive to economize.  Just like with any other product, families will seek the best school that they can find at the lowest price.  The result?  Private schools are incentivized to keep tuitions low and quality high.
4. Price Differentiation Entices More Providers:  Suppose a provider realizes that they can serve a certain group of students at the same level of quality for a lower price. The provider will have a better opportunity to do so in an ESA setting since families can spend less than the full amount on school tuition if they desire.  Additionally, providers of all educational services, such as tutoring, transportation, college preparation, and online learning, will have the same incentive.  The result of increased market entry: prices drop while quality increases for all educational services.
5. Positive Externalities of College Enrollment:  Since ESAs allow families to save excess funding for college costs, children will be more likely to receive higher education.  Consequently, society may benefit from additional citizens attaining higher levels of education overall.

Not all school choice programs are created equal.  Since ESAs allow for enhanced specialization and price differentiation, I expect that they will outperform voucher programs.  More importantly, since ESAs are more well-grounded in accepted economic theory, I expect they will allow children to have access to an enhanced educational experience and a better life.

Source: This Kind of School Choice Is Superior to Vouchers.

Interesting idea. I wonder if the new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos knows about this. She would be more favorable toward the concept than previous secretaries.

History of Labor Unions Part II

Unions have been an influential force in America with some very positive results. Child labor laws, the eight-hour workday, weekends off — all can be directly attributed to the labor movement of the late 1800s. The vast majority of union members are patriotic, hard-working Americans. But there is a seedy underbelly to labor unions.

The cauldrons of socialism, Marxism and communism, unions have fomented violence as far back as 1877. Employing both a mixture of Marxism and violence, early radical unions favored waging warfare against the capitalist society and its leaders. In modern times, Democratic allies in Congress have encouraged getting “a little bloody when necessary.”

Unions became enmeshed with another seedy ally during the 20th century: the Mafia. The 20th century labor wars opened up vast new territory to Mafia influence and domination. Organized crime would move in on unions and employers nationwide, soaking up the wages and pension funds of union members, while extorting huge payoffs from businesses in return for labor peace. The mafia would take control of major international unions and find its way into executive boardrooms.

Source: History of Labor Unions Part II.

Then you have calling people who cross picket lines “scabs” just because they want to put food on the table for their family. As for the Mafia, we still don’t know what happened to Jimmy Hoffa. The Mafia infiltrated labor unions because that’s where the big money is.

Faces of the $15 Minimum Wage Victims

From FEE.org (Dec. 1):

As another round of coordinated minimum wage protests occurred the other day around the country, the consequences of minimum wage hikes — including lost jobs, reduced hours, and business closures — are playing out in real time. To bring some economic reality into the national discussion on the #Fightfor15, the Employment Policies Institute (EPI) released four new mini-documentaries today featuring victims of dramatic minimum wage increases. EPI has documented hundreds of these outcomes on its Faces of $15 website. Four of these stories of lost jobs and business closing are featured in the mini-documentary videos below.

1. The Almost Perfect Bookstore in Sacramento was forced to close because it could not absorb the increased costs of California’s forthcoming (far from perfect) $15 state minimum wage.
2. ARGYLEHaus of Apparel in San Fernando (CA) is leaving the state for Nevada as a consequence of California’s pending minimum wage increase to $15 an hour
3. The Del Rio Diner in Brooklyn was forced to close because the owner couldn’t pass along the costs of New York’s rising minimum wage to his blue collar customers in the form of higher menu prices
4. Sterling’s Family Childcare in Oakland (CA) has been forced to cut staff and hours as well as scale back a free rides service because of the costs associated with Oakland’s minimum wage increase

[read more]

Notice all the businesses listed are small businesses. Corporations can absorb the minimum wage—small businesses can’t. I know the Left say they want minimum wage increases so workers have a “livable” wage. But the real reason is unions want the the increase so they have an excuse to raise union dues the same rate as the workers pay raise. In the end the workers isn’t getting ahead money wise.

Here is a Walter Williams article on the subject: “Minimum Wage and Discrimination.”

A Lack of Compassion in India

From Breakpoint.org (Jan. 30):

Why would India block foreign donations to help poor children? The answer is Hindutva.

On January 13^th, Compassion International told the sponsors of 130,000 Indian children that, barring an unlikely turn of events, it would cease operations in India in mid-March.

The announcement came a year after the Indian government told the organization that “it could no longer receive funding from outside the subcontinent.”

