The Return on Investment for Law, Business, and Medical School

My last post resulted from a search in which I was looking for general information about the cost of law, business and medical school, in response to what I found to be a dubious assertion from the AEI.

But it may surprise some readers to learn that the sizable rates of return for doctors appear to be less than for other professional degrees such as in business or law. Dentists and physician specialists have comparable rates of return, but primary care doctors have lower—albeit still impressive—rates of return. This is consistent with the general impression that primary care doctors are “underpaid” relative to specialists. Not surprisingly, there is a shortage of primary care doctors.

Frankly, given that the authors wrote a book on this subject, you would think that they would offer a bit more certitude than "appear to be" - the reason that readers would be surprised by the authors' assertion is that the authors "appear to be" wrong.

Upon re-examining the assertion and accompanying graph, and noting the lack of reference to sources or data beyond reference to the authors' recently published book, there didn't seen to be much of a point in tracking down the data. The authors reference "Hours-adjusted annualized internal rate of return on educational investment over a working lifetime", which I infer to mean that they divided cost of training by hours of training... although with medical school that raises the question of whether you should (or whether they did) include residency training along with medical school itself. The authors also speak of the rise in CEO pay, "rising from less than 60 times average U.S. worker compensation in 1940 to more than 100 times that average by 2004", making me wonder if the projections for the return on investment for law school are also predicated upon data that is now, to put it mildly, extremely dated and bearing little relevance to the present legal job market.

Here's the thing: when you break down the cost of getting a MBA (two years) or JD (three years) against a getting a MD (four years of medical school followed by a residency) to an hourly figure, you are intentionally distorting the cost-benefit analysis by pretending that the programs could be the same length. First, medical school is more expensive than business school or law school. Second, it's a longer program. Let's imagine an investment where you can contribute $X per year, with a rate of return that diminishes slightly with each additional year. You pick a fixed number of years, make your investment, and you're done. Your two year (business school) investment will provide a greater 'rate of return' than your four (or more) year (medical school) investment, but with a smaller contribution per year and a lower number of years of contribution, odds are you'll still look back in twenty or thirty years and think, "Wow, think how much better off I would be had I gone for that four+ year investment plan." A comparison of this type really only works if the cost of tuition is comparable and the length of the program is comparable: Once you have an MBA, you're done - you can't re-enroll for another two years in order to increase the size of your investment.

The authors' conclusions, although not atypical of the quality of AEI scholarship, verge on platitudinous:

It is well-known that much of the difference in healthcare spending between the United States and other nations can be attributed to the higher prices Americans pay for medical care. But the foregoing comparisons suggest that high prices for health labor in the United States might simply reflect higher returns to skilled labor across the board. After all, if we were “overpaying” doctors, we would expect to see a doctor surplus. Yet this is not what we observe. Paying doctors less would not benefit the country as a whole. That is, every dollar saved by consumers also would be one less dollar of income for doctors. Moreover, if doctors were paid much less, more people might get MBAs or law degrees instead. This would surely reduce health spending, but reasonable people might disagree on whether it would improve social welfare.

First the largest contributors to the cost of medical care are, from most costly to least costly, pharmaceutical costs, facilities costs and doctor salaries. If you are going to overlook the first two cost factors and suggest that we're simply looking at an American preference to give higher pay for skilled labor, you're not even trying to build a case. Physician salaries represent roughly 20% of medical costs. If we paid doctors nothing our nation's healthcare system would remain the most costly in the developed world. Medical schools routinely reject qualified applicants. We can easily expand our nation's pool of doctors by expanding medical schools, funding more residencies, and creating an easier path for foreign doctors to qualify to practice in the United States. The constraints we impose do lead to higher salaries for doctors, but through the distortion of the education and labor markets.

In terms of a "doctor surplus", there's in fact an artificial shortage of doctors in the U.S., driven in no small part by the AMA's successful obstruction of the expansion of medical schools, and also from immigration and accreditation policies that make the U.S. market unattractive to doctors in foreign nations who would otherwise be happy to practice in the U.S. Would lower salaries deter people from becoming doctors? Given that among nations in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), nations other than the U.S. have significantly more doctors per capita, that would not appear to be a valid concern.

