Grading the States, and On-Street Parking...

I'm feeling lazy; anybody out there in blog-land feel like doing some research for me?

First: many months ago the Pew Center released it's "Grading the States" report, where it ranks the states on the "effectiveness" of state governments.

I think it would be interesting to see if there's any correlation between their rankings and economic growth. Or poverty rates. Or student performance on the NAEP tests. Does it really matter if state governments are "effective"?

Second: the Town wants to ban parking on our street (High Street). My gut reaction is "no way! People drive too fast down our street already..." I wanna know: does traffic really slow down on residential streets with on-street parking? Are there more or fewer accidents on streets without on-street parking? I bet the answers are somewhere on the NTSB web site, but, as I said, I'm feeling lazy...

Miles per Gallon on the Bus

A week or three ago I read that if you divide the number of passenger miles ridden by the number of gallons of fuel used by the public transportation systems of many cities, you end up with a pretty lousy number (see here for the full scoop). That makes sense if the public transportation system runs lots of mostly-empty, big, heavy, diesel-hungry buses or trains or ferry boats.

Which made me wonder: how does our local public transportation system fare?

The National Transit Database gave me the number of passenger miles ridden in 2006 for the entire PVTA system: about 31 million miles.

And an email to the nice folks at the PVTA got the number of gallons of fuel they used last year (2007): about 1.5 million gallons.

Divide miles by gallons and you get about 20 MPG (that's not quite right-- I should divide 2007 miles by 2007 gallons; I'll update this post when the 2007 ridership miles are available).

20 MPG is lousy. The CAFE mandated fuel efficiency for single-passenger vehicles is 27.5 MPG. Unless you own a gas-guzzler, and especially if you're going somewhere with a friend, then the raw data says driving will use less gas than riding the bus.

But that's not really right. The "marginal cost" of riding the bus is probably pretty close to zero; add another person to the bus and it's not going to use a whole lot more fuel. At least, until the bus gets too crowded and you need to buy and run another bus to fit everybody. Then the marginal cost of that one extra person is ginormous.

I think the lesson is that it is not as simple as "bus good, car bad." Running lots of empty or mostly empty buses is worse for the environment (and our economy) than running smaller, more fuel efficient private cars or taxis. If we really care about the environment, then the fuel efficiency standards that we set for cars should also be applied to public transportation. Why not tell PVTA: "You must be at least as fuel efficient, on a passenger-mile-per-gallon basis, as the CAFE standard for single passenger automobiles (27.5MPG)."

Pot Luck or Banquet?

I've been thinking a lot about central planning versus spontaneous order lately, and wondering if my personal preferences are clouding my thinking.

For example, I like the typical pot-luck dinner better than the typical catered banquet. I like not knowing exactly what will be there, and I like trying new things. I don't like the "would you like the beef, chicken, or vegetarian?" question; I always want to answer "give me a little of all three."

My political preferences match my culinary tastes. I don't want to choose between Democrat and Republican, I'd like to have a little of each, please. And I don't want the government to create a least-offensive solution for whatever problem I might face, whether it's what kind of school my kids attend or what type of health insurance I think is best for me. I'd rather have a gloriously chaotic array of choices that I can try or ignore.

I'm probably atypical-- I bet most people would choose a safe, boring catered meal over a riskier but more exciting pot luck. I can hear them now: "What if everybody decides to bring a lime Jello^® salad?" I suspect that the same type of irrational fear of the worst-case scenario drives a lot of government programs, policies and laws that I think we'd be better off without.

But maybe they're being perfectly rational, and they just value consistency and safety a lot more than I do. Either way, I kinda wish they'd stop making me pay for stuff I don't want...

The only thing we have to fear...

Sigh.

Mr. Weiss, Ms. Stein, and Ms. Awad are afraid.

They're afraid that a conversation held in private 35 years ago between a former select board member and a judge might inspire somebody to sue the Town for holding an election on the same day that the State holds elections.

So we'll elect somebody to replace Ms. Awad in November instead of September. Not a big deal, in the grand scheme of things, but it still bothers me.

It bothers me that they're second-guessing the opinion of the legal experts, who didn't see anything wrong with holding the election as planned.

It bothers me that this whole episode smells fishy. Changing the election date the day before nomination papers are due??? My spidey-sense is telling me that something beyond fear of a lawsuit is motivating at least some of the actors-- somebody wants the select board seat to remain empty a little longer, or wants a little more time to convince somebody to run for the open seat...

And it bothers me that it sets a bad precedent. What's to stop other former select board members from "remembering" agreements that they made in private with judges in the distant past, if the current select board makes a decision with which they don't agree? There are very good reasons meeting minutes and court records are public documents; our memories are fallible, even when we are honestly trying to remember accurately what happened.

Sigh.

Blink Be Gone

Some random geeky thoughts today: The software I'm working on uses blinking, red text for "server error" messages. I had forgotten how annoying that was; blinking text on the web has gone away.

WAAAY back in HTML 1.0 days, there was a lot of use of the infamous <blink> tag. Blinking text on a web site was a sure sign that it was designed by somebody who didn't know what they were doing.

