Some homers among the strikes
Next month will mark the 40th anniversary of my debut as a columnist for North Carolina newspapers. Over the decades, I’ve gotten quite a few things wrong. I’ve misdiagnosed policy problems, misinterpreted data, miscalled political races, even misspelled an embarrassing number of names.
While every error makes my stomach lurch, I try not to beat myself up too much about it — or about how often I mix my metaphors. After all, when you step up to the editorial plate once or twice a week over four decades, you’re going to strike out. Often.
Still, when I really blow it and need some reassurance, I change the mental subject. I think about the articles I wrote that stand the test of time. Articles that correctly summarized and analyzed a difficult issue. Articles that offered what proved to be accurate predictions of political events. And articles pitching policy ideas that became law in North Carolina and beyond.
One of the first columns I wrote that appeared in more than one newspaper — and later appeared in expanded form in Reader’s Digest — examined the rising cost of college. While several factors were in play, I argued, one explanation for tuition inflation was actually the federal government’s attempts to solve the problem with grants and loans. As financial aid became more generous, college and universities hiked their tuition and fees to capture most if not all of the benefit. I called the process an “education treadmill,” in that many students and their families were expending a great amount of energy and money and getting nowhere.
This treadmill effect is now so widely accepted an account of how tuition subsidies work that even left-wing critics of school choice make the same argument about private-school tuition — and they are, to some extent, correct.
As it happens, I also wrote columns decades ago predicting that vouchers or tax breaks for households selecting private schools would, everything else being equal, enable those schools to raise tuition. My proposed solution, for both K-12 and higher education, was to use tax reform to give households a financial incentive to shop around for the best educational deal.
I urged policymakers to create what I called “educational savings accounts” into which parents and others could contribute tax-free deposits and from which they could withdraw to pay tuition, fees, and other costs. Those eligible for vouchers or other public subsidies would also have that money flow into their ESAs. Here’s the kicker: any unspent ESAs funds could eventually roll over into other savings or retirement accounts. Rather than presenting folks with a “use it or lose it” dynamic, ESAs would empower them to make the educational choices that best fit their needs while also encouraging them to be price-sensitive.
My first piece on ESAs came out in the mid-1990s. I’m happy to say that, since then, education savings accounts (subsequent advocates shortened the first word) have become a popular reform, enacted so far in 18 states, including our own.
Finally, one political call I got right was the fate of Jim Black, former Democratic speaker of the North Carolina House. In the 2002 midterms, Republicans won a 61-seat majority in the 120-seat chamber. Black didn’t yield power gracefully. Instead, he bribed a Republican with financial problems to change parties, yielding a 60-60 split, then used other questionable means to preserve his power.
As allegations of Black’s corruption continued to proliferate, most insiders believed the speaker would survive. Many dismissed predictions of his political demise as fanciful. That wasn’t my take. I wrote multiple columns about his scandals and predicted an end to his speakership and career. In a March 27, 2006 column entitled “It’s Not a Question of If,” I wrote that “the chorus of individuals and institutions calling for Black to step down as speaker started out as a barbershop quartet. Now it can perform oratorios.”
Some months later, Black announced his retirement, pled guilty to corruption charges, and went to prison.
John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy and American history.
“Some homers among the strikes” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.
