Voice For Liberty

Tag: Free markets

  • The real free lunch: Markets and private property

    The real free lunch: Markets and private property

    As we approach another birthday of Milton Friedman, here’s his article where he clears up the authorship of a famous aphorism, and explains how to really get a free lunch. Based on remarks at the banquet celebrating the opening of the Cato Institute’s new building, Washington, May 1993.

    I am delighted to be here on the occasion of the opening of the Cato headquarters. It is a beautiful building and a real tribute to the intellectual influence of Ed Crane and his associates.

    I have sometimes been associated with the aphorism “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” which I did not invent. I wish more attention were paid to one that I did invent, and that I think is particularly appropriate in this city, “Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.” But all aphorisms are half-truths. One of our favorite family pursuits on long drives is to try to find the opposites of aphorisms. For example, “History never repeats itself,” but “There’s nothing new under the sun.” Or “Look before you leap,” but “He who hesitates is lost.” The opposite of “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” is clearly “The best things in life are free.”

    And in the real economic world, there is a free lunch, an extraordinary free lunch, and that free lunch is free markets and private property. Why is it that on one side of an arbitrary line there was East Germany and on the other side there was West Germany with such a different level of prosperity? It was because West Germany had a system of largely free, private markets — a free lunch. The same free lunch explains the difference between Hong Kong and mainland China, and the prosperity of the United States and Great Britain. These free lunches have been the product of a set of invisible institutions that, as F. A. Hayek emphasized, are a product of human action but not of human intention.

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  • Kansas senators vote to advance Ex-Im Bank

    In a procedural motion, Kansas Senators Pat Roberts and Jerry Moran voted to advance the revival of the Export-Import Bank. The vote was a procedural motion on an amendment to allow a floor vote (invoking cloture). The amendment passed by a vote of 67 to 26.

    Among Republicans the vote was 24 to 26 against the measure. All Democrats voted in favor.

    The Export-Import Bank failed to be reauthorized by a June 30 deadline. It has not been making new loans since. The current legislation that passed the senate would reauthorize the bank.

    Free market groups have long opposed the Ex-Im Bank, while many business interest groups call it vital.

  • Friedman: Laws that do harm

    Friedman: Laws that do harm

    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.

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  • ‘Love Gov’ humorous and revealing of government’s nature

    ‘Love Gov’ humorous and revealing of government’s nature

    A series of short videos from the Independent Institute entertains and teaches lessons at the same time.

    Lov Gov trailer exampleThe 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.

    The link to view the video series is here.

  • Are you in the top 1%?

    Most Americans would be surprised to learn that they are, in fact, in the top one percent of income — when the entire world is considered. It is economic freedom in America that has been responsible for this high standard of living. But America’s ranking among the countries in economic freedom has declined, and may fall further.

    View the 60-second video at Economic Freedom in 60 Seconds, or click below.

  • More government spending is not a source of prosperity

    More government spending is not a source of prosperity

    Kansas needs to trim state government spending so that its economy may grow by harnessing the benefits of the private sector over government.

    In the debate over how to balance the Kansas budget, those who oppose low state taxes say the burden of taxation is simply transferred to other sources, usually in the form of sales and property taxes. Cutting spending is the other possibility, but it is argued that state spending is a good thing, a source of prosperity that Kansas should exploit.

    The idea that government spending is a generator of wealth and prosperity is true for only a certain minimal level of spending. We benefit from government provision of things like national defense, public safety, and a court system. But once government grows beyond these minimal core functions, it is markets — that is, free people trading in the private sector — that can produce a wider variety of better goods and services at lower cost.

    Those who call for more government spending seem to fail to realize spending has a cost, and someone has to pay. They see the salary paid to a government worker and say that money gets spent, thereby producing economic activity and jobs. But what is the source of the government worker’s salary? It is money taken from someone through taxation. By necessity, money spent on government reduces the private sector economic activity of those who paid the taxes. (At the federal level, government also spends by borrowing or creating inflation. Kansas can’t do this.)

    If this loss was economically equivalent to the gain, we might be less concerned. But there is a huge cost in taxation and government inefficiency that makes government spending a negative-sum proposition.

    Another fundamental problem with government taxation and spending is that it is not voluntary. In markets, people voluntarily trade with each other because they feel it will make them better off. That’s not the case with government. I do not pay my taxes because I feel doing so makes me better off, other than for that small part that goes to the basic core functions. Instead, I pay my taxes so that I can stay out of jail. This fundamentally coercive method of generating revenue for government gets things off to a bad start.

