Shut Down the Department of Education, End Federal Government Involvement and Intervention

To save the nation from a future Greek-style fiscal meltdown, we should reform entitlements.

But as part of the effort to restore limited, constitutional government, we also should shut down various departments that deal with issues that shouldn’t be handled by the central government.

I’ve already identified some low-hanging fruit.

Get rid of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Shut down the Department of Agriculture.

Eliminate the Department of Transportation.

We need to add the Department of Education to the list. And maybe even make it one of the first targets.

Increasing federal involvement and intervention, after all, is associated with more spending and more bureaucracy, but NOT better educational outcomes.

Politicians in Washington periodically try to “reform” the status quo, but rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic never works. And that’s true whether you look at the results of GOP plans, like Bush’s no-bureaucrat-left-behind scheme, or Democratic plans, like Obama’s Common Core.

The good news, as explained by the Washington Examiner, is that Congress is finally considering legislation that would reduce the federal government’s footprint.

There are some good things about this bill, which will serve as the reauthorization of former President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law. Importantly, the bill removes the Education Department’s ability to bludgeon states into adopting the controversial Common Core standards. The legislative language specifically forbids both direct and indirect attempts “to influence, incentivize, or coerce” states’ decisions. …The Student Success Act is therefore a step in the right direction, because it returns educational decisions to their rightful place — the state (or local) level. It is also positive in that it eliminates nearly 70 Department of Education programs, replacing them with more flexible grants to the states.

But the bad news is that the legislation doesn’t go nearly far enough. Federal involvement is a gaping wound caused by a compound fracture, while the so-called Student Success Act is a band-aid.

…as a vehicle for moving the federal government away from micromanaging schools that should fall entirely under state and local control, the bill is disappointing. …the recent explosion of federal spending and federal control in education over the last few decades has failed to produce any significant improvement in outcomes. Reading and math proficiency have hardly budged. …the federal government’s still-modest financial contribution to primary and secondary education has come with strings that give Washington an inordinate say over state education policy. …The Student Success Act…leaves federal spending on primary and secondary education at the elevated levels of the Bush era. It also fails to provide states with an opt-out.

To be sure, there’s no realistic way of making significant progress with Obama in the White House.

But the long-run battle will never be won unless reform-minded lawmakers make the principled case. Here’s the bottom line.

Education is one area where the federal government has long resisted accepting the evidence or heeding its constitutional limitations. …Republicans should be looking forward to a post-Obama opportunity to do it for real — to end federal experimentation and meddling in primary and secondary education and letting states set their own policies.

Amen.

But now let’s acknowledge that ending federal involvement and intervention should be just the first step on a long journey.

State governments are capable of wasting money and getting poor results.

Local governments also have shown that they can be similarly profligate and ineffective.

Indeed, when you add together total federal/state/local spending and then look at the actual results (whether kids are getting educated), the United States does an embarrassingly bad job.

The ultimate answer is to end the government education monopoly and shift to a system based on choice and competition.

Fortunately, we already have strong evidence that such an approach yields superior outcomes.

To be sure, school choice doesn’t automatically mean every child will be an educational success, but evidence from Sweden, Chile, and the Netherlands shows good results after breaking up state-run education monopolies.

P.S. Let’s close with a bit of humor showing the evolution of math lessons in government schools.

P.P.S. If you want some unintentional humor, the New York Times thinks that government education spending has been reduced.

P.P.P.S. And you’ll also be amused (and outraged and disgusted) by the truly bizarre examples of political correctness in government schools.

The Joy of Welfare-Funded Holiday Trips to Bali and Dubai

Since I’m in the United Kingdom, it’s appropriate to announce that another Briton has been elected to the Moocher Hall of Fame.

Ms. Kay Bird deserves this “honor” because it takes a very reprehensible entitlement mentality to brag about taking a global holiday with welfare cash.

