Category Archives: Wall Street Journal

Our Dire Fiscal Situation II A Promising Solution

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As I discussed in my last post, the Congressional Budget Office has shown very clearly that the U.S. is on an unsustainable fiscal path which must be reversed in order to avoid calamity.  We are spending too much money and not taking in enough tax revenue.  In a recent Wall Street Journal Op Ed column, the economist Martin Feldstein describes “How to Create a Real Economic Stimulus”.  “A successful growth and employment strategy would combine substantial reductions in the relative size of the future national debt with immediate permanent tax rate cuts and a multiyear program of infrastructure spending…….The only way to reduce future deficits without weakening incentives and growth is by cutting future government spending.”
Mr. Feldstein proposes slowing the growth of benefits of middleclass retirees by gradually raising the full benefit retirement age for Social Security from 67 to 70 and also raising the age of Medicare eligibility to the same level.  This would create a budget savings of 1% of GDP, or $200 billion, by 2020.   Rather than eliminating such popular tax deductions as the one for mortgage interest or the exclusion of employer payments for health insurance, he recommends limiting the amount by which individuals can reduce their tax liabilities to 2% of adjusted gross income.  This single change to the tax code would, for example, reduce the 2013 deficit by $140 billion.
In addition to lowering tax rates for individuals, corporate tax rates should be cut from 35% to about 25% in order to be competitive with other industrial countries.  We should also adopt the internationally common “territorial” system which doesn’t tax foreign earnings brought back home.
In short, we decrease spending and raise revenue with entitlement reforms and a limit on tax expenditures thereby creating a framework for tax rate reductions and infrastructure spending.  These are the sorts of bold measures needed to produce a real stimulus and thereby get our economy back on track!

The Link between Education and Prosperity

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In Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, two education experts, Paul Peterson and Eric Hanushek, write about “The Vital Link of Education and Prosperity”.  They point out, for example, that only 32% of U.S. high school students are proficient in mathematics based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test.  Comparable scores for other countries are 45% in Germany and 49% in Canada.
The authors demonstrate a close correlation between academic achievement and economic growth of many countries around the world.  The highest academic achievers, such as South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, also have the highest growth rates.
Over the past 50 years, from 1960 – 2009, the U.S. economy has grown 2/3 of a percent faster than would be predicted by our mediocre test scores.  But our relative economic advantages, such as open markets, secure property rights, universal K-12 education and favorable immigration policy, are now declining as other countries adopt these same successful social and economic practices.  In other words, we need to do better if we want to remain on top.
The authors make a good case that America’s GDP growth rate would be boosted by ¾ of a percent per year if we were able to match the educational attainment level of Canadian students (49% math proficiency vs 32%).
In their recent book, “Endangering Prosperity, a Global View of the American School,” the authors break down the overall math proficiency score by racial group:  the white proficiency rate is 41.8%, the African American rate is 11.0% and the Hispanic rate is 15.4%.  In other words, almost 2/3 of the American-Canadian math proficiency gap can be explained by the poor performance of American minority groups.
Conclusion: let’s definitely try to improve American K-12 education overall.  But in working on this difficult problem, we should concentrate on measures which will have the most impact on minority groups where the problem is greatest.  For example, providing early childhood education for all low income families will do more to raise academic achievement overall than adopting the Common Core curriculum (which will mostly benefit already high achieving students).

The College Education Bubble

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A recent article in the Wall Street Journal by the expert on the economics of higher education, Richard Vedder, “The Real Reason College Costs So Much”, points out the similarities between the government’s higher education and housing policies.  “In housing we had artificially low interest rates.  The government encouraged people with low qualifications to buy a house.  Today we have low interest rates on student loans.  The government is encouraging kids to go to college who are unqualified just as it encouraged people to buy a house who are unqualified.”
The federal government is now spending $105 billion on student loans each year.  The average student loan debt is $26,000 but goes much higher for millions of students.  The maximum annual Pell Grant (intended for low income students) is now $5350 and 20% of the recipients come from families making over $60,000 per year.
President Obama suggests capping monthly loan repayments at 10% of discretionary income and forgiving outstanding balances after 20 years.  This creates a moral hazard.  It signals to current and future loan borrowers that they don’t have to take loan repayment very seriously.  It encourages students to major in “soft” academic areas which have poorer job prospects rather than “hard” areas like engineering and technology which have good job prospects.
Innovation in higher education is not coming from government programs but from private initiatives such as massively open online courses (MOOCs).  These have the potential to greatly reduce college costs.  Community colleges have rapidly growing enrollments and prepare students for skilled jobs in high demand areas such as truck driving, machine technology and health careers.
The cost of higher education is going up much faster than the rate of inflation and the infusion of federal money is making the situation worse by encouraging students to take on excessive amounts of debt.  A cap should be placed on the amount of government money which can be borrowed by an individual student.  There are plenty of low cost options available for obtaining postsecondary education and government policy should support, rather than subvert, such common sense options.

Private Health Care Reform is Getting Started!

