Russell Roberts's Blog, page 118

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

Tweet

… is from page 226 of Joseph Epstein’s 1999 book, Narcissus Leaves the Pool:

One is resigned, too, to the world’s comedy: idiots rising to the top, fanatics dressed up as idealists, boobs confidently in control.

Getting Cause and Effect Straight

(Don Boudreaux)

Tweet

Here’s a letter sent last week to the New York Times:

Editor:

Among the reasons listed by Ezra Klein for why inflation might soon ease is that “real wage growth has turned negative” (“Why a Middle-Class Lifestyle Remains Out of Reach for So Many,” July 17). Mr. Klein is mistaken.

Real-wage growth has turned negative because of high inflation, as rising prices reduce nominal-wages’ real purchasing power. This decline in real-wage growth, being caused by inflation, will not reduce inflation.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

…..

And moreover, if and to the extent that real wages are falling because of reduced worker productivity, any resulting pressure on the price level would be, not downward as Klein presumes, but upward.

Some Links

(Don Boudreaux)

Tweet

Arnold Kling explains that DEI leads to racism. A slice:

If individuals are equally qualified on the basis of standards and you want to use diversity as a tie-breaker, that might be ok. But achieving diversity by getting rid of standards is counterproductive.

Jettisoning standards insults the many black students who are capable of meeting the highest standards of excellence. It probably depresses their achievement as well.

John Cochrane points us to two powerful essays on academia’s on-going self-destruction.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown reports that “the FDA’s awful labeling regulations made the baby formula shortage worse.”

Juliette Sellgren talks with my Mercatus Center colleague Weifeng Zhong about propaganda from the Chinese government.

Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel rightly observes that too many Republicans are hypocritical about government spending. A slice:

This is Republican business as usual. The GOP that is assisting in this quarter-trillion-dollar spendathon is the same GOP that last year provided the votes for a $1 trillion infrastructure boondoggle. The same GOP that in 2020 signed on to not one, not two, three or four, but five Covid “relief” bills, to the tune of some $3.5 trillion. The same GOP that smartly cut taxes in 2017, but pretended it didn’t and blew through discretionary spending caps. The same GOP that has unofficially re-embraced earmarks. The party occasionally takes a breather—say to gripe about the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion Covid bill in 2021—but then it’s right back to the spending grindstone.

When was the last time anyone heard a Republican talk about the need to reform Social Security or Medicare? That disappeared with the election of Donald Trump (opposed to both) and the retirement of Speaker Paul Ryan and never reappeared. Instead, a growing faction of the party sees a future in buying the votes of working- and middle-class voters with costly new entitlement proposals of their own, such as expanded child tax credits. Who wants to dwell on painful budget or welfare reform when Republicans can promote their values by doling out federal cash?

Some will note that “only” 16 Senate Republicans voted to advance the new “innovation” blowout—that the significant majority of the 50-strong GOP caucus remains opposed. But 16 is still a lot. Especially for a party that claims a core belief in “limited government.” The number is a function of a party leadership that is no longer making a top priority of fiscal restraint, giving license to its spenders. That, and outside conservative groups that are increasingly focusing on the culture wars rather than the threat of big government.

GMU Econ alum Caleb Fuller learned from personal experience “that even the most well-intentioned public policy has ripple effects that policymakers are not always capable of anticipating.”

Phil Magness observes on his Facebook page:

When you look back on the last 2.5 years, keep in mind that it took Fauci and Biden getting Covid before the public health profession conceded that basically none of the measures that they pushed upon us for that same period worked as they claimed.

Wesley Smith writes about a new study that finds that natural immunity is as effective as vaccines at protecting against serious consequences from covid. Here’s his reasonable conclusion:

Natural immunity should count as much as vaccinated status in determining risk of serious illness. More broadly, coercion to force vaccination is not defensible as a matter of policy. The mandates should be repealed. Military members who refused vaccination should not be discharged. People in the private sector who lost their jobs because of the vaccine hysteria should be reinstated. Anyone adversely impacted by their personal decision to remain un-vaxxed should be made whole.

Joel Zinberg says “no more masks.” Two slices:

Covid-19 cases are on the rise again in the United States. Even President Biden is infected. But the biggest danger is not the virus—the now-dominant and highly contagious Omicron BA.5 variant—but the risk that public health officials will overreact.