The argument that "We don't get any real savings if we pay doctors less, because every dollar saved by a consumer 'would be one less dollar of income for doctors'" - why, then, are AEI's scholars in a constant tizzy about labor unions, taxes on the wealthy, teacher salaries, whether government workers are overpaid, the minimum wage... it all comes out in the wash, right? How about this: We can legislate market distortions and subsidies that increase lawyer salaries to the tune of $1 billion per year and, when people complain, respond, "Paying lawyers less would not benefit the country as a whole, because every dollar saved by consumers also would be one less dollar of income for lawyers." Sound good?

I'll go back to something I said a few weeks ago:

You want the public to subsidize medical schools and residencies, so that you graduate with a lower debt load and, after your initial medical education, have a more comfortable lifestyle? I'm listening - if we give you that, what are you offering in return? How about we reduce compensation for medical care to an amount more in line with the amounts paid by the rest of the world? Do we have a deal?

You know what else that proposal would do? Massively increase the "return on investment" for medical school under the model described above, even though doctor salaries would drop. Go figure.

Mr. Canard, of the AEI

Earlier today on the radio, I heard the host pose a question to "Mr. Canard" of the American Enterprise Institute. I thought she was referring to Edward Conard, but... the reference suddenly seems ambiguous.

Bringing Facts Into the Budget Debate

I don't often see push-back against right-wing orthodoxy from the AEI but, in an article entitled Trillion-dollar deficits are sustainable for now, unfortunately, John H. Makin takes on a lot of the Republican Party's debt mythology:

Congress is attempting, unsuccessfully, to reduce “unsustainable” deficits and debt accumulation by engineering “crises” that are meant to force politically challenging action on spending cuts (entitlements) and tax increases (loophole closing, higher tax rates on the “rich”). The mid-2011 debt-ceiling crisis fiasco and the upcoming year-end “fiscal cliff” are striking examples of this dangerous tactic. The debt-ceiling crisis succeeded in getting Standard and Poor’s to downgrade US debt from a AAA to an AA+ rating and in setting up the sequestration portion of the upcoming fiscal cliff that has damaged business and household confidence by raising overall uncertainty.

The tactic of threatening to go over the fiscal cliff will fail to produce prompt, sustainable progress toward reduction of “unsustainable” deficits because deficits have been, and will continue to be for some time, eminently sustainable. The Chicken Little “sky is falling” approach to frightening Congress into significant deficit reduction has failed because the sky has not fallen. Interest rates have not soared as promised and, in fact, interest costs for the federal government have remained steady at a tiny 1.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) since 2002, having fallen to that level from a 3 percent average during the decade prior to 1997....

The hyperbolic claim that the United States is becoming Greece because of the absence of dramatic progress on deficit and debt reduction is unfortunately ridiculous. There is not yet a sign that a US fiscal crisis will emerge to force Congress to enact fundamental measures like entitlement reform to reduce the growth of spending, or tax reform to enhance revenues through faster growth.

Makin presents the case for reassessing the manner in which the U.S. government spends money, but is prepared to do so based upon the facts and long-term outlook as opposed to hoary bromides and fear-based arguments. Alas, that's probably why few have heard of him.

It's not necessary to agree on the causes of, or solutions to, the nation's debt and its projected growth in order to have a grown-up discussion of the issues. It's simply necessary that there be some grown-ups who are willing to discuss the actual facts and issues.

Justice Roberts, Apostate!

David Frum knows a little bit about apostasy. His abrupt termination by the AEI¹ was reportedly triggered by his "Waterloo" argument, that by choosing to fight healthcare reform rather than participate in the process the Republican Party missed the opportunity to potentially help craft a more conservative bill.

