Voice For Liberty

Author: Bob Weeks

  • What to do about gasoline prices

    Almost anything the government does in response to the recent high gasoline prices is bound to fail. The easy political solution is to place price controls on gasoline, as Hawaii has done. Basic economics tells us that when a price is held artificially low through price controls, demand will be higher than what it would otherwise be, and supply will be less than it would otherwise be. What does that spell? A shortage, as was the case the last time there were price controls on gasoline. The misery of dealing with lines at gas stations was much worse than slightly higher gasoline prices.

    As Thomas Sowell wrote in a recent column: “The last time we had price controls on gasoline, we had long lines of cars at filling stations, these lines sometimes stretching around the block, with motorists sitting in those lines for hours.

    That nonsense ended almost overnight when President Ronald Reagan, ignoring the cries of liberal politicians and the liberal media, got rid of price controls with a stroke of the pen.

    What happened is what usually happens when government restrictions are ended: There was more production of oil. In fact the 1980s became known as the era of an ‘oil glut’ and gasoline prices declined.”

    In an article titled “What’s the Answer for High Gasoline Prices? Absolutely Nothing” by Jerry Taylor & Peter VanDoren, published last October in National Review, we read:

    “… consumers have a right to make their own decisions about trade-offs between higher gasoline prices and conservation without the government whacking them over the head with higher taxes, constrained choices in the vehicle market, or extracting their earnings for the benefit of corporations engaged in making cars or fuels that consumers presently don’t want to buy. Simply put, individuals know better how to order their personal affairs than do politicians or bureaucrats no matter how well meaning they might be.

    At the end of the day, the best remedy for high gasoline prices is…high gasoline prices, which provide all the incentives necessary for motorists to conserve, for oil companies to put more product into the marketplace, and for investors to look into alternatives fuel technologies. Government has never demonstrated an ability to do better.”

    There are also unintended consequences of any action. When government requires higher fuel economy quickly (as many are calling for), automakers will find that the easiest way to comply is to decrease the weight of cars, since weight is the most important determinant of fuel economy. As Dr. Sowell wrote: “Many of the same people who cry ‘No blood for oil!’ also want higher gas mileage standards for cars. But higher mileage standards have meant lighter and more flimsy cars, leading to more injuries and deaths in accidents — in other words, trading blood for oil.”

    News stories tell us of SUV drivers considering trading for vehicles with more efficient usage of gasoline. Anyone who is considering such a move needs to do a little arithmetic first. Figure out the cost per mile, considering gasoline only, for the two vehicles. Then consider the costs of ownership of a new vehicle. Sales tax alone on a new $25,000 car (that’s about the average price now) in Wichita is $1,825. If you trade a 15 mpg vehicle for a 25 mpg vehicle, with gas at $2.60 per gallon, you’re saving about $.173 per mile in gasoline costs. That seems like a lot, but you’ll need to drive 10,549 miles just to “save” what you paid in sales tax. For many people, it might take a year to drive that many miles.

    Consider the other costs. Since cars depreciate at about 2% per month, a $25,000 vehicle depreciates about $500 its first month. The vehicle you already own that’s worth, say, $10,000 depreciates just $200 the same month. That difference of $300 requires 1,734 miles of driving to pay for (but will decrease each month as the new car rapidly loses its value). If you borrow money to buy the new car, you’re paying interest that needs to be allowed for. Add it all up, and you may not be saving as much as you thought you might. Then, if the price of gasoline drops, you may not save anything at all.

  • Why I Voted Against the Amendment

    On April 5, 2005, the State of Kansas voted on an amendment to our constitution. The amendment would prohibit same-sex marriage.

    I voted against this amendment. I don’t think we want a government that cares who we decide to marry. Before the election, The Wichita Eagle published a list of over 1,000 benefits that arise from marriage. This list alone, outside the context of the controversy over gay marriage, shows just how intrusive government at all levels is. Even if we agree that marriage is a good thing, it doesn’t follow that we want a government to practically force it upon us. Granting these benefits treats people who choose not to marry as second-class citizens.

    The amendment passed with 70% of the vote.

  • How to decide arts funding

    Writing from Miami, Fla.