While the news dismayed Compassion’s donors, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to those familiar with the deteriorating state of religious freedom in India.

Compassion’s announcement comes shortly after Open Doors International released its “World Watchlist,” which ranked the worst countries in which to be a Christian.

North Korea, of course, ranked first again. The next twelve countries are either overwhelmingly Muslim or, like Nigeria, are suffering from an Islamist insurgency—in this case, Boko Haram—that targets Christians.

Then at #15, just behind Saudi Arabia, is India. Why? India is neither Islamic nor a repressive dictatorship like North Korea or China.

David Curry, the CEO of Open Doors, told Morgan Lee and Mark Galli of Christianity Today that the situation in India reflects the rise of what he calls “ethnic nationalism,” in which what it means to be an Indian is defined in religious—in this case, Hindu—terms. An Indian who is a Christian or, for that matter, a Muslim, is regarded as less than truly Indian, because Hinduism is at the heart of what it means to be an Indian.

This ideology goes by the name “Hindutva,” which literally means “Hinduness.” It’s an ideology that belies the western image of India as a land of Gandhi, gurus, and nonviolence. There’s nothing peaceful or tolerant about Hindutva. On the contrary, the man who assassinated Gandhi was an adherent of Hindutva and felt that Gandhi had betrayed the Hindu community.

The current ruling party in India, the BJP, is ideologically committed to the idea of Hindutva. As Vice News put it, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in addition to being implicated in the 2002 massacre of 2,000 Muslims while governor of Gujarat, has also been “accused of promoting India’s majority religion of Hinduism to the detriment of Christianity, Islam, and other faiths.” [read more]

That’s too bad about India. This “Hindutva” would make Ghandi spin in his grave. Keep in mind this is “ethnic nationalism” not patriotism. This is close to what was happening in Germany when Hitler ruled.

History of Labor Unions Part I

The union label song was a happy little jingle for a happy group of Americans. So happy, in fact, Al Gore once told a group of teamsters it was a “lullaby” his mother sang to him at night. Interestingly, Al Gore must have been 27 years old when his mother serenaded him, because the union label song was written in 1975.*

From the beginning, unions, communism, socialism and democratic socialism have gone hand-in-hand. It may have something to do with Karl Marx and his feelings about unions:

Let the ruling class tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. Workers of the world unite.

Since both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, authors of the Communist Manifesto, seemed to care so much for the working class, organizing workers and communism made a natural fit. That may well explain why communists were pervasive within union leadership, the union movement and the Democratic Party.

The labor movement also had significant racism.^ In San Francisco in the late 1880s, the union developed a slogan for their strike: “The Chinese must go.” In the cigar industry, union labels signaled customers that products were made by whites, as blacks were excluded from joining unions.

Source: History of Labor Unions Part I

*Not so surprising. Since he claimed he invented the Internet.

^An interesting facts: No republican during the civil war owned slaves. FDR had to bribe the Dems in Congress  to sign on to the Civil Rights bill. The republicans already supported it.

Miscellaneous Thoughts Part 41

• I wonder if there is an event horizon for morality? A point of no return for evil.
• Third parties should not expect people to write them in on the ballot. If they are serious about running they should put themselves on the ballot in every state. Yea, it takes money and time to do this but if they are serious they should.
• If a lesbian couple gets married which family pays for the wedding (since by definition both people are brides right?) Or do both families pay for the wedding? Just wondering.
• A person needs to learn outside the school system.
• Instead of thinking outside-the-box, maybe we should think outside our stereotypes, our narratives, our preconceptions, our assumptions.
• If anyone wants to burn the ISIS flag I’m okay with that. If they want their dog to pee and crap on the flag before burning, that’s fine with me too.
• The Pharisees were the establishment in their time.
• Maybe there should be “wall” bonds for the building the wall.
• Just remember you can drop-kick a chicken but you can’t make it fly. Feel free to use this saying at parties, at work, etc.
• I wonder if some residue haunting are holographic in nature.

How the FDA - and Other Agencies - Shape What You Hear about Them

From FEE.org (Sept. 28, 2016):

An important investigation by Charles Seife in Scientific American looks at how scientific newsmakers – in this case the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – use “close-hold embargoes” to manipulate news coverage on breaking stories. Embargoes in themselves are a common enough practice in journalism; the special feature of a “close-hold” embargo is that it conditions a reporter’s access to a forthcoming story on not seeking comment from outside, that is to say independent or adversary, sources.