Since his termination, Frum has been attempting to reinvent himself as a different sort of Republican, a sensible Republican who longs for the good old days of bipartisanship (i.e., 5 Democrats joining a Republican bill) and who complains about partisanship, the unseemliness of right-wing radio hosts, and the like. His quest to reinvent himself has not found him a new home in the Republican Party, nor has his retreat from his own past excesses been forgotten by those who might be his allies but for his past attacks. But if Jeb Bush's apparent gamble on the Republican Party's return to moderation is credible, perhaps he'll seem like less of a Cassandra and more of an opinion leader.

Back in his AEI glory days, Frum appeared to be participating in what I jokingly suggested might be a contest between himself and two of his former Bush Administration speechwriting buddies, his ex-boss Michael Gerson and his fellow backbiter Marc Thiessen. The contest appeared to be, who could make the dumbest possible statement about an issue of public controversy and still be taken seriously. The AEI termination led to Frum's gradual, overall withdrawal from the contest - a choice he may regret, given that the apparent prize for the winner(s) is a sinecure on the Washington Post Op/Ed page.

I alluded to Gerson's commentary on the Supreme Court's decision upholding the ACA while poking fun at the ridiculous Peggy Noonan, but that wasn't entirely fair to Frum. Although he does see the Court's decision as contradicting the Republican Agenda, his criticism was directed not at Roberts but at the Republican Party. Once it was Waterloo, now it's a 100 Years War.

On the whole, Marc Thiessen is the clear contest winner - the guy whose arguments are usually devoid of fact or reason, with no apparent consequence to his standing as a conservative commentator. Michael Gerson's columns have gradually faded into mediocrity. It's if he can barely muster the energy to gather the kindling, leaving poor Marc not only to collect the firewood, but also to identify the heretics who must be burned.

When I saw Thiessen's piece today, titled Why is Fred Hiatt So Awful at Picking Op/Ed Columnists Why are Republicans so awful at picking Supreme Court justices, it seemed lucky for Frum that he had thrown in the towel. Thiessen lectures us that,

Democrats have been virtually flawless in appointing reliable liberals to the court. Yet Republicans, more often than not, appoint justices who vote with the other side on critical decisions.

If you actually follow the court, you will recall Justice Stevens' observations that his "transformation" from "conservative" to "liberal" did not actually involve his changing any of his opinions - it resulted from the court's dramatic shift to the right. Reagan's policies and politics would be far too liberal for the modern Republican Party. He appointed his nominees before the individual health insurance mandate was created and advocated by conservatives and the Republican Party, so it shouldn't be particularly surprising that his nominees represented a different brand of conservatism.

Thiessen also forgets that the task of nominating candidates for the Supreme Court belongs to the President, not to the party. Prior to G.W.'s presidency it was difficult to imagine that the Republicans would turn on a president's nominee in the manner in which they turned on Harriet Miers. Thiessen complains that Supreme Court justices don't share his preferred political agenda, and aren't consistently trying to advance his preferred agenda through their service on the Court? Maybe that's because Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush didn't share Thiessen's agenda, and thus didn't apply his litmus tests when selecting candidates. Perhaps also, Supreme Court Justices don't see their job quite the same way Thiessen does.

And that's before we get to the silliness of Thiessen's suggestion that the justices appointed by Democratic Presidents always vote against Thiessen's agenda "on critical decisions". As they say, it all depends on whose ox is getting gored.

Thiessen prattles on with the notion that "Conservatives are pariahs if they vote against the left on certain issues. But if they cross over vote with the left, they are hailed as statesmen." Hardly. Kennedy, generally regarded as the "swing vote" of the current court, is not hailed as a statesman. He's often characterized as having a weak and inconsistent approach to the Constitution, and of tending to patronize women. Who does he imagine he's talking about? Rehnquist? Scalia? Thomas? Alito? Because one example from one case, with cherry-picked quotes from a handful of sources, does not constitute a pattern - even if we ignore the fact that "pre-emptive" attacks are irrelevant to his argument and that it's conservatives like himself who are engaged in the behavior he supposedly deplores.