    In an editorial in The Wichita Eagle on August 9, 2005, Randy Schofield wrote, explaining why government should support culture: “Because cultural amenities make Wichita a more desirable place to live, work and visit, and thus help realize Wichita’s quality of life and economic development goals.” We might examine some of the ideas and reasoning behind this statement.

    Do cultural amenities make Wichita more desirable? That’s quite a judgment to make. Personally, I enjoy many of the music events held at Wichita State University. I look forward to attending the recitals in the Rie Bloomfield Organ Series, and the piano recitals by Professors Paul Reed, Julie Bees, and Andrew Trechak are the highlights of my cultural season, and, sadly, largely unappreciated by the rest of Wichita. But that’s my taste and preference.

    There is a common tendency to judge “highbrow” culture — art museums, the symphony, opera, etc. — as somehow being more valued than other culture. But what people actually do indicates something different. When people spend their own money we find that not many go to the piano recital, the symphony, or the art museum. Instead, they attend pop, rock, or country music concerts, attend sporting events, go to movies, eat at restaurants, rent DVDs, and watch cable or satellite television. I’m not prepared to make a value judgment as to which activities are more desirable. In a free society dedicated to personal liberty, that’s a decision for each person to make individually.

    Because there is the tendency to judge highbrow culture as highly valued, governments, as is the case in Wichita, often subsidize it or pay for it outright. Generally, governments don’t subsidize the “lowbrow” culture events that I listed above. So why does highbrow culture require a subsidy? There can be only one reason why: the public, as a whole, does not place as much value on this culture as it costs to produce it. There is simply no way to conclude otherwise.

    Consider the movie industry. It, to my knowledge, does not receive government subsidies. Yet, it is able to make a profit most of the time, even though it faces fierce competition from many other ways people can spend their leisure dollars. The movie industry has also faced many challenges arising from new technologies: television, videocassette recorders, and cable television come to mind. How has this industry survived? By focusing on the customer, by determining what people are willing to spend their money on, and by producing products that people value enough to buy. Since the movie industry does not receive government subsidies, it has to do this. It has to meet customer needs and desires and do so efficiently. Otherwise, it starts to lose money. These losses are a signal to management that they aren’t satisfying customers, or not running their business efficiently. They have to change something, or they cease to exist.

    When an organization receives government funding, however, it is isolated from the marketplace and its customers. If the organization doesn’t generate enough revenue to cover its costs, it simply asks the taxpayer to pay the difference and it goes on to the next year. The vital imperative to change, to improve, to serve the customer, it doesn’t exist. That’s exactly what is happening with Exploration Place. It has operated at a loss for four years. By accounts, the museum’s exhibits are tired. In the face of mounting losses, they weren’t able to change in ways that the public valued. Yet, the Sedgwick County Commission has given it funding to stay open for a little while longer, and the museum is asking for $2.8 million per year.

    Some might say that it doesn’t really matter much if a government gives a little money to a highbrow cultural program. But consider from where the government gets the money. It has to tax people, and that leaves people — not by their own choice — with less money to do the things they really want to do. That makes our city, as a whole, poorer than it would be otherwise, as people aren’t able to spend their money on the things they value most. The government, instead, tells us that we have made the wrong choices, and they are going to correct our poor judgment.

    The way to determine what the people of Wichita truly value is to price things at their true cost. People, by freely choosing how they spend their money, will tell us what they value.

    In his editorial, Mr. Schofield also said: “The city needs a fair, objective way to evaluate cultural programs and award funding.” I submit that it is not fair to ask one group of people to pay for the leisure activities of another group, no matter how much we value those activities. This is what happens when the city spends tax money on culture. For the evaluation as to which programs are worthy, a free market will tell us that. People will vote, using the votes they really value — their own personal dollars — and decide which programs are valued. When governments or commissions spend taxpayer money, they don’t have to consider value.

    “It’s a good first step to bringing some discipline to the arts funding process.” The free marketplace of ideas where true costs are charged provides all the discipline required. How can we expect politicians and arts commission members to exhibit discipline when they aren’t spending their own money?

    “No, government can’t support every cultural arts organization.” Finally, a statement from Mr. Schofield that I can agree with!