The result of this kind of embargo, critics say, is to turn reporters into stenographers by ensuring that no expert, outside perspective contrary to the newsmaker’s makes it into the crucial first round of coverage. And the FDA uses the technique to go further, according to Seife: it “cultivates a coterie of journalists whom it keeps in line with threats.” In fact, it even “deceives” disfavored major news organizations like Fox News “with half-truths to handicap them in their pursuit of a story.”  [read more]

This is what happens when gov’t agencies are basically unaccountable. Hopefully, the picks President Trump puts in will reform the agencies.

Breakdown of the Family Part II: The Cause

What caused the destruction of the American family? In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson announced the War On Poverty. Twenty-two trillion dollars later, that battlefield is lined with remnants of broken American families. Huge government welfare and indoctrination programs have contributed to dependency, stripping people of dignity, raising unemployment and enslaving three generations of American citizens.

Also taking a toll on the American family was the feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Progressives told women they couldn’t be fulfilled by staying home with their children. The movement also had strong anti-men sentiments. After the women’s movement, society and culture changed. With two working parents, children were often left with caregivers or on their own. In 2008, ABC reported that three-quarters of American girls would become pregnant that year.

Even many liberals understood many years ago that the family is the building block of civilization. If it crumbles, so does civilization. Yet far too many Americans have been swallowed up in political correctness. Today, society will tolerate virtually any substitution for the traditional family unit in the name of tolerance. But tolerance is only one side of the coin. The other side is truth. Without both truth and tolerance, everything falls apart.

Source: Breakdown of the Family Part II: The Cause.

Sociologists say the family is the most important agent of socialization. As Rick Santorum would say “it takes a family.” The alt-Left believes that the State should raise the children—that It should be the parents. This is, by the way, a Marxist idea.

Here are the other parts of the series:

• Breakdown of the Family Part I: The Children
• The Breakdown of the Family Part III: The Black Family
• Breakdown of the Family Part IV: The Solution

An Abraham Lincoln Letter

Here is a letter that Abraham Lincoln sent to a client when he was a lawyer:

Springfield, Illinois
21 February 1856
To Mr. George P. Floyd,
Quincy, Illinois

 

Dear Sir,

I have just received yours of 16^th, with check on Flagg & Savage for twenty-five dollars. You must think I am a high-priced man. You are too liberal with your money.

Fifteen dollars is enough for the job. I send you a receipt for fifteen dollars, and return to you a ten-dollar bill.

Yours truly,

A. Lincoln

Source: Heroes. From Alexander The Great—and Julius Ceasar—to Churchill and De Gaulle (2007) by Paul Johnson.

Wow! He really lived up to his nickname! I wonder how many lawyers nowadays would refund a client his money? Probably not too many.

“Self-Made Men” speech by Frederick Douglass

Excerpts from “Self-Made Men” (1872):

On the first point I may say that, by the term "self-made men," I mean especially what, to the popular mind, the term least imports. Self-made men are the men who, under peculiar difficulties and without the ordinary helps of favoring circumstances, have attained knowledge, usefulness, power and position and have learned from themselves the best uses to which life can be put in this world, and in the exercises of these uses to build up worthy character. They are the men who owe little or nothing to birth, relationship, friendly surroundings; to wealth inherited or to early approved means of education; who are what they are, without the aid of any favoring conditions by which other men usually rise in the world and achieve great results.

………………..

I do not think much of the good luck theory of self-made men. It is worth but little attention and has no practical value. An apple carelessly flung into a crowd may hit one person, or it may hit another, or it may hit nobody. The probabilities are precisely the same in this accident theory of self-made men. It divorces a man from his own achievements, contemplates him as a being of chance and leaves him without will, motive, ambition and aspiration. Yet the accident theory is among the most popular theories of individual success. It has about it the air of mystery which the multitudes so well like, and withal, it does something to mar the complacency of the successful.

…………………….

My theory of self-made men is, then, simply this: that they are men of work. Whether or not such men have acquired material, moral or intellectual excellence, honest labor faithfully, steadily and persistently pursued, is the best, if not the only, explanation of their success. But in thus awarding praise to industry, as the main agency in the production and culture of self-made men, I do not exclude other factors of the problem. I only make them subordinate. Other agencies co-operate, but this is the principal one and the one without which all others would fail. [read more]

Ronald Reagan Part I: Morning In America

In the 1970s, those who believed in the promise of America instinctively knew that America was more than she’d been allowed to become. Images from the decade — gas lines, Watergate, Nixon holding up the peace sign and boarding Marine One, hostages in Iran and helicopters burning in the desert — showed we were a nation lost, a once great nation on the decline — or so we thought.

