Today, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) is releasing prototype quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) by state statistics for 2005–2014. The quarterly GDP by state statistics are released for 21 industry sectors and are in both current and inflation-adjusted chained (2009) dollars.
The new data are intended to provide a fuller description of the accelerations, decelerations, and turning points in economic growth at the state level, including key information about the impact of industry composition differences across states. Relative to the August 2014 release, the new prototype statistics incorporate new and revised source data and cover an additional year of economic activity.
Statistics for the first quarter of 2015 are not being released as BEA continues to evaluate its methodology based on data users’ comments and evaluations received after the first release of prototype quarterly GDP by state statistics last September.
I’ve gathered a subset of the data and present it in an interactive visualization. In this subset, I include only these industries: All industry, Private industry, and Government. Click here to open the visualization in a new window.
According to Dan Mitchell, “First, we made a lot of fiscal progress between 2009 and 2014 because various battles over debt limits, shutdowns, and sequestration actually did result in real spending discipline.” Couple that with some (slow) growth in the economy, and as a result, federal spending as a percentage of GDP has declined.
$63 billion is a lot of output. It’s about 43 percent of the Kansas economy. A document supplied by the Kansas Department of Agriculture provides more detail: “As shown in the above table, agriculture, food, and food processing supports 229,934.1 jobs, or 12% of the entire workforce in the county [sic]. These industries provide a total economic contribution of approximately $62.8 billion, roughly 43% of Gross Region Product (GRP).” (Estimated Economic Impact of Agriculture, Food, and Food Processing Sectors, May 7, 2015.)
The document explains how such a large number is obtained. It includes three components, explained here: “Direct, indirect, and induced effects sum together to estimate the total economic contribution in the state. Direct effects capture the contribution from agricultural and food products. Indirect effects capture the economic benefit from farms and agricultural businesses purchasing inputs from supporting industries within the state. Induced effects capture the benefits created when employees of farms, agricultural businesses, and the supporting industries spend their wages on goods and services within the state.”
This method of reckoning economic impact is from a model called IMPLAN. It is a proprietary system with methodology and assumptions not open to inspection. It often used by those who are asking government for money or tax breaks. IMPLAN comes up with some real whoppers as to how important an industry is to the economy. When shown these figures, government officials are usually swayed to grant incentives.
There’s a problem, however. Agriculture cannot possibly be responsible for 43 percent of Kansas GDP. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) has figures for each state showing the contribution to GDP for industry categories. I’ve gathered the data and calculated percentages for each industry. As you can see, the category “Agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting” accounts for $8,136 million or 5.5 percent of Kansas GDP. There are seven other industry categories that rank above agriculture.
Gross Domestic Product for Kansas by Industry.
5.5 percent is a long way from the governor’s claim of 43 percent. It is true that the title of the paper is “Estimated Economic Impact of Agriculture, Food, and Food Processing Sectors.” So consider these industry subsectors:
Food and beverage and tobacco products manufacturing of $3,463 million (2013 value; 2104 not available)
Food services and drinking places $2,776 million (Also 2013 value)
If we add these to agriculture, we have production worth 9.8 percent of Kansas GDP. This is being overly generous to agriculture. It counts all bars and restaurants as part of the agriculture industry, something that makes no sense.
So how do we take these numbers and pump them up to 43 percent? IMPLAN, that’s how. It’s true that when an industry causes economic activity to occur, it spawns other economic activity. These are the indirect and induced effects that IMPLAN produces. But these numbers are hugely inflated. And when we take all industries, economic activity is counted more than once.
Recall there are seven industry categories ranking above agriculture. When it suits its needs, each of these uses IMPLAN to boost its importance to the state. Consider manufacturing, which at 13.1 percent of GDP is the third-largest industry in Kansas. When manufacturing companies appeal to state or local government for subsidies, they use IMPLAN or related mechanisms to inflate their importance. Almost everyone does this. It’s standard procedure.
Except: When everyone claims the same indirect and induced economic activity, such analysis becomes meaningless. If we added up the IMPLAN-calculated value of each industry to the Kansas economy, we’d end up with a value several times larger than the actual value.
This is what the Kansas Department of Agriculture and Governor Sam Brownback have done. We expect this behavior from companies or local economic development agencies when they appeal for economic development incentives. They need to inflate their importance to gullible government bureaucrats and elected officials. But Governor Brownback doesn’t need to do this, and neither does the Kansas Department of Agriculture. From them, all we want is the truth, and nothing more.
