Except I was wrong.

Libertarians in Red States may still naively hold this view because they didn’t have their lives upended like those Libertarians who lived in blue states. Red States significantly fought the lockdowns. In Blue States, we were arrested for kayaking or fishing.

When fishing was banned in my state, I was throwing red flags. Yet all my Leftist friends stood by the ban. “If you’re all standing around next to each other fishing, you’re going to spread the Coronavirus,” they said. There was not a single critical thought amongst them. As Leftists tend to surround themselves on coasts amongst natural resources, you’d think more of them have been fishing before. But they haven’t. “Just buy fish from the supermarket instead,” they insisted.

Yet, anyone who has ever been fishing before knows there is much more distance between yourself and another fisherman than there is between yourself and another customer at the meat counter. For a Party of Science, it is strange that the Left can’t account for currents. It’s crazy we don’t want our fishing lines to get crossed, therefore we stand a good distance away from each other. But that’s only where The Left began to fail at science during the pandemic, as they’ve failed every other step along the way.

We saw time and time again how restaurants and salons were shut down, only to become private events for politicians…. In Blue States. A single barber refusing to shut down was statewide news and controversial. Snitch Lists arose where people reported “Non Essential Businesses” for remaining open, which was a phenomenon largely reserved for Blue States. The reports largely targeted churches and gun shops, and leftists in Blue States used it as a tool to target political adversaries. It was political from the very beginning. COVID patients forced into nursing homes only happened in Blue States.

We are now two years into the pandemic, and lifting restrictions is a cause of The Right. Once a fringe position, School Choice is being adopted into the mainstream on the right due to mask mandates and Critical Race Theory. Meanwhile, The Left has been doubling down on harm to children, pushing for vaccine mandates on elementary age school children, while fighting tooth and nail to oppose curriculum transparency. They’ve been calling concerned parents terrorists. 

I’ve always had concerns with public school, as I myself am a product of it. I lived through it and was disenfranchised by it. In the last two years however, it’s clear Blue State society at large is trying to weaponize children against their parents via school curriculum. Don’t let the enemy mold your children.

Now, the Blue States are pushing vaccine mandates on children. The vaccine does not prevent the transmissibility of Omicron. The argument is that it does prevent a worse reaction. Yet, children have had little or no reaction to COVID-19 throughout all of the variants. The vaccine itself has a larger compromising threat to children than COVID does. So this makes absolutely no sense. It’s only The Left that’s pushing this.

The Left and The Right are clearly not the same. The Left is worse, and by large orders of magnitude. The Right is also quickly adopting more Libertarian positions in the wake of the pandemic. It’s time to leverage that. 

The post I Thought the Left and Right Were the Same, Until the Pandemic appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

The next morning, I awoke to a bright red banner across the top of my article informing me and my readers that the article was “under investigation or found in violations of the Medium Rules.” The graphic accompanying this article is a snippet of Medium’s post on my page. The next day, Medium’s bright red notice of violation was on all my articles.

The issue is not whether my articles appear in any specific publication. That is an irrelevant concern. The issue is about the message Medium and other social media corporations send to the public when they censor.

The communications genius, Marshall McLuhan prophetically noted in 1964, “The medium is the message.”

McLuhan asserted a communications medium is not neutral. While the medium delivers content, it also has a character that is usually overlooked. The character delivers notice of a long-term structural, social change. He gives the example of a news story about crime. McLuhan explains the story is less about crime than bringing the crime into homes to create fear and change public attitudes about crime. Since the public focuses on the content of the story, it, many times misses the subtle attitudinal changes the medium’s character is foisting upon society. As to social media, the character of its long-term message is to change public attitudes about speech it finds objectionable and to foster an acceptance of censoring such speech.

McLuhan urges us to understand the character of the messages being delivered so we notice “change in our societal…conditions” which “indicates the presence of a new message.” He views the recognition of these new conditions as an opportunity to understand the detrimental changes being delivered and to address them before harm occurs.

Today, social media bombards us with its party-line content on specific issues; vaccine mandates, immigration, stolen elections, the January 6, 2021 “insurrection,” racism, and the list seems to be infinite. But the character the medium embeds in its messages is the need to censor what it deems objectionable speech. Social media is sending us early warning of the detrimental effects of its censorship. If we do not resist its message, the result will be the death of free speech.

Resistance can start today if each reader circulates a copy of this article and the graphic to their friends.