    Then, ask how that money is spent. Who decides, and how? Jeffrey A. Miron explains: “The political process, alas, does not lend itself to objective balancing of costs and benefits. Most programs benefit well-defined interest groups (the elderly, teachers unions, environmentalists, defense contractors) while imposing relatively small costs per person on everyone else. Thus the winners from excess spending fight harder than the losers, and spending far exceeds the level suggested by cost-benefit considerations.” 1

    An example in Kansas is the special interest group that benefits from highway construction. They formed a group called Economic Lifelines. It says it was formed to “provide the grassroots support for Comprehensive Transportation Programs in Kansas.” Its motto is “Stimulating economic vitality through leadership in infrastructure development.”

    A look at the membership role, however, lets us know whose economic roots are being stimulated. Membership is stocked with names like AFL-CIO, Foley Equipment Company, Heavy Constructors Association of Greater Kansas City, Kansas Aggregate & Concrete Associations, Kansas Asphalt Pavement Association, Kansas Contractors Association, Kansas Society of Professional Engineers, and PCA South Central Cement Promotion Association. Groups and companies like these have an economic interest in building more roads and highways, whether or not the state actually needs them.

    As Miron explained, groups like this will spend almost limitlessly in order to receive appropriations from the government. It’s easier than competing in markets for customers and business. It’s perhaps the largest problem with government spending: Decisions are made by a few centralized actors who are subject to intense lobbying by special interests. It is the well-known problem of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs. 2

    Some argue that without government spending, certain types of goods and services will not be provided. A commonly cited example is education, which accounts for about half of Kansas general fund spending. Would there be schools if not for government? Of course there would be. There are many non-government schools now, even though those who patronize them must first pay for the government schools before paying for their own schools. And there were many schools and educated, literate Americans before government decided it need to monopolize education.

    Still, it is argued that government spending on education is needed because everyone benefits from an educated citizenry. Tom G. Palmer explains: “Thus, widespread education generates public benefits beyond the benefits to the persons who are educated, allegedly justifying state provision and financing through general tax revenues. But despite the benefits to others, which may be great or small, the benefits to the persons educated are so great for them that they induce sufficient investment in education. Public benefits don’t always generate the defection of free-riders.”

    Those who still argue that government spending in education is for the good of everyone will also need to defend the sagging and declining performance of public schools. They need to persuade us that government schools are producing an educated citizenry. They need to defend the capture of Kansas spending on schools by special interest groups that benefit from this spending. They actually do a pretty good job of this, which illustrates the lengths to which special interest groups will go. In Kansas, they throw children under the bus.

    Back to the basics: Government spending as economic booster is the theory of the Keynesians, including the administration of Barack Obama. Miron, from the same article cited above, explains the problems with this:

    That brings us to the second argument for higher spending: the Keynesian claim that spending stimulates the economy. If this is accurate, it might seem the U.S. should continue its high-spending ways until the recession is over.

    But the Keynesian argument for spending is also problematic. To begin with, the Keynesian view implies that any spending — whether for vital infrastructure or bridges to nowhere — is equally good at stimulating the economy. This might be true in the short term (emphasis on might), but it cannot be true over the long haul, and many “temporary” programs last for decades. So stimulus spending should be for good projects, not “digging ditches,” yet the number of good projects is small given how much is already being spent.

    More broadly, the Keynesian model of the economy relies on strong assumptions, so we should not embrace it without empirical confirmation. In fact, economists find weak or contradictory evidence that higher government spending spurs the economy.

    Substantial research, however, does find that tax cuts stimulate the economy and that fiscal adjustments — attempts to reduce deficits by raising taxes or lowering expenditure — work better when they focus on tax cuts. This does not fit the Keynesian view, but it makes perfect sense given that high taxes and ill-justified spending make the economy less productive.

    The implication is that the U.S. may not face a tradeoff between shrinking the deficit and fighting the recession: it can do both by cutting wasteful spending (Medicare, Social Security, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for starters) and by cutting taxes.

    The reduced spending will make the economy more productive by scaling government back to appropriate levels. Lower tax rates will stimulate in the short run by improving consumer and firm liquidity, and they will enhance economic growth in the long run by improving the incentives to work, save, and invest.

    Deficits will therefore shrink and the economy will boom. The rest of the world will gladly hold our debt. The U.S. will re-emerge as a beacon of small government and robust capitalism, so foreign investment (and talented people, if immigration policy allows) will come flooding in.