An analysis of public health spending in Sedgwick County illuminates the consequences of public spending decisions. In particular, those calling for more spending on zoos and arts must consider the lives that could be saved by diverting this spending to public health, according to analysis from Kansas Health Institute.
Kansas Health Institute infographicKHI’s analysis is based on the paper “Evidence Links Increases In Public Health Spending To Declines In Preventable Deaths,” Glen P. Mays and Sharla A. Smith, Health Affairs, 30, no.8 (2011):1585-1593, available here. Excerpts from the paper are below. KHI summarizes the findings of the paper as: “In short, the research showed that increased spending by local public health agencies over the thirteen-year period studied was linked to statistically significant declines in deaths from some preventable causes such as infant mortality, heart disease, diabetes and cancer.”
KHI developed a model based on the paper’s findings to conclude that the proposed reductions in spending on public health in Sedgwick County would result in the deaths show in the nearby table from their fact sheet. The total of these numbers is an additional 65 deaths per year.
Perhaps in response to these findings, two Sedgwick County Commissioners have proposed eliminating the proposed cuts. To help understand the effects of this spending, I duplicated the analysis performed by KHI. I took the proposed increases in spending (or reductions in cuts) and subtracted the spending for public health, leaving $1,019,499 in spending that loosely qualifies as “quality of life” spending. It’s for things like the zoo, Exploration Place, economic development, and the like.
Sedgwick County spending analysis based on Kansas Health Institute model. Click for larger version.As can be seen in the nearby illustration, if this quality of life spending was instead spent on public health, we could save 43 lives per year. Based on the methodology used by KHI, this is the human cost of restoring only the proposed cuts to quality of life spending in Sedgwick County. If we were to use the totality of quality of life spending, or even just a subset like the $5.3 million spent on an elephant exhibit, the cost in human lives is large. This, of course, assumes that the KHI methodology is valid and reliable.
In its summary, the KHI report states: “Budget decisions have real consequences.” Those supporting spending on quality of life issues instead of public health have some explaining to do.
Excerpts from Mays et al.
“On balance, there is very little empirical evidence about the extent to which differences in public health spending levels contribute to differences in population health. Several cross-national studies have found weak and conflicting associations between spending and health outcomes at a national level.”
In a section titled “Limitations” the authors note “Several limitations of this analysis are worthy of emphasis. Although we used strong statistical controls to address possible sources of bias, it remains possible that factors distinct from, but closely correlated with, public health spending may explain some of the observed associations between spending and mortality.”
Also, “Local public health activities may have important and perhaps more immediate effects on these other indicators of health … this analysis may underestimate the health consequences of changes in local public health spending.”
In conclusion, the authors write: “Our analysis supports the contention that spending on local public health activities is a wise health investment. Increasing such investments in communities with historically low levels of spending may provide an effective way of reducing geographic disparities in population health. However, more money by itself is unlikely to generate significant and sustainable health gains.”
In Sedgwick County the debate over the budget has the dimension of a moral crusade, except for one thing.
As Sedgwick County debates next year’s budget, the arguments against a three percent cut in spending have been heated. Proponents of spending say the commissioners are not honoring commitments (see here and here), the commissioners are being short-sighted and foolish for proposing cuts, the county has a moral obligation to use taxes to care for the needy, and that county spending has a great economic benefit.
But what isn’t often mentioned is the nature of taxation and government spending. A new video from Learn Liberty offers a perspective on the morality of government that seems to be totally missing in the debate. View the video below, or click here.
In summary, the video poses these questions:
Is it moral for you to donate your money and time to (the zoo, Exploration Place, arts, health care for the poor, vocational education, payments to companies so they remain in the county instead of moving, a livestock show, the river festival, the sports commission, etc.)?
Is it moral for you to force other people to donate their time and money to (same list as in question one)?
Is it moral for government to force people to donate their time and money to (same list as in question one)?
If you answer “no” to question two, then how do you justify answering “yes” to question three? All sorts of rationalizations are available to support these two answers, such as:
Society is like a club, and taxes are the dues.
Taxes are the price we pay for civilization.
Government owns the nation (state, county, city, school district), and if you want to live or do business there, you must pay rent.