Thiessen's on a roll,

Liberal nominees can simply affirm liberal positions, while conservatives must speak cryptically in terms of their judicial philosophy.

A statement that leaves me with the firm impression that Thiessen has never read a Supreme Court opinion - majority, concurring or dissent - by any of the Justices he's attacking. If you read a typical Scalia or Thomas opinion and are left scratching your head, "Is he a conservative? It's so... cryptic", all you've established is that you're a dolt.

Thiessen whines,

But legislate from the bench is exactly what Roberts did last week. The law’s proponents consistently rejected the notion that the individual mandate was a tax. But Roberts effectively redrafted the statute, making the mandate a tax in order to declare it constitutional....

That is the kind of sophistry we expect from liberals. The left sees the law as a tool of social justice — so they start with the desired outcome and then come up with legal reasoning to justify it. That is what Roberts did last week. He decided he wanted to uphold Obamacare and rewrote the statute to fit that outcome.

Talk about turning history on its head. Two years ago when the bill passed, conservative commentators regarded it as all-but-certain to pass muster with the Supreme Court. Then, months later, a right-wing law professor invented the "activity/inactivity" distinction that became the centerpiece of the legal attack on the ACA. And it almost worked. As Thiessen knows, Roberts endorsed that newly fabricated "magic bullet" argument - the one that was supposed to take down the ACA (or at least its key elements.

Had the four dissenters joined Roberts in overturning only the mandate and the associated community rating / preexisting condition provisions of the ACA, I think Roberts would have joined with them and that hacks like Thiessen would be praising his brilliance. But Roberts had just one vote to cast. With four Justices voting to uphold the bulk of the ACA, four hungering to overturn the entire Act - including provisions that are already in effect and have absolutely no relation to the mandate - Roberts chose the more judicially conservative approach. Thiessen should perhaps address his anger at the dissenters who, as a result of their eagerness to throw the baby out with the bathwater, ended up preserving both.

No, there's no real intellectual satisfaction to "We'll call it a tax and, voila, constitutional," but that was the avenue that allowed Roberts to join with the dissenters on issues that a better legal analysis would have required him to reject. The better approach would have been either to apply a traditional Commerce Clause analysis, applying existing precedent and discussing the proposed "activity/inactivity" distinction within that framework. Although there's some debate over whether it constitutes dicta or holding, Roberts attempted to articulate a new framework - but in order to avoid a form of activism that would take center stage in Constitutional Law textbooks for decades to come, he found an alternative path to upholding the ACA.

Thiessen sees only two reasons why Roberts would have changed his vote, "[that] he was suddenly convinced by his liberal colleagues, or simply had a failure of nerve". Thiessen apparently cannot contemplate the possibility that given a forced choice between (virtually) all or nothing, Roberts chose the conservative approach - eschewing the activism that hacks like Thiessen claim to detest but, as evidenced by his poisonous diatribe, actually desire. Thiessen falls victim to self-parody,

We need jurists who not only have a philosophy of judicial restraint, but the intestinal fortitude not to be swayed by pressure from the New York Times, the Georgetown cocktail circuit and the legal academy.

Which columnists do you suppose you're more likely to find at a Georgetown cocktail party - those of the New York Times, or those of the Washington Post? Which paper does Thiessen, who is explicitly trying to punish, diminish and marginalize Roberts for voting "the wrong way" on a case, work for, again? What's the point of Thiessen's vitriol, or of his long history of seeking out heretics and calling for their destruction, if not to influence them and others - to try to intimidate them into toeing the party line? And the legal academy? Which justices adhered to precedent and two centuries of Commerce Clause jurisprudence, again? And which glommed onto a less than two-year-old theory concocted by a law professor, then championed by others, as a means of defeating the ACA? Thiessen is entitled to his own opinion column, but not to his own facts.

