Per-Capita Measures of Nevada
June 29th, 2008I got an email this morning from a young Nevada voter that said:
I encourage you to follow and support the leadership of Speaker Buckley in the upcoming session and (if necessary) override the Governor’s absurd “no tax hikes” policy.
A fundamentalist policy which relies on absolute beliefs in the face of overwhelming facts cannot be the guiding force for our State.
So I wrote him back and asked him what overwhelming facts he believes “no tax hikes” flew in the face of.
One of them he cited in his response is our crime rate. This website, for example, ranks the Vegas metropolitan statistical area with the 15th highest rate of violent crime and the 26th highest rate of homicide.
His point, apparently, is that a larger state government would curb crime.
But the discussion reminded me of some research I had asked the Legislative Counsel Bureau to put together a few weeks ago, and had not yet had a chance to write about.
Let us, for the sake of easy math, pretend that there are 10,000 incidents (the type of incident does not matter) in Nevada each year, and 2.5-million residents. The per-capita rate of incidents, then, would be:
10,000 divided by 2,500,000 equals 4 incidents per thousand residents.
However, we know that Nevada is America’s premiere tourist destination. Is it fair to compare our per-capita incident rate with, say, Bakersfield, CA, which only gets a dozen tourists per year?
So I asked the Legislative Counsel Bureau to look into developing a measure of tourist-days versus resident-days to help get a handle on the percentage of our per-capita statistics that might be attributed to visitors versus residents. Here’s the memo.
The answer is that Nevada has 249.4-million “visitor days” per year. Using the same logic, I came up with 912.5-million “resident days” per year (2.5-million population x 365 days per year) . Thus, 21.5% of human activity in Nevada can be attributed to visitors while 78.5% of human activity in Nevada can be attributed to residents. No other state can attribute such a high percentage of its human activity to visitors.
In the case of the crime rates cited above, if our per-capita rate of homicide is 10.2, but only 78.5% of them can be attributed to residents, then our visitor-adjusted homicide rate would only be 8.0, which drops us to 53rd, just ahead of Battle Creek, MI and Longview, TX, and below our MSA ranking of 50th largest.
Perhaps Nevada’s rankings in per-capita measures of aberrant human behavior are systematically too high?
PS - I’ve gotten one or two emails since I posted this from people arguing that it is not fair to compare tourist-adjusted rankings for Las Vegas with unadjusted rankings for other places that draw tourists, like California. Perhaps so - but if California has the same number of visitor-days as Nevada (not likely) its base population of 40-million or so translates to 98.3% residents and 1.7% visitors.
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June 29th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
I find it always interesting how the numbers tell a different story when you start using more meaningful metrics. I am reminded back in school when they talked to us about Cost Accounting (my least favorite subject) and how cost allocations could be made for “common costs.” They cited several examples where products lines were discontinued because incorrect assumptions had been made relating to the profitability and overall contribution margin. Later they found that by discontinuing the product with the higher contribution margin, their losses increased dramatically because they kept the under-performing product.
Its interesting when put against some meaningful statistics, Las Vegas isn’t “one of the worst” places to live after all.
June 29th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
I never cease to be amazed when you stand on prinicple how liberals and moderates are appalled. When a politician trys to keep a pledge made to the voters that supported him or her, they use that principled stand as a negative.
I guess in the modern progressive world, keeping your promises is out of vogue, and the daily change in circumstances means you should change your opinions and beliefs. (that’s why their presidential candidate can completely contradict himself and not get called on it)
To my mind, if you did the right kind of wrestling in your own heart and mind and came to your priciples and beliefs honestly, then a passing circumstance can’t cause you to compromise your prinicples.
Of course, in politics, if you hold to your prinicples they make it a negative, and if you compromise your principles, they make it a negative. Whatever you do, they will use it against you. So the best course of action is to be true to your beliefs, that way you can sleep at night even though others criticize.
June 29th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Nevada’s leaders need to focus on gas prices. Everything else should be second.
Each uptick in Nevada drives tourist away from Nevada and Reno.
It will cause people to lose jobs.
It will cause the state’s budget problem to get worst.
There will be a tipping point in gas prices that will trigger a long term recession in the valley.
We need short term solutions and long solutions.
Everything should be on the table.
Also, the solutions can be higher energy prices to the consumers. If gas is at $7.00 a gallon the new energy source cannot be higher than $7.00 a gallon.