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Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal has a very interesting article, “More Employers Overhaul Health Benefits”, which describes a movement just getting started whereby employers give their employees a fixed sum of money and let them choose their own plan from an online market place.  The idea is that employers will be better able to predict and control their healthcare expenses for employees.  Furthermore, employees will be able to get better value for dollars spent by selecting their own coverage options, deductible amounts, copays, etc.
In fact, in an exchange run by Liazon Corp., which has 60,000 people enrolled, 75% of workers have chosen less expensive plans than they had before, by accepting bigger deductibles and copays, as well as smaller choices of healthcare providers and restrictions such as primary-care gatekeepers.
This is such an appealing approach to private healthcare cost control that the Accenture Management Consulting Company estimates just five years from now there will be 40,000,000 business employees receiving their healthcare benefits in this manner.  This would be a phenomenal development!
The United States spends 18% of GDP on healthcare altogether, both public and private, which is double the amount spent by any other country.  This enormous expense is a major reason why wage growth is stagnant in our country as well as why the costs of public programs like Medicare and Medicaid are so high and contributing to so much government debt.  It is critical for our country to get the rapid increase of healthcare costs under much better control.  That’s why this new movement of employers and employees working together on this critical problem is such a big step in the right direction.
If the estimate by Accenture is anywhere nearly accurate about how fast this new private healthcare selection method will grow, then there will soon be an excellent opportunity for Congress to expand its benefits to the control of Medicare and Medicaid costs as well.  This is very exciting indeed!

The Best Way to Spread the Wealth

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In today’s Wall Street Journal, Stephen Moore discusses how “Obama’s Economy Hits His Voters Hardest.”  A  report by Sentier Research shows that the average American household income has fallen from $54,478 in June 2009 (when the recession ended) to $52,098 in June 2013, amounting to a decline of 4.4%.
Mr. Moore notes that in the 2012 election, won by Barack Obama with 51% of the vote, the President received 60% of the youth vote, 67% of single women, 93% of black, 73% of Hispanics, and 64% of those without a high school diploma.
But, according to Sentier Research, it is precisely these groups for which income has fallen the most during the last four years.  Those under age 25 experienced an income decline of 9.6%, single women’s income dropped 7%, black heads of household’s incomes dropped 10.9%, Hispanic’s by 4.5%, and those without a high school diploma by 6.9%.
On the other hand, during the period 1981 – 2008, often referred to as the Great Moderation, income for black women was up by 81%, followed by white women up 67%, black men up 31% and, finally, white men up only 8%.  In other words, income inequality shrunk dramatically during the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush years and has increased significantly during the Obama years.
The lesson is that in order to spread the wealth it is first necessary to create more wealth.  If more people were working today, and the economy was growing faster, then the people at the bottom of the income scale would be doing much better and gaining on everyone else.  There are tried and true methods to get this done!  It’s exasperating that we aren’t using them!

What Is the Best Way to Advance Martin Luther King’s Dream?

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In Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal John McWhorter, an African-American professor at Columbia University, describes “A Better Way to Honor Dr. King’s Dream”. Mr. McWhorter writes that a new conversation about race, “one in which whites submit to a lesson from blacks about so-called institutional racism” is not what America needs.  “Today’s struggle should focus on three priorities.  First, the war on drugs, a policy that unnecessarily tears apart black families and neighborhoods.  Second, community colleges and vocational education, which are invaluable in helping black Americans get ahead.  And third, the AIDS and obesity epidemics, which are ravaging black communities.”
Such sentiments represent a huge dose of common sense.  The African-American community needs help and cooperation from the wider society to address fundamental issues like juvenile delinquency, poor educational outcomes and unhealthy environments.  But these things, as much as they’re needed, are not enough by themselves for further progress towards racial equality.
The route out of poverty for all low income people, including blacks, is to raise themselves up by their bootstraps through educational attainment and hard work.  Society can and should make sure that the appropriate institutions, such as community colleges, are readily available to provide training for jobs which are out there in the private sector.
But most of all we need a vibrant economy to give lower income Americans more opportunities to work their way up the economic ladder.  We have not yet recovered in a satisfactory manner from the Great Recession which ended in June 2009.  This makes it all the more important for our national leaders to focus on the pro-growth policies which will get our economy humming again.

Education Reform Is Speeding Up

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A front page article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, “Biggest Changes in a Decade Greet Students in Classroom”, discusses many new and recent developments in K-12 education.  The controversial Common Core, with tougher math and reading standards, has been adopted by 45 states.  A total of 41 states have agreed to link teacher evaluations to test scores or other student achievement measures and 15 states use, or plan to use, an A – F grading scale to rate schools.  Last year there were 5997 charter schools, up from 2559 during the 2002-2003 school year.
What all of this means is that states are hotbeds of educational experimentation.  Meanwhile Congress is trying to figure out how to replace the unpopular No Child Left Behind law which was enacted in 2002 and has been renewed on a year by year basis since it expired in 2007.  Both the Senate and the House are currently considering legislation to give individual states more flexibility in figuring out how to increase educational success.
The fiscal implications of this whole movement of educational reform and decentralization are huge.  The U.S. Department of Education has over 100 separate programs for K-12 education alone, involving massive duplication and inefficiency, with a combined budget of $100 billion per year.  A smaller total amount of money could be given directly to the states in the form of block grants devoted to education.  The states are able to spend the money more effectively than the federal DoE and at less total cost.  Conclusion: better results for significantly less money.
This helps reduce the deficit!