    In Kansas, we need to scale back government to appropriate levels, as Miron recommends. That means cutting spending. That will allow us to maintain low tax rates, starting with the income tax. Then we in Kansas can start to correct the long record of sub-par economic performance compared to other states and bring prosperity and jobs here.

    1. Cato Institute, 2010. ‘Slash Expenditure To Balance The Budget’. Accessed April 28 2015. http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/slash-expenditure-balance-budget. ↩
    2. David Boaz: “Economists call this the problem of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs. The benefits of any government program — Medicare, teachers’ pensions, a new highway, a tariff — are concentrated on a relatively small number of people. But the costs are diffused over millions of consumers or taxpayers. So the beneficiaries, who stand to gain a great deal from a new program or lose a great deal from the elimination of a program, have a strong incentive to monitor the news, write their legislator, make political contributions, attend town halls, and otherwise work to protect the program. But each taxpayer, who pays little for each program, has much less incentive to get involved in the political process or even to vote.” ↩
  • A Wichita Shocker, redux

    A Wichita Shocker, redux

    Based on events in Wichita, the Wall Street Journal wrote “What Americans seem to want most from government these days is equal treatment. They increasingly realize that powerful government nearly always helps the powerful …” But Wichita’s elites don’t seem to understand this.

    A Wichita ShockerThree years ago from today the Wall Street Journal noted something it thought remarkable: a “voter revolt” in Wichita. Citizens overturned a decision by the Wichita City Council regarding an economic development incentive awarded to a downtown hotel. It was the ninth layer of subsidy for the hotel, and because of our laws, it was the only subsidy that citizens could contest through a referendum process.

    In its op-ed, the Journal wrote:

    The elites are stunned, but they shouldn’t be. The core issue is fairness — and not of the soak-the-rich kind that President Obama practices. One of the leaders of the opposition, Derrick Sontag, director of Americans for Prosperity in Kansas, says that what infuriated voters was the veneer of “political cronyism.”

    What Americans seem to want most from government these days is equal treatment. They increasingly realize that powerful government nearly always helps the powerful, whether the beneficiaries are a union that can carve a sweet deal as part of an auto bailout or corporations that can hire lobbyists to write a tax loophole.

    The “elites” referred to include the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce, the political class, and the city newspaper. Since then, the influence of these elites has declined. Last year all three campaigned for a sales tax increase in Wichita, but voters rejected it by a large margin. It seems that voters are increasingly aware of the cronyism of the elites and the harm it causes the Wichita-area economy.

    Last year as part of the campaign for the higher sales tax the Wichita Chamber admitted that Wichita lags in job creation. The other elites agreed. But none took responsibility for having managed the Wichita economy into the dumpster. Even today the local economic development agency — which is a subsidiary of the Wichita Chamber — seeks to shift blame instead of realizing the need for reform. The city council still layers on the levels of subsidy for its cronies.

    Following, from March 2012:

    A Wichita shocker

    “Local politicians like to get in bed with local business, and taxpayers are usually the losers. So three cheers for a voter revolt in Wichita, Kansas last week that shows such sweetheart deals can be defeated.” So starts today’s Wall Street Journal Review & Outlook editorial (subscription required), taking notice of the special election last week in Wichita.

    The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal is one of the most prominent voices for free markets and limited government in America. Over and over Journal editors expose crony capitalism and corporate welfare schemes, and they waste few words in condemning these harmful practices.

    The three Republican members of the Wichita City Council who consider themselves fiscal conservatives but nonetheless voted for the corporate welfare that voters rejected — Pete Meitzner (district 2, east Wichita), James Clendenin (district 3, southeast and south Wichita), and Jeff Longwell (district 5, west and northwest Wichita) — need to consider this a wake up call. These members, it should be noted, routinely vote in concert with the Democrats and liberals on the council.

    For good measure, we should note that Sedgwick County Commission Republicans Dave Unruh and Jim Skelton routinely — but not always — vote for these crony capitalist measures.

    The Wichita business community, headed by the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce endorsed this measure, too.

    Hopefully this election will convince Wichita’s political and bureaucratic leaders that our economic development policies are not working. Combined with the startling findings by a Tax Foundation and KMPG study that finds Kansas lags near the bottom of the states in tax costs to business, the need for reform of our spending and taxing practices couldn’t be more evident. It is now up to our leaders to find within themselves the capability to change — or we all shall suffer.

