California gets low “freedom” score

Good morning! Happy hump day.

As the Legislature rolls through its last month of session, a Libertarian think tank issued a report saying that when it comes to liberty, California is one of the most restrictive states on its citizens.

The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, in its “Freedom in the 50 States” report divided liberty into three categories: personal, fiscal and regulatory. And while the Golden State ranked high (16th) in personal liberty, it was near the bottom in fiscal (46th) and regulatory (48th).

Overall, New Hampshire ranked the highest. New York was the only state with a lower overall liberty score than California.

For context, Cato defines libertarianism, in part, as “the belief that each person has the right to live his life as he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others.” And while the data used to compile the score gives a good snapshot of life in the state, many of the metrics used are sure to be viewed differently from person to person.

For example, gun “rights” account for more than 3 percent of the total score — and while the study sees gun-control measures as a threat to liberty, many Californians view restrictions on firearm usage and access as a necessity. But the study’s guiding principal is based on how governmental policies and regulations affect an individual’s ability to make his or her own decisions.

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• “State officials will not force most California water districts to reduce water use this year, even as they caution that the five-year drought persists and note that drought-fueled wildfires continue to wreak havoc,” reports The Sacramento Bee.
• “Felons serving time in county jails would be able to vote in California elections under a bill approved Tuesday by the state lawmakers and sent to the governor,” reports the Los Angeles Times. 
• A Democratic assemblyman has an oil industry lobbyist ghostwriting audit requests, a practice his chief of staff says is common, reports the Los Angeles Times.
• Some legislators are hoping a one-day hunger strike stunt will highlight the need to pass additional protections for farmworker overtime pay. The San Diego Union-Tribune has more. 

Assembly:

• Next floor session Thursday. Agriculture Committee hearing today. 

Senate:

• In at 10 a.m. Multiple hearings. 

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced. 

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The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, in its “Freedom in the 50 States” report divided liberty into three categories: personal, fiscal and regulatory. And while the Golden State ranked high (16th) in personal liberty, it was near the bottom in fiscal (46th) and regulatory (48th).

Overall, New Hampshire ranked the highest. New York was the only state with a lower overall liberty score than California.

For context, Cato defines libertarianism, in part, as “the belief that each person has the right to live his life as he chooses so long as he respects the equal rights of others.” And while the data used to compile the score gives a good snapshot of life in the state, many of the metrics used are sure to be viewed differently from person to person.

For example, gun “rights” account for more than 3 percent of the total score — and while the study sees gun-control measures as a threat to liberty, many Californians view restrictions on firearm usage and access as a necessity. But the study’s guiding principal is based on how governmental policies and regulations affect an individual’s ability to make his or her own decisions.

“In the American system, even ‘benefit to others’ cannot justify trampling on certain freedoms,” wrote the study’s authors. “Books may not be banned simply because the ideas and arguments they present offend some readers. Racial segregation would be unjustified even in the unlikely event it were somehow considered efficient. Likewise, state and local governments ought to respect basic rights and liberties, such as the right to practice an honest trade or the right to make lifetime partnership contracts, whether or not respecting these rights ‘maximizes utility.'”

Personal freedom

The most heavily weighted category in personal liberty is incarceration, where California ranks 12th — a steady improvement since 2010 as incarceration and drug arrest rates have fallen. 

California was tied for first with many states for marriage equality and ranked high in cannabis and alcohol liberty, but middle of the road in tobacco restrictions. The state ranked low in terms of school choice under the belief that taxpayers paying for public schools should have some freedom to choose where their children go.

Fiscal freedom 

As for fiscal freedom, California has relatively high state taxes and average local taxes, which, when combined, account for 10.8 percent of personal income. California ranks near the bottom (40th) for government debt, which comes to 22.8 percent of personal income.

Meanwhile, government employment in the state is actually well below the national average.

Regulatory Freedom

Regulatory freedom is where California scores the worst of the three categories. Land use is the highest-weighted category in regulatory policy, and it includes eminent domain rules and renewable portfolio standards for power companies, as well as smaller factors.

Labor law was also weighted heavily in regulatory policy, like right-to-work laws, minimum wage, mandated paid family leave and worker’s compensation as it relates to federal law. California ranks 50th in this category.

Recommendations

The study makes several suggestions on how to improve the state’s freedom score, which are included here:

• Fiscal: Cut spending in the areas of general administration, housing and community development, and employee retirement, where it exceeds the national average, and use the proceeds to reduce indebtedness.
• Regulatory: Eliminate the California Coastal Commission’s authority to regulate private land use. Instead, give it the authority to overturn local zoning rules that undermine sound environmental objectives, such as housing density.
• Personal: Expand legal gambling. California’s political culture is unlikely to have many qualms about gaming, but legalizing nontribal casinos would require a constitutional amendment. If California’s gambling regime rose, consistently with that culture, to a standard deviation better than the national average, it would rise from 16th to 9th on personal freedom.

