社区黑料

A version of this essay appeared on Matthew Yglesias鈥� , a site dedicated to offering pragmatic takes on politics and public policy. 

It鈥檚 not widely acknowledged as such, but America is experiencing a surge in anti-tax politics.

You see this of course on the right, which has always been skeptical of taxation. But we鈥檙e also starting to see a version of this on the left.

The growing progressive interest in exotic new tax-policy ideas 鈥� like Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna saying they can  鈥� shows a left that has lost faith in the idea of asking Americans to pay higher taxes in exchange for more and better public services.

And whatever you think of the Sanders/Khanna proposal, it鈥檚 important to understand that this kind of plan doesn鈥檛 scale well to small states or to cities and counties since it can be relatively easy for people to leave to avoid the taxes.

So, especially when it comes to local services, you really have to ask questions like 鈥淐an we make people feel that it鈥檚 worth paying more for this?鈥� and 鈥淐an we get more value for the money that we are already spending?鈥� Unlike with the federal government, where  in part because it was based on , local governments actually spend a huge share of their budget on direct provision of labor-intensive public services.

The most expensive of these line items is public school systems.

Education spending presents us with something of a paradox. We know from small-scale studies that marginal increases in school spending . In particular, fairly boring things like  are effective at promoting student learning, especially in low-socioeconomic-status schools.

So it seems to be the case that for a lot of schools there鈥檚 low-hanging fruit that could be addressed at least somewhat effectively with an influx of money.

On the other hand, if you look at large-scale cross-sections of American schools, it鈥檚 just not the case that higher levels of spending are strongly related to student outcomes.

The Urban Institute鈥檚  shows that the top-performing state for eighth grade reading is Massachusetts. That鈥檚 a relatively high-spending blue state, but not the highest-spending state. Number two is Louisiana. On eighth grade math, Massachusetts is number two and Louisiana is number three (Mississippi is number one).

The highest-spending system, New York, gets above-average results (I鈥檝e seen a lot of people express excessive negativity about this), but they鈥檙e not dramatically above-average in the manner of either lower-spending Massachusetts or dramatically lower-spending Mississippi and Louisiana.

Which is all just to say that even though there do appear to be useful opportunities to spend more money on schooling 鈥�  鈥� it seems like just looking at the average expenditure in high-spending systems is not very useful.

And those of us who think there are things the government should probably spend more money on ought to confront the reality that in many states the government is already spending a lot of money, some of it on things that are not very useful.

Teachers don鈥檛 move to higher-paying states

The question of how you design a high-functioning school system is complicated, and it鈥檚 clear that money isn鈥檛 the only thing that matters. For example, one factor that has gotten a lot of attention recently, and that I believe is a dominant factor in explaining why Mississippi and Louisiana in particular have started doing so well, is curriculum.

A restaurant can buy quality ingredients and hire decent cooks and have everyone work hard, and the food is still going to be bad if the chef鈥檚 recipes are no good.

But even when you get high-level agreement on something like curriculum, you can run into implementation problems. When I spoke recently with two people who worked in state government in Louisiana on setting up the current curriculum framework (which has had good results), they told me that a lot of their teachers had been taught in education school that the concept of centralized curriculum was bad. So, even with a strong curriculum in place at the state level, it still took work to get to a broad agreement to actually teach the curriculum.

So there鈥檚 obviously a lot happening that isn鈥檛 directly related to spending, but I do think it鈥檚 worth focusing on the more tedious technical question of how school systems are paying their staff, especially the teachers, who account for the lion鈥檚 share of the money and the work.

New York is number one in overall  and . So how come teaching talent isn鈥檛 fleeing Mississippi and Louisiana for New York, where average teacher salaries are 70 percent higher?

There are, of course, many reasons someone may not want to move across the country, but we鈥檙e also seeing the hidden cost of bad housing policy. Due to the much higher cost of living in New York, the real value of a middle-class salary is quite a bit lower there.

We know that there鈥檚 a lot of domestic migration out of the coastal states, and that it鈥檚 primarily not rich people fleeing taxes but . But this ends up inflating the cost of providing frontline public services, which leads to higher tax burdens, which itself further inflates the cost of living.

Another issue, though, is that teachers just don鈥檛 move state-to-state very much.

A  on Washington/Oregon border counties found that 鈥渢eachers along the state border were almost three times more likely to make a within-state move of 75 miles or more than to make any cross-state move.鈥�

They attribute the lack of interstate teacher mobility to two things: one is that mid-career teachers tend to lose a lot of pension value,聽and the other is that teacher licensing and certification is handled at the state level in a way that discourages mobility. Policy toward interstate transfers of teaching certifications differs from state-to-state. But New York in particular is a聽聽鈥� it鈥檚 one of only three聽states that has not聽聽the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification interstate agreement.