Over the past two months, new Covid cases have risen by roughly 15 percent. Covid hospitalizations have risen even more. But BA.5 does not cause more severe disease than earlier variants. In fact, the percentage of Covid cases leading to bad outcomes appears to be declining.

The hospitalization increase is likely artifactual. The severity of illness among hospitalized Covid patients has been declining since autumn 2021—both intensive-care unit admission and mortality rates have been steadily falling. The likely explanation is that many Covid-positive admissions actually entered the hospital for other reasons before testing positive on routine tests for Covid. In fact, current cases and hospitalizations are still moderate when viewed over the history of the pandemic and are far lower than previous spikes. More importantly, Covid death rates have been relatively flat for the past three months.

But these facts have not kept Los Angeles County from planning to reinstate its indoor mask mandate on July 29. Multiple California universities and school districts have already reinstated mask mandates. Gwinnett County, Georgia, employees and schools have imposed new masking requirements. And it’s always possible that enterprising officials could inflict more restrictive lockdown-type measures if cases continue rising.

…..

A study of Covid infection rates in all 50 states during the first year of the pandemic concluded that “mask mandates and use are not associated with slower state-level COVID-19 spread during COVID-19 growth surges.” Other studies comparing counties and states with different masking policies suggested that mandates could reduce Covid case growth, but these were generally conducted early in the pandemic, when multiple infection-prevention and control measures were in place, making it challenging to measure the independent impact of mask mandates. Moreover, these studies preceded the advent of more highly transmissible variants like Omicron, and especially the now prevalent and even more transmissible BA.5 subvariant, and therefore may not be directly relevant to the current situation.

Here’s the abstract from a June 2022 paper by Michaéla Schippers, John Ioannidis, and  Ari Joffe:

A series of aggressive restrictive measures around the world were adopted in 2020-2022 to attempt to prevent SARS-CoV-2 from spreading. However, it has become increasingly clear that an important negative side-effect of the most aggressive (lockdown) response strategies may involve a steep increase in poverty, hunger, and inequalities. Several economic, educational and health repercussions have not only fallen disproportionately on children, students, and young workers, but also and especially so on low-income families, ethnic minorities, and women, exacerbating existing inequalities. For several groups with pre-existing inequalities (gender, socio-economic and racial), the inequality gaps widened. Educational and financial security decreased, while domestic violence surged. Dysfunctional families were forced to spend more time with each other, and there has been growing unemployment and loss of purpose in life. This has led to a vicious cycle of rising inequalities and health issues. In the current narrative and scoping review, we describe macro-dynamics that are taking place as a result of aggressive public health policies and psychological tactics to influence public behavior, such as mass formation and crowd behavior. Coupled with the effect of inequalities, we describe how these factors can interact towards aggravating ripple effects. In light of evidence regarding the health, economic and social costs, that likely far outweigh potential benefits, the authors suggest that, first, where applicable, aggressive lockdown policies should be reversed and their re-adoption in the future should be avoided. If measures are needed, these should be non-disruptive. Second, it is important to assess dispassionately the damage done by aggressive measures and offer ways to alleviate the burden and long-term effects. Third, the structures in place that have led to counterproductive policies, should be assessed and ways should be sought to optimize decision-making, such as counteracting groupthink and increasing the level of reflexivity. Finally, a package of scalable positive psychology interventions is suggested to counteract the damage done and improve future prospects for humanity.

In response to Philip Bump’s defense of lockdowns, Jay Bhattacharya tweets:

This WaPo columnist thinks the lockdowns were justified because they delayed when Pres. Biden got infected. Shocking blindness to the tremendous harm they caused to children, the poor, & the working class in the meantime.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

Tweet

… is from page 126 of Deirdre McCloskey’s splendid 2022 volume, Beyond Positivism, Behaviorism, and Neoinstitutionalism in Economics:

Most social life is (to use exactly the wrong word) governed without government and is commonly governed by the words we habitually use.

Bonus Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

Tweet

… is from Bjorn Lomborg’s July 22, 2022, Wall Street Journal essay aptly titled “How the Climate Elite Spread Misery“:

Climate policies also increase energy prices by subsidizing renewables like solar and wind. That makes it even harder to adapt to the extreme temperatures climate activists bemoan. You need cheap and reliable energy to afford air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter.