And we’re talking about a global holiday that appears to be far more extravagant than the foreign trips enjoyed by Natalija, another member of the Moocher Hall of Fame.

Here are some of the jaw-dropping details from a report in the U.K.-based Daily Mail.

A single mother on benefits has admitted spending £3,000 of taxpayers’ cash on a dream round-the-world trip to far flung destinations with her 10-month-old baby daughter. ...she still receives more than £8,500 a year in child benefit, income support and tax credits as it is considered that she has a low income. …she visited places such as Australia, Bali and Dubai. Miss Bird says she could work but chooses not to… She said: ‘No, I don’t need the money as such and I didn’t need to go travelling either but I wanted to so I did. ‘If someone’s offering you free money and telling you to take it, you’d have to be a fool not to – that’s all I did. …‘I don’t feel guilty and I don’t regret it. It started off just as a ­holiday to Athens, then things started to fall into place.

Let’s think through her statement about “free money.” Is she really so clueless that she doesn’t realize that her handouts are only possible because other people are actually working and producing?

She says “I don’t feel guilty,” which is remarkable because I doubt taxpayers who financed her jaunt have ever been to Dubai and Bali.

‘Each time some more money landed in my account, I booked something. ‘I started booking flights and accommodation in Europe in October and was booking something with every payment until a few days before I went.’ …She also visited Athens, Istanbul, Dubai, Colombo in Sri Lanka, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Bali and Darwin before returning home via Amsterdam. In total, she spent four months worth of her benefits cash on the trip, paying for 13 flights, travel visas, accommodation and spending money. Her benefits continued to be paid into her bank account while she was away and she returned to the UK just before the five-week travel limit imposed on people claiming Jobseekers’ Allowance.

I have to confess that I’m mystified how someone who chooses not to work can get a handout called “jobseekers’ allowance.” I wonder if MHoF members Danny and Gina are benefiting from the same scam?

In any event, the bureaucrats seem more concerned with enabling welfare fraud than in protecting the interests of taxpayers.

She added: ‘I went to the job centre and told them I wanted to go travelling and they told me there was a five-week limit. I came home just within those five weeks so my benefits didn’t get cut off.’ …she was claiming £90 a week income support, £90 a month child benefit and £230 a month in tax credits. She said: ‘I told them I wanted to register back in the country and they told me I was already eligible for Jobseekers’ Allowance. ‘Then a couple of weeks later they said I could switch to income support which meant I didn’t even have to apply for jobs. ‘Then I was told I could get tax credits, too. I was really shocked at how generous it was but I wasn’t going to turn it down.’

I’m sure British taxpayers will be delighted to learn that Ms. Bird is already planning her next welfare-financed overseas holiday.

Now she says she is planning her next luxury trip for herself and daughter which will be to New Zealand. …She explained: ‘I’m not your regular single mum on benefits who spends it all in McDonald’s and never leaves the town they were born in. ‘I’m changing the image of what it is to be a benefits mum and proving that if you do it the right way, you can have ­anything you want. …’Of course people are negative and many people get very jealous. ‘But I had only been out of Europe once before I went on benefits and now I’ve had the chance to see some incredible things from tropical beaches to the ­skyscrapers of Dubai. ‘I never would have been able to afford it without benefits.’

Gee, doesn’t that warm your heart. She’s a trailblazer, showing other deadbeats how you can live like a jet-setter with other people paying the bills!

Yes, Ms. Bird definitely deserves to be in the Moocher Hal of Fame.

P.S. Since we’re talking about reprehensible welfare moochers, let’s shift from the U.K. to Australia.

It appears that there are lots of Aussie Muslims who want to join the “Terror Wing” of the Moocher Hall of Fame.

Here are some excerpts in a story from the Aussie-based Daily Telegraph.

A federal investigation into the welfare status of Australian foreign fighters, prompted last year by revelations in The Telegraph, shows 96 per cent had been on welfare benefits when they fled to the Middle East. Most had continued to collect payments from Australian taxpayers while training with Islamic State to become terrorists intent on wanting to kill Australians. The investigation has captured the records of 57 Australians who left the country before October last year to fight with the Islamic State. Of that number 55 have been confirmed to have been on welfare payments.