This is a long introduction to my article “A Scholarship for Every Student, Why Not We Pay for It Now!” which is set out in full below. Judge for yourself its content but also ask what is the character of the message being delivered by Medium and the other social media corporations about their right to censor free speech?

A Scholarship for Every Student, Why Not We Pay for It Now!

William L. Kovacs

The local, state, and federal governments already spend more, on average, on public education, than it would cost to award a scholarship to every student equal to the average cost of education in the U.S. Unfortunately, most of our taxpayer dollars just go to public schools that are very expensive, union-controlled, and do not produce results. For taxpayers to get value for their dollars, the money should follow the student and let the student and parents choose the school. If public schools want to stay in business, the motto should be “Let Them Compete for Students.” The competition will also foster much-needed creativity in the fossilized Teachers’ Unions.

The Number of Students: The Census estimates there are 53,591,620, K-12 students in the United States. The National Center for Education Statistics and the Council for American Private Education, estimates approximately 48.6 million of these students are in public schools. 5.7 million are in private school, which is comprised of Catholic (53%), nonsectarian (14.8%), conservative Christian (12%), and other religious (19.3). Since all the numbers are estimates, and school populations change yearly, the number of students does not add up as neatly as numbers on a corporate balance sheet. There is a small discrepancy in the different estimates, so for ease of calculating let’s round off the number of U.S. students to 54 million nationwide.

Cost Per Student: In constant 2019-2020 dollars, the cost per student in public education is $14,891, which includes teachers, capital expenditures, and interest payments. The total cost of public education in the U.S. is $762 billion.

The average cost per student across all of private education for its 5.7 million students is $10,740.00. This is the average of Catholic schools, $6,890; other religious schools, $8,690 and non-sectarian private schools, $21,510. Using the averages, the total annual cost of private school education is a little over $61 billion.

Total Cost of K-12 Education: The cumulative cost of educating all K-12 students in the United States is $762 billion in taxpayer funding for public education and another $61 billion in parent funding for private schools. Total funding for U.S. K-12 education is $823 billion or $15,240 per student.

Total Taxpayer Funding for Education in the U.S. that Can Be Distributed as Scholarships to Students: Taxpayers provide $762 billion to public schools and another $202 billion dollars to run the U.S. Department of Education, for a total expenditure of $964 billion. Since total K-12 education (public and private) is $ 823 billion, there is more than enough taxpayer funding for education to award a $15,240 scholarship to every K-12 student in the U.S. for use at the school of their choice and have $ 143 billion left over.

The U.S. spends more on education per student than 33 of the 36 OECD countries. Only Luxenberg, Austria, and Norway spend more, yet the U.S. ranks 28^th in math worldwide, 18^th in reading, and 22^nd in science. Clearly, the American taxpayer is not getting value for its money spent on its public school system.

Students Will Use Taxpayer Scholarships More Wisely than Government Directives: Almost every indicator on educational satisfaction finds private schools provide better-educated students, more satisfaction with teachers, happier parents, higher test scores, more advanced course of studies taken, and better and more manageable class sizes.

A Gallup poll of Americans found “Seventy-eight percent of Americans say children educated in private schools receive an excellent or good education.” It also found 69% believed parochial or religious schools provided an excellent or good quality education. Only 30% believed public schools provided an excellent or good education.

Parents of students attending private schools were substantially happier with the private school’s performance than parents of public schools, by significant margins. Private school parents had a substantially higher favorability rating for all aspects of school life than parents of public-school students. Specifically, there is a 78% to 57% public vs private favorability for teachers, 78% to 55% for academic standards, 83% to 56% for school discipline, and 81% to 56% for overall school satisfaction.

Another benefit of private school education is that students are more likely to have higher SAT scores, and attain college degrees. For private schools, the national average SAT score is Private 1230, whereas nationwide, the average test score is 1051.

The resources for providing good education to all students are available now. Students and parents will select the best school for the student; private, public, or trade. By allowing students to control their futures, rather than an authoritarian teacher’s union, out-of-touch school boards, or federal regulation writer, students will determine their educational path and career goals.

Action Items:

1. Each state and local school authority can redirect all current education funding from school districts to the students in those districts in the form of scholarships to be used for tuition at the school of their choice.
2. Congress should abolish the U.S. Department of Education. All funds presently appropriated to the U.S. Department of Education would be allocated to the states to fully fund student scholarships to the amount of $15,240 per student. The remaining $143 billion could be used by the federal government to reduce the federal deficit.