    “But it can help protect Wichita’s cultural investment by providing a dependable source of funds for proven programs and clear oversight and accountability for taxpayers.” There are no “proven” programs as long as they accept government funds, especially when they know the source of funds is dependable. That dependable source of funds allows them to ignore the market and their customers. The way to prove a program’s worth is to price it so that it pays for its entire cost of production. Then, see if people are willing to buy.

    Would there be any arts and culture in Wichita if government stopped funding cultural programs? I don’t know, but I imagine there will be. It might turn out that the culture we would have would be better than what we have now, because the operators of cultural programs would have to produce what people want badly enough to pay full freight for. We don’t really know. But we do know that the alternative is worse. It’s more government and more commissions making decisions for us, deciding what we should do with our own money and time.

  • Untold and Under Reported Stories From the Kansas Special Session: Part II

    Thank you, Karl, for this insight into the character of our leading Kansas politicians, and for another example of how Kansas newspapers and other news media aren’t giving us the information we need.

    Untold and Under Reported Stories From the Kansas Special Session: Part II

    By Karl Peterjohn, Executive Director, Kansas Taxpayers Network

    Early in the special session of the Kansas legislature the house speaker, Representative Doug Mays, R-Topeka, spoke one-on-one with Governor Sebelius. Following this conversation Rep. Mays relayed his discussion with the governor to his house GOP caucus as he laid out a variety of public policy options for the special session. This event deserves more public attention than it has received.

    Speaker Mays said that he and Governor Sebelius did not find a lot of common ground. Mays did say that the governor was willing to do a deal. The governor wanted expanded gambling while the conservative GOP legislators behind Mays wanted a constitutional amendment to defend the budgetary authority of elected officials from the Kansas courts.

    The two constitutional amendments both ended in failure on the house floor with 41 of 42 house Democrats voting against both proposals to limit the Kansas Supreme Court’s spending edict. A 2/3 vote or 84 out of 125 house members would be needed to send a constitutional amendment to Kansas voters after two separate amendments passed the senate. Unified house Democrats have the votes to stop any constitutional amendment.

    This proposal to swap gambling for constitutional restrictions on judicial activism and protecting legislative budget power is major news. I asked Rep. Mays why this has not been reported statewide? “I have no idea why they (the press) didn’t,” Mays said. He also said, “It’s public knowledge,” based upon the caucus discussion. Some press members sit in on the caucuses since they fall under open meetings provisions.

    The governor’s spokeswoman Nicole Corcoran said that the governor spoke with many legislators during the special session but that her office had no knowledge of this proposed swap on these two major issues.

    I asked Mays if he was surprised that this has not been reported statewide. Mays expressed frustration that this deal has not become public knowledge. Mays went on to explain that is most of the state house press, “Didn’t seem to be inclined to report anything to put the governor in a bad light.”

    Mays went on to acknowledge that he had been clobbered by a number of critical newspaper editorials concerning his legislative actions during the special session. This editorial page criticism does not bother Mays because the bulk of the public feedback he has received has been positive.

    The editorial criticism is not as important as the news reporting. Kansans need to know that there was talk about trading votes for a constitutional amendment in exchange for state expansion of casino gambling. This is important information since we no longer have a judiciary that has usurped legislative budget authority. Kansas now has an oligarchy of appointed judges. The average Kansan needs to know about this deal was being discussed at the statehouse during 2005 special legislative session.

    #####

    Karl Peterjohn is the executive director of the Kansas Taxpayers Network and is a former news reporter and California Department of Finance budget analyst.

  • Pricing a Car, Pricing a School?

    Pricing a Car, Pricing a School?
    By Bob L. Corkins
    August 4, 2005

    Think about buying an education as if you were buying a car.

    A car may be stylish, perfectly sized, fuel efficient, constructed for long life and safety, and loaded with the latest technology, but its price is still negotiable. And despite a window sticker that assigns a dollar amount to every selling feature, you can still cut a deal.

    That sticker won’t list the car’s value to your sense of self worth, your hope for recaptured youth or freedom, or even the improved welfare to your children that the car might represent.