Wow, 96 percent of the identified terrorists who came from Australia were subsidized by taxpayers.

And there are more welfare-fueled terrorists on the way, perhaps recruited by Abdul, who’s been sponging off Australian taxpayers for about two decades.

Since then, an estimated 50 more Australians have ­illegally travelled to the Middle East to join IS, with most believed to have been claiming some form of benefit. A subsequent audit of this group confirmed that most had been at one time in ­receipt of benefits such as Newstart, sickness, youth and carer’s allowances, as well as the Disability Support Pension.

So let’s summarize. Able-bodied young men who are healthy enough to join a fight in the Middle East somehow were somehow so helpless that they needed welfare handouts to survive in Australia.

In reality, of course, these low-life deadbeats surely were capable of working, but they doubtlessly thought it was wonderful that the people they hate were subsidizing their sloth.

All the more reason why policymakers in all nations should reduce the size of the welfare state.

But it’s equally important to decentralize so that local and regional governments are responsible for redistribution programs. Under such an approach, I suspect we’d be far more likely to see the imposition of standards to preclude mooching by able-bodied adults, whether they’re run-of-the-mill moochers or terrorists-in-training.

In the Case of Asset Forfeiture, the Moral Case against Big Government Is even more Compelling than the Economic Case

Earlier today, I gave a speech to some folks at London’s Institute of Economic Affairs about the failure of global financial regulation.

I touched on some predictable themes:

The absence of cost/benefit analysis for regulatory initiatives.

The failure of anti-money laundering laws and their harmful impact on the poor.

How one-size-fits-all Basel rules led to imprudent risk and misallocation of capital.

How anti-tax competition schemes impose high costs on the financial system (which get passed on to financial consumers).

One thing I noticed, though, is that I didn’t get overly passionate when discussing these topics. I didn’t even get that worked up when talking about the OECD’s dangerous plan to create something akin to a World Tax Organization.

But I did get rather agitated when talking about how money-laundering rules and regulations have led to disgusting and reprehensible examples of so-called civil asset forfeiture.

This happens when a government decides to steal the property of citizens simply because they think it may have been involved in illegal activity.

Politicians and bureaucrats often use the failed Drug War as their rationale, but the activity doesn’t actually have to be illegal. I specifically cited the horrific example of the government stealing $35,000 from some folks in Michigan for no other reason than money from the family grocery business was generally deposited in amounts under $10,000.

I’m sure such government actions have a negative economic impact, but this is a case where the moral argument should take precedence.

Simply stated, all decent and humane people should stand united against thuggery by government.

And in an example of serendipity, after finishing my speech, I turned on my computer and came across more evidence against civil asset forfeiture.

Here are some truly disturbing passages from a report in the Detroit Free Press that showed up in my Twitter feed.

Thomas Williams was alone that November morning in 2013 when police raided his rural St. Joseph County home, wearing black masks, camouflage and holding guns at their sides. They broke down his front door with a battering ram. “We think you’re dealing marijuana,” they told Williams, a 72-year-old, retired carpenter and cancer patient who is disabled and carries a medical marijuana card. When he protested, they handcuffed him and left him on the living room floor as they ransacked his home, emptying drawers, rummaging through closets and surveying his grow room, where he was nourishing his 12 personal marijuana plants as allowed by law.

All this sounds horrible – and it is, but it gets worse.

They did not charge Williams with a crime… Instead, they took his Dodge Journey, $11,000 in cash from his home, his television, his cell phone, his shotgun and are attempting to take his Colon Township home. And they plan to keep the proceeds, auctioning off the property and putting the cash in police coffers. More than a year later, he is still fighting to get his belongings back and to hang on to his house. “I want to ask them, ‘Why? Why me?’ I gave them no reason to do this to me,” said Williams, who says he also suffers from glaucoma, a damaged disc in his back, and COPD, a lung disorder. “I’m out here minding my own business, and just wanted to be left alone.”