The post If the Medium is the Message, Free Speech Is Dead appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Today, when people across America think of Seattle, it is marred by the image of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) and a lengthy year’s worth of rioting only overshadowed by the likes of Portland. They think of sidewalks obstructed by tents, trash, needles, and random violent assaults.

These negative associations with Seattle have been largely limited to downtown Seattle, on the south side of the Ship Canal Bridge; the other shore of Lake Union.

The north end of Seattle is a suburb of its downtown counterpart and has seen few of the problems downtown has, of which activity tends to be isolated along Highway 99. Yet, it is governed by the same Mayor and City Council as downtown Seattle, and those problems are now surfacing in communities who thought they had adequate distance from these problems.

The Bitter Lake Community of Seattle is on the most northern edge of North Seattle, only a handful of traffic lights shy of exiting city limits entirely. It’s a much more quiet single family home community, nestled in side streets between the main drags of Greenwood and Aurora avenues.

During the pandemic when students shifted to remote learning at home, a homeless encampment formed on school property at Broadview-Thompson Elementary School in the Bitter Lake Community. Parents were apathetic at first, adopting an ‘out of sight out of mind’ position, and assumed that the situation would be handled by the time students returned to the classroom on school grounds. 

The encampment started in July of 2020, and the city promised it would be removed that September. Yet the encampment has not been removed, and has only grown larger.

As time drew closer to the beginning of in-school learning, the Seattle School Board asked the city not to remove these camps, including the one at Bitter Lake, barely within the city’s grasp. Parents began to worry about their children’s safety returning to school.

As children returned to school to finish the remaining school year, the encampment continues to grow. Weapons have been found in the encampment on school property, and the school was placed into lockdown over a pellet gun spotted in the camp.

Now, King County has brought their needle exchange program to the elementary school, handing out needles and syringes to members of the encampment right in front of children on school grounds.

From local Seattle ABC affiliate KOMO:

“‘To see them (public health) disperse the needles right on your frontage in plain sight for everybody to see was an outrageous moment,’ said Paul Riemann whose home looks directly into the encampment.

Neighbors said the criminal activity is mounting.

In the last two weeks, police have been called to the camp several times, a large sword was seen outside a tent and last Tuesday the school had to ‘shelter in place’ when a camper was seen with a pellet gun.”

The school district runs a unique model where they are only accountable to public opinion (where they’re currently catering to the Wokes) rather than being accountable to the students whom they teach, and the parents of the students. They don’t actually have an incentive to do right by whom they should be accountable to. 

Perhaps voting for School Board Members should be a privatized vote reserved for people who actually have school aged children in the district, rather than everyone who is eligible to vote who have no skin in the game. But this is pie in the sky, as it makes way too much sense to actually come to fruition. 

Not everyone can afford private school, especially if they have several school aged children. With two income households, not everyone can find time to homeschool; though with all children learning from home and having to make time to accommodate this, I hope many can give this a second thought. Do it if you can.

What can really make a difference however, is School Choice. This is a system where the student is funded rather than the school, and can choose which public school they want to attend. This would force schools and districts which have become comfortable with zoning and not having to act in the best interest of their students, to immediately be forced to do so. The alternative is that students leave, and therefore funding also leaves. If a school consciously continues to underperform or not provide a safe environment, the conclusion will finally, for once, be as it should. The school will rightfully close, and not look good on a future resumé.

This would make a world of difference for students in the Bitter Lake Community, who are currently zoned into Seattle Public Schools without a choice, to be given the option to attend Shoreline Public Schools just a few traffic lights away. 

Also, if you are a parent who believes schools should serve students and not the mob, consider running for School Board.

The post School Choice Needed as Seattle Allows Homeless Camp, Drugs on School Property appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

It sounds like a ridiculous anecdote, but it is a simplified representation of the current primary and secondary educational system. As a recent high school graduate, I have seen firsthand so many flaws in the education system. From my experience, as well as research, I have identified three important factors that currently negatively contribute to the education of millions of students around the country. Some of these flaws are found not only in K-12 schools, but also in colleges as well.