Government gives (most) people back more in services and benefits than they pay in taxes.
Government makes investments with our taxes that earn it even more tax revenue.
Some of these have a grain of truth, such as taxes providing for the national defense and a justice system. These two things make it possible for us to be safe from foreign aggressors and to have our rights and property protected. It doesn’t take a whole lot — comparatively speaking — to provide these functions, but government goes way beyond.
In fact, the truth behind number four leads to a most uncivil society, where people spend vast amounts of time and money lobbying for government to take even more time and money away from others and give it to them — or to the things they think your money should be spent on. We end up fighting over things like zoos and arts, instead of cooperating to attain these desirable amenities.
And fight we do. The techniques are known in advance. The book Economics In One Lesson, first published in 1946 and available to read at the Foundation for Economic Education, explains fallacies (false or mistaken ideas) that are particularly common in the field of economics and public policy. At the very start of the book the author Henry Hazlitt explains:
Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics or medicine — the special pleading of selfish interests. While every group has certain economic interests identical with those of all groups, every group has also, as we shall see, interests antagonistic to those of all other groups. While certain public policies would in the long run benefit everybody, other policies would benefit one group only at the expense of all other groups. The group that would benefit by such policies, having such a direct interest in them, will argue for then plausibly and persistently. It will hire the best buyable minds to devote their whole time to presenting its case. And it will finally either convince the general public that its case is sound, or so befuddle it that clear thinking on the subject becomes next to impossible.
In addition to these endless pleadings of self-interest, there is a second main factor that spawns new economic fallacies every day. This is the persistent tendency of men to see only the immediate effects of a given policy, or its effects only on a special group, and to neglect to inquire what the long-run effects of that policy will be not only on that special group but on all groups. It is the fallacy of overlooking secondary consequences.
An example of using the “best buyable minds” is the promotion of government spending on arts as having some magic power not present in other spending. These buyable minds have produced an impressive document titled Arts & Economic Prosperity III: The Economic Impact of the Nonprofit Arts and Culture Industry in the State of Kansas. It explains that when a theater company (presumably operating with a government grant) buys a gallon of paint, it sets off a chain of economic activity that benefits many people. True enough. It’s called commerce. But anyone buying the paint sets off the same chain of activity. The same, that is, except that homeowners spending their own money on paint are doing so voluntarily, while the government-subsidized theater company has used the force of government to take money from others.
That’s a big difference, and one lost on most residents of Sedgwick County. I’m hopeful that the people pleading for more taxation and spending are simply unaware of these considerations, as if so, their minds can change. The alternative is much more bleak.
As evidence of the goodness of the project and why the city should forego collecting sales tax, the council has been presented with these benefit-cost figures:
City of Wichita General Fund: 44.67 to 1
City of Wichita Debt Service Fund: NA
Sedgwick County: 100.23 to 1
USD 375: NA
State of Kansas: 65.28 to 1
Undoubtedly council members will congratulate themselves on their wisdom and foresight for being able to invest $1.00 and get back $44.67 in return. And look at what a favor the council is doing for the county and state! For an investment of $1.00, they’ll get back $100.23 and $65.28.
If only these numbers were a true and accurate representation.
The source of these numbers is that the city is giving up a relatively small amount of sales tax revenue, but gaining a lot of property tax (and other tax) revenue in the future. This is true, as far as we can predict these things.
The problem is that one of the numbers used to calculate the benefit-cost ratio is incomplete, and far from being complete. (Click here to view the analysis prepared for the city.)
The source of the calculation starts with the city giving up $16,227 of its share of sales tax revenue, based on the action the council will likely approve on August 11. This is the city’s cost, according to city documents. Then, future tax revenues are estimated, discounted to present value, and compared to the cost. The result is the benefit-cost ratio.
This calculation could make sense if the city included all costs in the calculation. But it hasn’t done that. First, the project benefits from STAR bonds. These bonds carry a sales tax exemption on goods purchased with bond proceeds, which means that the city (and other jurisdictions) are forgoing the collection of other sales tax revenue in addition to the sales tax used in the present calculation. This foregone revenue is of precisely the same nature as other foregone sales tax revenue that the city includes in its calculation.
Additionally, the project benefits from up to $7,525,000 in STAR bonds financing. These bonds will be repaid by sales tax collections from the project and surrounding merchants. This represents more sales tax revenue that the city and other jurisdictions will not be able to spend on anything except paying principle and interest in these bonds.