I was going to declare Thiessen the hands-down winner, but before I had a chance to write anything Gerson came up with a late entry. Another "facts be damned" whine about how conservatives justicescare too much about the institution of the Court to simply aren't able to ram through the Republican agenda.

Perhaps channeling his inner David Brooks, king of the false dichotomy, Gerson pontificates that there are "two varieties of judicial conservatism — institutionalism and constitutionalism".

In [an institutionalist's] view, the court maintains its power by exercising it sparingly — deferring whenever possible to the legislative branch. Institutionalism embodies a temperamental conservatism — a commitment to continuity, humility and prudence.

[Constitutionalists focus] on the rigorous application of the words of the founding document. In this view, the meaning of the text is primary, whatever the political consequences of applying it.

So within the context of this decision, in which five Justices - the dissenters and Roberts - looked at the following Constitutional language:

[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;

And concluded that the text includes an absolute prohibition on the regulation of what the Court determines to be the regulation of inactivity - imposing a penalty on a person who chooses not to engage in a specific form of commerce - no matter what the facts or how compelling the circumstances. The fundamental "reasoning" for the prohibition is that, although states have long imposed mandates without controversy or excess, to allow even the most modest of mandate in even the most compelling of circumstances would inevitably lead to the government forcing people to buy broccoli. That argument is neither textual nor logical.

Meanwhile it is possible to be a close adherent of the text of the Constitution while also believing that the Court needs to protect its credibility as an institution. Gerson defends the judicial activism of the justices he purports to be constitutionalists, suggesting that they're pushing back against "liberal activism", but that's a self-serving, political argument. In the present case, the concurring opinion represents both the better textual interpretation and (as Gerson concedes) the "institutional conservatism" that Gerson would have us believe is somehow solely the province of Roberts. (Sorry, Michael - Roberts has only one vote - he needed to join with four others for that vote to count for anything.)

Gerson shares, and perhaps parrots, Thiessen's complaint that Roberts turned to Congress's power to tax as his basis for upholding the law. He then presents an addle, social science argument that the mandate might work as a "mandate" but by revealing to people the supposed secret that they could actually choose not to buy insurance and pay a penalty, Roberts has made it more likely that people will regard their choice in economic terms and now be more likely to pick the penalty if they think they'll save money. Seriously? One hardly dares tell Gerson that such "reasoning" has no place in the constitutional analysis of a statute.

Gerson opened his column by casting aspersions on Earl Warren, and closes by cautioning Justice Roberts, in effect, that if he doesn't shape up and start doing what the Republican Party wants him to do, he can expect hacks like Gerson to argue that he's the "new Earl Warren".

On the whole, Gerson seems to be parroting arguments raised by others, perhaps including Thiessen, so I think Thiessen takes the round.
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1. For somebody who cherishes intellectual rigor and honest debate, being fired by the AEI would be a badge of honor... but I presuppose that such a person could get hired by the AEI.

The Big Bucks in School Privatization (f/k/a Charter Schools)

It's been interesting to me to see the intense interest that some very wealth Americans have been giving to the charter school movement. Some (e.g., Bill Gates) appear to be genuinely interested in school reform, others (e.g., Mark Zuckerberg) seem interested in improving their public image, and many may see it as a fashionable social activity. But when hedge fund managers start sniffing around the perimeter you know that there has to be big money involved... somehow.

Well, here's an example of the big money.

Wealthy investors and major banks have been making windfall profits by using a little-known federal tax break to finance new charter-school construction.

The program, the New Markets Tax Credit, is so lucrative that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years.

The article explains how some charter schools have seen their rent skyrocket, but with little interest from regulators or state auditors. And the charters aren't making much noise about it, even as rent doubles or triples over a couple of years because.... at least according to the article, it appears that they're in bed with the companies that are building the properties and leasing them to the schools.

In Albany, which boasts the state's highest percentage of charter school enrollments, a nonprofit called the Brighter Choice Foundation has employed the New Markets Tax Credit to arrange private financing for five of the city's nine charter schools.