How Can We Boost Stagnant Wages?

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Today’s Wall Street Journal has a column by Neil Shah, “Stagnant Wages Crimping Economic Growth”, pointing out that the average hourly pay for non-supervisory workers, adjusted for inflation, has declined to $8.77 last month from $8.86 in June 2009, when the recession ended.  It has also been reported recently, e.g. in the New York Times, that U.S. medium household income, now at $52,100, has not nearly recovered from its prerecession peak of $55,500 and is even below its $54,500 level in June 2009, at the end of the recession.
Lower income for workers and households mean lower consumer spending.  This is a major reason for our economy’s low annual growth rate of only 2% of GDP since the end of the recession.  Of course, the high unemployment rate, currently 7.4%, as well as increasing global competition, contribute to downward pressure on wages.  But there is another factor, directly under government control, which is a major contributor to stagnant and declining wages.
Washington Post columnist, Robert Samuelson, in a recent column reprinted in the Omaha World Herald, reported that, from 1999 to 2013, wages and salaries rose 50% (adjusted for inflation) while health insurance premiums increased 182%.
Most health insurance is provided and largely paid for by employers and is therefore an indirect form of compensation.  The huge disparity between wage gains and health insurance premium increases in recent years means that wages are being held back by the rapidly increasing cost of health care.  The U.S. spends 18% of GDP on healthcare, twice as much as any other country and this is clearly out of line.
The best single thing we can do to slow down healthcare inflation is to remove the tax exemption for employer provided healthcare (and offset it with lower overall tax rates).  Employees would then pay taxes on their health insurance benefits as part of their pay. This would have the beneficial effect of making consumers far more conscious of the true cost of healthcare and therefore consumers a strong incentive to hold down these costs.
It is up to Congress to change this provision of the tax code.  Let’s insist that they get this done!

Federal Cutbacks Suggest State and Local Expansion

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A front page article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, “An Ohio Prescription for the GOP:  Lower Taxes, More Aid for Poor”, describes how Ohio’s Republican Governor, John Kasich, a former congressional spending hawk, has expanded Medicaid coverage in Ohio and steered millions more dollars into local food banks.  Mr. Kasich says, “When you die and go to heaven, St Peter is probably not going to ask you much about what you did about keeping government small.  But he is going to ask you what you did for the poor.”
There are good reasons why we should shift programs and responsibilities from the federal government back to states and localities.  At the federal level there is little fiscal restraint and therefore little incentive for making sure that governmental programs operate efficiently and effectively.  Study after study by the Government Accounting Office, as well as by private think tanks, demonstrate enormous waste and duplication in virtually all areas of federal government.  This long lasting fiscal irresponsibility at the federal level has now led to a massive national debt which will have a perverse effect on our nation’s prosperity for many years to come.
At the same time, all state and local governments are required to balance their budgets.  This means that they have to pay attention to the costs of all programs and set spending priorities.  They have to make sure that all functions of government are effective and be prepared to cut back or eliminate any program which is performing poorly.  States such as Illinois and California, and cities such as Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia, which have huge operating deficits year after year, will eventually be forced to declare bankruptcy (such as Detroit has just done) in order to reorganize their finances and make a fresh start.
It has long been a practical axiom that government should be as close as possible to the people.  But now it is a fiscal necessity as well to shift as much as possible from federal control back to state and local control.

Keep Squeezing the Budget!

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Monday’s Wall Street Journal has an Op Ed column by Stephen Moore, “The Budget Sequester Is a Success”, which points out that federal spending has actually shrunk from a high of $3.598 trillion in 2011 to $3.537 trillion in 2012 to a projected $3.45 trillion for 2013.  These spending declines are due to the Budget Control Act of 2011 which accompanied the 2011 increase in the debt limit.  The $100 billion per year budget sequester is a part of that agreement.  The current budget standoff between the Senate and the House is simply an attempt by the Democratic majority in the Senate to renegotiate the spending limits agreed to in 2011.
The sequester will continue to constrain discretionary spending but the two thirds of the federal budget devoted to entitlements is growing at a much faster rate than the overall growth of the economy.  The way out of this dilemma should be obvious to any rational, impartial observer.  We need to slow down the growth of entitlements and speed up the growth of the economy.  But this is much easier said than done!
Democrats will apparently not agree to do either of these two things.  Reining in entitlements takes political courage and the Democrats would rather be able to accuse Republicans of cruelty to the poor and the elderly than to actually address this problem in a serious manner.  Growing the economy faster will require appealing to investors and risk takers, with lower tax rates, for example, as well as loosening anti-business regulations.  Measures like these go against liberal ideology.
While we’re waiting for common sense to prevail in Washington, what more can be done to shrink still very large deficit spending?  There are all sorts of wasteful, duplicative and ineffective federal programs out there.  Fiscal conservatives should just keep going after them, one-by-one, and whittling them down.  Millions of voters and taxpayers will be thankful for this.