Why him? Well, one local attorney has a good idea of what’s really happening.

“It’s straight up theft,” said Williams’ Kalamazoo attorney, Dan Grow. “The forfeiture penalty does not match the crime. It’s absurd. …A lot of my practice is made up of these kinds of cases — middle-aged, middle-income people who have never been in trouble before. It’s all about the money.”

Just to be clear, Mr. Grow is emphasizing the utterly perverse incentive structure that exists when cops are allowed to steal money from citizens and use it to pad their own budget.

This system needs to be reformed.

And the second bit of serendipity is that a new report from the Institute for Justice showed up in my inbox. It explains why civil asset forfeiture should be abolished. And while the report focuses on the venal actions of the IRS, this reform should apply to all government agencies at all levels of government.

Civil forfeiture is the government’s power to take property suspected of involvement in a crime. Unlike criminal forfeiture, no one needs to be convicted of—or even a charged with—a crime for the government to take the property. Lax civil forfeiture standards enable the IRS to “seize first and ask questions later,” taking money without serious investigation and forcing owners into a long and difficult legal battle to try to stop the forfeiture. Any money forfeited is then used to fund further law enforcement efforts, giving agencies like the IRS an incentive to seize.

Here’s how IJ suggests that this type of abuse can be halted.

The surest way to prevent innocent people from losing money unjustly would be to end civil forfeiture and replace it with criminal forfeiture. Short of that, removing the financial incentive to seize, raising the standard of proof to forfeit and enacting other procedural reforms would help protect people from losing their bank accounts when the government has little or no proof of criminal wrongdoing.

While the Institute for Justice does great work, I don’t think they should have opened the door to halfway reforms.

Heck, even the two people who helped start up the Justice Department’s asset forfeiture program now say it should be abolished.

P.S. The Princess of the Levant is also in London, so I’m being forced to engage in tourist activities.

We took a ride on the London Eye, which wasn’t cheap but offers very good views of Big Ben, the House of Commons, Westminster Abbey, and other historic sites.

As far as I’m concerned, though, London is too cold and dreary. The only good tourism involves a warm beach in the Caribbean.

P.P.S. To close on a humorous note, here’s some anti-gun control humor with a rather pointed message.

Definitely worth adding to my collection.

The Empirical Case for a Much Smaller Public Sector

As a fiscal policy economist who believes in individual liberty and personal responsibility, I have two goals.

1. Replace the corrupt and punitive internal revenue code with a simple and fair flat tax that raises necessary revenue in the least-destructive and least-intrusive manner possible.

2. Shrink the size of the federal government so that it only funds the core public goods, such as national defense and rule of law, envisioned by America’s Founding Fathers.

Needless to say, I haven’t been doing a great job. The tax code seems to get worse every year, and even though we’ve made some progress in recent years on spending, the long-run outlook is still very grim because there’s hasn’t been genuine entitlement reform.

But I continue with my Sisyphean task. And part of my efforts include educating people about the Rahn Curve, which is sort of the spending version of the Laffer Curve. it shows the non-linear relationship between the size of government and economic performance.

Simply stated, some government spending presumably enables growth by creating the conditions (such as rule of law and property rights) for commerce.

But as politicians learn to buy votes and enhance their power by engaging in redistribution, then government spending is associated with weaker economic performance because of perverse incentives and widespread misallocation of resources.

I’ve even shared a number of videos on the topic.

The video I narrated explaining the basics of the Rahn Curve, which was produced by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.

A video from the Fraser Institute in Canada that reviews the evidence about the growth-maximizing size of government.

A video from the Centre for Policy Studies in the United Kingdom that explores the relationship between prosperity and the size of the public sector.