    All possible benefits of the car will have their value defined by one number: the final selling price. When you voluntarily agree on a price, that price sends signals to all sorts of people throughout our economy.

    The value of an automobile is as subjective as the value of a child’s education. But because the value of cars is determined in a competitive market where price is negotiated to the satisfaction of buyer and seller, a far greater consensus on value is possible.

    Only when value is determined by a voluntary exchange does the price send reliable messages to producers and consumers. Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman observed that “Anything that prevents prices from expressing freely the conditions of demand or supply interferes with the transmission of accurate information.”

    In utter disregard of this principle, Kansas is now under Supreme Court order to list the manufacturer’s suggested retail price for K-12 education. You can bet it will be no mere suggestion once the experts finish their calculations.

    Two state-sanctioned studies are now underway that will tell us by January how much more this state must spend on K-12. Although the Court already forced a $293 million enhancement (our largest ever) last month by threatening to close public schools, the Court also held that the new state studies might require at least another $568 million for the following school year.

    Before this ruling, Kansas used to have a method for keeping the price of K-12 within reason. Voters would elect legislators; the legislators, in turn, would receive input from an unlimited number of sources and exercise their judgments on appropriate spending levels.

    For K-12, which consumes a rapidly growing majority of the Kansas state budget, this is no longer a matter of legislative discretion.

    Legislator judgment was not a perfect substitute for voluntary market pricing, but it was far better than what the Court compels. Kansas’ K-12 pricing decisions are now in the hands of appointed judges, bureaucrats and hired consultants who have no duty to care how additional money is raised to pay for K-12.

    Another Nobel Prize winning economist, James Buchanan, highlighted this all-too-common problem. “Indeed, by their very nature, bureaucrats act as monopolistic suppliers. Whether their role is to supply politicians with information about alternative policies, or to design the specifics of policies to be implemented…they do so in a setting in which competitive provision of such expert advice, or alternative sources of supply of the relevant public goods, are unavailable.”

    Even the most intense and professional effort of those engaged in Kansas’ studies cannot overcome this handicap. Their research will try to examine cost factors for achieving a level of student achievement that the Court finds acceptable.

    This is not just a tall order, it’s an impossible mission.

    Explaining that impossibility was the core purpose of still another Nobel laureate economist, Friedrich Hayek. Admiring the unplanned and infinite interplay of market interests, Hayek summarized that “all the details of the changes constantly affecting the conditions of demand and supply of the different commodities can never be fully known … [but] this is precisely what the price system does under competition, and what no other system even promises to accomplish.”

    Understanding the flawed premise of the Court and the ensuing studies helps to crystallize a vastly superior alternative. For the field of education, like so many other policy areas, this state should embrace market pricing over government pricing, competition over monopoly, and choice over coercion.

    The time for school-choice has now come to Kansas. Indeed, the Supreme Court has served up the idea on a silver platter to lawmakers. By removing crucial budgetary authority from the legislative branch, the Court has left no other effective means for taxpayers and elected officials to financially govern the big picture of public education.

    Legislators should start by addressing the real areas of student need that the Court identified. School-choice scholarships should be immediately extended to the low-income “at-risk” children and special education students who motivated the lawsuit in the first place.

    The state’s K-12 studies will eventually present us with a “book value” of our supposed price per student, just like car buyers and sellers will cite published “blue book values” whenever they can gain an advantage by quoting them. The Supreme Court may come to realize what everyone in the car market already knows, that the only book that buys anything is a checkbook.

    # # #

    Bob L. Corkins is executive director of the Freestate Center for Liberty Studies. The Freestate Center is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit, Topeka based research institute for advancing the Constitutional principles of limited government, individual liberty, free enterprise and traditional family values. Freestate is organized under IRS 501(c)(3).

    The Freestate Center for Liberty Studies
    827 S.W. Topeka Blvd.
    Topeka, KS 66612
    (785) 233-5157 office
    (785) 220-2800 mobile
    ksfreestate@sbcglobal.net

  • Favorite Internet and computer things

    Pdf995

    Pdf995, available as a free download at http://www.pdf995.com/, lets you create documents in the popular Adobe Acrobat pdf format. This is immensely useful for many situations. A companion program, PdfEdit995, lets you edit some attributes of the pdf files. For basic usage, though, Pdf995 works just fine. After you download and install the software, you’ll be able to “print” any document to pdf format, and then do with it as you wish. When using Pdf995 you have to watch a small advertisement, but this is what keeps the program free.