COVID-19 Fear Mongering

With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing well into the spring of 2021, some teacher unions have lobbied to stay on an asynchronous learning basis, with schools still remaining closed and the education of the children still being jeopardized for no currently scientific-based reasons. One example of such nonsense comes in the form of a video from the Chicago Teacher’s Union, which went live on Facebook on January 23 and depicts many of the teachers dancing while a narrator and captions convey the importance of staying safe during the pandemic. While the relation of dancing and safety is unclear, what is evident is the many falsehoods that are indirectly propagated by the video. These need to be analyzed to see whether a case can be made that it is too early to go back to in-person learning.

To debunk such a ridiculous video, it is important to first look at the number of cases and deaths by age group to determine the validity of any possible claims the union might make. First, deaths have been on the decline—even on the day that the video was originally published—and future projections as of the writing of this article show a similar trend. What if the students get each other infected and spread the coronavirus even more? Good question, yet statistically the number of deaths from COVID-19, pneumonia and the flu among the sick aged 0-17 is only 978 people across the whole country.

In comparison, the average age of a teacher in the United States is 42 years old. Looking at the figures, those in the 40-49 age range, accounted for 20,148 COVID-19 related deaths. These figures are from the start of the pandemic to today. This indicates that students are more than 20 times less susceptible than their teacher counterparts and, although the student population is large, they would not be at an elevated risk of infecting each other and the teachers. With vaccines being administered in daily increasing numbers, older teachers would be at an even lower risk than everyone else. As a result, safety is not as big a concern as the unions or the media make it out to be.

While the figures are not in the favor of the Chicago Teacher’s Union, I am not arguing that there should be no masks or social distancing in place. What I am saying is that schools need to open up and allow students to have face-to-face interactions with their teachers. What are the implications of continuing online learning? According to one Gallup poll, 30 percent of parents said that their child’s mental health has worsened as a result of online schooling and restrictions that are in place. In terms of education, it has been estimated that the students are only receiving 70% of their knowledge for a typical school year, while in mathematics that figure drops to 50%. Children are simply not learning the material that they would be able to learn in person.

Speaking from experience, I spent my last semester of senior year, and now my second semester in college being stuck with online learning. Many of my lectures are asynchronous only. I have rarely been able to ask my professors for help, and I had to resort to using outside sources and spending more time than necessary just to be able to pass many of my basic general education classes. Although I have made some friends through my online interactions with other students and through clubs that I virtually attend, I have not been able to meet most of those people in person. It is time to open up the schools and get everyone back to normal and into the classroom.

Reject Alternative Schooling Options and Parental Choice

One key aspect that is ignored by many politicians is the many alternative options to public schools that could be available to students through the use of student vouchers. Parents could select where they want to place their children. The Department of Education itself admits that funding would not solve all of the problems that cause disparity in the performance of students from low-income and high-income families. One option that they themselves proposed is community schools, which allow a greater involvement of parents and the local community in the structure of the learning curriculum as well as spending. Instead of having the state or federal government make those decisions on behalf of a local community, the local ordinance should decide how to approach its wants and needs and how to resolve any issues that may arise.

Charter schools have gained a lot of ground in the past 20 years, and now more than 7,200 exist in 44 different states. The main benefit is the increase in parental choice and satisfaction ratings. Among the different types of schooling, charter schools had 13% higher satisfaction ratings than district schools. Charter school parents also indicated that they were able to have more extensive communication with their teachers by 15% more than parents in district schools. Of course, private schools scored at the top of the satisfaction ratings, as parents with more money are able to send their children to an even wider array of schools. However, since charter schools are free to the public and take a huge portion of low-income students there is more competition to get in. Instead of being stuck in a low-income area and having one’s child go to that one school, parents are able to take their children to a school of their choice that is more competitive and provides more opportunities to their students. Even under Barack Obama’s administration, millions of dollars were spent on the development of charter schools. If there was little belief in them, why would they be funded so heavily? Students would be able to attend a school that fits their learning needs and desires and a general district school is not always able to provide that.

In my high school, for instance, we had only a small fraction of the classes for humanity-related courses compared to other schools in my county. Students have asked for many years to add courses to the registration list, yet they were always denied for unclear reasons. I wanted to take Russian as my foreign language instead of French, and to have more classes that would have been more applicable to my future career goals instead of being stuck with math all of these years. I understand that it is not possible to please everyone, but I have not heard of a single class being added from student requests. What time we did have to take an interesting elective was taken up by physical education or other unimportant classes—at least in my opinion.

