Tag: Obama

Categories
education and schooling

Diminishing Diminishing Returns

In late September, President Obama announced a goal. Noting that American students average out in the middle of the pack, vis-​à-​vis students worldwide, in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), he pledged to recruit 10,000 STEM teachers over the next two years.

This was put in proper context by Andrew J. Coulson, on a Cato website. He displayed two graphs. One compared employment rates versus enrollment rates in public schools. The enrollment rates have slightly risen since 1970, while the employment rate has skyrocketed. In the other graph, the inflation-​adjusted cost of a K‑12 education contrasts with achievement scores for reading, math, and science during the same period. The costs skyrocketed, while the test scores had barely moved.

Perhaps students should be encouraged to apply a little math to this. 

From economics we have the concept of diminishing returns. For each expenditure of input, smaller increases are expected of output. So, if we’ve been increasing teachers and administrators during this period, but the scores have neither diminished nor increased, this suggests a number of things, chief being that, well, expenditure of funds on public schooling is not the chief variable in improving knowledge or achievement. Not now, anyway.

So why would we increase expenditures?

Could the expected returns be political rather than academic? Could President Obama care more about teacher union support, say, than what kids actually learn?

Far be it for me to suggest this. Let the data alone do that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies

My Enemy’s Money

American democracy is uglier than necessary. We don’t have to talk so nasty about our opponents. Or their money.

The usual snipe about this process is that funders of “our side” (whichever side that happens to be) are Good and True and Selfless, while funders of the other side are Evil and Dishonest and Selfish.

So, Democrats decry — and often seek to regulate — the spending of wealthy conservatives and “major corporate lobbyists”; Republicans decry — and, perhaps less often, seek to limit — the spending of unions and billionaires such as George Soros.

Because organizations like MoveOn have been funded by Soros, they are said to be somehow less “legitimate.”

When it was discovered that the Koch brothers of Koch Industries had funded various “Tea Party” organizations to the tune of (it is said) many millions, Obama-​hurrahing pundits and activists decried this, charging that it proved that there was no “grassroots” element to the movement. “Astroturf!” they cried.

All nonsense.

Now, Democrats from Obama on down claim that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is using foreign money for ads. But Democrats haven’t produced a shred of evidence. It’s simply a wild accusation.

Look: It’s not tainted money when the other side gets it and you don’t. Or vice versa. Besides, rich people should be as free as less rich folks to give to their causes.

And perhaps we’d see less money pouring into politics from billionaires were campaign contributions for the rest of us less limited.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies

He Lies!

A congressman yells “You lie!” during a State of the Union address and everybody blasts him for lapse of manners, failure to respect the office of the presidency. Less objectionable, presumably, is the statement itself. For President Obama and members of Congress do fib, misrepresent, lie: About this, about that, about the other. About a great many things.

We can safely say, I hope, that it is wrong to deliberately misrepresent any proposed policy for the sake of fooling people into supporting that policy.

Yet there are politically interested persons out there, men of good will in their own view, who not only endorse lying to advance “just” political causes but who even publicly defend such lying. Political writer Matt Yglesias doesn’t lie himself, he stresses. It’s the politicians, the activists who should lie. Yglesias has declared, for example, that it’s swell for proponents of government-​funded rail to supply “unrealistically optimistic” estimates of ridership in order to secure government funding.

If you habitually support policies that rob people of their wealth and freedom, I guess you might not hesitate to lie about what you’re doing. You might be quite eager to deceive as many people as possible as much as possible. To insist, for example, that Obamacare will “save money” and “reduce the deficit” and “enhance competition.”

Yglesias says it’s okay to fight “dishonesty with dishonesty.”

But if you have truth on your side, you really don’t need to lie.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Gross Jobs

The president says he’s creating jobs. I’m skeptical. I guess there are some things government can do to ensure that jobs get created, out there in the bill-​paying, profit-​making world. But these do not include spending trillions of borrowed money.

And neither do they include simply giving more money to state and local governments.

The truth about Obama’s much-​ballyhooed job creation is that more than half of his alleged new jobs turn out to be government jobs.

Government jobs don’t count, Mr. President. 

Remember, many things governments do actually drain us. Jobs in the marketplace, on the other hand, serve real consumer demand, make us all better off. They also help pay the taxes for those government jobs. Employing more people in government means needing more real jobs to pay for the government ones.

And how much work do politicians cause us to engage in just to unbury ourselves from their silly, wealth-​extracting regulations? I know, I know: Every time they add on some new complication to the tax code, jobs emerge in the accounting and tax-​consulting industry. But this doesn’t exactly make us better off, does it? Not on net.

This lesson applies generally. Here’s the bottom line. Government can borrow and tax to spend to create “gross jobs.” Sure. But on net, after balancing the collective books, we’re not better off.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

American Opinion versus the Political Mandate

American politics is often dominated by a myth, the myth of the “mandate.”

Mandates, it is said, come from winning elections. The word used to be applied to big wins. Now that’s been watered down.

But elections do not a mandate make.

The recent shift from united government under the Republicans to united government under the Democrats has been dubbed a mandate, a mandate for “change” — which, in the programs of President Barack Obama and his powerful allies in Congress, seems to mean “more government.” Lots more.

Meanwhile, the American people hold different notions. A recent Gallup poll shows that 57 percent of Americans think that government is doing too much. Only 38 percent of respondents to the poll thought that government should do more. And regarding business and industry? Twenty-​four percent thought government did too little; 45 percent thought government regulates business too heavily as it is. 

According to most Americans, there’s too much government overall.

So how does this square with the picture provided by major media, and emphasized on the left? Not very well. Democrats came into the recent situation thinking they had a mandate. They were wrong.

What Democrats had was a win from Americans repudiating the Republicans for general incompetence, and for (yes) growing government too much. If Democrats continue their government growth agenda, the mirage they see as a mandate will completely vanish.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

The Pump Price of Politicians

Before closing Congress in order to block a vote to allow more domestic oil drilling, Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters, “I’m trying to save the planet.”

Funny, Pelosi hasn’t stopped using oil but wants to stop drilling for it.

Some time after Congress’s 35-​day vacation, she hopes to find a renewable energy source.

There’s that audacity. Or insanity. You pick.

Presidential candidates, meanwhile, get no vacation. They’re busy producing new energy plans.

Lots of folks, Obama included, blame the oil companies. Not me. They don’t owe me fuel. Just because we don’t like the price of gas doesn’t mean we’re allowed to fill up and drive away without paying. Yet that seems to be the spark plug of Barack Obama’s latest. He’d offer a $1,000 tax credit to taxpayers to be paid for with a windfall profits tax on oil companies. That is, rob Exxon to pay Paul.

McCain says drill, drill, drill. And Obama has already started to cave on many energy stands, though both he and McCain continue to oppose drilling where we know there’s oil, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Beware of politicians with plans. Let markets react. Let the private sector do its job.

As for more drilling on government lands, like up in desolate ANWR? Why not let voters decide? Put it on the ballot this November.

Now that would provide a paradigm’s worth of difference.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.