If these costs were included in the benefit-cost ratio calculation, I don’t know what the result would be, except that it would be different, and probably a great deal lower. It might even be below the city’s threshold for projects.
No matter your opinion on the wisdom of the city investing in public-private partnerships, the city council ought to insist on complete information. That hasn’t happened in this case. The city is using only part of its costs, but pretending that these costs are responsible for producing all revenues.
Who do we hold accountable for this? The benefit-cost ratios are computed by the Center for Economic Development and Business Research (CEDBR) at Wichita State University. It uses figures provided by the city. In the past, when results like these have been questioned, the city has cited the economists at CEDBR as evidence that the figures are valid and reliable. By splitting the responsibility for these calculations, accountability is avoided.
As we approach another birthday of Milton Friedman, here’s his column from Newsweek in 1982 that explains that despite good intentions, the result of government intervention often harms those it is intended to help.
There is a sure-fire way to predict the consequences of a government social program adopted to achieve worthy ends. Find out what the well-meaning, public-interested persons who advocated its adoption expected it to accomplish. Then reverse those expectations. You will have an accurate prediction of actual results.
To illustrate on the broadest level, idealists from Marx to Lenin and the subsequent fellow travelers claimed that communism would enhance both freedom and prosperity and lead to the “withering away of the state.” We all know the results in the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China: misery, slavery and a more powerful and all-encompassing government than the world had ever seen.
As we approach another birthday of Milton Friedman, here’s an insightful passage from the book he wrote with his wife Rose: Free to Choose: A Personal Statement. It explains why government spending is wasteful, how it leads to corruption, how it often does not benefit the people it was intended, and how the pressure for more spending is always present.
A simple classification of spending shows why that process leads to undesirable results. When you spend, you may spend your own money or someone else’s; and you may spend for the benefit of yourself or someone else. Combining these two pairs of alternatives gives four possibilities summarized in the following simple table:
Category I in the table refers to your spending your own money on yourself. You shop in a supermarket, for example. You clearly have a strong incentive both to economize and to get as much value as you can for each dollar you do spend.
Category II refers to your spending your own money on someone else. You shop for Christmas or birthday presents. You have the same incentive to economize as in Category I but not the same incentive to get full value for your money, at least as judged by the tastes of the recipient. You will, of course, want to get something the recipient will like — provided that it also makes the right impression and does not take too much time and effort. (If, indeed, your main objective were to enable the recipient to get as much value as possible per dollar, you would give him cash, converting your Category II spending to Category I spending by him.)
Category III refers to your spending someone else’s money on yourself — lunching on an expense account, for instance. You have no strong incentive to keep down the cost of the lunch, but you do have a strong incentive to get your money’s worth.
Category IV refers to your spending someone else’s money on still another person. You are paying for someone else’s lunch out of an expense account. You have little incentive either to economize or to try to get your guest the lunch that he will value most highly. However, if you are having lunch with him, so that the lunch is a mixture of Category III and Category IV, you do have a strong incentive to satisfy your own tastes at the sacrifice of his, if necessary.
All welfare programs fall into either Category III — for example, Social Security which involves cash payments that the recipient is free to spend as he may wish; or Category IV — for example, public housing; except that even Category IV programs share one feature of Category III, namely, that the bureaucrats administering the program partake of the lunch; and all Category III programs have bureaucrats among their recipients.
In our opinion these characteristics of welfare spending are the main source of their defects.
A series of short videos from the Independent Institute entertains and teaches lessons at the same time.
The Independent Institute has produced a series of humorous and satirical videos to present lessons about the nature of government. The Institute describes the series here:
Love Gov depicts an overbearing boyfriend — Scott “Gov” Govinsky — who foists his good intentions on a hapless, idealistic college student, Alexis. Each episode follows Alexis’s relationship with Gov as his intrusions wreak (comic) havoc on her life, professionally, financially, and socially. Alexis’s loyal friend Libby tries to help her see Gov for what he really is — a menace. But will Alexis come to her senses in time?
There are five episode (plus a trailer). Each episode is around five minutes long and presents a lesson on a topic like jobs, healthcare, and privacy. The episodes are satirical and funny. They’d be really funny if the topic wasn’t so serious. I recommend you spend a half-hour or so to view the series.
As we approach another birthday of 