Force Standardized Testing On All Students

One of the bigger downsides of high school that every student knows, including myself, is studying for the SAT/ACT tests. Colleges heavily rely on this metric, claiming that it provides a standardized baseline for applicants across the country, so that the performance of each of them can be accurately measured, as opposed to a grade point average (GPA), which might vary from school to school. The main problem with the SAT (and this is coming from a person who scored in the top 2% of the percentile range) is that it only accesses two subjects—math and English. Students come from different backgrounds, have different skillsets, and, as a result, might struggle with one or both of these subjects. A more artistically inclined student might be trying to become an art major, yet he or she might not get in due to doing worse on two subjects that are almost unrelated to future prospects. Since many colleges have begun to realize the flaw in these standardized tests, almost a third of schools do not require standardized test scores for admission. Instead, they rely on other metrics, such as the GPA, Advanced Placement test scores, the quality of the admissions essay, etc..

This trend will most likely be seen in secondary level education as well. If charter schools and even district schools decide to do away with standardized testing entirely, students will be under less stress, and their performance can be measured with standard class tests created by that very institution. This will help address the problem of having teachers “teach to the test”, and allow them to have more creative control and do a much better job of educating their students. Teachers are often evaluated and promoted or fired on how students perform on this flawed metric, and in many cases, negative results may be out of the educators’ control. For the same reason, besides discontinuing the requirement of SAT and ACT tests for students to get into college, schools should also drop the various other tests, like the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) in their entirety, and having a more flexible approach in teaching students.

What Does the Future Hold?

With Joe Biden as President, it is unclear what will happen with secondary education in the United States. In his campaign, he pledged to spend more money funding low incomes areas, while improving teachers’ salaries. On his website, there is no mention of alternative schooling options, and the cycle of perpetually throwing money in hopes to solve the various flaws in the education system continues. At this point in time, not much can be done to make the mentioned changes necessary on the federal level. Yet, states have the power to design their own educational systems. Hopefully, they will realize that the current school districting system needs to be redone instead of slapping on band-aids time and time again. Charter and private schools need to be allowed to compete for students instead of having a government monopoly on education.

The post How to Destroy Your Child’s Education in 3 Easy Steps appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Homeschool is just that. It’s home and school. It should sound ideal. All the comforts of home. With all the benefits of education—the exploring, the discoveries, the flourishing. 

Instead, for many families it sounds like stress. Lots and lots of stress. 

It doesn’t have to. You can make the flourishing happen. You can kick the stress to the curb. The trick is to let your children take ownership in their own education. Put them in charge and see what happens.

Does that sound crazy? Maybe. But consider this. Is it any more crazy than working overtime to replicate a school setting in your home, complete with miniature desks, homework assignments, and rigorous schedules? If you’re not sending your kids to school “out there,” clearly a traditional school environment isn’t, for whatever reason, meeting your family’s needs. Why break your neck trying to turn your basement family room into an in-home remake of a public school classroom?

Instead, spend your time exploring one of the primary benefits of homeschooling—tailor make an education based on your kids’ interests. Foster their love of learning and curiosity about the world. Radically re-envision what educating children looks like. You can do it.

First—ask your kids what they want to learn about this year. Find out what truly interests them, not what they’ve been told they need to know. What subjects have they have always wanted explore and learn more about? 

Second—listen with integrity. When you grant your children liberty and agency in their education, as a parent it’s your job to listen to them, to really hear them, and then act on what they’re saying. If your kindergartener is passionate about trains, then study trains. If your third-grade son wants to learn about the stars, then study astronomy. If your ninth grade daughter is obsessed with fashion, then study fashion. 

You’ll soon see that learning doesn’t happen in a vacuum. 

Third—integrate their interests into the curriculum. Trains can be counted, which means they’re math. The Little Engine that Could is reading. Making a miniature steam engine is science, and learning about how trains changed the world is history. The same pattern of interconnectedness works for astronomy—and even fashion.

When your sixth grader wants to learn sew, buy her a sewing machine and fabric. She’ll soon be a whiz at fractions. Then when that same young woman is in high school and wants to start an Etsy shop featuring her clothing designs, you’ll help her start her own small business!

Homeschool parents quickly realize the challenge they face isn’t so much being a teacher (because heaven knows we don’t know everything) as it is being a facilitator or mentor helping kids figure out how they can learn what they want to learn and become their most authentic selves.