Then a simple man stepped forward to present a new image. That man was Ronald Reagan and the image was one we hadn’t seen in quite some time — the image of American greatness.

Many historians go on about Ronald Reagan’s story-telling ability, saying his willingness to laugh at himself and spin a tale was how he moved people. What Ronald Reagan really did, though, was hold up a mirror.

For so long, people in America were told how corrupt or inept they were. Critics ran us down and divided us — rich from poor, white from black, Democrat from Republican. Tearing Americans apart had become as fashionable as bell bottoms and silk disco shirts. Yet Ronald Reagan forced us to look at the good. Once again, we saw ourselves for who we really were: hard-working, decent, honest, capable and God-fearing Americans whose best days were still on the horizon.

At first, many said he was a simpleton, an idealist. They said he was way over his head with Gorbachev and Reykjavik, but he won the Cold War. They said he was arrogant, but he tore down that wall. They said he was too stupid to talk economics, yet he created a better economy than in the 1990s.

………………………

They said Reagan was too simple to become a great president, but that’s what we loved about him. He was like our father or our grandfather. He told us what we needed to do and inspired us to go out and do it on our own. Reagan said that a great leader doesn’t do great things, he inspires others to do them. And he did just that. Reagan inspired us to believe in the power of the individual, in the small business owner, in the strength of our military and the humility of those who live it.  [read more]

The critics (mainly on the Left) said President Reagan was stupid but he got A’s in school. Then again it didn’t hurt to have a photographic memory.

You can read President Reagan’s “A Time for Choosing” speech on the Good Web Sites scrolling list on the left. There are also some of his quotes too.

Below is more of the series:

• Ronald Reagan Part II: The Early Years
• Ronald Reagan Part III: The Biggest Role ‘The Gipper’ Ever Had
• Ronald Reagan Part IV: Assuming the Presidential Mantle
• Ronald Reagan Part V: One of America’s Greatest Presidents

 

Are We 99% Chimps?

From Break Point.org (Jan. 24):

Journalists and science writers endlessly repeat the biological bromide that “humans and chimpanzees are 99% genetically identical,” a factoid that has taken on a life of its own and, pun intended, has evolved into a worldview assumption. If our genes are virtually indistinguishable from those of chimpanzees, the reasoning goes, we must be virtually indistinguishable from chimpanzees!

Kevin Williamson, writing at the National Review of all places, made this leap about Ivanka Trump’s rude welcome by fellow airline passengers recently. If we are, after all, 99% chimps, it’s not surprising our inner apes would make an appearance, say, on a JetBlue flight.

Now, people certainly are capable of acting like animals, and the scientific-sounding assertion that we really are animals at heart seems to explain it. But there’s just one problem: It’s not true. Our DNA is not 99% identical to that of chimpanzees. Even if it were, that wouldn’t make us apes-except-for-one-percent. That’s bad genetic science and reductionist philosophy, to boot.

Writing at Evolution News and Views, David Klinghoffer points out that the “99%” myth is based on hopelessly outdated research. But it got a shot in the arm after researchers at the Genome Consortium announced in 2005 they’d sequenced chimp DNA and compared it with our own.

Newspapers the world over trumpeted the similarity between the two genomes as further proof of our close ancestry. What they neglected to mention was that the project only compared protein-coding segments of the genome, which in humans, account for just 2% of the total! The rest is what Francis Collins once termed “junk DNA.” Except, as scientists have since discovered and Collins has admitted, this “junk” serves regulatory roles that determine how other genes are expressed, particularly in the brain. In other words, “junk DNA,” which makes up the vast majority of our genome, is a vital part of what makes humans, human and chimps, chimps.

Second, it turns out that the “99%” figure resulted from using a complete human genome as the template to sequence that of chimpanzees. That would be like assembling a jigsaw puzzle based on how another puzzle fit together!  [read more]

Yea, science in general has to watch what it labels as “junk” especially when it doesn’t understand what it is examining. The phenomena may have function not yet known to science especially in complex systems. Better to call it “unknown” than “junk.”