Liberty v Access

Our egalitarian-obsessed government is preparing to apply the American with Disabilities Act to websites.  There are, of course, First Amendment issues with such a novel application.  Websites deal with mainly with speech, which is protected by the Constitution.  So, we’ll see how all this shakes out.

As a libertarian, I consider the ADA one of the most offensive pieces of legislation around.  Prior to Obamacare, it took the top spot.  I totally reject the idea that a private business must be forced to comply with some accessibility standard.  As the owner of a firm, either I am free to arrange my business affairs as I see fit, or my liberty has been severely curtailed as a result of some high-minded notion of fairness.  Some may label me as cruel and insensitive but consider the unintended consequences of such noble accessibility legislation.  Let’s examine what ADA would look like in Korea.

If there are 20 million Koreans in Seoul, there must be 10 million restaurants.  I can count more than a dozen looking out my 26^th story window, and none are handicapped accessible.  Most sidewalks don’t taper down to the curb.  Korea’s hills rival those found in San Francisco, and many restaurants and eateries are located on a very sloping grade.  Additionally, most Korean restaurants are tiny compared to their American counterpart.  With so many Koreans crammed into a small geographical area, space comes at a premium, and Koreans are experts at utilizing every inch.  

Now, let’s introduce ADA into Korea.

 

Nearly every mom & pop eatery would close up shop.  Most simply could not afford to comply with U.S. accessibility standards, and so they would simply cease to exist.  Those that chose to stay open would have to charge higher prices due to compliance – this in addition to the upward pressure on prices due to reduced supply.  And while some consumers would benefit from the new accessibility standards, the overwhelming majority would suffer.  Former mom & pop restaurateurs would be out of work and consumers would face dramatically fewer choices and higher prices.

Yes, it’s most unfortunate that some among cannot navigate around as easily as others, but to use the legal system to force private property owners into complying with a government-approved and costly standard seems hardly a just and noble cause.

Labor and Disability

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.  This picture may qualify. 

 

Since 2009, the number of folks claiming disability has grown 19%.  The average monthly disability payment in 2013 was $1,130.  Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate continues to decline.  During the same time frame, the labor force participation rate has fallen -3.3%.   I plotted the two data sets on one chart, and it’s quite telling:

 

Would it be completely unreasonable to say that many capable but chronically unemployed folks have abandoned looking for work and joined the disability rolls?

Source: http://www.socialsecurity.gov/cgi-bin/currentpay.cgi and http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

Do as I say, not as I do

Some wise words from the Chinese president:

"We must respect the right of each country in the world to independently choose its path of development and oppose interference in the internal affairs of other countries," Xi told students at an international relations school.

If only Xi felt the same way toward his own citizens.  If he did, he’d say this:

"We must respect the right of each country citizen in the world China to independently choose its his path of development and oppose interference in the internal affairs of other countries citizens," Xi told students at an international relations school.

What’s in an Average?

Someone once said about data: “there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.”  This truism reflects the fact that information gleaned from data can often be maligned.  Here’s a good example.

The Mercatus Center at GMU produced the Freedom Index of the fifty states.  The fine folks at George Mason took a plethora of statistics regarding personal and economic freedom from each of the states and reduced it to a single Freedom Index score.  Part of that data set contained information regarding right to work (RTW) laws.  I wanted to see if there was correlation between RTW laws and statewide employment.  My intuition told me that, in general, unemployment should be lower in states with right to work laws.  Forced unionism can be an impediment to employment, or so I thought.

I went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and obtained unemployment figures for each state.  I used the most recent data – January 2013.  This is a snapshot of a point in time and a better indicator might have been a two or three year average.  But to keep it simple, I used the January data.

First, I ran a simple average for RTW states and the unemployment rate. If my intuition were correct, I should find lower UE in RTW states.  Here’s what I found:

                Unemployment rate for RTW states – 6.78%

                Unemployment rate for non RTW states – 7.3%

Unemployment is over 7% lower in RTW states.  Case closed, right?  If I worked for the MSM, I could conclusively report that states with RTW laws have lower unemployment figures than non RTW states.  Therefore, RTW laws increase employment.  Not so fast.  While the average UE rate in RTW states is indeed lower, is this relationship strong?  Let’s see.

Using unemployment as the dependent variable and RTW law as the independent variable, I used regression analysis to see how RTW might influence employment.  My R-square value was a mere .027 and the P-value was not significant at 0.253.  What does all this mean?  While the average unemployment rate is lower in RTW states, only 2.7% of the variation can be explained by RTW laws.  Other factors are at play here and RTW alone isn’t sufficient to explain why RTW states enjoy lower unemployment.

Moral of the story: beware of misleading statistics. We are constantly bombarded with averages, percentiles, and other data regarding a whole host of economic data.  Many times, these statistics are meant to influence our thinking towards public policy.  So, before you hop on board your favorite statistic, look more deeply into the numbers.  You might be surprised at what you find.

Some Clarity, Please

Mr. President, I’m a little confused.   

You say that reducing the flow of federal dollars into the economy will inflict harm.  Thus, the sequester is bad policy.  In its stead, you advocate for tax increases – a policy that would reduce the flow of private dollars into the economy.  However, you remain agnostic about the economic effects of this seemingly identical policy.

What is the difference?