The Press-Dispatch
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The Press-Dispatch Wednesday, September 7, 2022 C-3 OPINION Submit Letters to the Editor: Letters must be signed and received by noon on Mondays. Email: editor@pressdispatch.net or bring in a hard copy: 820 E. Poplar Street, Petersburg Government the problem, not solution, on college costs No sooner had President Joe Biden announced his plan for student loan debt forgiveness — $10,000 for non-Pell grant recipients and $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients — the presi- dent of the NAACP was complaining that it should be more than twice as much. At least $50,000. Brookings Institution scholar An- dre M. Perr y echoed the sentiment. The plan, according to Perr y, "does not go far enough in addressing the root of the problem: a post-second- ar y education system that has seen tuition rise three-fold in the last 30 years. That same system will put fu- ture borrowers in peril." We have a problem here known popularly as the chicken and the egg. Do we need to pump a lot of tax mon- ey into higher education so students can afford to deal with runaway tui- tion costs? Or do we have runaway tuition costs because we're pumping billions of taxpayer funds into higher education? A picture of the stark reality of way-out-of-line tuition costs is pro- vided by blogger/economist Mark Perr y where he shows relative price increases of various goods and ser- vices from 2000 to 2022. From Januar y 2000 to June 2022 the overall rate of price increases — the average of all goods and ser vices — was 74.4%. But over the same period, the in- crease in the costs of college tuition and fees was 178%, and the increase in prices of college textbooks was 162%. That's more than twice the av- erage rate of inflation. The prices of new cars, household furnishings and clothing were un- changed over this period, and the price of cellphone ser vice was down 41% and computer software was down 70.5%. Whereas the price of college text- books increased 162%, over the same time period the price of recreation- al books, according to the Federal Reser ve Bank of St. Louis, declined slightly. The only area that exceeded col- lege tuition increases was hospital ser vices, which were up in price 220%. The distinguishing factor between areas with large price increases, well above the general rate of inflation, and areas with no change and drops in prices, is government involve- ment. Areas with a lot of government in their business — health care, higher education, child care and nurseries — had price increases over time well above the general rate of inflation. Business operating freely without government supports overall were unchanged or dramatically lower in prices. So, our scholarly friend at the Brookings Institution may well have things backward. Government is not the solution to escalating costs of col- lege tuition and books, but to a large extent the cause. Universities are free to bloat their bureaucracies and offer programs that are of little practical use, such as various ethnic studies programs and other programs structured to appeal to politically correct themes that are popular with youth. They do it be- cause they know that government programs and supports will bear the costs. Of course, universities should be free to do what they want. But not on my dime. What is being called loan forgive- ness is not loan forgiveness. It is debt transfer. How many reading this column would be glad to pay tuition for their neighbor's children? This is what is going on. But it's really worse. At least if your neighbor asks you to foot the bill for their child's tuition, you can refuse. But now we have a smiling president buying the love of Americans who are happy to see their debts disappear, while those debts are transferred, by pres- idential fiat, to American taxpayers. Is this really the way to build a na- tion of strong character and a thriv- ing, efficient economy? Regarding the NAACP, I wrote Race for the Cure By Star Parker Heritage Viewpoint By Ted R. Bromund War in Ukraine shows why Arms Trade Treaty remains a bad idea Give Me a Break By John Stossel In September 2020, at the first presidential debate between him and President Donald Trump, Democrat- ic nominee Joe Biden infamously declared, "Nobody's going to build another coal-fired power plant in America" if he won the White House against Trump. Even with comments like this, the United Mine Workers of America en- dorsed Biden for President. It was a head-scratcher, for sure. Biden and the Democrats hate coal, and they hate mining. Their endgame agenda is to put ever y miner in America out of a job The Biden Interior Department is vetoing most mining permit applica- tions. But why did the UMWA presi- dent, Cecil Roberts, endorse a pres- idential candidate who promised to put his members out of work? There was never a good answer except that the union bosses are willing to sacri- fice the jobs of their own dues-paying members to advance the cause of big government socialism. I suspect no one ever asked the workers themselves which candi- date they supported. I strongly sus- pect that, like the preponderance of blue-collar workers, most miners voted for Trump. But unions don't even pretend anymore to be demo- cratic institutions, which is why they don't want members to be voting on just about anything — least of all whether they want to stay in the union. Biden has kept his promise of do- ing all he can to destroy mining, and so many mining jobs are disappear- ing. Biden says condescendingly