So while you might think that one point of paying teachers unusually well would be to make your state an unusually attractive place for teachers to move, New York undercuts that with high cost of living and also has regulatory policies that specifically discourage out-of-state teachers from coming in.

Rewarding veterans, not attracting new talent

The issue behind the issue is that the highest-paying states are the ones with strong collective-bargaining frameworks for public sector workers: The National Education Association says  have salaries that are 24 percent higher on average. And when labor unions negotiate compensation packages, they prioritize the interests of their existing members. That鈥檚 different from the mindset of an employer who decides to unilaterally increase compensation specifically for the purposes of recruiting new talent. An employer who is eager to attract new talent would, for example, put money into hiring bonuses, but a union is never going to demand that around a bargaining table.

That鈥檚 how states end up raising compensation without reducing barriers to entry.

It鈥檚 also why compensation in the more generous states is heavily backloaded. So while New York pays 70 percent higher teacher salaries than Louisiana on average, its entry-level salaries are only . That doesn鈥檛 come close to compensating for the higher cost of living. If you ask where 鈥渢eacher鈥� counts as a decent-paying job for someone just starting out, Mississippi and Louisiana look good and New York looks terrible, despite there being much higher average salaries in New York.

I don鈥檛 want to overstate the significance of this. Massachusetts, as noted previously, has very good school performance despite a New York-esque compensation scheme.

My guess is that other things like curriculum are moving the needle on outcomes, so I think we should look at it the other way around: What is the case for spending a lot of money on teacher salaries if not to make it easier to hire teachers? Plowing tons of money into backloaded compensation systems while making it hard for people to laterally transfer in is not a good way of achieving any of our education goals.

Of course, if you assume that people are perfectly rational maximizers of income across the life cycle, it鈥檚 possible that people considering entry-level teaching jobs care a lot about the fact that a teacher with 23 years of experience will earn dramatically more in New York than in Mississippi.

But in the real world, people are imperfect in thinking that far ahead. And they are extremely imperfect about assessing the long-term value of things like unusually generous pension and health insurance plans. Veteran members who are closer to retirement and have more health care needs place a lot of value on these benefits, so unions can end up bargaining for things that cost the state a lot of money but have very little juice in terms of teacher recruitment.

Pensions in particular also intersect with housing and growth policy in a nasty way.

If your community is experiencing rapid population growth, then you can spread pension costs accrued in the past across a relatively large number of present-day taxpayers. But if your community has low population growth, then the retiree hangover is a much larger burden in per capita terms. The economic impact is even worse if those retirees take their pension incomes to Sunbelt states, leading to New Yorkers鈥� tax dollars supporting the economy in Florida.

Governing is hard

I鈥檝e been thinking a lot lately about how structural roles in the political system can be at least as important as factional affiliation.

When Zohran Mamdani was in the state legislature, he voted for a law that created an unfunded mandate for New York City to reduce class size in its public schools. The comptroller鈥檚 office thinks this  and more than $1 billion per year in subsequent years. Not coincidentally, now-Mayor Mamdani .

It鈥檚 easy for even relatively moderate state legislators to vote for policies that push up school costs, and it鈥檚 hard in practice for even very progressive mayors to raise taxes.

Matt Mahan is running in California鈥檚 crowded gubernatorial election, arguing that  before raising taxes to fund new initiatives.

I think that鈥檚 a courageous and correct moderate/reformist platform. But even a politician who has a totally different factional identity and set of priorities should consider this. If you have a new spending idea that you truly believe in on the merits 鈥� whether it鈥檚 free buses or child care subsidies 鈥� then it shouldn鈥檛 be all that hard to identify something the state is already spending money on that is not as good or important.

Not just as an exercise in sloganeering but as a way to actually get things done.

Even if you assume there are zero political or substantive problems with raising huge sums of revenue from new special taxes on billionaires, residents of high-tax places will reasonably ask 鈥淲hy not use the money to cut my taxes?鈥�

The explanation for increasing net revenue 鈥� as opposed to just making the base more progressive 鈥� has to be that the money already allocated is being well-spent.

Unfortunately, state budgets are quite complicated, so I can鈥檛 just write down three bullet points for cutting waste. But if you start looking under the hood of major budget categories like teacher compensation, you start seeing problems pretty quickly. I get why taking this on is nobody鈥檚 idea of a good time, but with the public increasingly cranky about taxes I don鈥檛 think there are any easy options available.

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