Obviously, drilling and conserving energy are the short term solutions. We can play games anymore.
How about a robust busing system between LA and Las Vegas?
We need those tourists.
There should be an emergency summit by Nevadan leaders to address this problem.
June 29th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Hey, did we not just raise the sales tax a couple of years ago to fight crime?
June 30th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
It never ceases to amaze me how many people I talk to say taxes need to be increased, believing that it won’t be them paying the tax. Bob, you should have told this person to make a personal donation to the State Treasury or Metro.
June 30th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
No, no, no, we didn’t raise sales taxes to fight crime; we did it to hire more cops. That’s not the same thing and it didn’t happen anyway. Disproportionately the money went to give raises to existing cops. What increases I have noticed are, in my opinion, useless. More neighborhood patrols, more detectives, those might help. Instead, I’ve seen is more motorcycle cops setting up speed traps on my way to work.
Bob’s methodology is the correct one. More than any other city I can think of, we have this gap between the resident population and the population present. Unfortunately, some of those included in that boost are criminals and many are potential victims. Both probably contribute to a higher number of crimes being committed in their own way.
June 30th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Does anyone know where Los Angeles or Washington DC falls on the crime list? I’d be interested to know if their high-tax rates are successful in reducing crime. And how about Washington DC’s great education system?
June 30th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Oh yeah! The sales tax increase for more cops. I should have put money on that one. Nice raises they all got there. Now Metro wants to build the Taj Mahal/Bellagio of police stations. Great timing too, huh? As long as they can pay it out of their sales tax money, go ahead since it isn’t going to be used for more cops anyway.
June 30th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
With tourist coming for the modern concept of Sodom and Gamorah in the desert, what kind of tourist do you think we attract? Yes, most are here for the fun of it, but just about every fugitive in the US comes through here at some point while on the run. And, don’t even try to count the number of criminals from south of the border that creep up here illegally.
Yes, we have a very difficult crime picture to compare with any other city in the world.
I think the police do a pretty good job in this city, but the lack of cops on the street in many areas, and some reductions in the resorts security staffs as layoffs start taking hold, is making our city more dangerous than most.
June 30th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Did we not just pass a sales tax for the police to hire a bunch of cops?
When will the “need for more tax money” ever end?
June 30th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Is it really true that “No other state can attribute such a high percentage of its human activity to visitors”? I guess because our population is low compared to vacation destinations like Florida, or California…
Any-hoo, you should forward this blog post as an op-ed and get the word out.
June 30th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
The, “Young Voter,” urging you to support Speaker Buckley probably lives with his/her parents who would be subjected to higher taxation.
My question is, ‘What kind of soap do they use when they brainwash a young voter?’
June 30th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Bob:
Thanks for pointing this clear statistical aberration out. I remember years ago, Mothers Against Drunk Driving complaining that Nevada had the highest per capita alcohol consumption in the country. It seemed obvious that dividing the amount of alcohol consumed in our unique state by its population was an unsound way to determine this.
Now if the LCB could only research what the young voter was possibly thinking by connecting taxes to crime.
July 1st, 2008 at 6:35 am
[...] Nevada State Senator Bob Beers’ blog post entitled Per Capita Measures of Nevada for an interesting examination of our supposed violent crime and homicide [...]
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:55 am
Jim Nance;
Are you talking about greyhound?
July 2nd, 2008 at 12:08 pm
One thing that is always interesting to me is that changing positions on an issue is equated with lacking core values. On the flip side, sticking to the same rigid position has been somehow equated with being true to ones core principles.
When a politician changes positions on an issue, I am always suspect that it is for political expediency or whatever will yield the most votes at the time. Hillary Clinton was a marvelous example of this, as was her morally corrupt husband.
There are those who I believe to be good, honest people who look at an issue and understand that at some point later they may need to re-evaluate in light of new data or other additional information. As time progresses, facts and circumstances on particular issues change with it. The fix for inflation in the early 80’s was a hike in interest rates that killed the economy. The fix for corruption in the private sector was Sarbanes Oxley, which is now being re-evaluated as it may not be quite as effective at preventing the abuses that led to the Enron downfall.
Its a hard thing to judge, but the triangulation vs change in position due to new data or additional info will keep me from voting for any liberal candidates as I haven’t seen any who exhibit core beliefs or good fiscal judgement!