Even a video on the Rahn Curve from a critic who seems to think that I’m a closeted apologist for big government.

Now we have another video to add to the collection.

Narrated by Svetla Kostadinova of Bulgaria’s Institute for Market Economics, it discusses research from a few years ago about the “optimal size of government.”

If you want to read the research study that is cited in the video, click here. The article was written by Dimitar Chobanov and Adriana Mladenova of the IME

The evidence indicates that the optimum size of government, e.g. the share of overall government spending that maximizes economic growth, is no greater than 25% of GDP (at a 95% confidence level) based on data from the OECD countries. In addition, the evidence indicates that the optimum level of government consumption on final goods and services as a share of GDP is 10.4% based on a panel data of 81 countries. However, due to model and data limitations, it is probable that the results are biased upwards, and the “true” optimum government level is even smaller than the existing empirical study indicates.

Two points in that excerpt are worth additional attention.

First, they understand that not all forms of government spending have equal effects.

Spending on core public goods (rule of law, courts, etc) generally are associated with better economic performance.

Spending on physical and human capital (infrastructure and education) can be productive, though governments often do a poor job based on a money-to-outcomes basis.

Most government spending, though, is for transfers and consumption, and these are areas where the economic effects are overwhelmingly negative.

So kudos to the Bulgarians for recognizing that it’s particularly important to restrain some types of outlays.

The other point that merits additional emphasis is that the growth-maximizing size of government is probably far lower than 25 percent of economic output.

Here’s what they wrote, citing yours truly.

…the results from the above mentioned models should not be taken as the “true” optimal level of government due to limitations of the models, and lack of data as already discussed. As Dan Mitchell commented, government spending was about 10% of GDP in the West from the end of the Napoleonic wars to World War I. And we do not have any data to think that growth would have been higher if government was doubled or tripled. However, what the empirical results do show is that the government spending should be much less than is the average of most countries at the moment. Thus, we can confidentially say the optimum size of general government is no bigger than 25% but is likely to be considerably smaller because of the above-mentioned reasons.

And here’s their version of the Rahn Curve, though I’m not a big fan since it seems to imply that government should consume about one-third of economic output.

I much prefer the curve to show the growth-maximizing level under 20 percent of GDP.

Though I often use a dashed line to emphasize that we don’t really know the actual peak because there unfortunately are no developed nations with modest-sized public sectors.

Even Singapore and Hong Kong have governments that consume about 20 percent of economic output.

But maybe if I someday achieve my goal, we’ll have better data.

And maybe some day I’ll go back to college and play quarterback for my beloved Georgia Bulldogs.

P.S. Since I shared one video, I can’t resist also including this snippet featuring Ronald Reagan talking about libertarianism.

What impresses me most about this clip is not that Reagan endorses libertarianism.

Instead, notice how he also explains the link between modern statism and fascism.

He had a much greater depth of knowledge than even supporters realize. Which also can be seen in this clip of Reagan explaining why the Keynesians were wrong about a return to Depression after World War II.

And click here if you simply want to enjoy some classic Reagan clips. For what it’s worth, this clip from his first inauguration is my favorite.

Given my man crush on the Gipper, you also won’t be surprised to learn that this is the most encouraging poll I’ve ever seen.

Amazing Chutzpah – and Cluelessness – from the Obama Administration

While I normally focus on jaw-dropping examples of hypocrisy by politicians, I realize that our beloved leaders also can be absurdly brazen in their exaggerations, deceptions, and prevarications.

But sometimes you can’t help but be shocked by their chutzpah.

Sort of like the time back in 2010 that a Greek politician issued an ultimatum that his country should get a giant bailout without taking the necessary steps to rein in bureaucratic bloat.

But nothing compares with Obama’s recent claim that his opponents are trying to “bamboozle” voters.

