WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 (UPI) -- The UPI think tank wrap-up is a daily digest covering opinion pieces, reactions to recent news events and position statements released by various think tanks.
The Cato Institute
WASHINGTON -- Tax hikes are still ballot losers
by Patrick Basham and Chris Edwards
Oregon voters were the latest to reject a tax hike when state legislators offered them one in a Jan. 28 referendum. In a near-record turnout, voters defeated a proposal to hike the state's corporate and individual income tax rates.
A 10-point statewide margin reflected a "No" vote in 32 of 36 counties. That rejection of a government-proposed tax hike should not surprise most Americans. They know that government already takes too much and spends too much.
Oregon's political establishment, however, apparently was surprised by the vote in favor of budget constraint. After all, the tax increase was supported by a broad coalition of interest groups, labor unions, business associations, environmentalists, and university presidents.
But Oregonians didn't listen to those government-dependent groups. Instead, they repeated their historic reluctance to approve new taxes. Oregon voters haven't approved an income tax increase since at least 1930.
Oregon's Ballot Measure 28 proposed a "temporary" three-year income tax increase in an attempt to close the state's budget gap. Instead, higher taxes would probably just have fueled higher spending. In addition, higher tax rates would have driven mobile businesses out of the state and scared away the well-paid engineers and scientists who are crucial to the high-tech industries that every state wants today. With so many good alternative locations for business development, states can no longer afford to have uncompetitive tax systems.
Most voters recognized that pitfall, as well as the need to protect their own pocketbooks. They clearly demanded that the state budget be balanced by spending cuts -- not tax increases. The Oregon Legislature had tried to scare voters by listing specific cuts that would go into effect if Measure 28 lost, including cuts to highly visible education, social services, and law enforcement programs.
That's the well-worn "Washington Monument" strategy -- proposing the most unpopular possible spending cuts if a tax increase isn't supported. In Oregon, alarmist media stories suggested that, without the tax increase, the elderly, the disabled, and mentally ill would be abandoned and that prisoners would be released from overcrowded prisons.
Voters were right not to buy that story. In turns out that the alleged spending cuts were not really cuts at all. As in other states, what are often called "cuts" are just reductions in large projected spending increases. If an overly optimistic budget assumed 8 percent spending growth and is later trimmed to 4 percent, state budget parlance refers to that increase as a cut.
In Oregon, spending will be 5.5 percent higher after the failure of Measure 28, in contrast to the 8.5 percent increase that would have occurred with the tax increase. Clearly, that's not a real cut.
This year's spending increase comes after a decade of rapid budget growth. Oregon's per-capita, inflation-adjusted spending rose 45 percent between 1990 and 2001. Based on our new survey of state budget trends, that is the fourth highest increase in the nation during the period. The upshot is that Oregon should treat its budget woes as an opportunity to pare back the excess spending built up during the past decade.
One budget-balancing option would be for Oregon legislators to offer voters a new referendum with a menu of spending cuts to choose from. But politicians try to avoid such open-ended democratic votes, as the ballot box is too unpredictable. Instead, they like one-sided tax-hike votes that they try to control with a big campaign war chest.
Oregon's Yes campaign, which focused on radio advertising and an extensive grassroots campaign, outspent the No side by more than 16-to-1 and still lost. The Yes campaign's war chest was almost exclusively funded by public sector unions, particularly the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the National Education Association.
By contrast, the No campaign was largely invisible and didn't produce paid advertising until the campaign's final days.
A similar tax-hike rejection occurred in Virginia last November. The state Republican and Democratic parties joined with business lobbies to push for sales tax increases to build more highways. The pro-tax state establishment outspent sales tax opponents by10-to-1, yet the sales tax referendum was soundly defeated.
These crushing defeats on both the East and West coasts confirm that the much-touted birth of a new state-tax increase movement has been stillborn. If state politicians want to have such budget referenda, they should listen to the message taxpayers are sending them, rather than trying to use referenda simply to avoid the heavy lifting of serious budget reforms.
(Patrick Bashm is senior fellow in the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute, and Chris Edwards is Cato's director of fiscal policy.)
The Hoover Institution
STANFORD, Calif. -- A better way to protect endangered species
by Laura E. Huggins
The fate of many endangered species is in the hands of private property owners. By maintaining habitat for rare species, landholders are providing a public service, and the best way to encourage landholders to protect these species is to ensure that they are compensated rather than penalized for this service.
The Endangered Species Act, or ESA, passed by Congress and signed by President Nixon in 1973, established lists of endangered and threatened species and prohibited the killing or harming of them and their habitats.
Measured by any reasonable standard, the ESA has failed. In the past three decades many more species have been added to the list than have been removed. Even if we count all of the species removed from the list as "successes," they account for only 3.5 percent of the species recorded since 1973. According to the General Accounting Office, most species are closer to extinction now than when they were originally listed.
The first step toward reforming the ESA should be to moderate the damage that the current law inflicts on private landowners. Nearly 80 percent of listed species depend on private land for all or part of their habitat requirements. Yet if landholders provide suitable habitat for an endangered species, they run the risk of their property being subject to severe government regulations, many of which constrain land from being used profitably.
An unintended consequence of the ESA is that it effectively creates perverse incentives for landowners to destroy species and their habitat -- the "shoot, shovel, and shut up" syndrome.
Some environmental leaders recognize the problem. Michael Bean, an Environmental Defense Fund attorney who is often credited with authorship of the ESA, acknowledged that there is "increasing evidence that at least some private landowners are actively managing their land so as to avoid potential endangered species problems."