  • What we can learn from the piano

    What we can learn from the piano

    The purchase of a piano by a Kansas school district teaches us a lesson. Instead of a system in which schools raise money voluntarily — a system in which customers are happy to buy, donors are happy to give, and schools are grateful to receive — we have strife.

    A Kansas City, Kansas school has spent $48,000 to purchase a new piano, replacing one in use for many years. Critics of school spending, even Governor Brownback, point to this as an example of school spending out of control. How can schools want more money, they say, if one school can spend $48,000 on a piano?

    We can learn a few things about our public schools from this.

    Piano piano-558452_1280First, there is no way to tell whether this purchase was wise. There are several reasons. First, the school is not spending its own money. The school is spending other people’s money, and in a near vacuum. It’s spending in circumstances that are not amenable to wise purchases. Milton Friedman has developed a grid of the ways that money may be spent. The purchase of the piano falls into category III, which is spending someone else’s money on yourself.

    Second, the school is spending this money in an uncompetitive environment. In Kansas, the public schools have a near-monopoly on the use of public funds for schools. No matter how bad the public schools may be, not matter how wasteful of funds, public schools know that parents have few alternatives. Yes, there are private schools in Kansas, but if parents choose them, they still have to pay the public schools. Who else can do that?

    Competition is important because it provides accountability. It provides a framework for making decisions about the allocation of resources. If we see, say, a grocery store spending lavishly on fixtures and furnishings, we may surmise that the store is trying to attract customers. The ultimate test of the strategy is profit. Do customers appreciate the store’s investment enough to shop there? If so, profits may be earned. If not, there will be losses, and store management has learned a lesson.

    Similarly, if Kansas public schools faced meaningful competition for students, schools would have a framework for making spending decisions, as well as for making many other decisions. But with no meaningful competition, Kansas schools are operating in the dark. They do not have the benefit of market competition and profit to let them know if they are making wise decisions as to the allocation of resources.

    Market competition is not competition like a life-and-death struggle in the jungle or sea, where the winners eat the losers. It is also not a contrived event, as is a sporting event. Instead, market competition refers to a discovery process, where through mountains of voluntary transactions we learn what works and what doesn’t. We don’t have that learning process in Kansas public schools.

    Kansas City school district spending. Click for larger version.
    Kansas City school district spending. Click for larger version.
    The purchase of the piano has also stimulated much rancorous debate. People are yelling at each other, and over the education of children. Instead of fighting and strife, we should be celebrating children, schools, and education. But that’s not the way government works. Money is taken through taxes. (I realize it’s considered impolite in some circles to say this, but taxes are taken by the threat of force.) Then tax money is spent by people who pretty much say “screw you” to taxpayers. That is the tone of an article written by the superintendent of the school district that bought the piano. The real problem, she contends, is that the people of Kansas are not taxed enough.
    Employment ratios in Kansas City schools. Click for larger version.
    Employment ratios in Kansas City schools. Click for larger version.
    No matter that spending per student in this school district is $15,388. That’s down from 2009 when it nearly touched $18,000, but much higher than the early years of this century when it was around $11,000. (These are inflation-adjusted, per student figures.) Employment ratios in this district have improved, and unspent fund balances, not including bond and capital funds, have risen.

    Unspent funds in Kansas City schools, not including bond and capital. Click for larger version.
    Unspent funds in Kansas City schools, not including bond and capital. Click for larger version.
    Despite these improvements, the Kansas City school superintendent says Kansans do not pay enough taxes to her schools. I get the sense that she wants to fight for more.

    Do we fight over which grocery store is best? Do we fight over how much to spend on building and operating grocery stores? No. People peacefully and freely choose the store they like. Sometimes they choose several stores at the same time.

    Civil society is dying. Instead of a system in which schools raise money voluntarily — a system in which customers are happy to buy, donors are happy to give, and schools are grateful to receive — we have strife. Instead of a Kansas school superintendent saying “thank you” to taxpayers for the new piano and $15,388 to spend each year on each student, we have something else. We have the gnashing of teeth, and that’s a shame.

  • Making Wichita an inclusive and attractive community

    Making Wichita an inclusive and attractive community

    There are things both easy and difficult Wichita could do to make the city inclusive and welcoming of all, especially the young and diverse.