President Obama, in a fiery speech to Democrats Friday, accused Republicans of trying to “bamboozle folks,” saying their policies on middle-class issues did not reflect their lofty talk about helping ordinary Americans. …Obama went on to lambast Republicans for their opposition to his healthcare law… “Their grand predictions of doom and gloom and death panels haven’t come true,” Obama told the roomful of Democrats. “The sky hasn’t fallen. Chicken Little is quiet.”

Given the ongoing series of Obamacare disasters, I think there’s a strong case to be made that the American people have suffered some doom and gloom.

But I’m more amazed that the President, while defending his health plan, actually had the gall to accuse others of trying to “bamboozle.”

This from the President who prevaricated when he said people could keep their doctor.

This from the President who dissembled when he said health policies would be $2500 cheaper.

This from the President who lied when he said people could keep their health plans.

This from the President who took liberties with the truth when asserting that a new entitlement would be fiscally responsible.

I could continue, but you get the point. Virtually every claim he made about Obamacare has turned out to be a falsehood, yet he wants to accuse others of bamboozling. Amazing.

Now let’s shift to another example of the Obama Administration doing something really amazing. I wouldn’t put this in the hypocrisy category of the chutzpah category.

I’m not sure if there are words that suffice, so let’s just look at this tweet from an official State Department twitter account. It’s criticizing ISIS for raising taxes on cell phone service.

I’m sure ISIS deserves lots of criticism for many things. And I certainly don’t object to nailing them for tax hikes.

But what’s astounding is that the Obama bureaucrats didn’t bother to do the slightest bit of research. Had they done their homework, they would have realized they were throwing boulders in a glass house.

As anyone with a cell phone bill knows, phone taxes in America are significantly higher than what ISIS is charging (1000 Syrian Pounds every two months breaks down to about $2.75 per month). In fact, cell phone taxes in America make up 17 percent of monthly bills on average, while in some states it totals as high as 34 percent—charges which can easily run ten times ISIS’ monthly fee.

Heck, let’s set aside the example of cell phone taxes and look at the big picture. The American people are pillaged by higher taxes over and over again and we also get crappy government in exchange.

So if paying taxes for “poor service” makes a government illegitimate, I guess that means the State Department thinks the President should resign.

Gee, who knew that there were rabid libertarians working for this Administration.

P.S. There have been other “libertarian moments from Obama and his people, however insincere.

We have a president who thinks the government shouldn’t confiscate more than 20 percent of a company’s income, but he only gives that advice when he’s in Ghana.

And the same president says it’s time to “let the market work on its own,” but he only says that when talking about China’s economy.

We have more evidence that the President understands the dangers of class-warfare taxation and burdensome government spending. At least when he’s not talking about American fiscal policy.

And the President even applauds foreign voters on occasion when they reject big government.

If only we could get him to have this attitude inside America’s borders.

 

Green Energy, Corruption, Reform Conservatism, and the Size of Government

Remember Solyndra, the festering symbol of green-energy corruption that resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money being flushed down the toilet?

And that was just one example. Based on the ratio of energy produced compared to insider enrichment, the entire green-energy racket is a sleazy boondoggle.

For taxpayers, this is a lose-lose situation. They pay to line the pockets of green donors, and they also suffer as government intervention diverts resources in ways that reduce jobs and economic output.

But look at the bright side. Every so often, some of the insider crooks get caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

In a column for the Washington Examiner, the invaluable Tim Carney highlights some of the insider sleaze that led to the resignation of Oregon’s Democratic Governor.

When a love affair begins with shared dreams of solar panels and fantasies of switchgrass, it shouldn’t surprise us that it leads to tears, resignation and federal investigations. Such is the love story of Oregon’s former governor John Kitzhaber and his fiancée, Cylvia Hayes.

Yup, it appears that Ms. Hayes cashed in on her relationship with the governor.

Hayes…described herself as a “policy adviser to Gov. John Kitzhaber on the issue of clean energy and economic development.” Hayes simultaneously ran a consulting firm called 3E Strategies….Demos was pushing governments to use a new measure of the economy — the Genuine Progress Indicator — in place of Gross Domestic Product. They hired Hayes to aid in this push. Soon, Kitzhaber adopted GPI as a new measure for state policies.