Some Links

(Don Boudreaux)

Tweet

National Review‘s Jim Geraghty is justified in reminding readers of fully vaccinated and boosted Joe Biden’s summer 2021 assertion that “[w]e have a pandemic for those who haven’t gotten a vaccination. It’s that basic, that simple.”

“New Zealand Covid deaths soar to RECORD high as Omicron wreaks havoc: Scientists claim nation is vulnerable because it spent too long under ‘hermit’ China-style eradication strategy”. (HT Will Jones)

“England’s Latest Covid Wave Peaks Without Masks or Restrictions“.

TANSTAFPFC (There Ain’t No Such Thing As Free Protection From Covid.)

Jay Bhattacharya catches covidian Ashish Jha sounding as if he – Jha – endorses the great Great Barrington Declaration.

Martin Kulldorff tweets:

“One good comedian is more valuable to society than a hundred public intellectuals because nothing exposes power as a joke at its expense … for the tyrant can endure anything except being laughed at.” – Jeff Polet

Joseph Sternberg is no fan of Ben Bernanke’s new book. Two slices:

That this evolution in Mr. Bernanke’s views doesn’t on its face undermine his credibility could be explained by the fact that there’s still quite a lot that economists don’t understand about these policies and how they work—as Mr. Bernanke acknowledges. But it might also be a clue that something is awry in the economics behind Mr. Bernanke’s new approach to monetary policy. Or that his enthusiasm for the Fed’s new tools could be a tad premature.

It turns out to be the latter. A glaring omission from Mr. Bernanke’s book is any sense that central-bank policies may themselves contribute to the negative productivity, employment or output trends to which—as Mr. Bernanke and so many others believe—a central bank merely reacts.

…..

That’s all economics, though, and Mr. Bernanke’s book is best read as a political rather than an economic treatise. The Fed’s interventions since 2007 have grown steadily more controversial. The crux of the indictment against the Fed, from both the left and the right, is that with its ever more aggressive policy tools it has strayed into the kind of distributional decisionmaking that’s properly the prerogative of elected politicians.

Gary Galles helps us to better understand protectionism. A slice:

Protectionism provides special treatment for political favorites at the expense of others’ rights and well-being. In fact, it harms all American consumers not given special protection, by removing options they chose for themselves (as illustrated by the fact that undoing protectionist policies could lower prices paid by Americans at a time when rapid inflation is supposedly political topic number one), yet it persists.

Here’s more from Scott Lincicome on the baby-formula fiasco.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

Tweet

… is from page 178 of former Caltech physics professor and provost – and former Energy Department undersecretary during the Obama administration – Steven Koonin’s superb 2021 book, Unsettled? What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters:

[C]limate is only one of many factors influencing economic development and well-being. Economic policies, trade, technology, and governance are also important, and these are different in different countries and can change in unpredictable ways. Economics measures are highly regional, and their future uncertainties are compounded by the uncertainty of regional climate predictions. It is particularly difficult to predict how, and how much, a rising temperature would damage a society economically in the face of so many unknowns – among them the role that might be played by adaptation measures like the raising of sea wall or shifts in what crops are cultivated that minimize, or sometimes even exploit, the impact of climate changes.

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “Silence golden for market economy”

(Don Boudreaux)

Tweet

In my column for the February 11th, 2013, edition of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, I argued that “[o]ne of the market economy’s greatest flaws is the silence it maintains when it is working relatively flawlessly.” You can read my column in full beneath the fold.

(more…)

Some Links

(Don Boudreaux)

Tweet

My Mercatus Center colleague Adam Thierer wonders why America is following the lead of Europe on government regulation of artificial intelligence. A slice:

It would be imprudent for the U.S. to adopt Europe’s more top-down regulatory model, however, which already decimated digital technology innovation in the past and now will do the same for AI. The key to competitive advantage in AI will be openness to entrepreneurialism, investment and talent, plus a flexible governance framework to address risks.

K. Lloyd Billingsley rightly laments the existence of the U.S. Department of Education (so-called).

My GMU Econ colleague Bryan Caplan ably defends his work on immigration. A slice:

Assume we agree that immigrants get a large raise because immigration massively raises their productivity. The next question, then, is: When one segment of society massively increases its productivity, what happens to the rest of society?