    Wichita Chamber of Commerce 2013-07-09 004In its questionnaire for candidates for Wichita mayor and city council, the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce asked this: “How will you work to make Wichita an inclusive community where all will feel welcome, particularly the young and diverse talent we need to help attract more young and diverse talent?”

    There are a few very easy things Wichita could do to appeal to millennials — I think that is one of the groups the Chamber addresses in its questions — and diverse people.

    Support the decriminalization of marijuana. The city council reacted to a recent petition to reduce the penalty for carrying small amounts of marijuana by placing the measure on the April general election ballot. Another option the city had was to adopt the ordinance as submitted. That would have sent a positive message to millennials, but the council did not do that.

    Ask the state to positively end marriage discrimination. The city has a legislative agenda it prepares for state legislators each year, but this matter was not mentioned.

    wichita-taxi regulationsWichita should reform its taxicab regulations so that ride-sharing businesses like Uber are operating fully within the law, instead of outside the law as Uber is currently operating. Uber is an example of the type of innovation that city officials and civic leaders say we need, and millennials love Uber. But: Uber has been operating in Wichita since August. Uber has model legislation that could be adopted quickly. Yet, six months later the city has not acted. This delay does not send a message that Wichita welcomes innovation. Instead, it sends a message that the regulatory regime in Wichita is not able to adapt to change.

    Pledge to resist the growth of the surveillance state. No street surveillance cameras in Wichita. No mass license plate scanning by police.

    To the extent there are problems with the Wichita Police Department, resolve them so that citizens feel safe and minorities feel welcome and not threatened. A citizen oversight panel that has real authority would be a good step. Proceed quickly with implementation of police body cameras. End the special entertainment districts, which many feel are targeted at minority populations.

    Here’s a bad idea, but an indication what passes for innovation at the Wichita Chamber: Pay down the student loan debt of young people. This is a bad idea on several levels. First, it rewards those who borrowed to pay for college. Those who saved, worked, or went to inexpensive colleges are not eligible this benefit. Further, if we award this incentive, those who receive it might wonder if that someday they will be taxed to provide this benefit to younger people. After all, the corollary of “Come to Wichita and we’ll pay down your student loan” is “Stay in Wichita, and you’re going to be paying down someone else’s student loan.” If the Chamber wished to raise funds voluntarily to provide such a program, that would be fine. But no tax funds should be used for anything like this.

    What Wichita really needs to do

    Most of the above are relatively easy to accomplish. Here’s something that is very important, something that should be easy to do, but goes against the grain of elected officials, bureaucrats, and civic leaders like those who run the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce. That is: Promote free markets instead of government management of the economy.

    A Reason-Rupe survey of 2,000 Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 found that millennials strongly prefer free markets over a government-managed economy. When asked to choose the better system, 64 percent of millennials choose the free market over an economy managed by the government (32 percent).

    Also, the survey found that millennials are distrustful, believing that government acts in favor of special interest groups and that government abuses its powers: “A Reason-Rupe survey of 2,000 Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 finds 66 percent of millennials believe government is inefficient and wasteful — a substantial increase since 2009, when just 42 percent of millennials said government was inefficient and wasteful. Nearly two-thirds of millennials, 63 percent, think government regulators favor special interests, whereas just 18 percent feel regulators act in the public’s interest. Similarly, 58 percent of 18-to-29 year-olds are convinced government agencies abuse their powers, while merely 25 percent trust government agencies to do the right thing.”

    What could Wichita do, in light of these findings? One thing is to stop its heavy-handed regulation of development, particularly the massive subsidies directed to downtown Wichita.

    We should take steps to make sure that everyone is treated equally. Passing “pay-to-play” ordinances — where city council members or county commissioners are prohibited from voting on matters that would enrich their campaign contributors — would be a first step in regaining the trust of citizens.

    We also need to reform our economic development practice to favor entrepreneurship. Millennials like to start businesses, the survey tells us: “55 percent of millennials say they’d like to start their own business one day and that hard work is the key to success (61 percent). Millennials also have a positive view of the profit motive (64 percent) and competition (70 percent).” red-tape-person-upsetMuch of our economic development practice consists of directing subsides to our existing large firms or large firms we hope to lure here. But young and small firms — entrepreneurial firms, in other words — can’t qualify for most of our incentive programs. For example. the programs that offer property tax abatements have lengthy application forms and other obstacles to overcome, plus annual fees. Sometimes there are minimum size requirements. Young firms can’t suffer through this red tape and the accompanying bureaucratic schedules.