that these unemployed workers can be retrained to make wind turbines. Uh-huh. But Roberts' treach- er y was doubled when he recently endorsed the energy/health care law negotiated by Sen. Joe Manchin (D- WV) and Senate Ma- jority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). The $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act that Biden recently signed into law pipelines tens of billions of dollars into the coffers of the hopelessly inefficient green energy industr y in order to kill coal. Period. For the union bosses to endorse this bill put the interests of their members last. But Roberts didn't apologize. He dismissed these crit- icisms of the bill as "absolute bull." He wrote in a public statement de- fending the bill: "Those who are at- tacking this legislation ... overlook some pretty obvious benefits of this bill to West Virginia coal miners, like the billions in tax credits for the application of Carbon Capture and Storage technology, which would al- low coal-fired power plants to extend their lives for decades. This is one of the first times Congress can actually take steps to support the coal indus- tr y, which few ever expected." And finally: "I cannot understand how any politicians who actually care about working West Virginians and the quality of their lives can trash this bill." But there is hardly a word of truth in that statement. The law won't ex- tend the life of the coal industr y. It is an issuance of the last rites. If ever there were an example of union bosses looking after themselves and not the best interests of the men and women they are supposed to represent, it is this. He may take some so- lace that the last job in the industr y that will be sacrificed at the Left's altar of climate change re- ligion will be his. Probably, Roberts is feeling confident he will be taken care of by the environmental groups that will get rich off a bill that sticks a dagger into the back of coal miners. The Left has made a big deal about a blue-green alliance. By this, they mean that blue-collar workers have a common interest with green environ- mentalists. Yes, these have the same common interests as the frog and the scorpion. The green groups have spent two decades tr ying to flatten the coal industr y. Despite their best efforts, we get more than one-quar- ter of our electric power from coal. Incidentally, the Left hasn't suc- ceeded in reducing coal consump- tion. They've simply moved the jobs out of West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsyl- vania and Wyoming to China and the rest of Asia. That really helps the planet. Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore The dumbest union ever The nations that have signed the Arms Trade Treaty are meeting this week in Geneva. In 2016, the Obama administration took the U.S. into the treaty. In 2019, the Trump adminis- tration took us out of it. The latter decision keeps on looking better and better. In theor y, the Arms Trade Treaty is about requiring nations to set up a system for controlling the export— and to an extent, the importation—of conventional weapons, from revolv- ers to battleships. In practice, howev- er, it's about pressuring democracies not to sell weapons to anyone the activists behind the treaty don't like. If you take the treaty on its own terms, the idea behind it was silly from the start. If a nation wants to control its arms exports, it can and will. It doesn't need a treaty to give it that right. If it doesn't want to con- trol its arms exports, it won't—and a treaty can't and won't make it. In reality, therefore, the treaty isn't a legal instrument; it's a political one. It exists not to require nations to do something. It exists to create a way to pressure nations into doing something. It's a tool in a struggle over policy, a car to allow the left to chase its favorite ambulance. For a while, the left's favorite vil- lain was Israel. Now, thanks to the war in Yemen, it's Saudi Arabia. What doesn't change is the unwill- ingness of the left to criticize anyone but the United States and a few Euro- pean arms exporters—and to ignore Russia, China, and Iran. I treasure the memor y of a lead- ing treaty activist explaining that the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, shot down by a Russian surface- to-air missile over eastern Ukraine in 2014, was the fault of "today's global- ized environment." She couldn't bring herself to blame the Russians. At this point, almost a decade after the treaty was negotiated, no one's even bothering to pre- tend that it's working. One of the big talking points in 2014 was the need for a treaty to stop arms dealers such as Viktor Bout— portrayed by Nicolas Cage in the 2005 mov- ie "Lord of War"— from running amok in Africa. That, too, was non- sense: Bout wasn't a free agent. He was working with the knowledge and backing of the Russian government. But now, the Biden administration wants to swap Bout, now in U.S. cus- tody, for WNBA star Brittney Griner and former U.S. Marine Paul Whel- an, both of whom are being held in Russia. That tells you all you need to know about how much anyone cares about Bout. Now that he's ser ved his pur- pose and justified the treaty, Bout's disposable. But so is the treaty itself. Its own supporters point out that nations are increasingly not even filing the reports that the treaty supposedly mandates. These days, with more and more reports not showing up at all, no one even bothers to ask if the reports that are filed are actually accurate. The U.S.' response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine