Using money instead of morals to answer questions about the public good
Published December 24, 2013
by Eric Johnson, a writer in Chapel Hill, published in the News and Observer, December 24, 2013.
Last month, on a chill and rainy Saturday morning, I set off for Pilot Mountain. It seemed a fine day for a hike with friends, and four of us made the 90-minute drive from Chapel Hill.
As we ambled to the trailhead, we were greeted by a pair of N.C. State graduate students wielding clipboards and eager smiles. “Have a moment for an economic impact survey?” asked the bearded fellow, as his research partner readied her pencil.
“Of course!” I replied, eager to do my part for the state parks.
Unfortunately, from an economic standpoint, the four of us were quite useless. We hadn’t purchased any food that day; we packed leftovers for lunch. We hadn’t bought any hiking equipment; a five-mile walk in the woods doesn’t require any. We weren’t staying in a hotel or bed and breakfast. And we arrived in a fuel-sipping car that didn’t need topping off at any point during the trip.
We had a marvelous hike, learned some North Carolina history and generally deepened our appreciation for this wonderful state – but none of that will be reported to policymakers. Instead, our woeful economic stats were duly recorded, and they will hold sway.
Economic impact, after all, has become our grail, the end that must justify any public means, the lodestar that trues our collective compass. Investments and dividends used to be the province of business; they are now the dominant argot of government.
I don’t begrudge the park system its effort to assess economic impact or fault N.C. State for helping gin up numbers. But there is danger in viewing our public goods through an exclusively economic lens.
The demand for clear, formula-driven proof of monetary value is coming to dominate too much of our public discussion about parks, schools, libraries and a whole host of other intrinsically worthy public goods. Armed with algorithms, we seek to measure the efficiency of all things, to settle tough questions of public policy with a mathematician’s misguided confidence.
I have on my bookshelf a fine volume about 19th century English textile mills, wherein one can find a precise calculation of the value of child labor in producing cotton garments (a value based, in part, on a physician’s careful study of the average duration a 10-year-old can work at a mechanical loom before collapsing). It was meant to help guide industrial regulations.
While this valuation was no doubt accurate, it was also wrong. Not because the math was suspect or the physician mistaken about the loom-wielding stamina of children (12 hours, give or take), but because children shouldn’t be working in factories. A mathematical answer was sought where a moral answer was wanted.
And though the questions have changed, we go right on trying to convert ethical quandaries into math problems. We want a formula to tell us whether a park or a forest or a school is worth it. We want a return-on-investment projection for universities, for health care, for environmental regulations. We desperately seek the right regression analysis to tell us whether we’ll enjoy “dividends” from a particular public service. Give us data, we plead. Let the numbers decide.
This is no doubt a fine way to run a profit-seeking business. But it is a sorry and cowardly way of running a state.
And it’s a betrayal of the ideals that built North Carolina. We didn’t fund public schools because they make for a stronger tax base; we built them because knowledge is preferable to ignorance. We didn’t establish parks because they help sell barbecue and gasoline; we built them to preserve public access to the state’s natural beauty. Such principles are difficult to quantify.
Data is a marvelous tool for informing decisions or providing new insight, but it cannot be a substitute for the difficult and uncomfortable work of deciding what we value. If the only answers we can offer come with dollar signs, we’re going to wind up poor in ways that truly defy calculation.
December 24, 2013 at 9:03 am
Norm Kelly says:
State budgets are NOT unlimited. It is necessary to make value decisions.
The more times we allow the feds/central planners to force expenses on us, the less often we get to make our own financial decisions. When the feds tell us we have to spend a certain amount of money on highways & bridges in order to qualify for some federal dollars, we give up decision making for ourselves. When the central planners tell us we have to spend a certain amount of money on health care (old or poor!), then that limits the financial decisions we can make about other expenditures.
When the Demoncrats accept federal money to install 'high speed' rail, this limits our future financial decisions. The central planner money for 'high speed' rail funds only a portion of the build-out costs. Then the central planners tell us that the day-to-day expenses of this 'high speed' rail boon-doggle is ours for the rest of the life of the system. An expense that the state can NOT afford. But since the central planners, the White House, and the politicians in Raleigh were all of the same party, it was better to support the party than to do what was right for the state. And I refer to this mess as 'high speed' rail because it's design will eliminate less than 15 minutes from the current travel time. So gobs & gobs of money (to you libs: that means a bunch; lots; more than we have) will be spent on a plan that is completely idiotic at best, but sure does support the DemocRAT party well.
When the state decides to build a tea cup museum, buy ferry's to run in the ocean that are meant for lakes, and various other stupid expenses that were/are unnecessary, then it makes it much harder for the same money to be spent on what the state should be spending money on. Like parks, forest preservation, and various other ideas that are good for all of us. Expanding medicare/medicaid (you keep 'em straight!) to play nice with socialized medicine part 1 is not the right way to spend state dollars. Just like Washington, Raleigh has limited funds. This is true because the people who work & pay taxes in our great state have limited funds to pay these taxes. Since my back pocket has a limit, the states budget is also limited. When the state spends money on what it should, and leaves the other garbage out of the mix, then the state will probably have enough money for what it should be paying for. Just like families (and loathsome businesses) the state MUST make financial decisions that benefit ALL residents, not just certain groups or individuals. It's time that Raleigh starts telling the central planners 'NO'. There are items the central planners want to force us to participate in (pay for) that we should simply deny. The money in Raleigh should be spent by Raleigh, not forced by the central planners. Regardless of how good a socialist you are, regardless of how much you support the DemoncRAT party over the state, socialized medicine should not be supported by Raleigh. It's a disaster in the making, it can't be fixed, and it will only force the state to spend money we don't have, limiting our ability to spend OUR money where WE want/need to spend it. This is just 1 example of the central planners trying to dictate how our state budget is spent.
December 24, 2013 at 11:36 am
TP Wohlford says:
And next we'll cover how government should NOT pay for Olympics, F1 races, IndyCar races, NASCAR Halls of Fame, based on the idea of "it will stimulate the local economy."
Hell, we should talk about how any dollar spent by government takes out a dollar -- or more -- from the private economy, and that the "multiplier effect" for most government expenditures is actually "negative."