Convey the idea that education is not about pleasing an authority (be it mom and dad, or the government). It’s about your student’s life–with all the responsibilities and consequences. It’s a first-class ticket to independence, autonomy, and emotional flourishing—first as small children, then as teenagers, and eventually as adults who are comfortable living and working in the world, interacting with people of all ages. 

Will your homeschool kid’s education look like a traditional education? I certainly hope not. Will there be holes in their education? Undoubtedly. (There were definitely holes in my public high school education.)

Allowing kids active agency in their education plays into the boundless curiosity all children have. Nurture that curiosity throughout their at-home education, and they will remain curious throughout their lives. They’ll be armed with the knowledge that they can teach themselves (or find someone to teach them) what they want to learn or need to know. 

And—most importantly—they’ll be ready to meet the world head-on, filled with passion and accountability.

Gina Prosch educates her children at home in Mid-Missouri. She is also a homeschool life coach (and parent) who blogs and shares homeschool resources at www.TheHomeschoolWay.com. She is also the co-host of The OnlySchoolers Podcast. 

The post Give Your Kids Ownership in Their Education and Watch Them Flourish appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

So, where do friends of freedom go from here? In the past, I’ve argued the best vehicle to advance free markets, limited government and individual liberty is the GOP. After the Libertarian Party’s difficult election night, the argument for revitalizing the GOP around these ideas is even stronger.

While people will likely debate the reasons for Donald Trump’s loss for years, there is a path forward for liberty-minded voters and candidates to build a winning coalition. Doing so requires pursuing an agenda that may seem obvious: offer principled solutions to the problems people care about.

This isn’t a groundbreaking suggestion, but it is necessary in an era where politics is often consumed with personalities and esoteric debates. The answer to this problem is practicality—not in the sense that one must compromise principles to win, but instead, by pursuing an approach that acknowledges people’s concerns.

I offer four ideas that could serve as a core platform for people interested in promoting liberty and improving people’s lives. These ideas center around several key issues: education, health care, jobs and poverty.

Universal School Choice

Every single family should have the option to send their child to the school of their choice. I know in some libertarian circles this idea is seen as a retreat from a truly free market in education. My gentle pushback is that it is possible to strive toward universal school choice while reducing the size of government. This is possible because school choice saves taxpayers money.

Generally, school choice programs require allocating a certain amount of money that is just a fraction of what a government school typically spends on education for each child. These programs allow families to select the educational model of their choice while reducing costs for government schools. Making this an option for every family would be a boon for liberty, reduce government’s footprint and pave the way for tax cuts at the state and local level.

Universal Health Insurance

No, this is not a proposal to make government the sole payer or provider of health care. Liberty-minded candidates and activists need to embrace health care reform because it is a top issue for voters. Everyone, regardless of political persuasion, can agree that no one should lose their life because they can’t afford the care they need. The question is how do we ensure universal access? Hint: not through the government.

The number of government interventions in the health care and insurance industry sectors is seemingly endless.

This is the chief reason health care costs continue to rise and are projected to increase over the next several years. Liberty-minded legislators must address costs by shrinking government’s role. This includes but is not limited to reducing taxes on health insurance, repealing anti-competitive mandates and regulations, and putting patients in charge of their own health insurance and health care decisions.

The goal of any reform should be to move the country closer to a model where everyone—if they choose—can purchase health insurance and/or have access to health care because it is no longer made prohibitively expensive by the government.

Universal Job Choice

Again, this is not a call for more government involvement. This proposal requires reducing or eliminating barriers that prevent people from being hired at, or from creating, the job of their choice. Occupational licensing is a prominent example of how government makes this idea of achieving universal job choice more difficult. In a 2018 report, the Institute for Justice estimated state licensing regimes cost the economy nearly two million jobs. Add in other mandates, taxes, and regulations, and the cost of government intervention is something very real to millions of people looking for work.

Imagine an economy where millions of more jobs are available because government finally got out of the way. This would put upward pressure on wages and unleash a flood of innovation driving down the costs of everyday products, giving a boost to family budgets in the process.

Cost-Based Poverty Reduction

Liberty-minded people don’t talk about poverty as often as those on the left. I think that’s a mistake. While many well-intended proposals are constructed to reduce poverty by boosting incomes, this often has unintended consequences. For example, government programs offer supplemental income that may be lost after a person works their way up the economic ladder. This creates an incentive for people to remain on government assistance—a problem known as the welfare trap.