When agricultural productivity massively increases, should we say, “It’s a benefit to agrobusiness, that’s all”?

When information technology massively improves, should we say, “It’s a benefit to tech workers, that’s all”?

When the construction industry builds a lot more houses, should we say, “It’s a benefit to developers, that’s all”?

Absolutely not. In each of these cases, increased productivity enriches not just producers, but consumers. How could matters be otherwise? Look at the world: Countries that produce lots of stuff are rich. Countries that produce little stuff are poor. As I love to say, the secret of mass consumption is mass production.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that the gains for immigrants are illusory. What it means, rather, is that immigrants’ massive gains are just part of the total gain.

Walter Olson blogs on the recent report, written by prominent conservatives, the conclusion of which is that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was lost, not stolen. A slice:

There is no defensible case that Trump won the 2020 election. “We urge our fellow conservatives to cease obsessing over the results of the 2020 election, and to focus instead on presenting candidates and ideas that offer a positive vision for overcoming our current difficulties and bringing greater peace, prosperity, and liberty to our nation.”

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Joseph Epstein describes as “bums” both Trump and Biden. A slice:

The Jan. 6 committee investigation may end in a call for a criminal indictment of Mr. Trump. My hope is that at a minimum it will quash in the former president’s mind the idea of running again in 2024. The prospect of a second Trump-Biden election invokes a staggering sadness for the fate of our country. How did America come to such an unhappy choice, which it may face again in 2024?

My sense is that, just as Mr. Trump gave us Joe Biden, liberal culture earlier gave us Mr. Trump. It’s easy to imagine all those Americans, struggling to make a living, worrying about the fate of their families amid rising crime and plummeting educational standards, tuning their TV sets in 2014 and 2015 to the antipolice riots in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo. Changing the channel, they heard college students say that disagreement made them feel unsafe. On another channel they were told that failing to celebrate transgenderism made them bigots. Bring on the Donald!

GMU Econ alum Dominic Pino decries corporatism.

David Henderson shares EconLog commenter Kevin Corcoran’s thoughts on industrial policy and central planning.

Liam Cosgrove reports that Covid Derangement Syndrome still plagues Sri Lanka.

Paul Alexander wonders if Rochelle Walensky will correct her mistake about the lethality of covid to children.

“Children up to four years old were just as likely to die from the flu or a stroke as Covid at the height of the Omicron wave, data shows – and those aged 5 to 14 were FOUR TIMES more likely to die from cancer.”

David McCune tweets: (HT Jay Bhattacharya)

Regarding Biden’s COVID, 2 lessons:
1) If the most protected man on the planet can get COVID, you will also get COVID.
2) If COVID is not likely to be a serious infection for a 79yo man with evidence of frailty, it’s not likely to be serious for the vast majority who contract it.

Quotation of the Day…

(Don Boudreaux)

Tweet

… is from page 124 of Deirdre McCloskey’s insightful 2022 volume, Beyond Positivism, Behaviorism, and Neoinstitutionalism in Economics:

True, property can be guaranteed by government. But the evidence is crushing that property much more usually is taxed or stolen by government and that anyway property arises easily and repeatedly in history without government at all.

DBx: My favorite modern example of property rights emerging spontaneously – that is, without design – occurs in college cafeterias. A person who puts his or her books or backpack on the table in front of an empty chair in a cafeteria, or who drapes a coat or sweater on an empty chair, establishes his or her property right to sit in that chair, and to use the adjoining table space, when that person returns several minutes later from buying lunch. People who spot that empty chair with the books or backpack placed in front of it are disappointed to discover that that table space is already taken – despite the fact that, at that moment, no human being is actually seated in that chair. The property right is respected.

The cafeteria-table example doesn’t itself prove that all worthwhile rights to property emerge spontaneously, or that government recognition and enforcement of property rights cannot or will not further strengthen property rights. But this quotidian example does prove that we humans, without being directed by an authority, at least sometimes (and I would argue very often) not only naturally recognize the difference between mine and thine, but that we also stumble upon useful signals to distinguish mine from thine, as well as respect these signals as legitimate markers separating mine from thine.