By Mark Landsbaum

If you wanted to destroy an economy, what would be a good way to go about it?

You might take money from those who earn it. Can there be a more perverse disincentive than to take money from people on a progressive scale, such as California’s stair-stepped income tax rates? The more one earns, not only more is taken, but proportionately more. At some point, the earner will say, “Enough is enough” and conclude it’s not worth the effort to earn more.

Next, you might divert money from those who earned it to enrich others. The harder one works, the more one enriches someone else.

Welcome to California, where perverse disincentives abound, and where private-sector workers labor to enrich public-sector employees.

On the November ballot, Propositions 30 and 38 urge Californians to double down on this economy-killing formula by increasing their taxes, which already are among the nation’s highest and most progressive, in order to further enrich public sector workers.

If you wanted to concoct an excuse for such redistribution of wealth, from people who produce it to people who desire it, you might argue that it’s for a good cause. You might say that it’s “for the children.”

On the November ballot, Californians are told that, if they just inflict more of this economy-killing pain on themselves, they can improve public schools. Sure, turning over more of your hard-earned money is painful, but after all, it’s “for the children.” Buck up, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer. Your sacrifice will be for a good cause.

Money is fungible

If you wanted to bamboozle voters and taxpayers into buying this swindle, you definitely wouldn’t mention that money is fungible. Pouring more taxes into the pot is no guarantee it will benefit “the children,” despite disingenuous ballot arguments to the contrary. What is certain is that the benefit will go to California public-school teachers, who already are among the highest paid in the nation. And, of course, it will benefit their top-heavy school administrations, which teach nothing.

While bamboozling voters and taxpayers, you wouldn’t want to mention that no amount of money, short of paying for individual tutors for each of California’s 6 million public school children, will substantially improve what emerges at public high school graduations. Los Angeles public schools spent $25,208 per year per public school student, according to an analysis of all school spending conducted by Cato Center for Educational Freedom in 2010, even though the district reported spending only $10,053. Washington, D.C.’s public schools spent $28,170 per student.

(The fact that public schools grossly under-report how much of your tax money they spend per pupil ought to be a red flag to signal something’s amiss. As Cato author Adam Schaeffer explained in his study, school officials “believe certain expenditure categories should not count,” even though things like health and retirement benefits and debt service “are expenses borne by the taxpayer that are used to support the K-12 education system.”)

D.C. schools

If there exists a correlation between how much money is spent and educational outcome, District of Columbia kids ought to be far more accomplished than California kids. Instead, as economist Walter Williams points out, despite spending more money per student than any state, the District of Columbia “comes in dead last in terms of student achievement.”

While persuading voters and taxpayers to act against their own economic well being, you wouldn’t want to mention that the surest guarantee of a quality education is for a kid to come from a home where Mom and Dad read, and encourage junior and sis to do the same. You wouldn’t want to remind taxpayers and voters that no amount of tax increases will change home life for kids whose parents can’t speak English, or where parents don’t bother to instill a work ethic in their children because Mom and Dad didn’t develop one of their own.

It’s painful to admit that the greatest determiner of how kids do in school is their home life. At least it’s painful for public school employees to admit. But isn’t that what every grownup knows in his heart from personal experience and from the experience of public schools?

Californians could double or triple their tax burden and effectively grind the state’s economy to a halt, and pour every dime of it into public schools, and what would the outcome be? Kids still would resemble their parents.

It is no secret that the best public schools are located in the best neighborhoods. Sure, someone will object to this generalization by pointing out an exception here and there. But the fact that the exceptions are exceptions makes the point best of all.

Prop.s 30 and 38

What Props. 30 and 38 on the November ballot will do, if voters buy the spiel, is enrich public workers, most of them public school teachers and administrators. What the propositions won’t materially change is what emerges at high school graduation.

Indeed, these tax increases are extremely unlikely to measurably change the lives of children on path to drop out of school because they are acting out values they learn at home. Parents, and most tragically the lack of parents, particularly the lack of a father in the home, are the greatest determiners of kids’ educational success or failure. Not tax money.

Public school teachers will resist admitting this out loud, even though they are the first to protest that they shouldn’t be held accountable for kids who come to school unprepared to learn. Nevertheless, in the same breath they will insist they can do what the obscenely funded Washington, D.C., schools fail to do year in and year out — if only they can have more taxpayers’ money to do it with.

Don’t believe them.

Voters and taxpayers can take another step in November to dismantle California’s economy by voting to divert yet more of the private sector’s money to feed public schools’ insatiable appetite. Or they can reject the fatuous argument that it’s “for the children,” and say, “Enough is enough.”