A principled alternative to poverty reduction is to address the high cost of living, as Ryan Bourne documents in a 2018 Cato Institute report. Bourne finds government intervention costs the typical household between $830-$3,500 per year through higher prices for goods and services for things like childcare and transportation. Those in the liberty movement should be out in front talking about the reforms needed to reduce these costs to make it a easier for people to provide for themselves and their families.

These four ideas do not represent a comprehensive list, but they can serve as a foundation for a movement that believes protecting and expanding liberty is the best way help people.

The post A Way Forward for the Liberty Movement appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

The post Parents Group Petitions For Removal Of Northern Virginia School Board Members appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

I don’t quite share his pessimism, especially considering all of the variables likely to affect a NYC comeback—the widespread availability of a vaccine, government policy, “pandemic fatigue,” technological innovations, etc. But I am confident in saying that if the city resists tearing down the barriers to innovation—high taxes, burdensome regulations and gratuitous mandates—recovery will be all the more difficult.

I say this as someone who lives in Upstate New York and doesn’t have an insider’s perspective about NYC, but I do understand the power of free enterprise to make life better.

Unfortunately, NYC’s policy climate has not been very friendly to innovation. According to a Reason Foundation report, NYC ranks 49 out of 52 on the U.S. economic freedom index for metropolitan statistical areas. This is relevant because research indicates that economic freedom can positively impact outcomes like income, employment and population growth.

People, when free from government coercion, have an innate ability to serve others in the pursuit of their own interests. It’s this process—one that allows for innovation and production—that creates wealth for everyone. In order to carry out this process easily, companies often use open innovation platforms such as ideXlab. These platforms enable you to determine the sectors that require your expertise and solutions so that you can provide unforgettable experiences.

What then are the policy implications to be drawn from this fact? As a start, NYC needs to reduce its bloated budget and high tax burden on people at all income levels. This will put more money back in the private sector, where resources are allocated based on consumer demand and entrepreneurial foresight rather than political preferences.

Another important step would be to loosen zoning restrictions. As Altucher points out in his piece, many businesses have switched to working from home, emptying floors of office buildings in the process. This could be a permanent move given the ease of tele-commuting. One way to combat this new problem of ghost buildings is to allow for rezoning, paving the way for vacant office space to become new housing—as suggested by Eric Kober of the Manhattan Institute.

Officials should also consider eliminating minimum wage and paid sick leave mandates for businesses looking to hire. Some have estimated that the pandemic and shutdowns have led to the closure of approximately 3,000 NYC businesses. For those businesses lucky enough to remain open, adding to their pain and the pain of people looking for work with costly mandates is unconscionable.

Innovation in education is also a critical component of a NYC comeback. Families with students in the district should be allowed to take their education dollars and use it for the school of their choice. NYC’s school reopening plan, which includes having students in class part-time, is not a viable option for many parents who don’t have the resources to watch or educate their children at home during the school year. Expanding school choice allows parents to find the school that’s best for their child while giving them the flexibility they need to work outside of the home if tele-commuting or hiring a childcare provider isn’t an option.

This next solution seems obvious but may be the most controversial. Officials must allow NYC to fully reopen. I understand concerns about a potential second wave hitting the city, but the unintended consequences of a prolonged economic shutdown could be worse. The decision about attending a Broadway play or eating inside a restaurant—and the risk involved—should be shifted to each individual, not decided by the government.

Risk tolerance varies by person, and so I imagine some people will visit NYC again if they’re confident it won’t be closed for business by the time they arrive. Others may stay away until a vaccine is available. That’s how the freedom of choice works. And it’s preferable to the one-size-fits-all paternalism imposed on us over the last several months.

Top down dictates from government squash innovation. They hinder entrepreneurs from meeting consumer needs. And they prevent people from adapting to their environment. If NYC is going to make a comeback, people need to be free to take risks again.

It’s time for the city that never sleeps to awake from its temporary slumber.

The post Give NYC a Chance to Survive appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

One of those problems is the failure of government-run schools to provide a quality education to millions of kids. There are no silver bullet solutions to society’s social problems, but education reform is perhaps the closest we have.

If reformers want to make strides against structural racism, they should start by empowering families—of all colors—to choose the school that best fits their child’s unique needs.

Before I explain why, it’s important to define the term structural racism because it tends to upset people of different political persuasions for a variety of reasons. Professors Gilbert C. Gee and Chandra L. Ford of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health note that structural racism is defined as “the macrolevel systems, social forces, institutions, ideologies, and processes that interact with one another to generate and reinforce inequities among racial and ethnic groups.”