Sounds like pay-to-play, which is so typical of government.

But the GPI scam is just the tip of the iceberg.

…federal investigators are looking into Hayes’s work for companies that profited from Kitzhaber’s green policies. …Green energy deserves more scrutiny than the average industry, because so many of its technologies, being unprofitable and inefficient, depend on government subsidies for their very survival. One Hayes client was a California-based company called Waste to Energy Group. Hayes picked up Waste to Energy as a client in 2011 — after becoming first lady — as the company sought a contract for converting landfill gas into energy. …Mary Rowinski, a governor’s office employee, worked for Hayes. Hayes used Rowinski to set up her meetings with Waste to Energy. …Federal investigators probing the Hayes and Kitzhaber case are also seeking state agency contacts with the Oregon Business Council. The Business Council is a corporate lobby group, and a client of Hayes. …The important lesson is that the more you intertwine business and government, the more opportunities you create for cronyism. And green energy is fertile ground for such problems.

Tim’s lesson is spot on.

When you get big government, you get big corruption.

So how do we reduce sleaze in the political system.

Jay Cost, writing for the 2017 Project, urges an aggressive focus on fighting corruption.

…an anticorruption agenda should be integral to reform conservatism. First, reform conservatism is self-consciously oriented to the middle class, and political corruption works against the interests of the middle class. Usually the product of connections between interests and politicians, it favors the well-connected. The typical insurance agent, bakery owner, or office manager lacks such contacts. Second, an anticorruption agenda challenges the liberal belief that ever more government is good for the middle class. The left wishes to cast itself as defender of middle America and conservatives as champions of the elite. A full-throated attack on cronyism in the distribution of public favors would help conservatives fend off this accusation.

And he recognizes that “legal” corruption is just as big of a problem – perhaps even bigger – than “illegal” corruption.

…there is another form of corruption, an “honest” kind. Politicians see an opportunity to use their public authority to favor some private interest—be it the lobby for some commercial group, a wealthy donor, maybe themselves—and they take it. Often, no law is broken, but the public trust is nevertheless violated. James Madison understood corruption from this perspective—as including but not limited to illegal and venal activity.

So what’s the solution to the legal and illegal sleaze in Washington?

Cost seems to recognize that big government has enabled more corruption.

The legislative power has expanded most in three areas not prominently considered by the Founders: the promotion of economic development, the regulation of the economy, and the provision of social welfare benefits. For Congress, developing the national economy has long meant pork barrel politics. Members love to send money back to the district for improvements to rivers and harbors, for roads, railroads, airports, and so on. They want defense spending similarly distributed. The tax code is another place where Congress, in the name of economic growth, favors special interests. …And on top of this, a vast array of corporate welfare programs, like the Export-Import Bank, pay off various groups.

But he seems to think big government is now inevitable, and perhaps even desirable.

…one of the premises of the new reform conservatism is an acknowledgment that the federal government has a legitimate and potentially beneficial role to play in economic development, health care, education, and so on.

So his proposed reforms are rather tepid.

One goal should be to make it harder for members of Congress to cut deals with special interests. …Committee and subcommittee chairs should be required to obey stricter rules concerning conflicts of interest. They should not be allowed to accept money from interest groups with business before their committees. …the temporary lobbying ban on former members of Congress, now two years, should be extended and its loopholes closed. …Given the highly technical work that senior legislative staffers perform, they are grossly underpaid compared with their private counterparts. …The most skilled staffers should be paid appropriately… Similarly, Congress should increase the size of staffs—perhaps substantially.

Having worked on Capitol Hill, I have to say that I’m underwhelmed by these proposals.

More regulations, more staff, and higher pay are not going to change the culture of Washington.

