Show-Me Institute

Overview

The Show-Me Institute is a free-market think tank founded in 2005 in Clayton, Missouri, by Rex Sinquefield, Crosby Kemper III, and economist Michael Podgursky, affiliated with the national State Policy Network of similar organizations.[1] Its stated mission is "improving the quality of life for all citizens of Missouri by advancing sensible, well-researched solutions to state and local policy issues," with a general orientation toward lower taxes, smaller government, and deregulation.[1] Its very first publication (2006), by University of Missouri economist Joseph Haslag, argued that the 1% municipal earnings taxes levied by Kansas City and St. Louis were suppressing personal income growth in those cities relative to their untaxed suburbs.[1]

Land Value Tax Advocacy

Unusually for a free-market institute, the Show-Me Institute's proposed alternative to the earnings tax has consistently been expanded land value taxation rather than a cut in overall taxation or a shift to sales taxes. In a series of articles from 2010 to 2026, its writers — Christine Harbin, David Stokes, and Joseph Haslag among them — argued that Kansas City's existing land-only Parkway and Trafficway Maintenance Taxes (raising roughly $9.9 million/year as of 2012) should be expanded, not eliminated as a 2012 city revenue commission proposed, and that both Kansas City and St. Louis should shift toward land taxation to replace their earnings taxes, citing Henry George, Milton Friedman, Paul Samuelson, and Joseph Stiglitz as cross-ideological economists who favor land taxation on efficiency grounds.[2] See United States for the fuller account of this advocacy record and its outcomes.

See Also

• United States — the Kansas City/St. Louis earnings-tax-to-land-tax advocacy record
• Land Value Tax
• Pittsburgh — the split-rate precedent Show-Me Institute writers repeatedly invoke

Sources

1. "Show-Me Institute," Wikipedia — used for founding date, founders, location, mission statement, and the 2006 Haslag earnings-tax study. en.wikipedia.org
2. Christine Harbin, "A Land Tax Is Preferable to the Earnings Tax" (Jan. 11, 2010); David Stokes, "Great Article About the Land Tax in the Kansas City Star" (Feb. 22, 2010); Joseph Haslag & David Stokes, "Kansas City Land Tax Should Be Expanded, Not Eliminated" (July 21, 2012); David Stokes, "Kansas City Should Expand, Not Remove, Land Taxes" (Aug. 2, 2012); Michael Rathbone, "Land Taxes and Columbia" (July 15, 2015); David Stokes, "It's Time to Phase Out the Earnings Tax. Honestly, Nothing Else Has Worked . . ." (Mar. 12, 2026) — all Show-Me Institute articles, fetched directly this session. showmeinstitute.org — used for the full advocacy record summarized above and on the United States page.