But many of those same schools are now straining to pay escalating rents, which are going toward the debt service that Brighter Choice incurred during construction.

The Henry Johnson Charter School, for example, saw the rent for its 31,000-square-foot building skyrocket from $170,000 in 2008 to $560,000 last year.

The Albany Community School's rent jumped from $195,000 to $350,000.

Green Tech High Charter School rents went from $443,000 to $487,000....

And key officers of Albany's charter school boards are themselves board members, employees or former employees of the Brighter Choice Foundation or its affiliates.

Christian Bender, for example, executive director of the foundation, is chairman or vice chairman of four of the Albany charters.

So is this catching anybody's attention?

No wonder JPMorgan Chase announced this week it was creating a new $325 million pool to invest in charter schools and take advantage of the New Markets Tax Credit.

Who else is seeing opportunity here?

The Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. today announced the formation of a $25 million charter school facility that will finance the development of approximately 16 charter schools over the next two years.

The Goldman Sachs Charter School Loan Facility will be capitalized by Goldman Sachs and credit-enhanced by funds awarded by the US Department of Education to LISC, which will also manage the facility and its lending program. LISC currently supports 130 charter schools nationwide. This facility will be focused on the greater New York City and New Jersey areas. In total, the fund is expected to leverage approximately $100 million in additional capital to support high-quality charter school facilities.

How might more money be squeezed out of charter schools? How about allowing them to operate as for-profit businesses (in the model of the University of Phoenix and Kaplan)? The AEI's on the case:

The Obama administration has been particularly guilty on this count, enthusiastically championing charter-school expansion even as its Department of Education radiates hostility toward for-profits in K-12 and higher education. The result is entrenched funding arrangements, policies, and political currents that stifle for-profit operators — organizations such as National Heritage Academies, which operates 67 charter schools in eight states, or EdisonLearning, which operates schools and provides supplemental education services across the United States and overseas. If choice-based reform is to yield more than boutique solutions, for-profits are a critical piece of the puzzle.

Meanwhile, even as they admit that charter schools are effectively doing nothing to improve school performance, with the help of their mainstream media stenographers they hope to create a funding structure that shifts more money to charters and out of the public system - in a manner that appears designed to benefit large commercial ventures:

A real marketplace in education, he suggests, probably wouldn’t fund schools directly at all. It would only fund students, tying a school’s budget to the number of children seeking to enroll. If there are 150 applicants for a charter school, they should all bring their funding with them — and take it away from the failing schools they’re trying to escape.

A "real marketplace" in which you defund the public school in favor of a for-profit charter school that doesn't actually get better results, but pays a lot of rent to the property investors who sit on its board, operates a large number of schools so that it can justify CEO-sized salaries to its management, doesn't offer amenities such as music, gym, art, libraries (all a "waste of money"), avoids public oversight, and leaves special education to what's left of the public school system. And if the public becomes concerned that you're scrapping the public system in favor of something that may not be better - may in fact be worse - and that these corporations are interested not only in the inner city but in extending their reach into successful school districts? Lecture them that results don't matter - what counts is "freedom of choice". Oops, sorry Ross - I mean being "Free to Choose".

As I've indicates, my initial hope for the charter school movement was that it would bring about more choice for parents. I would like to see charters offer parents a real choice of educational model with less focus on standardized testing. But with few exceptions the charter school movement has not lived up to that promise and, sorry, exceptions do not prove the rule. The charter schools that show the most promise in the inner city receive grants and other subsidies that expand their budgets well beyond the standard level of funding per pupil, while advancing an educational model that would be quickly and firmly rejected by most middle class parents. We're to extrapolate from that limited success to believe that if those charters not only operated without that additional grant money, but were operated by corporations that were also pulling out 10-20% of the school's money to satisfy investors and shareholders on top of oversized rents, we would be happy with the results? Why stop there? Let's push the argument right over the top.

And a world where more parents and kids have access to a fraction of the educational choices available to, say, Sasha and Malia Obama seems a like a better world by definition, no matter what happens to America’s average S.A.T. score.