    What’s so great about pdf files? They’re a good way to send documents by email or web without worrying about viruses, compatibility, and formatting. Many people send Microsoft Word documents to one another. But what if the recipient doesn’t own Microsoft Word? Did you also know that there’s a programming language built into Word (and Excel and other Microsoft Office document types) that can transmit viruses and worms? Pdf documents retain the original formatting, which is important in many cases (but not all). Pdf documents are also a good way to save a copy of a web page.

    Save as “Web archive, single file”

    What if you’ve read an article on a website and you want to save it? Do you print it? You can, but then you’re stuck with paper with its attendant drawbacks. Can you save the website on your computer? If you’re using Internet Explorer, there is is the “Save as” command on the “File” menu, which will save a copy of the web page. But there’s a catch to be aware of. If you use the default value for the “Save as type” setting, which is “Web page, complete” you’ll end up with many small files on your computer. A better setting is “Web archive, single file,” which saves the web page in a single file. This is a much cleaner and neater option. Printing the web page as a pdf file (see above) is also useful.

    Offline Files

    How do you keep your notebook computer’s files synchronized with your desktop computer’s files? The best answer is offline files, a feature built into recent versions of Microsoft Windows. With offline files, it’s almost as if your notebook and desktop computers were acting as one, even when you’re away from home or office.

    Offline files is not easy to configure and not always easy to use, but it works and performs an indispensable service. Without it, it would be much more difficult to manage using two computers.

    Suspend and Hibernate

    Windows has two useful features that are an alternative to turning off your computer when you’re finished using it. Suspend puts your computer in a state where it uses very little power, but will come back to life almost instantly. Hibernate saves the state of your computer to disk and turns off the computer so that it uses no (or just a little trickle) power. It takes a little longer to bring your computer to life after hibernation, but it’s still faster than starting from scratch, and as with standby, all your programs will be running as you left them.

    Each of these two options can save a lot of time and electricity, too. Plus, when your computer is in standby or hibernate mode, it isn’t going to be attacked by hackers.

    Google Mail

    Currently my Google Mail, or gmail, account tells me that I have 2470 MB total space available for my use. I pay nothing for this space. It was not along ago that my Internet Service Provider, to which I pay $40 monthly, granted me 10 mb total space.

    Google mail works very well, although it has a few quirks and peculiarities when compared to traditional email services. I use gmail to receive email newsletter subscriptions and other similar email.

    Google Alerts

    Google Alerts let you “save” a Google search and have the results emailed to you as new web pages that match your searches are found. This is an invaluable way to keep up-to-date on topics you are interested in.

    Your Own Cheap Website

    For less than $50 a year plus about $8 for a domain name, you can have your own web site with perhaps 2,000 mb of storage and a lot of bandwidth. What can you do with all this? For one thing, you can host a website like wichitaliberty.org. Some other things: Create email addresses, manage a mailing list, store backups of your personal data offsite (with cautions), host a blog, host a website using any number of content management systems such as Drupal that runs wichitaliberty.org, host a discussion forum, use image gallery systems for photo albums, use project management systems to coordinate a project, host a wiki for collaboration, and many other things. Most of these systems make use of open source software and work very well. But, a lot of these things are not for the inexperienced computer user. There are times I have had to manually edit various Linux configuration files and mySQL databases to make things work. But it’s a lot of fun to learn, and some of the open source software is amazing in its capability and quality.

    Online Newspapers and Magazines

    Did you know that you can read the content of many of our nation’s important newspapers for free? Each day I read (well, at least I have the potential to read) the New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, and Los Angeles Times. Around the state of Kansas, The Wichita Eagle, Wichita Business Journal, Topeka Capital-Journal, Lawrence Journal-World, and The Kansas City Star are available for free. I pay to subscribe to The Wall Street Journal, but that newspaper stands out as an exception.

    Many national and local magazines have all or some of their content available on their websites for free, too. Furthermore, many of these publications will send me an email about each issue.