It's yet another nice example of market forces creating spontaneous order, and creating "good enough" solutions. Firefox still support blink, but you almost never see it any more. I'm just surprised no congress-critter jumped on the bandwagon and introduced legislation to ban it (for safety-- apparently, too much blinking text can cause seizures in certain sensitive people).

Natural, but more deadly

Robin is going to the Hitchcock Center's nature camp this week. They spend a lot of time outside looking at plants and critters, so the camp registration materials suggest applying sunscreen and bug repellent to campers every morning.

They further recommend the use of non-DEET ("natural") products, "so we don't hurt the creatures we might pick up."

That got my skeptical hackles up. "Natural" doesn't mean "safe," or "good," or "effective," despite what many people seem to think. It's what drives the whole faith-based (oops, I mean "Complementary and Alternative") medicine industry.

So could DEET residue left on your hand hurt a froggie that you pick up?

I dunno. And that's not really the relevant question; the real question is "might DEET hurt the froggie any more than any of the other things that are likely to be found on a six-year-old's hands?"

Like, oh, maybe the citronella oil that is the active ingredient in a lot of "natural" bug repellents. Mr. Google knows everything, and it turns out both DEET and citronella oil have been tested for toxicity on wildlife:

DEET is slightly toxic to trout, with a Mean Toxic dose of about 70,000 parts per billion.
Citronella oil is also slightly toxic to trout, with a Mean Toxic dose of about 17,000 parts per billion.

I'm citing the figures for trout not because I like the word "trout" (mmm... trout...) but because that's the only species I could find that had been studied for toxicity to citronella oil.

So-- the "natural" products are four times as toxic. And they're less effective, so you have to use more.

They do smell a little bit better than DEET, and by using a 100% organic, all-natural, fair-trade-certified bug spray you're telling your eco-friendly friends that you really care about the environment and your kids' health. Which is why I spray the kids with DEET as they leave the house, but put "naturapel" in their backpacks to reapply at camp. I don't want the camp counselors to think I'm trying to kill their frogs.

My dissonant inbox

We humans have a tendency to seek out information that reinforces our pre-existing beliefs. I'm worried that I'm brainwashing myself by reading and listening to too much pro-free-market, anti-central-planning media, so I try to expose myself to progressive points of view on economic issues.

My email inbox this morning was particularly dissonant. I'm on the mailing lists for both the Center for Small Government, which is trying to repeal the Massachusetts income tax, and The Coalition for Our Communities, which is absolutely opposed to repealing the tax.

It seems to me the key questions are:

• What does Massachusetts state government spend it's money on? Bridges and roads? Health care? Police? Higher education? Programs to help the poor? (answers at: http://www.mass.gov/bb/gaa/fy2008/app08/ga08/hdefault.htm ).
• How much of the budget goes back to local communities (and do richer communities get less, per-capita, than poorer communities)? (I did some spot-checking for rich and poor communities, and it looks like state aid, chapter 70, and chapter 90 are nicely progressive).
• Does Beacon Hill spend more or less per-capita than other states? (the massbudget.org folks like to use "spending as a percentage of personal income", which seems like an odd measure to me-- do richer people need more government services than poorer people?)
• How fair is the income tax, compared to other taxes and fees the state collects? (pretty fair, as far as I can tell)

Unfortunately, both the pro- and con- websites aren't very good at answering those questions. The Vote NO website is using the Bush war-on-terror strategy-- scare tactics. Risk! Unsafe! Cuts! Fragile!

The anti-income-tax website is using a shotgun approach, appealing to idealism, putting up misleading statistics (like using non-inflation-adjusted budget numbers), and talking about how they're not fringe lunatics (... but it doesn't help that their home page looks a little bit like www.timecube.com-- lots of colors, really long, lots of subjects on One Big Page....).

Neither is very convincing. My gut feeling is that repealing the state income tax would be irresponsible, and if we're going to repeal a tax, it should be the sales tax; at least the income tax is reasonably progressive (whereas the sales tax is pretty darn regressive).

Both sides agree that the state budget should be even more transparent. One change I'd like to see, at the Local, State, and Federal levels, is to put budget numbers in perspective. For example, I have no idea whether or not $5,889,274,147 (almost six billion dollars) is the right amount of money to spend in Massachusetts on Health and Human Services. I have trouble imagining six billion dollars.

A billion is too big a number for my little brain to handle. Divide by either the state population, or divide by the number of people in the state below the poverty line, and I can begin to understand:

State Health and Human service spending per-capita per-year is about $900. About 10% of Massachusetts citizens have incomes below the poverty line ($11,000 per year), so if Health and Human Services spends all their money on those poorest people, that's $9,000 per poor-person per year, not counting education spending for poor kids, which is a different part of the budget. Oh, and not counting affordable housing. Or early education. Or labor and workforce development.

Sigh. I feel slightly better than I did three hours ago, when I started my state budget spelunking. But I also feel like I'll never really figure out whether or not our tax dollars are being spent wisely. I don't think anybody is smart enough to figure that out; that's why I believe in democracy and free markets and not benevolent dictators. There's gotta be a better way...