First, while it's nice to pretend that we're talking about average SAT scores, the larger discussion of charter schools involves bringing children up to grade level in math and reading. We're not talking about a trade-off between "history, science, foreign languages, classic literature, mathematics and English composition" and "test scores" that a typical parent would find acceptable. If you're lagging two or three years behind grade level, it's absurd to pretend you can simultaneously hold an advantage in mathematics, literature and composition. Second, the school attended by the President's children is not in any way average, nor would the public have any interest in funding a school at @$35,000 per student per year. If it were, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Third, the school is a non-profit. As are most of the private schools to which those with the money to choose presently send their children.

Stop and think about that for a minute. If you're wealthy, your kids don't go to the University of Phoenix, and your kids certainly won't be attending the "charter school" equivalent of the University of Phoenix. It's quaint to pretend that if only corporations are permitted to pull profits out of the per-student fees allocated to charters we'll suddenly have thousands of schools across the country offering rich curricula and pedagogical choices. But if you look at the for-profit college industry you can see what you actually get - bottom feeders. No kidding, the advocates of that system are encouraging people to ignore test scores.

As for the conceit that "costs of educating kids who took vouchers were lower than for kids who stayed in the existing public schools", well, no kidding. Because public schools offer libraries (and librarians), sports programs, gymnasiums, school cafeterias, and other amenities, the cost of providing "alternative schools" for students with behavioral problems, as well as bearing the cost of medical support and special education services for special needs students even if those students are in charter schools and private schools. The money paid to charters reflects the fact that they don't offer that full set of services - not even close.

Yes, by all means, come up with systems that create true choice for parents, and let them pick a program that suits their child. But let's not pretend that the monied interests who are hungrily eyeing public school dollars are any more interested in education than private prisons are in reducing recidivism. Those who truly want to help charters offer a wider set of choices can follow the model of Clonlara, and develop curricula and teaching methods that can be employed by interested charter schools. If they do a good job, they should even be able to sell such a curriculum at a profit. And those who truly want to help kids can do so through smaller nonprofits that remain answerable to parents and the community.

Let's not offer up the elementary school equivalent of the University of Phoenix, and defend it by claiming that we're giving its students "a fraction of the educational choices available to" parents who can afford the elementary school equivalent of Yale.

Frum on the Right-Wing Noise Machine

David Frum has published a blog post that rebukes the conservative media for its shameful conduct, focusing on the Shirley Sherrod case.

Whether it's a change of heart or an end to self-censorship, it would have been nice had Frum been writing stuff like this before he was fired from AEI.

What Passes for Scholarship on the Political Right

Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, has penned the type of editorial one would expect from the Wall Street Journal editorial page, an exercise in jaw-dropping mendacity. For example,

The International Social Survey Programme asked Americans and Europeans whether they believe "It is the responsibility of the government to reduce the differences in income between people with high incomes and those with low incomes." In virtually all of Western Europe more than 50% agree, and in many countries it is much higher—77% in Spain, whose redistributive economy is in shambles. Meanwhile, only 33% of Americans agree with income redistribution.

Simply put, Europeans have a much stronger taste for other people's money than we do.

Leaving aside for the moment that the difference in results isn't all that dramatic - on the whole, one sixth of people who responded to the survey, skewed markedly upward by outliers like Spain - to somebody who is actually interested in the issue, it would be helpful to know the means by which the survey's respondents expect the government to close the income gap. For example, they may favor greater investment in education, from pre-school through college, to help ensure broad access and opportunity for the best students. It could mean job training for lower skilled or displaced workers. It could mean attempting to reduce discriminatory policies in the workplace. But it's Europe so Brooks doens't feel any need to find out the facts, and instead assumes that the only possible means to the desired end is to tax the rich and redistribute their assets.

