Category Archives: politics

University Funding and University Overhead

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Maya Sen, Professor of Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, thinks the Trump administration’s insistence on a cap of 15% for “indirect costs” as part of all Federal research grants to colleges/universities is too low for too many such institutions; such caps should continue to be negotiated school by school. She insists, for instance, that Harvard needs its 69% cut of research grants for its indirect cost.

An across-the-board 15% cap, she insists, ignores any individualized considerations, leaving schools with higher costs in the lurch. And, she claims,

University research depends on federal money—11% of Harvard’s operating revenue comes from such grants.

Her alternative:

There’s a better solution than a blanket cap. Universities could instead commit to addressing administrative bloat and shoring up research integrity—both reasonable points that academics themselves have flagged.

Couple things about that. One is Harvard’s $53.2 billion endowment with its 2024 return on investment of 9.6%—a fairly typical ROI for Harvard; even if its yearly ROI varies quite a bit around that figure. That’s a lot of money carefully not being used for the school’s operating revenue, or its grant “indirect costs.”

The other is that proposed Universities could instead commit to addressing administrative bloat and shoring up research integrity. We’ve seen already the value of those commitments—empty virtue-signaling words in far too many cases. See for instance, Sen’s own Harvard and its refusal to enforce its commitment to protect Jewish students from Harvard’s population of pro-terrorist “students.”

Bonus thing regarding those schools with higher costs about which Sen worries being left in the lurch: any lurch is solely the product of those “higher cost” schools. They can straightforwardly cull their administrative bloat and adjust their spending allocations to deal with remaining costs. All that would take is a modicum of courage, with backbone injected via reduced revenues caused by reduced Federal froo-froo included in any research grants.

No. The administration’s across-the-board 15% cap needs to be implemented.

“Another Reason to Move to Florida”

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The Wall Street Journal phrased its headline as a question, but it fits as a statement, also. James Freeman’s op-ed was centered on Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’ move toward reducing/eliminating Florida’s property tax, but there’s a much broader item in play here.

Florida’s regular legislative session starts next week and state Senator Jonathan Martin (R, Fort Myers) recently filed a bill to study “a framework to eliminate property taxes…and to replace property tax revenues through budget reductions, sales-based consumption taxes, and locally determined consumption taxes authorized by the Legislature.

Consumption taxes are even more regressive than our existing national income tax structure is progressive. Replacing reduced taxes with budget reductions, though—that would be a strong move toward leaving Florida’s citizens’ money in the hands of those citizens.

If Florida can pull that off, it would be a strong reason to move there, and it would be a powerful empirically demonstrated example of how such a move would increase the prosperity of the citizens of the other 49 States, and of the United States.

“Racists Support other Racists”

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That’s the claim Texas’ Progressive-Democrat Congressman Jasmine Crockett says in her diatribe against Republicans and us average Americans who voted for President Donald Trump (R).

She’s right, of course. Given the intrinsically racist and sexist bigotry that is Progressive-Democrats’ identity politics, that support for other racists is exactly what Crockett is doing.

Some Thoughts on our Trade Imbalance

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Phil Gramm and Donald Boudreaux had an extensive op-ed in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal. I have a couple of thoughts on their piece.

Overall, they presented a typical argument regarding international trade balances, and it was sound as far as it goes. However, I’ve never seen an argument for or against US trade deficits/surpluses that take into account the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

For international trade, how much, really, are local currencies traded for dollars in order to purchase American goods and how much are local dollars traded for foreign currencies in order for Americans to buy foreign goods? How much of those currency exchanges are really just taps of the foreign nation’s dollars held as reserves and similarly replenished into those reserves through ordinary trade-of-goods-and-services exchanges? In other words, how much to buyers and sellers themselves do the currency exchanges and how much of those currency exchanges are actually done from government to government out of government reserve holdings?

Maybe a lot is government to government, maybe a little, but the question needs answers.

Also this:

Has the expansion of global trade “hollowed out” US manufacturing, as Joe Biden claimed in 2022? No. US industrial production today is more than double what it was in 1975, the last time we ran a trade surplus.

What is produced by today’s “industrial production” compared to that of 1975? Or immediately after WWII? That never gets specified. Nor does “industrial production” ever get normalized to account for changes in technology and manufacturing techniques.

A similar definition disconnect exists for services.

Until those specifications are made, claims of industrial production or services changes in either direction are meaningless.

Why Not?

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The press’ “government officials” now say that President Donald Trump (R) is planning to eliminate the US Postal Service’s Board of Governors and fold the USPS into the Department of Commerce. On the other hand, a “White House official” says that’s not so.

For the hyperventilators in the audience, here is the sum and total of what our Constitution says about a postal service. It’s in Article I, Section 8:

[The Congress shall have Power…] To establish Post Offices and Post Roads

Nothing in there about establishing or maintaining a postal service, only the post offices, useful for dropping off and collecting mail and packages for transporting over those post roads—of latter which we have an enormous network of roads over which to carry that mail and those packages, along with extensive railroad and air shipping networks capable of the same. Those post offices are directly analogous, and no more useful than, FedEx and UPS drop-off and pickup offices.

A move to consolidate the USPS into Commerce has the potential of reducing duplicative governance. It also would give those with commerce expertise—to the extent such exists in the Federal government—control over what is, essentially, a commerce enterprise—the movement as shipper of First Class mail and packages as well as intermediary shipper of other shippers’ packages.

Of course, the better move would be to completely privatize the USPS and let it compete with existing shippers for the movement of all mail, including First Class, just as it does now with packages. USPS already has a serious advantage in such competition: a last mile network that reaches every household and business in the nation, which none of its potential competition (with the possible exception of Amazon, for its own exclusive use).

Still, consolidation would be a good start.