He emphasized that these actions are "not the result of malice toward the environment" but "fairly rational decisions, motivated by a desire to avoid potentially significant economic constraints."
Cases of preemptive habitat destruction have become notorious. For instance, as the golden-cheeked warbler was about to be added to the endangered species list, a firm that owned hundreds of acres of warbler habitat hired workers to chainsaw the entire stand of oak and juniper trees, thus preserving its investment by eliminating the birds' habitat.
For wildlife conservation to be successful, negative restrictions on landowners must be replaced with positive incentives, such as those in Texas's Landowner Incentive Program. Under the tenets of this state-initiated program, landholders voluntarily enter into a contract to perform measurable actions (such as restoring native vegetation or performing controlled burns) with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Biologists are allowed on the property to monitor progress, and landowners are paid on the basis of meeting the contract's objectives. Grants of up to $10,000 are available to property owners who actively manage their land for rare species.
As Aldo Leopold explained nearly 70 years ago: "Conservation will ultimately boil down to rewarding the private landowner who conserves the public interest."
(Laura E. Huggins is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.)
The Employment Policy Foundation
(EPF is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research and educational foundation focused on workplace trends and policies. EPF seeks to shape U.S. employment policies by producing timely, high quality, unbiased and reliable economic analysis and commentary. EPF believes that sound employment policy requires objective research, strategic analysis and prudent forecasting.)
WASHINGTON -- Valentine's Day guide to never-married availability index
With Valentine's Day later this week and a labor force that includes 37.9 million never-married workers, the Employment Policy Foundation examined the places where single workers are most likely to find romance.
Analyzing the relative number of never-married men and women in individual occupations, industries and educational levels, EPF has developed a picture of who is available, where they are working, and what they do at work. In total, a majority of never-married workers are men (21.3 million individuals, 56.2 percent), while never-married women make up a sizeable minority (16.6 individuals, 43.8 percent).
EPF calculated an availability index based on the relative number of never-married men and women in each industry, occupational, or educational group. The index for a group divided evenly between never-married men and never-married women would be 1.0 for both men and women.
Index values represent relatively higher or lower proportions of never-married men or women. For example, a group of never-married individuals made up of 75 percent men and 25 percent women would have indices of 3.0 for women and 0.75 for men. The availability index for men is correspondingly higher for groups with higher proportions of never-married women. The index for women is higher for groups with higher proportions of never-married men.
The availability index for women ranged from 0.2 to 15.2 across major industry groups. The range for men was 0.1 to 4.1. Industry groups showing the highest proportions of never-married men were construction, manufacturing and transportation, with availability indices (for women) of 15.2, 3.0 and 2.8.
For men, the industry groups showing the highest proportions of never-married women were medical services, social services, and hospitals, with availability indexes of 4.1, 2.8 and 2.7.
EPF also calculated availability index for major industry groups within specific educational levels. Data was analyzed for groups with a high school degree or less, some college or a bachelor's degree, and for those with education beyond a bachelor's degree.
Separating never-married workers by educational level showed only small differences in the availability index for both men and women.
The availability index for women among never-married workers with a high school degree or less, were highest in the business and auto repair, utilities and services, and finance, insurance, and real estate industry groups. The availability index values for those groups were 27.1, 22.6 and 5.4, respectively.
Conversely, the index for men among the same educational group was highest in the medical services, public administration, and social services industries, with values of 9.7, 5.1 and 2.5, respectively.
Among never-married workers with some college or a bachelor's degree, the availability index for women was highest in the construction industry group, with transportation, and manufacturing industry groups tied, with values of 7.2, 2.7 and 2.7, respectively. Within the same educational group, the availability index for men was highest in the medical services industry, with the social services and hospital industry groups tied below it. Their respective availability indices are 4.4, 3.4 and 3.4.
Among those with education beyond a bachelor's degree, the availability index for women was highest in the wholesale trade, business and auto repair, and manufacturing industry groups, with indices of 2.1, 1.9 and 1.8, respectively. The index for men was highest in the educational services industry group at 2.0. The transportation and social services group showed the second and third highest proportions of never-married women with index values of 1.7 and 1.6, respectively.
This analysis shows that at higher educational levels, the proportion of never-married men and women within major industry groups becomes close to 1.0. For example, the highest index for women in the group with a high school degree or less was 27.1, almost 16 times higher than the highest index for women in the group with education beyond a bachelor's degree.
Overall, the availability indices for women tend to be higher than those for men. "The higher level of workforce participation for men provides women with more opportunities than men for meeting a potential partner in the workplace. However, with the number of women obtaining higher degrees greater in younger generations, it will become more difficult for them to meet men of similar educational backgrounds," said EPF's director of communications, Mike Chittenden.
EPF's analysis also included calculating the availability index for major occupational groups. Availability indices for women ranged from 10.9 to 0.5, while the indices for men ranged from 2.2 to 0.1. The occupations with the highest availability indices for women were: precision production, craft, and repair; transportation and material moving equipment; and handlers, equipment cleaners, helpers, and laborers. These occupational groups showed the highest proportions of never-married men, with index values of 10.9, 9.4 and 5.9, respectively.
For men, the occupational group showing the highest proportions of never-married women was administrative support, with an availability index for men of 2.2. The service occupations (except for protective and household services), professional specialty occupations and sales occupational groups all were tied with the second highest index value of 1.1.
The analysis is based on the March Current Population Survey, maintained by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