Brooks next complains that some politicians are skeptical of the origins of the Tea Party movement, particularly in relation to the "tax day tea party protests in April 2009", and their assertion that some wealthy interests are funding the movement. Rather than looking at the facts, Brooks turns to of all things an opinion poll, asserting that "more than half of Americans viewed the [2009 tax day] protests favorably" and, shifting gears to healthcare reform in 2009, "61% of those polled" believed that the people protesting healthcare reform at town hall meetings were "mainly individual citizens coming together to express their views" while 28% thought the protests "were mainly coordinated by health-care interest groups." This, Brooks tells us, means that "Average Americans are not as cynical" as Democratic politicians. But as you might expect, he begs the question of who was correct - presumably because he knows the facts aren't on his side.

Brooks next moves on to a dishonest attack on civil service wages:

The increasing size of the federal work force is an early indication of what lies ahead. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in the last year the federal government added 86,000 permanent (non-Census) jobs to the rolls. And high-paying jobs at that: The number of federal salaries over $100,000 per year has increased by nearly 50% since the beginning of the recession.

Today, the average federal worker earns 77% more than the average private-sector worker, according to a USA Today analysis of data from the federal Office of Personnel Management.

We've gone through decades of outsourcing, leading to a present in which a lot of the low-skilled and unskilled jobs once performed by government workers are instead performed by contractors. In no small part as a result, the average government job requires a significantly higher skill set and level of education than the average private sector job. If you include the jobs performed by those contractors in the average government wage you'll see the average go down, just as you would if you had the government fire its contractors and hired new federal workers to perform the outsourced services. Brooks isn't honest enough to concede the former point, and he would of course (and appropriately) strenuously object to ending outsourcing even though it could cause what he pretends to be a problem, the average wage of a federal worker, to plummet.

Brooks could have done us the favor of identifying specific federal employees or classes of employees who are paid at a higher level than their private sector counterparts. But... I guess that would be too much to ask. I haven't checked to see if Brooks railed against the Bush Administration's policies on compensation and bonuses for civil servants, but let's not forget that the Bush Administration implemented a system of bonuses for its appointees - a practice that had been banned by the Clinton Administration - insisting that government wages alone were too low to attract and retain the best candidates. Which is it - are government wages too low, with private sector jobs siphoning off the best talent with offers of far greater compensation, or are they too high?

Further, the claim that "The number of federal salaries over $100,000 per year has increased by nearly 50% since the beginning of the recession" tells us nothing about how many federal salaries are over $100,000 so that we have context about what a 50% increase actually means, and doesn't tell us why the increase has occurred. On the first point, it's reasonable to assume that we had more than two federal workers earning more than $100,000 at the start of the recession, but an increase from two to three would be a "50% increase". With Brooks deliberately removing the context, the statistic is supposed to shock his readers but is in fact meaningless. Second, for the statistic to have any meaning we need to know how many federal employees were making almost $100,000 at the start of the recession. Brooks presumably wants to send the false message that the Obama Administration has been lavish with salaries and raises since taking office. The mundane reality is that we're talking about salary scales and annual cost of living adjustments that were put into place before President Obama took office.

The piece calculated to inspire an anti-government reaction on the part of the reader, and to that end it probably works. But it takes a deliberate attitude of facts be damned. Brooks doesn't even attempt to introduce facts, save as red herrings (i.e., opinion poll results to challenge accusations of astroturfing). While typical of the AEI's contributions to public discourse, it's a shame that the Institute has so little regard for the quality of that discourse.

Wretched Public Policy Arguments

If Paul Krugman is correct, it becomes more understandable why editorials from AEI "scholars" seem so often to be wretched, weak in analysis and careless with facts.

In discussing the [David] Frum firing [by AEI], Bruce Bartlett asserts that AEI has muzzled its health-care experts, because the truth is that they agree with a lot of what Obama is proposing.

Sort of an, "If you don't have anything nice to say for the benefit of our corporate sponsors, don't say anything at all"? Ensuring that your most knowledgeable experts either toe the corporate line or remain silent?

Update: "They’re hiring Jonah Goldberg and Marc Thiessen." As I was saying... wretched.