    Strunk: The Elements of Style

    This important reference work is at http://www.bartleby.com/141/. Strunk is a little old-fashioned in some ways, such as advocating the use of the Oxford comma, but I think that’s good.

    AVG Anti-Virus

    I became disenchanted with several commercial anti-virus program because they seemed to be doing too much, integrating firewall and other protections, and they seemed to be making my computers run slower than they should. So at home I investigated AVG anti-virus, from grisoft.com. It works just fine, and for home users, there is the “Free Edition.” You have to look pretty hard on the website to find it, but it’s there. For work I use the professional edition, which I pay for, but it is less expensive than many competing products, and is less intrusive.

    ZoneAlarm

    I recommend a firewall in addition to anti-virus software. Recent versions of Windows have a built-in firewall. For older versions of Windows, of if you want to use something else, I recommend ZoneAlarm, from zonelabs.com. You have to look pretty hard on the website for the free edition, but it’s there.

    Sbybot — Search & Destroy

    Besides anti-virus and a firewall, I recommend an anti-spyware program. Sbybot — Search & Destroy, available for free at http://www.safer-networking.org works very well.

    Skype

    Skype is free Internet telephony that works very well. You need a broadband or high-speed Internet connection, but after that it’s free, and the quality of voice call is usually much better than that of regular telephone service.

    Audacity

    Audacity, available at http://audacity.sourceforge.net, is an open source software product that provides you with many of the features of a professional recording studio. At the minimum, you could make a recording of your voice, edit it, and save it, perhaps as an mp3 file. With additional effort, you can alter recording to remove noise, add enhancements, and other tricks.

  • Book Review: Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy

    Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy
    Revised and Expanded Edition
    Thomas Sowell
    Basic Books, 2004

    This book is a general introduction to economics written in a non-technical way. It provides excellent coverage of many introductory topics in economics, and you don’t have to be a mathematical sophisticate to understand it. It is very readable by anyone who is interested in this topic.

    One of the best things the author does in this book is to distinguish between what politicians want to happen and say they are doing when they implement economic policies, and what incentives are actually created. Often there is a big difference between the two.

    One of the most important things to learn from this book is the importance of prices, and what goes wrong when governments interfere with prices. As the author says: “Prices play a crucial role in determining how much of each resource gets used where. Yet this role is seldom understood by the public and it is often disregarded entirely by politicians.” As an example: “The last premiere of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, is said to have asked British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: How do you see to it that people get food? The answer was that she didn’t. Prices did that. And the British people were better fed than those in the Soviet Union, even though the British have never grown enough food to feed themselves in more than a century. Prices bring them food from other countries.”

    The example of rent control illustrates how what politicians intend to do may not be what actually happens: “In short, a policy intended to make housing affordable for the poor has had the net effect of shifting resources towards housing affordable only by the affluent or rich, since luxury housing is often exempt from rent control.” What lower-priced housing that remains is in short supply (since less is supplied at a lower price), is in high demand (because more is demanded at a lower price), and is in poorer condition than it would be otherwise (since housing is in a shortage, landlords have an easy time finding tenants, and there is little incentive to maintain their housing stock). In fact, rent control often leads to rental housing being taken off the market, or, especially in New York City, entire buildings being abandoned when the (artificially low) rent that comes in isn’t sufficient to provide city-required services to the tenants.

    But because there are more tenants than landlords, Dr. Sowell explains, rent control is often a political success. It is easier for the average person to look at the situation superficially, to see that politicians are looking out for them by protecting them from landlords who would otherwise gouge them on rent.

    You can learn all this and more just by reading through page 40 of this nearly 400 page book. I highly recommend this book.

  • Governor Claims Growth While Jobs Disappear

    Governor Claims Growth While Jobs Disappear
    By Karl Peterjohn, Executive Director Kansas Taxpayers Network

    Governor Sebelius’ press office issued a news release headlined, “Kansas economy continues to grow under Governor’s leadership,” August 4. The same day the Wichita Eagle headlined the layoffs in Winfield as 1/3 of the 600 employees at Rubbermaid Inc. were laid off.