Providing more money to a system that consistently fails to do what it is paid to do is unwise. Well-off communities don’t need more money for their well-off children to do well. And economically disadvantaged communities’ children won’t do well simply by pouring more money into their public schools.

Can public schools be improved? Not with more money. But perhaps kids’ education can be improved by letting parents use that money to shop for a better, private school. When vouchers are offered anywhere in the nation, the list of applicants far outstrips the available cash. If the product public schools sell must compete against private schools that can and do provide more for less, the competition will improve both.

The fact that so many parents intuitively recognize that they can improve their children’s lot by escaping the grip of public education speaks volumes. The fact that so many public schools refuse to free the children from their grip speaks volumes about what public schools really are all about.  And it’s not “for the children.”

Editor’s note: This is cross-posted from our friend Larry Sand. The NEA is the parent union of the powerful California Teachers Association.

July 24, 2012

By Larry Sand

The teachers union uses bogus numbers to con the public into believing that education needs more funding.

The National Education Association is relentless in its quest to raise taxes. In its latest gambit — “Massive Budget Cuts Threaten America’s Children” — the union claims that “…America’s schools have added 5.4 million students since 2003.” The only documentation for this outlandish number – an 11.1 percent increase – is a link to another article where they state the same fiction.

However, the National Council for Educational Statistics, an organization without an agenda, tells a far different story. NCES says that in 2003-2004 there were 48,540,375 K-12 students enrolled in the nation’s pubic schools. In 2010-2011, that number climbed to 49,484,181, an increase of just under 944,000 students – a 1.9 percent gain.

NEA also tries to convince us that severe spending cuts are dooming our children to an inferior education. But Mike Antonucci offers a realistic look at spending data culled from the U.S. Census Bureau. He came up with a chart which shows that between 2004-2005 and 2009-2010 per student spending increased 22 percent nationwide (9.3 percent after correcting for inflation.)

However, as Antonucci points out, the spending flattened out toward the end of that five year period. And in all likelihood we will be in for a decrease in the near term. But, what must be determined is how spending correlates to student achievement.

Compared to other countries around the world, we are fourth in spending after Luxembourg, Switzerland and Norway. Yet,

“The three-yearly OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world, ranked the United States 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics.”

Not much of a correlation there. What about individual states? A recent study about the U.S. failure to close the international achievement gap released by Education Next finds nothing at all convincing.

“No significant correlation was found between increased spending on education and test score gains. For example, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey posted large gains in student performance after boosting spending, but New York, Wyoming, and West Virginia had only marginal test-score gains to show from increased expenditures.”

Class size

The spendthrift teachers unions and their fellow travelers insist that we need more teachers because small class size is an essential component to a good education, but there is no evidence to back up this assertion. In fact, in a wonderfully contrarian op-ed, Cato Institute’s Andrew Coulson makes his case that “America Has Too Many Teachers” and other school employees.

“Since 1970, the public school workforce has roughly doubled—to 6.4 million from 3.3 million—and two-thirds of those new hires are teachers or teachers’ aides. Over the same period, enrollment rose by a tepid 8.5%. Employment has thus grown 11 times faster than enrollment. If we returned to the student-to-staff ratio of 1970, American taxpayers would save about $210 billion annually in personnel costs.”

Referring to the NAEP tests, also known as the nation’s report card, Coulson says that in spite of the increased workforce,

“These tests, first administered four decades ago, show stagnation in reading and math and a decline in science. Scores for black and Hispanic students have improved somewhat, but the scores of white students (still the majority) are flat overall, and large demographic gaps persist. Graduation rates have also stagnated or fallen. So a doubling in staff size and more than a doubling in cost have done little to improve academic outcomes.”

Ah, but what about the kids who do get lost in larger classes? A story in the Huffington Post addresses this, focusing on a sweet eight year old girl in New York City who is having a tough time in school because, due to budget cuts, her 3rd grade class now has 32 students. To be sure some students are hurt by being in bigger classes. But despite the appeal to sentiment, it is hardly a universal truth.

Teacher-pupil ratio

Hoover Institution senior fellow and economist Eric Hanushek has devoted much of his time studying this issue. In 1998, he released the results of his impressive research.

“Examining 277 separate studies on the effect of teacher-pupil ratios and class-size averages on student achievement, he found that 15 percent of the studies found an improvement in achievement, while 72 percent found no effect at all—and 13 percent found that reducing class size had a negative effect on achievement. While Hanushek admits that in some cases, children might benefit from a small-class environment, there is no way ‘to describe a priori situations where reduced class size will be beneficial.’”

In our fiscally tough times it is more important than ever not to be swayed by emotion, demagoguery, and plain ol’ BS. Americans must do their due diligence and not be conned by the hucksters. And be especially wary of the teachers unions; the snake oil they sell is particularly venomous.

About the author: Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network  — a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.