illustrates why the Arms Trade Treaty is such a bad idea. After the Russian inva- sion, the Biden administration's response was repor tedly stalled by "legal questions" about wheth- er it was legal to provide arms to the Ukrainians. Fortunately, the determination to help Ukraine was bipartisan and nearly unanimous, so those legal questions didn't amount to much (at least as far as we know). But this is pre- cisely the kind of situa- tion in which the Arms Trade Treaty could be a serious obstacle. All it needs is for the U.S. to sign back onto the treaty, for another and more controver- sial crisis (say, a Chi- nese threat to Taiwan) to kick off, and for a few lawyers on the National Security Council to start raising ob- jections, and the U.S.' ability to ex- port arms could be kneecapped. How could that happen? Well, a lot of the treaty's most enthusiastic backers don't like the U.S. arming Ukraine. And one of the require- ments of the treaty is that export- ers are supposed to assess whether their arms would be used in "attacks directed against civilian objects or ci- vilians protected as such." And wouldn't you know it—Am- nesty International recently pub- lished a report, "Ukraine: Ukrainian Fighting Tactics Endanger Civil- ians." It was a shoddy piece of work and was immediately condemned by the United Kingdom's Royal United Ser vices Institute, and it led to the resignation of the head of Amnesty's Kyiv branch. On the other hand, the Russians loved it, with the Russian Embassy in London tweeting that "@Amnes- ty confirms #Ukraine tactics violate international humanitarian law & endanger civilians. … [E]xactly what #Russia has been saying all along. Labor Union shortage Monday was Labor Day. Did you celebrate unions? The media does. "Unions are cool again," reports CBS News. They sug- gest unionization is booming. "Reporters" practically cheered when a Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, became the first Starbucks to unionize. "A big symbolic win for la- bor," The New York Times called it. Since then, more than 180 Starbucks voted to unionize, and 300 filed for union elections. Starbucks already offers better benefits than many companies: health benefits, even for part-time workers, free college tuition, mater- nity leave and more. Their minimum wage is $17/hour. But activists want more. Apple Store employees and Google workers are also starting unioniza- tion efforts. In the first half of 2022, union election petitions increased by 57%. They have political support. Presi- dent Joe Biden promised he'd be "the most pro-union President you've ever seen," and he probably has been. He supports the PRO Act, which would override state right-to-work laws and fine employers who fire workers for tr ying to unionize. The Washington Post claims there is a "wave of labor activism sweeping the countr y." But despite all political support and media hype, unionization is down. Unionization did increase during the pandemic but fell as the pandemic waned. In 2021, 15.8 mil- lion workers were represented by a union, a decline of half a million since 2019. There are many reasons. The Janus Supreme Court deci- sion in 2018 declared it unconstitu- tional to force government workers to pay union dues. Now 28 states no longer force any workers to pay union dues. That's a good thing. No one should be forced to join groups they don't want to join. In 1973, when I first went to work for CBS, I was forced to join AFTRA, the American Federation of Televi- sion and Radio Artists. I didn't want to. I didn't want to pay dues to a union that didn't appear to do much, but I had no choice. At work, I saw how union rules routinely slowed work down — in ridiculous ways. I couldn't just press a button and watch a video. I had to find a union editor and ask him to press the button. One reason Fox News grew faster than CBS, NBC and ABC news oper- ations is that non-union Fox is more flexible. They are able to tr y new things. They didn't have to obey all the stupid rules. This is another rea- son why the number of union work- ers has declined. Union rules limit their employers' ability to change, adapt and grow. Non-union Toyota and Honda out- grew unionized companies like Gen- eral Motors. They hired more people, created more jobs. That was good for labor, just not unionized labor. Unionization helps some. But it hurts more. Some GM workers got higher pay and more time off. But lots of poten- tial workers never got a chance. Toy- ota and Honda helped more people simply by growing faster. Today activists claim unions built the middle class. Without unions, they say, there would be no weekend and no eight-hour day. But that's not true. Workers' lives improved in Amer- ica mostly because of competition, not union rules. Competition is what does the most for workers. In 1914, Henr y Ford doubled his employees' wages to $5 a day and cut their workday to eight hours. People claim he was forced to do it by union pressure. That's a myth. He did it because his company had high turn- over. Raising wages helped him keep good workers. Free market compe- tition forces ever yone to do better. What workers need is not a union's rigid rules, but competition. Today there's lots of competition for workers. It's driven companies like Costco to offer a $17-an-hour starting wage. Unions help some, but a free mar- ket helps more. John Stossel is creator of Stossel TV and author of "Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media." See TREATY on page 4 See COLLEGE on page 4 See UNION on page 4