July 5th, 2008 at 7:37 am
Kenny Guinn’s so called “legacy” was higher taxes, a bloated joke called Millenium Scholarship that overbuilt “higher education”. We can all thank that Rino for nothing. The raises for the cops were promptly grabbed by their union where
they DEMANDED a 40% raise. If we are so strapped for cops why do I have pictures of 2 on duty cops flirting with a blond while on duty? Why did we see a group of 25 cops standing under a tree jawing outside of the Convention center (fat ones by the way)while traffic was backed up and only one cop was actually working???? We DON’T need more cops, they are the
highest paid in the country! They don’t even bother to take a report on a stolen car unless you foot it down to the police station. When our business was burglarized, the cop that showed up to make a report was too busy laughing at the jokes
he and his buddy were making on their radios to do anything
other than fill our some paperwork. NOTHING was ever done,
even though we gave him the name of who we suspected was behind it.
Rather than hire more of them, we need to require them to actually solve some of the crimes instead of just giving out tickets. For a fender bender, it took them 3 HOURS to get there to make a report. WHAT A JOKE!!!!
July 5th, 2008 at 10:57 am
If your e-mail friend thinks there is not enough money in police protection, let him send some more to the Metropolitan Police Department from his personal bank account.
Free enterprise made this nation the envy of the world.
Socialism, such as your e-mail freind advocates, has relegated us to the laughing stock of the world.
I prefer the former. Let people start personally supporting programs they like out of their own pocket. That is the message you should send to your socialist constituent.
July 5th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Hi, Bob then I can infer from this analysis that Metros desire for an increase in sales tax revenue is unwarranted due to the low crime rate we enjoy?
July 5th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
My point is about per-capita statistical measures, and whether Nevada’s rankings on them are exaggerated because we have so many visitors and so few residents. Per-capita crime statistics are merely an example for discussion purposes. The same theory would apply to per-capita suicide statistics or (as somebody noted above) alcohol consumption statistics.
July 5th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Bob, “What is a tax?” When I moved here, almost four decades ago, we had no speed limit. The Las Vegas Police Dept. (John Moran, Chief of Police) did not have a very good reputation. The Clark County Sheriff’s Dept. (Ralph Lamb) had a slightly better reputation. The Nevada Highway Patrol had the best reputation and garnered the most respect. Then came the ‘55′. The NHP prostituted themselves for the dollars that the ‘55′ gathered up for the state and the supplement to their pay through grants from U.S. DOT, to enforce the ‘55′. The NHP’s reputation and creditability went ‘down the tubes’. I maintained then, that the ‘55′ was a tax imposed on us lackeys, in Serfdom. BUT I could not document that position, until May of 1995, when the Transportation Committee met to come up with a plan that would keep the State of Nevada ‘revenue neutral’, upon the repeal of the ‘55′. AND they did. Safety was not the concern, revenue was. Those minutes (available from the archives) then provided the information that told me that the fines were indeed taxes, and the State of Nevada had become dependant on that revenue. Much as the State of Georgia has been for many a decade. Keep in mind that murders don’t pay fines as we lackeys are charged for driving at a reasonable and proper speed; NRS 484.361(1). Now we face another money maker, headlights on during day time, on Tonopah Highway ($200 fine). I am ashamed to say that missed that bill, in the 2001 Legislature. It is, as the posted speed limits are, designed to make money and money they make. Just one more tax.
All of the remarks I stated in this e-mail have been presented to every NHP that has pulled me over, or to the PR’s, the latest is Kvein Honea. If you desire, you may speak with NHP, and use my name. They have heard this and much more, during the preceding 35 years.
Bottom line, 85% of those on the highway can’t be wrong.
July 6th, 2008 at 10:20 am
Larry, I invite you to donate all you want to the fund. Why push your desires on the backs of others? Whether it is a good idea or not is irrelevant. The relevant points are:
If you like it so much, fund it yourself, along with all your friends. I guarantee you that it will not sound like such a good idea under those circumstances.
The mooches hired by our politicians through the “free money” policies you advocate represent the least likely chance to solve any problem. If people want more Metro, let those who want it support a direct advocacy movement to pay for it themselves. Otherwise, shut up because you are only interested in “good ideas” is someone else is taxed for it. QUIT STEALING MY MONEY FOR YOUR “FEEL-GOOD” PROJECTS!!!!!!
Larry, you and your cronies are ruining our country through your whining and pandering to corrupt politicians. I know you will not shoulder the load to the level of your whining, so just shut up and quit destroying this country.