In other words, structural racism isn’t necessarily the product of intentionally racist acts, which should disarm those who take offense when people use the term to describe particular societal outcomes. Nevertheless, no one should tolerate a system that disproportionately fails people of any race, even if the failures are the result of inherent flaws—like poor incentives created by education monopolies—rather than racist behavior.

An objective look at the efficacy of government-run schools shows a major performance gap among students of different races. According to the Nation’s Report Card, 8^th grade white students score higher than both black and Hispanic students in reading and math. Though achievement levels are still far too low for students of all races.

The same trend is prevalent in graduation rates. The National Center for Education Statistics places these rates for whites, blacks and Hispanics at 88.6, 77.8, and 80 percent respectively. Such outcomes lend credibility to the idea of structural racism—and how it sets back millions of kids in their pursuit of happiness.

One excuse offered in defense of government-run schools is that they’ve been underfunded for decades. But as Corey DeAngelis and Matthew Nielsen document, education spending has risen by an inflation-adjusted 280 percent since 1960. The average government-run school spends $15,000 per student. In my state of New York, spending reaches more than $24,000 per student. Yes, money matters, but more spending is not correlated with higher student achievement.

Still, calls for more education spending persist, which is odd as the money requested would be used to prop up an education system that disproportionately hurts people of color. Critics may reply that more money would address rampant inequities, but there’s plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise. Plus, after decades of failing students, why should more spending be diverted to prop up a failing system?

Instead of waiting years, even decades for structural changes, parents should be free to immediately remove their children from the current educational system and choose the school that is the best fit for their child. This could transform education overnight. And it would provide a much-needed safeguard against the painful consequences of the failure of government-run schools.

The benefits of school choice are enormous. Dozens of studies have demonstrated positive effects on issues ranging from student test scores to education attainment to parental satisfaction. This shouldn’t come as a surprise as parents and guardians are better equipped to determine the best ways to educate their children when compared to the people in charge now: distant politicians and bureaucrats.

School choice can be a lifeline for students and families. If we want to have an honest conversation about race, people on all sides of the debate need to acknowledge the burdens carried by those stuck in unsafe and underperforming schools. And why bigger government isn’t the solution to their problems.

The post Expand School Choice to Combat Structural Racism appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

This comes on the heels of several states closing down all public schools, with many school districts making similar decisions at the local level across the country.

As parents prepared themselves for a new reality of educating their own children at home, #homeschooling began trending on Twitter, Monday. Moms and dads were sharing their plans, checklists, schedules, resources, successes, and ‘failures’ on this first day of the school week. And all the while, veteran homeschoolers were like –

Some parents were very organized in their approach, with colorful, structured schedules (god bless ‘em).

Others were slightly less formal, but still with a good (if not somewhat vague) plan laid out.

Still others tried more of a non-traditional curriculum plan, only to be vetoed by their spouse… (This didn’t sound so bad to me – there are learning opportunities in nearly everything!)

Only a few short hours in, many parents were confronted with the varied challenges that come with homeschooling.

Teachers (parents) rejoiced in their successes, as well (we’ll see how they feel in another week).

The freedom for parents to choose how to educate their children has been an ongoing battle. It was most recently brought to the forefront when Reason Foundation’s Corey DeAngelis caught former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren on video lying about sending her children to public schools. He has continued to call out Republican and Democrat officials alike for their hypocrisy in fighting against school choice while sending their own children to private schools. Parents from all walks of life continue to lobby their state legislatures for more education choices.

Perhaps a good that will come out of this coronavirus pandemic that has upended life as we have known it in America will be the realization that government schools are not the only and certainly not the best option for our children. Each child deserves the opportunity to be educated in the way that works best for them, whether that be homeschool, private school, charter school, public school, or any other number of options. The ‘schooling’ is unimportant. What is important is that they be given every opportunity to learn.

Whether you are a veteran homeschooler or a #coronaquarantine parent teaching your child at home for the first time, go check out the #homeschool posts on Twitter. You will laugh, be encouraged, and find a treasure trove of support and resources.

Whether your homeschool looks like this:

Or like this:

The important thing is that you do you. We all learn differently and you do what works best for you and your children. A child who is taught to love learning will never stop learning. And that is the best lesson you can teach them.

The post Coronavirus Effect: We Are All Homeschoolers Now appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.