I’m not sure if Mr. Cost sees himself as a reform conservative, or whether he’s merely offering advice to the so-called reformicons. In any event, his proposals symbolize what’s good and bad about reform conservatism: A recognition that government is causing problems, but solutions that are sometimes too tepid to actually solve problems.

The bottom line is that you can’t fix the corruption problems caused by big government unless you’re actually willing to get rid of big government.

P.S. If it’s true that misery loves company, then we can take solace in the fact that other nations have wasteful and corrupt green energy programs.

P.P.S. In keeping with our tradition, let’s close with a link to some amusing material about green-energy boondoggles.

The African Version of Free Markets vs. Statism

Several months ago, I put forth a two-question challenge for our left-wing friends.

Since they relentlessly insist that we can have bigger government, higher taxes, more regulation, and added intervention without any negative impact on economic performance, I asked them to identify a single country that became rich following their policies.

And because I’m such a nice guy, I even gave them an extra option. If they couldn’t find a nation that become prosperous with statist policies, they also could successfully respond to my challenge by picking out a big-government jurisdiction that is out-performing a similar country with free markets and small government.

So what’s been the response? Zip. Nada. Zilch. Nothing.

Not that we should be surprised. After all, the rich nations of the western world all became prosperous back in the 1800s and early 1900s when the burden of government was tiny, smaller even than the public sector in Hong Kong today.

And what about the second part of the challenge? Well, our leftist friends have no answers to that query either.

But our side has lots of counter-examples. I’ve put together several comparisons of relatively pro-market jurisdictions and relatively statist jurisdictions. And when making these comparisons, I’ve used several decades of data to avoid the risk of misleading results caused by cherry-picking favorable or unfavorable years.

* Chile vs. Argentina vs. Venezuela

* Hong Kong vs. Cuba

* North Korea vs. South Korea

* Cuba vs. Chile

* Ukraine vs. Poland

* Hong Kong vs. Argentina

* Singapore vs. Jamaica

* United States vs. Hong Kong and Singapore

In every single case, the places with smaller government and free markets generate much stronger economic performance. And that translates into higher living standards.

Now we’re going to add to our list of comparisons, and we’re going to travel to Africa.

Botswana is one of the most pro-market nations in sub-Saharan Africa. It’s still a long way from being Hong Kong, but you can see from the Economic Freedom of the World data that it’s been a steady performer, averaging more than 7 out of 10 this century.

Indeed, only Rwanda ranks higher for economic freedom in the region, but that’s the result of pro-growth reforms in the past few years, so we’ll have to wait a while (assuming the reforms are durable) before having useful data.

And speaking of comparisons, let’s now look at what’s happened to per-capita GDP in Botswana as well as the data for the countries in the region that get the worst scores from Economic Freedom of the World.

As you can see, Botswana (the thick blue line) used to be among the very poorest nations in the region, but over time its per-capita economic output has easily surpassed the countries that have followed statist policies.

These numbers are adjusted for inflation, so the key takeaway is that per-capita economic output is now almost 10 times higher in Botswana than it was in the mid-1960s.

Most of the other nations, by contrast, have suffered from declining real incomes. In other words, the price of statism is very high, particularly for the less fortunate in society.

But there is a sliver of good news (in addition to the Botswana data). If you look carefully, you’ll see that the overall numbers for Africa (thin blue line) have noticeably improved since the late 1990s. Which underscores the importance of promoting business investment in the region, as explained recently by Marian Tupy.

For more information on Botswana, here’s a video put together by Ed Frank (who’s also a very good softball player).

P.S. I rarely comment on foreign policy, but I confess that my jaw dropped when I saw that an Obama Administration official said that a jobs program was key to defeating ISIS.

I thought about recycling some of the evidence showing that government efforts to create jobs are a miserable failure, but then I saw two cartoons that are too funny not to share.

Our first contribution is from Glenn McCoy.

And here’s a gem from Michael Ramirez.

You can see why Ramirez won the political cartoonist contest.