    Is the Kansas economy growing or are the layoffs plaguing the private sector in Kansas aberrations? Recently, the Kansas branch of Americans for Prosperity has been reporting that for every new state and local government jobs that have been created in Kansas in the last five years, a larger number of private sector jobs have disappeared.

    This is a distressing trend when Kansas state and local government employment is measured. Kansas is already one of the top states for government employment as a percentage of the workforce when census figures compare the Sunflower state to our neighbors.

    Despite the shrinking private sector in Kansas, it is certainly true that state revenues are growing. If there had been any limits on fiscal spending, there would have been plenty of money to start making the Kansas tax climate competitive. Instead, the money was spent by profligate “moderates” from both major political parties that dominate the statehouse. Governor Sebelius, a very liberal “moderate,” happily signed this increased spending into law.

    State revenues for the fiscal year that ended June 30 were 7.1 percent, or $322.5 million, above the previous year’s total. This is good news and the governor deserves the credit, right? Well, you need to look at the rest of the country. The Wall Street Journal reported July 12 that federal tax revenues were 14.6%, or $204 billion, above the same level as last year.

    So, Kansas is actually growing its tax base at less than half the national rate. Governor Sebelius claimed, “Kansas businesses are hiring more employees, Kansas workers are earning more, and Kansas consumers are spending more.” The governor went on to cite additional public school “investment,” the most popular euphemism for increased government spending, as a reason for this growth.

    The actual reason for the growing revenues is the 2003 federal tax cuts passed by Congress and President Bush and the economic stimulus that federal tax cuts are generating. The positive economic impact of this tax cut is covering the entire country. Even Kansas is getting some benefit from the federal tax cut that was opposed by almost every Democrat in Congress. Ironically, these cuts may improve the Kansas economy enough to help Governor Sebelius win a second term in office next year.

    What is clear about this data is that Kansas is lagging behind the rest of the country. Many Kansans, including our governor, do not even realize this fact. This situation is going to get worse even before the activist Kansas Supreme Court can expand their fiscal damage with more edicts in 2006.

    Oklahoma recently enacted personal income tax cuts that will lower that state’s top income tax rate to below Kansas’ top rate beginning in 2006. Instead of spending their fiscal windfall like Kansas, Oklahoma is investing it in their people in the form of a six percent personal income tax cut. In Kansas, the only growth industry is bigger government and rising prospects for future tax hikes.

  • The misplaced morality of public officials

    In Wichita some public officials, particularly mayor Carlos Mayans, are seeking to eliminate adult businesses and stores selling pornography. This focus on private morality lies in sharp contrast with government’s large-scale acts of public immorality.

    If government allows people to gamble, look at nude dancers, or buy pornography and sex toys, it is not government that is “sinning” or acting immorally. Government is not requiring that we do these things. Government is merely allowing those who wish to do so to engage in these activities.

    But when government — say the Wichita City Council — takes the property of one person and gives it to another person to whom it does not belong, government is actively and purposefully committing an immoral act.

    How do we know that it is immoral when government takes money from one person and gives it to someone else? We can learn from the insight of Frederic Bastiat (1801 – 1850), writing in his short book The Law:

    But how is this legal plunder [theft] to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

    It doesn’t matter to whom the money is given: poor people, homeless people, airlines, farmers, banks, artists, downtown developers, problem gamblers, nonprofit organizations, students, schools, civic groups, museums, sick people, children, public amenities, or businesses under the guise of economic development. It doesn’t matter how much they need it, or how deserving they may be. It’s simply wrong for a private person or government to take money from one person and give it to another. The economist Walter E. Williams also makes this case succinctly:

    Can a moral case be made for taking the rightful property of one American and giving it to another to whom it does not belong? I think not. That’s why socialism is evil. It uses evil means (coercion) to achieve what are seen as good ends (helping people). We might also note that an act that is inherently evil does not become moral simply because there’s a majority consensus.

    This is not to say that we should not support some of the people or groups mentioned earlier. We should do so voluntarily, however. To help someone through an act of charity is noble. There is nothing good or moral happening when governments tax one person and give the proceeds to someone else.

    So when government officials want to control private morality, remember government’s large-scale acts of public immorality.