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Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #563
06/24/2022, 06/25/2022, 06/26/2022
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1) Education Policy Should Put Parents and Kids First, Not Teacher Unions

One of first supporters at CTUP, Jeff Yass, penned a piece in the Friday Wall Street Journal that demonstrates families with kids in failing schools would be so much better off if the education dollars went to the parents, not the education blob.

We have been told for decades by progressives that if we just keep throwing more money at the problem, it will solve the education gaps that exist in our failing public schools. Obviously, it hasn’t worked.

Yass makes the case for real reform:
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The Census Bureau reports inflation-adjusted spending in K-12 education has tripled since 1970 to a record $751.7 billion. Yet barely a third of all fourth-graders across U.S. urban communities can read or do math at grade level. The time has come to reimagine the way we pay for education. Let’s stop writing blank checks to failing school systems.

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That’s the reality for many American children. Boston and New York City each spend well over $25,000 a pupil annually for education, yet families get dismal results. Philadelphia spends $24,000, but only 17% of eighth-graders are proficient in reading. Nationwide, black mothers can expect their children to learn 30% of what they are supposed to learn to be successful in life, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress, testing core subjects in fourth, eighth and 12th grade.

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Now imagine if that same mother could choose how the $500,000 was spent. She could use up to two-thirds of her education money to advance her children’s education, with the remaining third set aside for the children’s use after high school. She could make sure her children received a good education that fit her values and their learning needs. She could use the money at a charter school or even to pay for tuition at a private school, religious or otherwise.”

Yass estimates that the public schools now spend some $250,000 to educate the average child, and if that money went to the parents for school choice, the kids would be better prepared for life, and the family would have money left over for savings, college tuition or trade schools.

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2) Biden’s War on the American Economy Is Working

Friday was a doubleheader day for CTUP in the Wall Street Journal. In addition to the Jeff Yass piece above, Committee to Unleash Prosperity senior fellow Casey Mulligan explains how the Biden administration’s policies can only lead to recession. These are all self-inflicted wounds:

“In normal years, workers’ productivity rises by about 1%. That alone is a strong economic tailwind causing GDP growth, making recession by the reduced GDP definition less likely than otherwise. Unfortunately, Mr. Biden’s economic policies will likely cause productivity growth to fall. A 2020 analysis ([link removed]) by one of us (Mr. Mulligan) and three co-authors concluded that Mr. Biden’s economic agenda would cause full-time equivalent employment per capita to be 3.1% lower than otherwise and real GDP per capita to be 8.5% lower than otherwise. If that effect were spread over five years, the reductions relative to the baseline growth would be 0.6% and 1.7% a year, respectively. That by itself makes a recession likely in one of those five years.

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Although Mr. Biden’s Build Back Better bill would increase taxation of capital, it’s unlikely to pass. High inflation, however, is increasing taxation of capital without any action by Congress. Mr. Biden is almost certain to let temporary capital-taxation provisions in the 2017 tax cut law expire. The effect will be to reduce growth of real GDP by about 0.4 percentage point a year.

The combined effect of increased regulation and increased taxation of capital is a reduction in employment growth by about 0.25 percentage point a year and of real GDP growth by about 1.1 points a year.”

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3) Does This Look Like “Record Oil Production” to You?

Here’s a little math question, and it’s not too hard. It doesn’t require a calculator.

Which is a larger number?

a) 13 million
b) 11 million

If you answered b, there is a high-level job for you in the Biden administration. Under Trump, 13 million was the peak barrels produced per day, and 11 million is the latest estimate of production under Biden.

Yet these facts don’t seem to matter much. Responding to criticisms about Biden’s war on American energy, White House chief of staff Ron Klain shared a chart on Twitter showing oil production higher than any of his five predecessors. Biden has said the United States is "approaching record levels of oil and natural gas production."

Here’s the chart on oil production from the Energy Information Administration:

By the way, given that the price of $110 a barrel is now almost double what it was when Trump was president, the fact that production is now lower than it was peak Trump indicates how much energy has been lost. We estimate given the price changes, the U.S. should be 2 to 3 million barrels of added production every day.

4) Merit-Based Admissions Returns To San Francisco
Recalls of “Woke” and incompetent school board members can have consequences.

Regular readers of the Hotline will recall that San Francisco voters ousted three radical members of the city’s school board last November.

The board had presided over falling educational test scores, a growing deficit, and an obsession with giving new names to schools honoring Abraham Lincoln and Paul Revere.

The replacements for the recalled members made their presence felt on Wednesday as they voted 4 to 3 to restore merit-based admissions for Lowell High School, the city’s academic jewel.

The previous school board had ended merit selection for Lowell in favor of a permanent lottery-based system. To their credit, the new board also voted down a recommendation from Superintendent Vince Matthews to keep the lottery system in place for another year.

Recalls have been launched against school boards in some 40 states and dozens are expected to be on the ballot this year. San Francisco’s experience shows that if it can happen there (it voted 85% for Biden in 2020), it truly can happen anywhere.

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5) Germany Loves Coal
We mentioned earlier this week that out of necessity, Germany’s Socialist/Green coalition government has announced it will have to increase the burning of coal to reduce its dangerous dependence on Russian oil and natural gas.

Underlining that dependence was Russia’s announcement last week it was cutting gas supplies through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline for “technical reasons.” In other words: a form of blackmail.

What a turnaround. Germany was one of the first industrialized nations to try to go green with windmills and solar panels. It was an unworkable experiment. Then 10 years ago German leader Angela Merkel foolishly announced the closure of all of Germany’s 17 nuclear reactors. Only three are left, and all of them are set for shutdown later this year.

The result of all this has been the highest global electricity prices per household in the world – almost three times that of the U.S.

Now Germany will likely decide to go back to nuclear power to supplement coal-fired plants.

Why is the Biden administration following in the footsteps of this green energy fiasco?
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6) Thanks, Joe!

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